Feel Logging dump
Bad North
Every feel I logged while playing, sorted into good and bad, straight from the notes. The five that mattered most get the full treatment in Five Feels: Bad North.
Good feels
You can understand the whole game in minutes:
The game is largely self-explanatory. No lengthy tutorial or memorizing. I had learned how to play within 5 minutes of launching.
Leveling my archers felt awesome:Often strategy games get leveling up units wrong. It feels lack-luster or unnoticable. Not here. The increase to accuracy and damage was clear. It felt juicy.
It’s gorgeous and it runs perfectly:Nothing broken or janky. The art creates a wonderful atmoshere. Showing that you don’t need ultra realistic graphics to be fully immersed in a world.
Mouse & keyboard fixed my experience:My initial playthrough was on controller, which was fine. But when I played on mouse & keyboard, I noticed how fluid the controls were.
Second monitor content:Great game to have on while a podcast plays, because it keeps your hands busy without taking your head. It’s net time, the same as mending nets or knitting or washing dishes, repetitive work you’re good at that leaves your mind somewhere else. Enough to do that you’re not just sitting there, never enough that you have to concentrate.
Bad feels
I died and nothing happened:No unlocks, no progress for my next run. Nothing to get me excited to try a new approach next time. Just back to the same island with the same 3 unit types to engage in the same strategy once again.
It calls itself a roguelite:Could this be a difference in eras? In 2018, the term meant procedural and permadeath. These days, it means my death means progress. This phrase makes a promise that wasn’t kept.
My units stand there and get shot:An enemy archer 2 tiles away is peppering my pikes, who do nothing about it. Every autobattler or RTS solves this with aggro. But this is a weird blend of micro-managing of positioning and RTS. The design combines 2 approaches that feel awkwardly suited to eachother.
Skills feel like they’re on a delay:Skill like dropping a mine or throwing a bomb felt awkward to use and time against enemy movement. This was largely a controller issue that was solved with the increased rate of input from mouse & keyboard.
Only three classes:Infantry/archer/pike – rock/paper/scissors. No new ones to find. Each upgrade to the class is just a numbers boost.
The codex is short and I could see the bottom of it:I went looking for all the unlocks I could aim for. The depth and variety felt lackluster for a modern roguelite.
I can say the whole strategy in one sentence:It stops the game from being challenging enough to let me enter a flow state. Each battle is the same tactic of ticking a box depending on the enemies that spawn.
It’s not hiding the puzzle:Most games are puzzles under the hood. Good ones use smoke & mirrors to hide the fact. But the unit counters sit at the surface level.
I never got into flow:If you already know the plan works, you’re not playing. Instead, you’re just executing directions that you’ve already worked out. Good for second monitor gameplay, as a primary focus, not so much.
Every run starts identically:Each commander is the same, aside from items and traits you unlock further into your runs. But there’s nothing fresh to excite me here. The units stay the same. The combos never get exciting. Each time I start a new run, I know what’s coming.
No engine, no BUMs:Build Upgrade Moments (BUMs) are the pivotal steps behind making sure the player feels in control of a roguelite/like. It’s where you build your engine to outmatch the developer. Making you feel like you’ve outsmarted them and beaten them at their own game. But here, there’s the minor upgrade system for units, RNG drops for items… and that’s pretty much it. I was never handed the controls to assemble an almigty army of my choosing.
Islands stopped asking me new questions:Islands are pretty much all the same with different shapes and building count. More buildings to defend = more gold when you win. But that’s about it. Nothing throws a challenge your way and asks you to use your skill to overcome it.
I turned it off mid-run with free time available:This matters a lot. I had the time, wasn’t tired & was ready to play. Mid-run I decided enough was enough. So I turned the game off to play something else. Something I never do with roguelites.
It’s a second-monitor game and it didn’t mean to be:This could easily be both a second-monitor game and primary focus game. So there’s good and bad here. Throw in more unit types, branching upgrades, more items, a regular shop visit, random events that alter your units? This could be a wonderful roguelite with variety on each run.