I posted part of this to Discord on Kickstarter and he told me to come here to share.
Villagers
What if you could rescue people from the mine? What if the people that you rescued from the mine improved the facilities on the city and/or opened more stuff to buy or to do? It is a village, so the idea of making it empty at first and add more people on it wouldn't be bad.
For example, every time you managed to rescue one of the 3 sons of the blacksmith, you would have new items on the store, since they would help him make stuff. Every time you rescued a client from the Inn, more food to buy. You could rescue the twin grandaughters of the Gypsy Woman to get more spells and potions. And everytime you rescued a relative of the mine owner, he could give you special items to access certain parts of the game, like giving keys for locked rooms or locked chests inside the Chasm.
Maybe a mage guy to save the game and/or teleport you from/to the chasm levels, huh? Or someone to use the well to pull you up/down like an elevator.
One metroidvania that worked well with the concept of rescuing villagers to improve your base was Castlevania Order of Ecclesia.
Character Portraits
I really hope there are character portraits in this game. You know in every Castlevania since Symphony of the Night when you talk to someone or the game show you talking with someone when appears the face of the character together with the message?
Call me crazy but just seeing their faces creates the illusion of the sound of the voices they possess. It really increases immersion and you shouldn't need more than a few images for that.
Passive Abilities
The game should give passive abilities to Tyrion. In form of enchantment (like Aria of Sorrow) or the possession of certain relics (like Symphony of the Night). The powers could be from having the items automatically fly to your pocket instead of simply scatter or mana regeneration to stuffs like status resists (resists curse or resists poison) and status upgrades (inteligence +20% or strenght +25%) or even walk faster, to cover the increasing ground of the Chasm as you open the maps. Could be used to activate showing the enemies names too.
This would differ from simply equiping stuff. It would be permanent abilities or status increase to compensate the increased difficulty of the lower levels. The items should do their part too.
Active Abilities
The Xbox 360 controller seems to be too much ununsed buttons. What if we could use the shoulder buttons for stuffs like casting magic (like in Aria), activating abilities/moves (like in Symphony), or changing the equipped items to another list (like in Dawn). The D-Pad is underused too and could be used to activate magic moves or something.
Enemy Damage
Right now, if an enemy has 8 HP, every time you hit it with a sword that takes 5 HP per hit, it will show the enemy losing 5 HP on the first strike and 3 on the second. While it could help the user getting a good sense of the enemy life, it will make stupdly powerful weapons show really crap damages done to weak enemies. It would be more satisfying to see the actual damage done by the sword. Lets imagine you get the White Fucking Big Sword of Righteousness and hit a rat with it. It will show 1 HP now. Meh. With my idea, it would show 7999 HP of damage. SHA-POWWW!!! Awesome!
But maybe there should be an option or even a relic that show the data the old way, in case people want to figure out how much HP an enemy have. It's not bad, just not really satisfying when you're mowing enemies with an end-game weapon.
Intro Stage
What if Tyrion fought a little on the beggining of the game before reaching the village? He's a soldier, and probably is carrying some really good mid-game sword with him. Maybe he's walking and stumble onto enemies and start mowing them like butter until he stumble onto a boss or something that renders him uncounscious, which is when he ends up near the village or rescued by the villagers. Just a suggestion.
This remembers me of the Mega Man X games, where you always starts with an intro stage. Also, remember on Symphony when Alucard comes with all of his awesome gear and mows down the enemies until he meets Death? I think it added some cool feeling to the start of the game. You starts really kicking ass and all awesome, giving you a good first impression of the game and them BAM! It starts properly with crappy starting gear.
It doesn't even need to be big. Just to get the player a little feeling of the game. First impressions, and all that.
Fixing the first level
One of the stuff that I've told Discord is that the first level is a chore. You have to go down on your knees to scrub the rats from the floor. Not really cool.
I mean, have you seen any Castlevania? Or even Mega Man X? There's no enemies that you have to crouch to kill on the first stages. All of them lets you move around freely. Because it's boring to crouch and it affects gameplay. You can't walk left or right while crouching. You're kind of locked into a crouched instance until you stand up to move. That's bad for the first part of the game, where you're trying to show how cool and dynamic the game is.
There could have modifications on the game to use bigger and easier to hit enemies, like the games I cited, or Discord could simply throw a Rusty Knife in the middle of the first stage or something that could reach the pesky rats.
Boss Doors
I've talked with Discord about this too. While playing the demo, I've stumbled onto a boss and the game ended right there… because it's the demo. I felt kind of "What the fuck?!". I was caught with the pants down. That shouldn't happen!
The bosses should have something on the room next to it showing that you're going to a boss room. Both Castlevania and Mega Man games have that transition door to indicate the peril zone, telling you "if you don't feel ready, come back later". They could even be used to lock you in the room with the boss instead of letting you quickly flee. Otherwise people would complain about the illogical fact that the boss doesn't try to follow you and stuff.
Too small, too big
I've also complained with Discord about having just a few rooms on each floor. The map looks sad with so few rooms showing, unlike Castlevania which showed the entire mansion and stuff. But also, the rooms took a lot of time to clear at the beginning. You're always struggling to kill the enemies. They hit you a lot and you hit them too little.
Maybe there should be a little bit more or equillibrium. Make enemies a bit easier and put more rooms or something to compensate. Or maybe not. It was just a suggestion.
Well, those should suffice right now. I'll bring more ideas if I have them.
. Not knowing what is about to happen is part of the suspense... especially on Hardcore.
This is all what you need lol 