This game rules! great artwork. The movement and combat have a lot of unique aspects that you are doing an impressive job implementing. You also have good UI, tutorials and overall polish to the game at this stage.
I can definitely see the vision, but I think there are certain aspects of the movement controls that I don't gel with. Control feels pretty non existent, I feel as though I just aim downward to keep my hover and spam the jump button to wall jump my way up the level and parry everything that comes near me. Because the gun is also your jet pack, you have to choose between movement and fighting. its not bad to make that sort of kinesthetic dilemma part of the game's design, but it does make it difficult to balance while allowing the player to retain a sense of control and ability to influence their character on screen
mostly, as a player i just felt like I was along for the ride, rather than driving, if that makes sense.
Thanks! You are right on the money in all your judgement and it sounds like you got good at the game. Only like 2-3 people reached that stage and were able to see through the lack of depth and control.
I'm working on improving the controls, so shooting will get some love too.
Out of curiosity what was your score? Parrying everything is one thing (not many people reach even that skill), but making it all connect is something that makes me wonder if I should put more emphasis on it.
Cool prototype, I probably have already said this in a thread but the visuals are amazing and look highly professional. I'm not someone who plays this kind of game consistently but I did find it fun.
One thing that took me somewhat long to figure out was how to break bubble in the last room (I don't think I saw a tooltip for that?). But I guess its the point of being the end of the demo.
Also dunno if its a bug but when low on health and you loose something like a foot it keeps moving the bullets? If its intended thats cool.
Wait, do you mean the bubble in the tutorial level? You break those in sequence: by doing a quick dive, then by kicking flying enemies, then killing both enemies with parry to remove the bubble to the exit. If there's a tooltip bug or any other usability error then details would be really helpful. Outside of tutorial you are free to approach the bubbles in any way you want outside of shooting and kicks.
If it was the tutorial then remember there's an actualy gameplay level.
And yeah, you can lose most of the body parts until you are a walking skeleton without a head.
Yup, sorry I realized after posting that the main menu lets you select through stuff (since text is hidden for a few seconds I just went and clicked start). Also while playing the boss on the level I started getting some glitches when the bullet pile got bigger. The circled part alternated between being black and disappearing.
I was going to remake the main menu UI anyway. Shell mesh rendering is so fucked I have to remake it from ground up because I can no longer even wrap my head around it.
How did you like the actual gameplay in the end? Any change of heart?
Yeah the actual gameplay is a lot better. The bullets stacking in the ground to get you higher is a nice feature,. I carted to the boss but I will give it another try later, I like that you need to start shooting at it to discover the weak points. Overall I think its coming up great, wanna see what a future version brings to the table.
Really fun game! I didn't master all the techniques in the short time I played but there were moments of brilliance when everything came together on my end and I was able to kill everything on screen in moments. I think you know this already and I can see you put in some work into it but the tutorial is still rather cryptic when it comes to kicks & projectile parries. It'd be nice if you included slow-mo videos that also displayed inputs to show how things are done properly. Maybe it'd be worth it to have other tutorial levels just for practicing those techniques forever--but this might just be unnecessary if the upgraded tutorial is good enough. Also, it'd probably be a good idea to have more feedback so that way it's obvious for the player when you dodge, kick, or parry. The dodge in particular is hard to tell because the sprite just turns red--bit of hitstop for all of them might be good. But aside from the tutorial I only have one minor suggestion: it'd be nice if I could toggle the trigger instead of hodling down the entire time! Other than that no complaints--the art is great and there's a lot of cool details like the pieces of the armor falling & being littered about the stage as the mech takes damage! Music and sound effects are solid as well, the jump sfx has a nice bassy heft to it, and the parry/kick has a nice pneumatic feel.
Overall, this is really polished and a good game. I'm excited to get more! Here's the video of my playthrough, I hope it helps!
What the hell, I knew about the rocket clipping bug, but somehow you managed to trigger some cascade explosion that killed/suicided the boss! That was some TAS shit, nice. 19:33 was really cool even when accidental (spirit form's momentum preservation + bouyancy launch bug feature).
Yeah, tutorial needs to be longer and more in depth, and I'm even considering a hub location where player can fuck around. I will need to be careful about it though, since front loading tutorials will delay the gameplay, and putting it for later will trap players into walk-n-shoot mentality. Gimmicky maps made around a single trick would be a nice addition for sure.
Hit stop and feedback for evasion is a great idea, I'm adding that, as well as a different kick attempt animation.
>it'd be nice if I could toggle the trigger instead of hodling down the entire time!
I'll think about it, as it would free up a precious controller button (dual stick game where both are used all the time is a pain in the ass), but I had a gun respin mechanic in mind for additional utility, so I will see how it goes. Sometimes you just gotta hodl, man.
>the jump sfx has a nice bassy heft to it, and the parry/kick has a nice pneumatic feel.
That's actually funny, I generated the jump sound years ago in bfxr or whatever it was. The environmental reverb is probably doing most of the work here.
Thanks for the playthrough. You actually pulled off kicks and spirit form on the boss, so that was one of the most stylish attempts I've watched even if it ended with a clutch. I'll have to reward those more.
Really cool concept and great presentation! I can imagine someone good at the game doing some skillful movements, Im bad at moving around, since I cant get used to my movement being tied to my shooting direction, except at the boss where I hugged the ceiling and shoot down. I found wall jumping complicated, since I needed to hold the key against the wall it was difficult for me to jump to go away from the wall to build momentum.
I couldn't beat the tutorial. I really didn't manage to obtain momentum or make that "press down while shooting up" movement. I know there is a trick to defeating the shielded enemies but I didn't figure it out.
The sound effects are great and mesh really well with the game. Shooting feels very satisfying. This could make a nice game for streamers.
Damn, I need to push the tutorial change ASAP, especially since even fishking was confused too.
The shielded enemies go down to anything but direct shooting and kicks, and the preferred method is a parry.
I agree on the wall jump. Before you had to hold key away from the wall, which made sense for me (as a Super Metroid fan) but lots of people didn't like it. You actually can still do it this way, it's just tighter with the range.
Woah, this is super cool! Firing the chain gun feels very satisfying. I think you really nailed that dakka dakka dakka feeling. Also my favorite feature, the missile parry kick. That stuff is great, I loved doing that on the final boss especially, that was awesome. The brass platforms slowly rising was fun, felt like an assurance that you can always progress even if platforming fails.
Aesthetically everything fits together well I think. The art, the effects, it all gave that intense high-action shooter vibe. Maybe it could be a bit faster overall? But then again maybe I'm just bad at games and you can move faster when you play better. Yeah, thinking about it again, it might be that, for example I also never really managed to get the sideways spirit form going by building momentum, that looks super fun from the screenshots, just blazing through enemies.
But these are minor things, you really have a super fun game here!
I love doing missile tricks on the boss too, even though at the moment only the head is hurt by explosions due to tech limitations. Riding a missile straight into its head always makes me chuckle.
Even though the game gets really fast and overwhelming I agree that the baseline should be faster and less floaty. Hover and walking can be awkward if you don't plan your movement ahead (which happens regardless of skill). Faster walking is tricky because it will keep dropping you off from platforms and animation will no longer look like a mecha chad stride. I will try sideway dash or running speed buildup.
Spirit form can be done with diagonal aiming so that you glide, and the cursor has to be adjusted constantly to follow the character. It's very tricky but once you get it, it should be intuitive. I'm still not sure if I should add some angle snapping to it, the future amount of control and satisfaction from mastering it might outweight all accessability concerns. I will try adding aiming direction indicator to mouse controls as it should help with coordination and learning.
Nice art style but movement feels slow and clunky which might just not be my preference. The mechanic where you shoot upwards and drill down mostly gets triggered unintentionally because all the enemies are above me and I'm just trying to shoot at them. Might be worth having a separate action button for certain things like that.
Thanks for the feedback. The game is mostly vertical so there's not much reason to walk for the most part, and you can move quite fast midair both horizontally and vertically.
Tomorrow it will be a bit better, since new version will preserve spirit form on the ground (although it's not much help when someone can't use it) and shooting up will require down input to trigger the form. With updated speed tech you can blast through the tutorial, which has the most amount of walking, under 40 seconds.
I like the art of the game, the enemy variety is good, the way you can use spent brass as a platform with pseudo-fluid physics on it is a really interesting idea. But I do not like the controls. It seems very overly complicated to do actions like parrying and melee while also jumping. I suggest exploring some alternative control schemes.
I'm sorry, I underestimated the amount of brain fog I would have going into this due to sleep related issues, and playtesting like this requires a lot of mental energy for me. Nonetheless, I hope you will find it useful.
I never expected anyone would finish wall jump tutorial without ever acknowledging it even exists. That would actually be funny if not for the final result. I have to bulletproof the tutorial.
As for enemy projectiles blocking yours my intention was to add some dynamics - it encourages not standing in place and shooting, and encorages switching targets. It also foreshadows projectiles hitting each other which is used for defense later on.
There's no delay on jump btw, it's all animation making it look like a jump with windup. I never thought it would be received kinda negatively.
Thanks for playing. Yesterday I was reviewing up to the middle of the night, so I know the feel.
Regarding the jumping delay, I did notice a delay but I'm sure it was just normal input latency due to vsync. I'm used to playing games with vsync disabled to reduce latency as much as possible. It became noticeable because you have a timing based mechanic.
I never actually knew there was a tutorial going on except for the text I had read at the start lol.
I gathered from comments and such that there's a lot more to the mechanics than I was able to uncover in my blind session. It looks pretty interesting. Hope I can try out a more polished version in the future.
Beautifully difficult game here. I might just be a slow learner but it took a while to understand the parry and may take even longer to get how to control spirit form. I ended up going through my first few runs assuming I'm meant to platform just with the shell casings which still helps keep the game going until I get it. Parries are satisfying once you finally get it. I didn't quite understand how to deal with the minigun enemies so they're still nuking my health pool before I get to the boss. I'm sure if I keep coming back to it I'll get there but it would be nice if it were more clear how to get through some of it.
Yeah, the chaingunners are tricky, but there are a few options. I'll write those below in case you don't want to be spoiled. I'm so glad I didn't adjust the difficulty, because I have to actually lose on purpose in order to die, so a bullet have been avoided there. Spirit form is not very controllable at the moment, so it's something you can at best redirect or try to keep the speed moderate. Thanks for playing!
Kicking the flying enemy into them will explode and instakill (unfortunately it's not very consistent at the moment), you can spirit form through, or rush to the wall in front then melee when its safe, or just have a dakka-off until they drown in their own shells.
Played about 30min, got to the boss a few times but couldn't quite get the kill.
Game is very COOL. I want to like it more, but feels a bit backwards.
Bullets feel slow/weak. My gun feels more like a water hose for hovering and casings than a weapon. I know the spirit of the game is that it's a multi-purpose tool, and a game needs to be balanced, but as a chain gun enjoyer, I feel let down.
Pressing away from a wall to wall jump is something I've never been a fan of personally, feels easy to let go of the wall too early. or like you're glued to it. I'd rather jump away even if I'm holding towards the wall but I guess that'd mess up the parry mechanic.
On that note, parrying projectiles is very satisfying when it works, but since you have to hold away from them, the cross-up when they are above or below you feels hard to deal with and happens a lot because of the verticality of the map.
Can't do anything intentional with Spirit Bullet, more often I plow through platforms I want to grab or dive into the casings.
I'll admit, I might also just suck at the game, :3 so feel free to tell me my opinion is wrong.
Most of my frustration would probably go away if I didn't need to shoot down and away from enemies constantly for any real upward momentum. If you're considering any sort of additions/changes, I think a character with something like jump jets and a gun with less kick so you can push and shoot upward at the same time would be fun.
That's a great angle for reference. When you put it that way I guess I should give regular shooting more use, and utilize small enemies and new gimmicks. Most people want everything easily gunnable so I failed to make the connection.
Wall jump went a long way of trying both variants. For parries it's probably essential, but I will do some tests to see if it's feasible to make both directions usable (maybe with a variant of the move). Vertical axis is the weak point of the parry - you can evade from ground, precisely manoeuvre with hover or spirit form in rare cases.
Spirit form got nerfed into the ground because it used to mow the entire level. It's about time I give it proper gliding controls.
I will try to a few hover variants to allow for independent shooting. That might help it evolve from a gimmicky meme game.
It sounds like you got the mechanics except for being able to bully the boss. Thanks a lot for the feedback!
Really cool concept! It's oozing style, and I've never seen another game have you ride a literal mountain of bullet casings. I got a bit overwhelmed right at the start with how much was going on, but I got the hang of it eventually. It would be nice to have some time to practice wall jumping, parrying, etc. without any real threats around - it gets a bit stressful trying to learn all at once while enemies are around. Really good stuff all around though. I don't normally have a lot of interest in 2D action platformers but this was genuinely fun.
Very interesting concept, I like it. Good luck sorting out all the quirks from the mountain of bullets.
I didn't particularly like the wall jumps and the parries and attacks that derive from it, I think a different mechanic should take their place. Just doesn't seem to gel with with the ultra destruction/fuck platforming angle it's going for.
Thanks. There's no avoiding platforming with so much verticality, so it's more like "fuck the floor, let's jump off everything else, lethally". Wall jumps work so well at advanced skill level that I wouldn't want to break it, but there's always space to add a crutch mechanic or just move on to alternate character with a different moveset.
I had no idea what it was with the logo, it's one reason why I haven't played it until now. You make amazing art and it seems like you haven't put a game on steam before(?) So I'll tell you this: You need the main cover image to showcase the game. I would recommend drawing something for the cover art like a Mech instead of using he brass alone. But when you release on Steam, which I recommend for you to do when the game is 100% finished with the effort put in already, people will "read the book from the cover" which means the first impressions matter a lot.
Second thing: You are really introducing way too much at much. There is the shooting and the hard platforming, then you have the bugs SWARM the player and then a rocket and destroy platforms. People are going to get really out of it if you hit them with that right at the start. Explain things instead barely anything like a tutorial simulator for the mechanics.
The shells being a platform, why isn't it explained at all?What platforms can or cannot bot shot and destroyed?
I also think the robot turrets should have less HP since they require a lot of shooting before they die.
But like I said before, you have a lot good going with this, you need to put a lot of consideration of explaining things to the player more slowly, making the turrets resist the bullets less, and making a better cover image. Doing all of this will heavily make the game a lot better now and in the future for new players.
EDIT: Thinking about it, I do wonder why the player's bullets are blocked by the turret's beams and rockets, if they are going to be blocked, then allow them to be destroyed or slowed down, or weakened with lots of hits. Maybe rockets go fly crazy when knocked off course.
Good point with the logo, but I simply wouldn't physically be able to make it since I got the itch page set up right before DD after an entire night spent finishing all the shit up. However it might still be a good moment to change it while the itch entry is still fresh.
Shells aren't really that important in comparison to other mechanics. They keep altering the arena when you are being too idle, and often become an obstruction blocking shortcuts.
The more people ask for less turret hp the more I feel like I should increase it. There are 5 ways to instakill them, and if you really want to shoot them, you can multitask ie. by parrying other enemies.
I was considering pushing rockets by shooting them, but there are plenty of ways to deal with enemy projectiles already. At that point I would only make people even more confused.
Making a tutorial area and getting it just right will be essential to teach a less static way of playing.
I had some serious technical issues unfortunately. I couldn't walk left or right. Space jumped me up, but hitting A/D would move me barely an inch and then I would just stop. While jumping, I could only go straight up. No combination of jumping and A/D would move me at all. I can make a video if you need, but it's pretty much like I describe.
It's a controller issue, I still have to push the fix. You can unplug the controller or just play with it (opinion on gamepad controls would be really useful for me, as I don't even know what bind should I use so I just binded all buttons to the 2 actions).
Pretty interesting concept, the controls are fine but personally I would like if there was crouching to duck under some enemy projectiles. I also really like the visuals.
So far my main grip is that if your game is about constantly shooting it's not a great idea to make all the platforms destructible, especially since there's only one way forward or rather upwards so you get stuck having to use the bullet casings to go up most of the time.
I still enjoyed and I hope you are able to sort out most of the weird level design issues because this game is cool as hell.
Insanely cool gimmick but rather wonky in execution. Half the time I have no idea what's going on due to all the particles flying on the screen and the mountain of bullets that forms after firing continuously is awkward to walk on top of. The main character has a tendency to dive into it if you carry enough momentum too.
Parrying is cool when you pull it off but it's not difficult to unintentionally destroy most of the environment in the process which kinda sucks because it forces you into careful platforming or shooting a mountain of bullets to progress. I think adding just a few more indestructible blocks would go a long way in this regard.
Wading through a literal sea of bullets is great, but there's a lot of visual things here I do not like. The vignettes or shadows on the screen can make it hard to pick out stuff, and there's so many particle effects and everything on screen that it can be hard to also figure out where to shoot or dodge.
The low health red flash is also not something I'm a fan of. I kept thinking I was taking damage when I wasn't. Feel like just having the health bar flash red would be enough. I think I enjoyed this most when I was fighting the worm more than anything.
Vignettes? The only one is on the title screen. Visibility is an ongoing problem though and looking back, toning down effects took a major part of the workload so far. Thanks for the feedback.
Idea and execution are great. My only problem is on the level design and tutorial.
I'll put it bluntly, the level design it's horrible (lol):
Your level doesn't reward you for being good at the game. If you get good with walljump+parry you still can't climb the level with ease because your design seems against it. Even if you learn to hover and chain walljumps, every once in while there are sections that you can't climb(or void sections because an explosion destroyed a whole platform). And so if/when you fall, there is a "Getting over it" effect. Since everything is destroyed you must sit and shoot for a long while to raise your bulletsea.
This is a big problem because it's not fun to sit and wait to fill your pool.
Another compound problem is that if your game plan is to parry most enemies, the bulletsea won't rise at all, and so again the game punishes you if play well.
ihmo you need indestructible blocks(or at least some blocks with 4x health) to create a skeleton of platforms for your level. Also a bathtub for your bullets wold be nice, so you can cut downtime if you slip.
Tutorials on how to actually play the game are pretty much missing. So you can't really be mad at players/streamers when they play like shit. The new version you uploaded with a shielded enemy doesn't solve anything. It's not a tutorial, but a roadblock.
Don't give up this project because it's super good.
That's what I get for doing my level design the day before DD. I will try rerouting the level diagonally and then figure out a type of support structure that won't make people try to play it like a precision platformer. I could also make some kind of endless enemy spawn to serve that purpose, or just make the hover infinite.
>Another compound problem is that if your game plan is to parry most enemies, the bulletsea won't rise at all, and so again the game punishes you if play well.
I mean, filling everything with shells is not really the point, but I think I can get why people would want it.
Comments
This game rules! great artwork. The movement and combat have a lot of unique aspects that you are doing an impressive job implementing. You also have good UI, tutorials and overall polish to the game at this stage.
I can definitely see the vision, but I think there are certain aspects of the movement controls that I don't gel with. Control feels pretty non existent, I feel as though I just aim downward to keep my hover and spam the jump button to wall jump my way up the level and parry everything that comes near me. Because the gun is also your jet pack, you have to choose between movement and fighting. its not bad to make that sort of kinesthetic dilemma part of the game's design, but it does make it difficult to balance while allowing the player to retain a sense of control and ability to influence their character on screen
mostly, as a player i just felt like I was along for the ride, rather than driving, if that makes sense.
but it could also be that i'm just bad at it lmao
Thanks! You are right on the money in all your judgement and it sounds like you got good at the game. Only like 2-3 people reached that stage and were able to see through the lack of depth and control.
I'm working on improving the controls, so shooting will get some love too.
Out of curiosity what was your score? Parrying everything is one thing (not many people reach even that skill), but making it all connect is something that makes me wonder if I should put more emphasis on it.
Cool prototype, I probably have already said this in a thread but the visuals are amazing and look highly professional. I'm not someone who plays this kind of game consistently but I did find it fun.
One thing that took me somewhat long to figure out was how to break bubble in the last room (I don't think I saw a tooltip for that?). But I guess its the point of being the end of the demo.
Also dunno if its a bug but when low on health and you loose something like a foot it keeps moving the bullets? If its intended thats cool.
Wait, do you mean the bubble in the tutorial level? You break those in sequence: by doing a quick dive, then by kicking flying enemies, then killing both enemies with parry to remove the bubble to the exit. If there's a tooltip bug or any other usability error then details would be really helpful. Outside of tutorial you are free to approach the bubbles in any way you want outside of shooting and kicks.
If it was the tutorial then remember there's an actualy gameplay level.
And yeah, you can lose most of the body parts until you are a walking skeleton without a head.
Yup, sorry I realized after posting that the main menu lets you select through stuff (since text is hidden for a few seconds I just went and clicked start). Also while playing the boss on the level I started getting some glitches when the bullet pile got bigger. The circled part alternated between being black and disappearing.
I was going to remake the main menu UI anyway. Shell mesh rendering is so fucked I have to remake it from ground up because I can no longer even wrap my head around it.
How did you like the actual gameplay in the end? Any change of heart?
Yeah the actual gameplay is a lot better. The bullets stacking in the ground to get you higher is a nice feature,. I carted to the boss but I will give it another try later, I like that you need to start shooting at it to discover the weak points. Overall I think its coming up great, wanna see what a future version brings to the table.
Really fun game! I didn't master all the techniques in the short time I played but there were moments of brilliance when everything came together on my end and I was able to kill everything on screen in moments. I think you know this already and I can see you put in some work into it but the tutorial is still rather cryptic when it comes to kicks & projectile parries. It'd be nice if you included slow-mo videos that also displayed inputs to show how things are done properly. Maybe it'd be worth it to have other tutorial levels just for practicing those techniques forever--but this might just be unnecessary if the upgraded tutorial is good enough. Also, it'd probably be a good idea to have more feedback so that way it's obvious for the player when you dodge, kick, or parry. The dodge in particular is hard to tell because the sprite just turns red--bit of hitstop for all of them might be good. But aside from the tutorial I only have one minor suggestion: it'd be nice if I could toggle the trigger instead of hodling down the entire time! Other than that no complaints--the art is great and there's a lot of cool details like the pieces of the armor falling & being littered about the stage as the mech takes damage! Music and sound effects are solid as well, the jump sfx has a nice bassy heft to it, and the parry/kick has a nice pneumatic feel.
Overall, this is really polished and a good game. I'm excited to get more! Here's the video of my playthrough, I hope it helps!
What the hell, I knew about the rocket clipping bug, but somehow you managed to trigger some cascade explosion that killed/suicided the boss! That was some TAS shit, nice. 19:33 was really cool even when accidental (spirit form's momentum preservation + bouyancy launch
bugfeature).Yeah, tutorial needs to be longer and more in depth, and I'm even considering a hub location where player can fuck around. I will need to be careful about it though, since front loading tutorials will delay the gameplay, and putting it for later will trap players into walk-n-shoot mentality. Gimmicky maps made around a single trick would be a nice addition for sure.
Hit stop and feedback for evasion is a great idea, I'm adding that, as well as a different kick attempt animation.
>it'd be nice if I could toggle the trigger instead of hodling down the entire time!
I'll think about it, as it would free up a precious controller button (dual stick game where both are used all the time is a pain in the ass), but I had a gun respin mechanic in mind for additional utility, so I will see how it goes. Sometimes you just gotta hodl, man.
>the jump sfx has a nice bassy heft to it, and the parry/kick has a nice pneumatic feel.
That's actually funny, I generated the jump sound years ago in bfxr or whatever it was. The environmental reverb is probably doing most of the work here.
Thanks for the playthrough. You actually pulled off kicks and spirit form on the boss, so that was one of the most stylish attempts I've watched even if it ended with a clutch. I'll have to reward those more.
Managed to beat the boss after 3 runs. Video:
Really cool concept and great presentation! I can imagine someone good at the game doing some skillful movements, Im bad at moving around, since I cant get used to my movement being tied to my shooting direction, except at the boss where I hugged the ceiling and shoot down. I found wall jumping complicated, since I needed to hold the key against the wall it was difficult for me to jump to go away from the wall to build momentum.I couldn't beat the tutorial. I really didn't manage to obtain momentum or make that "press down while shooting up" movement. I know there is a trick to defeating the shielded enemies but I didn't figure it out.
The sound effects are great and mesh really well with the game. Shooting feels very satisfying. This could make a nice game for streamers.
Damn, I need to push the tutorial change ASAP, especially since even fishking was confused too.
The shielded enemies go down to anything but direct shooting and kicks, and the preferred method is a parry.
I agree on the wall jump. Before you had to hold key away from the wall, which made sense for me (as a Super Metroid fan) but lots of people didn't like it. You actually can still do it this way, it's just tighter with the range.
Thanks for the video! Those are always helpful.
Woah, this is super cool! Firing the chain gun feels very satisfying. I think you really nailed that dakka dakka dakka feeling. Also my favorite feature, the missile parry kick. That stuff is great, I loved doing that on the final boss especially, that was awesome. The brass platforms slowly rising was fun, felt like an assurance that you can always progress even if platforming fails.
Aesthetically everything fits together well I think. The art, the effects, it all gave that intense high-action shooter vibe. Maybe it could be a bit faster overall? But then again maybe I'm just bad at games and you can move faster when you play better. Yeah, thinking about it again, it might be that, for example I also never really managed to get the sideways spirit form going by building momentum, that looks super fun from the screenshots, just blazing through enemies.
But these are minor things, you really have a super fun game here!
Thanks a lot, this is really encouraging!
I love doing missile tricks on the boss too, even though at the moment only the head is hurt by explosions due to tech limitations. Riding a missile straight into its head always makes me chuckle.
Even though the game gets really fast and overwhelming I agree that the baseline should be faster and less floaty. Hover and walking can be awkward if you don't plan your movement ahead (which happens regardless of skill). Faster walking is tricky because it will keep dropping you off from platforms and animation will no longer look like a mecha chad stride. I will try sideway dash or running speed buildup.
Spirit form can be done with diagonal aiming so that you glide, and the cursor has to be adjusted constantly to follow the character. It's very tricky but once you get it, it should be intuitive. I'm still not sure if I should add some angle snapping to it, the future amount of control and satisfaction from mastering it might outweight all accessability concerns. I will try adding aiming direction indicator to mouse controls as it should help with coordination and learning.
Nice art style but movement feels slow and clunky which might just not be my preference. The mechanic where you shoot upwards and drill down mostly gets triggered unintentionally because all the enemies are above me and I'm just trying to shoot at them. Might be worth having a separate action button for certain things like that.
Thanks for the feedback. The game is mostly vertical so there's not much reason to walk for the most part, and you can move quite fast midair both horizontally and vertically.
Tomorrow it will be a bit better, since new version will preserve spirit form on the ground (although it's not much help when someone can't use it) and shooting up will require down input to trigger the form. With updated speed tech you can blast through the tutorial, which has the most amount of walking, under 40 seconds.
I like the art of the game, the enemy variety is good, the way you can use spent brass as a platform with pseudo-fluid physics on it is a really interesting idea. But I do not like the controls. It seems very overly complicated to do actions like parrying and melee while also jumping. I suggest exploring some alternative control schemes.
Keep it up, I like the idea overall.
I'm sorry, I underestimated the amount of brain fog I would have going into this due to sleep related issues, and playtesting like this requires a lot of mental energy for me. Nonetheless, I hope you will find it useful.
I never expected anyone would finish wall jump tutorial without ever acknowledging it even exists. That would actually be funny if not for the final result. I have to bulletproof the tutorial.
As for enemy projectiles blocking yours my intention was to add some dynamics - it encourages not standing in place and shooting, and encorages switching targets. It also foreshadows projectiles hitting each other which is used for defense later on.
There's no delay on jump btw, it's all animation making it look like a jump with windup. I never thought it would be received kinda negatively.
Thanks for playing. Yesterday I was reviewing up to the middle of the night, so I know the feel.
Regarding the jumping delay, I did notice a delay but I'm sure it was just normal input latency due to vsync. I'm used to playing games with vsync disabled to reduce latency as much as possible. It became noticeable because you have a timing based mechanic.
I never actually knew there was a tutorial going on except for the text I had read at the start lol.
I gathered from comments and such that there's a lot more to the mechanics than I was able to uncover in my blind session. It looks pretty interesting. Hope I can try out a more polished version in the future.
Beautifully difficult game here. I might just be a slow learner but it took a while to understand the parry and may take even longer to get how to control spirit form. I ended up going through my first few runs assuming I'm meant to platform just with the shell casings which still helps keep the game going until I get it. Parries are satisfying once you finally get it. I didn't quite understand how to deal with the minigun enemies so they're still nuking my health pool before I get to the boss. I'm sure if I keep coming back to it I'll get there but it would be nice if it were more clear how to get through some of it.
Yeah, the chaingunners are tricky, but there are a few options. I'll write those below in case you don't want to be spoiled. I'm so glad I didn't adjust the difficulty, because I have to actually lose on purpose in order to die, so a bullet have been avoided there. Spirit form is not very controllable at the moment, so it's something you can at best redirect or try to keep the speed moderate. Thanks for playing!
Kicking the flying enemy into them will explode and instakill (unfortunately it's not very consistent at the moment), you can spirit form through, or rush to the wall in front then melee when its safe, or just have a dakka-off until they drown in their own shells.
Played about 30min, got to the boss a few times but couldn't quite get the kill.
Game is very COOL. I want to like it more, but feels a bit backwards.
Bullets feel slow/weak. My gun feels more like a water hose for hovering and casings than a weapon. I know the spirit of the game is that it's a multi-purpose tool, and a game needs to be balanced, but as a chain gun enjoyer, I feel let down.
Pressing away from a wall to wall jump is something I've never been a fan of personally, feels easy to let go of the wall too early. or like you're glued to it. I'd rather jump away even if I'm holding towards the wall but I guess that'd mess up the parry mechanic.
On that note, parrying projectiles is very satisfying when it works, but since you have to hold away from them, the cross-up when they are above or below you feels hard to deal with and happens a lot because of the verticality of the map.
Can't do anything intentional with Spirit Bullet, more often I plow through platforms I want to grab or dive into the casings.
I'll admit, I might also just suck at the game, :3 so feel free to tell me my opinion is wrong.
Most of my frustration would probably go away if I didn't need to shoot down and away from enemies constantly for any real upward momentum. If you're considering any sort of additions/changes, I think a character with something like jump jets and a gun with less kick so you can push and shoot upward at the same time would be fun.
Your game's got great potential, good luck!
That's a great angle for reference. When you put it that way I guess I should give regular shooting more use, and utilize small enemies and new gimmicks. Most people want everything easily gunnable so I failed to make the connection.
Wall jump went a long way of trying both variants. For parries it's probably essential, but I will do some tests to see if it's feasible to make both directions usable (maybe with a variant of the move). Vertical axis is the weak point of the parry - you can evade from ground, precisely manoeuvre with hover or spirit form in rare cases.
Spirit form got nerfed into the ground because it used to mow the entire level. It's about time I give it proper gliding controls.
I will try to a few hover variants to allow for independent shooting. That might help it evolve from a gimmicky meme game.
It sounds like you got the mechanics except for being able to bully the boss. Thanks a lot for the feedback!
Really cool concept! It's oozing style, and I've never seen another game have you ride a literal mountain of bullet casings. I got a bit overwhelmed right at the start with how much was going on, but I got the hang of it eventually. It would be nice to have some time to practice wall jumping, parrying, etc. without any real threats around - it gets a bit stressful trying to learn all at once while enemies are around. Really good stuff all around though. I don't normally have a lot of interest in 2D action platformers but this was genuinely fun.
Very interesting concept, I like it. Good luck sorting out all the quirks from the mountain of bullets.
I didn't particularly like the wall jumps and the parries and attacks that derive from it, I think a different mechanic should take their place. Just doesn't seem to gel with with the ultra destruction/fuck platforming angle it's going for.
Thanks. There's no avoiding platforming with so much verticality, so it's more like "fuck the floor, let's jump off everything else, lethally". Wall jumps work so well at advanced skill level that I wouldn't want to break it, but there's always space to add a crutch mechanic or just move on to alternate character with a different moveset.
I had no idea what it was with the logo, it's one reason why I haven't played it until now. You make amazing art and it seems like you haven't put a game on steam before(?) So I'll tell you this: You need the main cover image to showcase the game. I would recommend drawing something for the cover art like a Mech instead of using he brass alone. But when you release on Steam, which I recommend for you to do when the game is 100% finished with the effort put in already, people will "read the book from the cover" which means the first impressions matter a lot.
Second thing: You are really introducing way too much at much. There is the shooting and the hard platforming, then you have the bugs SWARM the player and then a rocket and destroy platforms. People are going to get really out of it if you hit them with that right at the start. Explain things instead barely anything like a tutorial simulator for the mechanics.
The shells being a platform, why isn't it explained at all?What platforms can or cannot bot shot and destroyed?
I also think the robot turrets should have less HP since they require a lot of shooting before they die.
But like I said before, you have a lot good going with this, you need to put a lot of consideration of explaining things to the player more slowly, making the turrets resist the bullets less, and making a better cover image. Doing all of this will heavily make the game a lot better now and in the future for new players.
EDIT: Thinking about it, I do wonder why the player's bullets are blocked by the turret's beams and rockets, if they are going to be blocked, then allow them to be destroyed or slowed down, or weakened with lots of hits. Maybe rockets go fly crazy when knocked off course.
Good point with the logo, but I simply wouldn't physically be able to make it since I got the itch page set up right before DD after an entire night spent finishing all the shit up. However it might still be a good moment to change it while the itch entry is still fresh.
Shells aren't really that important in comparison to other mechanics. They keep altering the arena when you are being too idle, and often become an obstruction blocking shortcuts.
The more people ask for less turret hp the more I feel like I should increase it. There are 5 ways to instakill them, and if you really want to shoot them, you can multitask ie. by parrying other enemies.
I was considering pushing rockets by shooting them, but there are plenty of ways to deal with enemy projectiles already. At that point I would only make people even more confused.
Making a tutorial area and getting it just right will be essential to teach a less static way of playing.
I was more of saying in the future you should change it. But I hope it goes well for you
Cool game and fun. Satisfying.
I had some serious technical issues unfortunately. I couldn't walk left or right. Space jumped me up, but hitting A/D would move me barely an inch and then I would just stop. While jumping, I could only go straight up. No combination of jumping and A/D would move me at all. I can make a video if you need, but it's pretty much like I describe.
It's a controller issue, I still have to push the fix. You can unplug the controller or just play with it (opinion on gamepad controls would be really useful for me, as I don't even know what bind should I use so I just binded all buttons to the 2 actions).
The new version fixes the issue, and has some more useful changes.
Pretty cool. I really like the art style and sounds. The casing mechanic is badass.
I tried it a bunch of times but never made it to the boss. I never managed to parry an attack either. Sorry, I'm just bad at video games.
The only thing I noticed was that it's kind of zoomed in too much? Sometimes my man is almost off screen. I play on a 21:9 monitor.
Thanks for trying it out. It seems I need to find another way to fit the aspect ratio. Putting black bars at the sides will probably be the way to go.
Pretty interesting concept, the controls are fine but personally I would like if there was crouching to duck under some enemy projectiles. I also really like the visuals.
So far my main grip is that if your game is about constantly shooting it's not a great idea to make all the platforms destructible, especially since there's only one way forward or rather upwards so you get stuck having to use the bullet casings to go up most of the time.
I still enjoyed and I hope you are able to sort out most of the weird level design issues because this game is cool as hell.
Insanely cool gimmick but rather wonky in execution. Half the time I have no idea what's going on due to all the particles flying on the screen and the mountain of bullets that forms after firing continuously is awkward to walk on top of. The main character has a tendency to dive into it if you carry enough momentum too.
Parrying is cool when you pull it off but it's not difficult to unintentionally destroy most of the environment in the process which kinda sucks because it forces you into careful platforming or shooting a mountain of bullets to progress. I think adding just a few more indestructible blocks would go a long way in this regard.
Wading through a literal sea of bullets is great, but there's a lot of visual things here I do not like. The vignettes or shadows on the screen can make it hard to pick out stuff, and there's so many particle effects and everything on screen that it can be hard to also figure out where to shoot or dodge.
The low health red flash is also not something I'm a fan of. I kept thinking I was taking damage when I wasn't. Feel like just having the health bar flash red would be enough. I think I enjoyed this most when I was fighting the worm more than anything.
Anyway, add a train.
Galenyds are just trains made out of lead.
Vignettes? The only one is on the title screen. Visibility is an ongoing problem though and looking back, toning down effects took a major part of the workload so far. Thanks for the feedback.
Then I expect some steam whistles out of those Galenyds.
I love this game and I'm super envious of it.
Idea and execution are great. My only problem is on the level design and tutorial.
I'll put it bluntly, the level design it's horrible (lol):
Your level doesn't reward you for being good at the game. If you get good with walljump+parry you still can't climb the level with ease because your design seems against it. Even if you learn to hover and chain walljumps, every once in while there are sections that you can't climb(or void sections because an explosion destroyed a whole platform). And so if/when you fall, there is a "Getting over it" effect. Since everything is destroyed you must sit and shoot for a long while to raise your bulletsea.
This is a big problem because it's not fun to sit and wait to fill your pool.
Another compound problem is that if your game plan is to parry most enemies, the bulletsea won't rise at all, and so again the game punishes you if play well.
ihmo you need indestructible blocks(or at least some blocks with 4x health) to create a skeleton of platforms for your level. Also a bathtub for your bullets wold be nice, so you can cut downtime if you slip.
Tutorials on how to actually play the game are pretty much missing. So you can't really be mad at players/streamers when they play like shit. The new version you uploaded with a shielded enemy doesn't solve anything. It's not a tutorial, but a roadblock.
Don't give up this project because it's super good.
That's what I get for doing my level design the day before DD. I will try rerouting the level diagonally and then figure out a type of support structure that won't make people try to play it like a precision platformer. I could also make some kind of endless enemy spawn to serve that purpose, or just make the hover infinite.
>Another compound problem is that if your game plan is to parry most enemies, the bulletsea won't rise at all, and so again the game punishes you if play well.
I mean, filling everything with shells is not really the point, but I think I can get why people would want it.
Thanks for the feedback.