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A jam submission

WormwoodView game page

Submitted by PavloConan — 2 days, 23 hours before the deadline
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Wormwood's itch.io page

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Comments

Submitted

Looks neat, plays well enough, decent enemy variety and sound. My main suggestions are:

  • Make the barrels and vases breakable.
  • Better their collision boxes.
  • Less teleporters.
  • More stuff in general, but that's probably WIP.

Overall, decent base to work on, just make sure you're not just making Gungeon but worse.

Developer(+1)

Thanks man!
Decent base was all that I was looking for with this prototype, I've already made 20+ tickets based on the impressions from this so yeah, all things you've mentioned are to be fixed. I think the next build will show the direction I want to take to distinguish it from, for example Gungeon :) 
Your games looks awesome, I''ll try it today!

_
.
Developer(+1)

Holy crap, I can't believe you've made the 1-hour long gameplay of my prototype :) Going to watch now, cheers!

Submitted

Cool game! I like the art and music, but sfx of gunshot could be better, maybe add some metal clicks to it, or more bass.
Would like to see more interactions like breaking all theese sweet pots (but maybe you just didn't implement it yet).
Don't know why, but I couldn't use first skill I got (lightning thing), I pressed 1 and nothing happend.
Good job, anyway, friend!
Is map always will be preset or there will be generation later? (I often hear this same question often too, lol)

Developer(+1)

Hey man, thanks for the feedback!
Yeah, the breakable environment is one of the things that come up quite a lot, just not implemented yet :)
The skills are used by RMB, the 1-4 is just for choosing the one that you want to use, like weapons in FPS :) 
You can see the key binding in pause menu.
The maps are procedurally generated, but there will be more variants in the future.
Cheers!

Deleted post
Developer

Hey man!
So for the minimap I guess you mean that the player should see a small UI window with the map in a corner?

Submitted

Really solid gungeon-esque demo.

  • aiming with mouse and keyboard was a little awkward. Felt like I was fighting the controls to get it to point exactly where I was aiming and the reticle's movements felt inconsistent compared to my mouse movement.
  • Also, sometimes when shooting, the player character would fire a shot backwards even though my mouse wasn't moving.
  • Some decorations that are hung on the wall have deceptively large collision boxes (shields, spider webs etc) When moving along the walls, I would occasionally get stuck on map geometry because of this.
  • Combat is satisfying and visual effects are very well done.
  • I like the decision to have an hp bar instead of the more discrete heart/half-heart system that games like enter the gungeon and binding of isaac use. Makes getting caught in a bad position more punishing due to lack of invulnerability and I imagine it opens up a lot of design space.
  • Its also interesting that you can freely leave most rooms (besides the ones in the room with the key ) and have the enemies you ditched wander around and chase you through halls.

Overall felt like a good vertical slice of a game with a lot of room for development on all of the systems supporting the already pretty fun combat.

Developer

Holy crap, thanks a lot for the feedback!. I'm really glad that you can see the potential, cause that's basically all that this demo is - looking for a potential game that's buried within :)

Submitted
  • Seems gamepad is only halfway supported: i could move with it, but couldn't aim with the right stick.
  • Way too much screenshake.
  • Score at death seems to be broken.

I like how the music and the art fits together.

Developer

Yeah, I haven't take gamepad into consideration yet, the `twin-stick shooter` tag was more about the genre than input specification :)
The screen shake can be disabled in the main menu. As for the score - yeah...I was made aware by someone already :)

  • Clicking with the mouse in the menu removes the selection and I cannot reselect anything. I had to quit out to fix it.
  • You give me so many objects and I can´t destroy any of them? :(
  • I really dislike the screenshake when shooting, some love that stuff though.

The foundation is very solid, I´d say finding some unique mechanic to stand out from other games in the genre would be good.

Developer

Thanks, man!
You can disable screen shake in game options in the main menu:)
The main menu was basically unchanged from the very beginning, so the code sucks balls, I give you that. :)

I see, I did look into the options but I kinda got stuck there unable to get back out so I never paid attention to what options I even have. If I can disable it it´s not an issue then.

Developer

Can't blame you for that. The menus and UI are kind of troublesome right now.

Submitted

so this is a pretty standard twin stick shooter roguelike, you've got the gungeon roll and everything. i'm making something similar (but not a roguelike) and two things i've founds to be true are you want the played to always be in the middle of the screen and enemies should lead projectiles if they're not going to shoot them in patterns, there's already a game which kinda has this same horror aesthetic in "lovecraft's untold stories" but it's a lot more claustrophobic

i've got a script which lets enemies predict where the player is going and aim there, maybe do something similar if enemies are just going to shoot one projectile

it just feels pretty generic, as someone who has played a lot of these twin stick shooter roguelikes i'd prefer something that plays a little different

Developer

Thanks for the feedback.
Yeah it agree that it feels generic right now. For this release I was really more trying to land on a combat model that is satisfying enough. After this release and after I finish the refactor I intend to focus solely on design aspect, because I have a lot of ideas in store that would help to distinguish this game from others. Small steps I guess :)
Cheers!

Developer (1 edit)

Oh, and also I 100% intend to have predictable projectiles. Didn't have time to implement yet, though. Thanks, buddy.

Submitted

Time to play whatever this is!

- Free OST? Sounds pretty cool!

- The gold trails initially looked like enemy bile attacks to me.

- Disappointed as hell that the pots don't seem to be breakable.

- I feel like the next room should fade in a little earlier. It feels bad to me that there's a point in time where I can't see my character and he could be right next to an enemy.

- Despite the free OST I actually can't hear the music during gameplay over the SFX.

- It can be hard at time to tell what is alive and what is a corpse on the ground. I would darken the corpses by like 25~50% so they read as irrelevant.

- Teleport screen controls are weird. I recommend using a cursor there since you can scroll anyways.

- A chest spawned on a teleport pad and I can't access it. Chests should have priority, not teleporters.

- The KB+M controls I find really awkward to manage. I'm not sure how one would improve them, but having dynamic input to allow me to rebind stuff would be excellent.

Overall, this is a pretty good start! Nice progress! I look forward to seeing more from you in the future!

Developer(+1)

Thanks a lot man! Lot of great feedback, I appreciate a lot :)