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A jam submission

Cyberdome Penelopenxia AlphaView game page

Brave the life of a robot gladiator, optimize your build and fight impossible odds in the Cyberdome!
Submitted by CyberdomeDev (@CyberdomeDev) — 2 days, 23 hours before the deadline
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Submitted

I did a quick no-commentary recording. The video is still processing, so the embed will probably break, but here's the link: 

Thoughts: It's cool that the player has so many moves they can do, but I found myself fumbling with the keyboard controls. I noticed that the game actually works with gamepad, so I'd suggest adding gamepad instructions to the tutorial.

The movement will probably feel better with mouse, but there are so many buttons to keep track of (ctrl, shift, e, f) in addition to WASD movement that my left hand felt overloaded. On gamepad, half of those actions would be mapped to bumpers, and it would be easier to melee without interrupting your movement. But I don't think I've played anything else in the genre on PC, so I can't compare.

More broadly, I found myself defaulting to the usual "spam melee attack + dodge roll" technique. The game should probably do more to discourage this and to encourage projectile use. The gun felt like a downgrade when I got it, because it also weakens your melee attack by occupying one of your arms.

Seems cool so far; hope the recording helps!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing! and recording! ^_^

Sorry about the controls, as it turns out that's what I've been working on all last week 
Controller is missing some functionality in the uploaded build, possibly including the button to drop your guns 

next update should have rebindable keys and all the controller buttons working properly

Tutorial definitely on the todo!

Thanks again!

Submitted

Sounds great. Thinking about it now, the game probably does feel better with a mouse, but controller rebinding will definitely help. Maybe if I map punch/kick to the forward/back buttons on the side of the mouse, and then use the left hand for movement (jump/dodge/block).

In terms of combat, are there other games on PC in this genre? I'm trying to think of what else I might have seen/played that would have a similar control scheme.

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Well for action RPG's, there's Nier Automata, Devil May Cry, Phantasy Star Online 2, Kingdom Hearts, Warframe, Mount&Blade, Sekiro, Souls-likes....  
For melee combat I'd say it's the closest to Kingdom Hearts  
In general, I've drawn a lot of inspo from Armored Core and Phantasy Star Online 2

At the moment a few buttons are somewhat redundant: 
>In melee mode, Punch and Kick do the same thing as Fire1 and Fire2
>with guns out, Fire2 just points your weapon at the current target, and zooms while manual aiming

What I'm least satisfied with for M&K is Block being on Ctrl, I suppose I could swap it with Fire2 to get it on the mouse (it's kind of leftover from when manual aim was always on while guns were out)

Submitted


Finally beat that dark souls level bullshit DDOS Manos. The game has grown quite a bit since my last playthrough and I really like the new features! Coloring the character was fun and the battles were fun. I was a big fan of the internal customization before and still am with the new abilities screen.  One thing I had a question about was the energy blade, to me it wasnt obvious that you still required the normal blade as I figured an energy blade would replace a normal blade but as it turns out you need both so maybe some clarity on that ingame would help, perhaps renaming the energy blade to an energy augment for the blade or something.  Look forward to more enemies and more bosses, if you can get some more like DDOS then that would be stellar! 

Developer(+1)

Well done! Glad DDOS was well received!

I'll keep that bit about the energy blades in mind, I think the abilities menu might end up looking more like a branching skill tree since new abilities are gonna require old ones to function.

Thanks for playing! ^_^

Submitted (2 edits)

Here's a youtube video of the playthrough:

I hope it helps.  I cut out grinding for credits once & setting-up the internals.

Good hack & slash, I can tell you're a big fan of the genre!  I didn't notice any bugs and it seems very well developed so far  Character customization is very cool!  Honestly, the whole earn-credits-upgrade-retry-trial seems really cool and has a lot of potential. For the demo, I would suggest just giving people a lot of credits to spend to buy things from the store so they can try out all the mechanics without having to grind.  As you can see in the playthrough I tried fighting maxotaur a couple times without realizing I had a bunch of modules I could install, so maybe add a UI element that shows uninstalled modules that could fit.  Also, I talk about this in the video but when modifying internals maybe add an "optimize" button that would optimize the location of all currently installed modules.

One of my suggestions is to add more cancel options  (i.e. cancel a dash into an attack/block/jump, attack into dash/block/ jump, etc.) so that way player could do more stylish combos.  Or make cancel routes modules for the player to buy & install.  That'd be cool to and synergizes well with the existing gameplay you have now! Also, I'd suggest being able to combo dead enemies a bit & being able to continue combos between enemies, I was trying to launch the more basic enemies but they'd die so quickly I wouldn't get to that part of the combo.

I've only played it for a little over half-an-hour (trying to play through more DD submissions first) but I'll definitely come back to this and leave a more detailed review afterwards.

Honestly, I think you're working on something with a lot of potential here!  I better see you tweeting & making youtube videos because I would HATE to see this thing not do well!  Just think of it as part of the development process (i.e. X videos by version 0.3.0, weekly devlogs by version 0.4.0, etc.).  If you're worried about video editing tools blender isn't terrible and is free.

Submitted

Upload & processing DONE!

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Wow, thanks so much! For the detail and the kind words ^_^ 


>give player credits for the demo to skip the grind 

I almost did! and I certainly might next time!


>"optimize button"

I think that might take a bit of the strategy out of it, but I'm hoping to make a lof of QoL changes to the menus/Ui for that, which may take some of the pain away. 


>cancel options

definitely on the todo, probably as upgrades


>being able to combo dead enemies a bit & being able to continue combos between enemies

I hear ya, unfortunately with the way the targeting system is setup there's a lot of nuance to guessing whether the player wants to change targets or just turn the camera (while softlocked), so I chose to make the target kindof sticky during the combo.  
There's certainly more fine tuning I could do with it though, and I have some ideas ; )


>tweeting & making youtube videos

ha.... I do a little bit now and then, there's a certain point were I think I'll start promoting it a lot more but I haven't hit that quite yet 
I have high hopes tho! 


I'll be taking notes while watching your video ^_^

Thanks again for playing!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

>"optimize button"
Yeah, during the video you can hear that I'm a little conflicted about suggesting it.  I can tell that you want customizing internals to be an integral part of the game and it is pretty fun.  I cut out about 5 minutes where I just look at all my modules and tinker around with everything.  And it also raises the question what would the algorithm optimize for?  One player might do a melee focused build, another a gun focused one, etc.  Honestly, I'd say don't make a decision on it yet.  You don't need it right now and it seems you have existing improvements planned already so worry about it later.

Also don't listen to when my comments about crouch on shift.  My only suggestion is to make the player dash/roll backwards (or any other preset direction) if they press shift without a directional input instead of crouching.

And you never hear me complain about the soft-locking system in my playthrough because it's so good it goes unnoticed.  Certainly shows that you put in a lot of fine tuning on that.

Submitted

I would like it if the Stat/Ability overview was somehow visible during equipping/chaning of mods, not just in an extra window. Took me a bit to realize I need to have all the parts for a given ability equipped, not just one of them. 

Main Menu music and Missile lock-on sound are a bit obnoxious I think. 

The Module equipping with the body rotating around towards the desired Area is really nice, but when clicking a party while rotating the Body it messes up the grid display and doesn't allow you to place the part unless you stop and reselect it. 

The Head slot looks too dark, couldn't properly see the space left after some Parts where equipped without the green grid behind them. 

Some items also don't seem to stack their effects when placed, like the Ammo belt, if thats intended a small tooltip that it doesn't stack would be nice. 

Also sometimes when equipping Parts it wouldn't save the Loadout correctly, only saving some parts or none of them.

In the Shop rightclicking a item to directly sell/buy it would really be nice, so I wouldn't have to select all the parts and then spamclick sell in the bottom, since you get a lot of small batteries.

Don't know if it happens everytime but it seems you don't get the mission complete reward or any cash change when you have 0 cash while completing the mission. Especially in the beginning this is problematic, as when I finished the first mission I got 0 cash, and apparently when you're having 0 cash (or less, I could start missions without having the cash for it, causing me to go negative) you can't sell anything in the Shop, meaning you're locked on 0 money until you loose a few battles.

The Game seems to be intended as a high action Game, however once in the Arena the base movement speed feels incredible slow, almost as if I wasn't some kind of agile cyborg but as cumbersome and clunky as the big minotaurs. 

I would also really like if you could jump out of a dash or dash while in the Air, it felt a lot better once I got the freeflight/hovering mods, but a quick dash instead of only the option to go into full on flight or be locked to the slow base speed would be nice. 

It was really annoying that I couldn't dash out of attacks to pre-emptively cancel the Attack animations, which are pretty long. Especially in the Minotaur fight it often came down to luck, where he would oneshot/hit me if he started his attacks early enough in my Melee hits, since I was locked in place for a substantial amount of time. If the Maxotaur starts to spin and you're already in an Aircombo you can just keep on going, staying above the Hammer, and demolishing him in one of his attacks, don't know if that was intended, but it felt pretty nice to have an opportunity to really wail on him.

DDOS MANOS feltreally good to fight, beat her mostly with Pistols, but since I didn't have enough bullets/damage had to melee her in the end, which wasn't a problem, but felt a lot less fun then sliding around the floor on high speed, spamming shots into her, again thanks to the slow attack animations probably. Also could stand inside the spinning radius of her big hands once in melee, don't know if intended or not.

Decided to try out the Energyblades and Rockets after I beat her, couldn't figure out how to shoot Rockets at all, but the Energyblades where a lot of Fun, the longer attack animations didn't bother me as much there as with the default blades, as you basically oneshot the Target anyway, so you only really need to make a single attack before being able to dash out again.

Overall I think it would feel a lot better if you could cancel attacks with dashing, and dash in midair, it might make the fights a lot easier, but also maybe allow you to play around more with the Enemies. Otherwise a really fun game, kept me engaged for 2-3 hours (but I forgot to test if you can freeflight out of the Arena, since it doesn't seem to take up much energy if any at all).

Developer

Thanks for playing, and especially the feedback! ^_^

>menu, visuals, sound stuff
totally understandable and QoL adjustments for internals editing is definitely on my list of things todo, as well as sound changes. 

>Also sometimes when equipping Parts it wouldn't save the Loadout correctly, only saving some parts or none of them
This one is new and worries me a bit, gonna have to hunt that down

>don't get the mission complete reward or any cash
gdi, I think I know what causes this, thx for the heads up

>at 0 cash you can't sell anything in the Shop
OOF, sorry about that

>melee stuff
yeah the starting melee moveset is pretty slow, I'm hoping people are willing to put up with it until energy blades but I might look for a way to speed it up a tiny bit without tearing everything apart 
I need to take a look at dodge canceling out of melee attacks (it seems you can't dodge after it hits and I honestly don't remember if that was intentional or not so I'll probably change it) 
Air-dodge is on the todo as an unlockable ability (I think, need to check my notes), but for Maxotaur, blocking is probably gonna stay your only aerial defensive option 

>Rockets 
should be middle mouse button (if they're working right) a box should show up and start targeting things on screen

>DDOS MANOS fight
Happy it left a good impression!  it has a lot of stuff going on that I wasn't sure about (safe spot during the spin is intended, might add some visual flair to make it seem like the eye of the storm)


Thanks Again!

Submitted(+1)

Can't believe I didn't try middle mouse button for Rockets, I tried every keyboard button I could think of, but not that. Consider me retarded.

Also I never really used block, I guess I kind of felt like it wouldn't properly block the Giant hammer with those tiny Armblades? Probably just a visual thing.