Got to the boss several times, but I couldn't beat him. Decided to stop there since I was starting to tire of redoing the same challenges to get there.
Things I like: Visuals and shaders are great to look at, they fit well into a cohesive aesthetic. Sound is nice, I like how things seem quieter with the gun held down. Kinda reminds me of when I would do metal shop. Bullet shell piling mechanic is cool. Wall jumping off of enemies is an interesting idea. Overall gunplay and enemy AI are fun to engage with.
Criticism: Wall jumps on projectiles and enemies felt a bit inconsistent to do reliably. Might just be me though. Destructible tiles are cool, though I think it would benefit from some invulnerable tiles, so it's easier to quickly traverse upwards. Level starts too quickly I think, may be nice to have more of a 'tutorial area' that tries to get the player to engage with a mechanic one at a time with less immediate threats.
I was expecting to like this game a lot more than I ended up liking it. It refused to go into full screen on the monitor I wanted to, the cursor did not appear in full screen, and it was acting up because I had a gamepad plugged in. Parrying is incredibly fiddly and I could only ever get it to work once. That said, it's clearly a very cool demo, and I'm curious how it will change in the future.
Damn, it turns out SFML can't even handle multiple screens in the first place. Thanks for pointing that out.
I caught up with the vod, you did pretty well given how short you played, but there's no way anyone could get the hang of it in just a few minutes given how gimmicky this meme game is. Tutorial zone should bridge that gap when I add it, I hope.
Probably one of the most unique mechanics I've seen in a while, and the presentation is excellent as well. The game has a lot of easy to read, yet stylish choices like the armor breaking away as you lose health or the way flying enemies spin out and explode. Aiming and shooting feel nice, though I will admit I'm terrible at this and sidescrollers in general (a unique mechanic is one hell of a hook) so take the following with a grain of salt.
I gave up on parrying halfway through my second run because I could only get it work work without getting chipped about 30% of the time. If there are controls listed anywhere other than ASD, LMB, and Space I never found them. I pressed every sensible key I could to varying results. Sometimes I could perform a spinning dive but I don't know how.
Total Playtime: 1ish hour. The Void Lord ate more lead than I could carry and wanted more.
You got the controls right. The only trick to parrying is holding direction away from the object you are deflecting, and it won't work on objects directly below you. It has a lot of range (scales with speed too), and the timing has so much input buffer that you can spam both directions.
If by dive you mean the bullet form, it works with any momentum, but shooting up will trigger it really quickly - good for escape, ruining your progress and bullying the boss.
Holy cow, that's a lot of playtime considering how short this game is. Must have been several levels full of brass. Thanks for playing!
This game is a bit tricky to play. I get what the game wants me to do (spam parry to gain speed and go drill mode) but I feel like the level is a bit chaotic for a first level where I'm supposed to be learning the mechanics (if it is even meant to be a first level and not just the level for demo purposes).
I'd also recommend changing the cursor to something that stands out a bit more because I would sometimes loose it's position in all the chaos onscreen.
Overall this seems like it could be interesting once it clicks, but getting to that point is a bit of a bumpy ride.
Oooh, now that's the feedback I needed to hear. The level is indeed very steep in learning curve and it gives too much options at the start, so I should go for a separate tutorial level. Thanks a lot!
Somehow, it seems like the the movement is completely broken for me. I'm not sure how that could be the cause since others seem to be running the game fine but basically when I hold the A or D key all the character does is a microscopic nudge in the direction.
I love the visuals and the colours and the sound. Also the title screen looks kind of like gun barrels that is cool, and making a ramp to get up higher by pilling brass shells feels awesome. It'd be cool if you could hold shift to focus / hold breathe and make tighter dispersion at range for more focused long range fire when you need it
Thanks! Sniping could be good for an alternate character, but gunning down everything is exactly the opposite of how it should play, since melee options like wall jump are so much better and more fun. You can still shoot accurately when fire rate is slower, but I don't advise playing this way.
ok the concept of this is just incredible. even from just the menu screen the game screams "this is the shit"
it does often take longer than is comfortable to build the mountain of shell casings necessary to get up to the next bit. might be a good idea to have some mechanism to generate them really fast
the existence of platforming mechanics, the ledge grab and walljump, feel unnecessary since you can just make a giant mountain to go wherever you want. but I like their existence, it makes the game feel very extra, which is definitely the tone of the whole game. good inclusion I say
I beat the void lord worm boss by the skin of my teeth, and it's a cool boss although it does have a tendency to rush out of nowhere and slam me. It's also not all that clear when I've taken damage and I still haven't figured out what exactly to do about enemy missiles
Actually, wall jump is more essential to this game than the shells because it serves at least different 5 purposes. Shells are more like both a fail-safe and an obstruction of sorts. If you want to generate them faster, they build up faster off-screen, but that's supposed to be a secret.
You can parry the missiles easily or jump-evade/jump on top of them to hijack them.
If there's no reason to let go of LMB, why do I have to hold it down the entire time?
The gun feels unsatisfying due to the ridiculous spread and slow projectiles.
The health bar (and UI in general) is too small.
The movement feels sluggish and imprecise with the slow walking speed, automatic wall-jumps, and sinking into the brass.
Missiles feel incredibly wonky. They turn on a dime and it doesn't seem like you can shoot them down, but half the time they just pass right through you.
Those machine gun turrets have way too much health.
90% of the game is just waiting for the brass to build up.
Why does the character sometimes float in midair? I noticed it a lot while trying to jump over the boss.
No idea how you're meant to avoid contact damage/getting shot point-blank by the boss. Only beat it because enemies do fuck-all damage.
The shell casings building up is a neat gimmick, but I don't think it has the longevity to base an entire game around it. It's basically a glorified auto-scroller.
You don't actually have to wait for anything. You can get to the boss in 1 minute. You get to hover both from gun recoil and from shooting enemies, which is how you keep staying midair and preserve momentum.
You can jump-evade and momentum-evade boss attacks, as well as parry projectiles and the head, so in the end it's only risky to get stuck below him and when you are overly aggressive with the kicks.
Machine gun turrets still die to one hit from anything else than the gun, so you can take them out immediately with one good kick, sneak up or break through with momentum when that fails.
Holding trigger is for... immersion. The thought of making it automatic passed through my head, but it didn't sit right with me.
I'm not sure what do you mean by automatic wall jumps?
>You can get to the boss in 1 minute. You get to hover both from gun recoil and from shooting enemies
I didn't even realize you get pushed back by the recoil with how chaotic it is. Why is it only when moving downwards, though? And why would shooting enemies make you float?
>You can jump-evade and momentum-evade boss attacks, as well as parry projectiles and the head
I didn't notice that jump evading was a thing. You're only told about it in a tiny message that stays on screen for a few seconds while you're being swarmed by bats. I still don't really understand how it works. Does jumping just give you I-frames at the start? I have no idea how parrying is supposed to work; "...everything is a wall" tells me nothing.
>overly aggressive with the kicks
The what?
>sneak up or break through with momentum when that fails
The game gave me no indication that stealth is possible, or that there is impact damage or even momentum-based movement. If anything, I assumed touching enemies damaged you.
>I'm not sure what do you mean by automatic wall jumps?
I only ever wall jumped accidentally, and since there's never any downtime to experiment I felt like it was happening by just pressing Space near a wall.
Recoil is always there, but it's nerfed right after the jump (the controls would suck a lot without that) and sideways it's building up gradually. Hover from shooting enemies doesn't make much sense but it does its job gameplay wise.
>>>overly aggressive with the kicks
You can dive head first into the boss and deal impact damage to it, and then also start kicking its body parts, but the last part is risky because you can lose i-frames by accident.
>The game gave me no indication that stealth is possible, or that there is impact damage or even momentum-based movement. If anything, I assumed touching enemies damaged you.
This assumption kinda makes sense since the game starts with a swarm. It's not exactly stealth, but the wall gives you an opportunity to get closer and swoop in, and you can dig from below too.
It makes sense now, I neglected the UI scaling there so the tutorial wasn't readable or visible enough.
Theres some wonkyness on the right Side going on like the Walls are changing Geometry when moving out of the Screen at the Bottom or something.
Bullets also stack up rather weirdly, they don't feel like individual Bullets or a Sea of them you're wading through, but like a moving Polygonal Shape. With that small Jump and the Bullets constantly blocking you, jumping feels very unsatisfying and not very useful.
Biggest Issue I had tho, was that whenever I started shooting for a while, or occassionally in between the Minigun would lock on to the top left Corner with a blue Circle and I couldn't aim anymore, making it pretty much impossible to kill most Enemies, unless they just happened to be right in that Corner.
Thanks for playing. What's your setup? Seems like it's getting weird analog stick inputs from a gamepad or maybe some other device. I will be pushing a fix for that just in case.
I can't really see the geometry problem, I only know the shells are completely fucked up but walls are new to me. It sounds like a chunking problem on specific aspect ratios. Screenshot would help a lot.
In general jumping only gets you off the ground initially and lets you chain different moves from there.
Seemed to be indeed an issue with the Controller, unplugging helped.
Made it to the Boss this Time, played closer attention to the Walls, might've been just a visual trick with all the deformation from the Bullets, the 'camera bending' and the slight transparency on the bottom infograph.
BulletPolygons don't stick to the ground tho, they can create some Airgaps for a while there.
Bossfight is a lot more Fun then the Level itself, I might be just too bad to jump properly, but it feels like more open Areas work better for this.
Comments
Got to the boss several times, but I couldn't beat him. Decided to stop there since I was starting to tire of redoing the same challenges to get there.
Things I like: Visuals and shaders are great to look at, they fit well into a cohesive aesthetic. Sound is nice, I like how things seem quieter with the gun held down. Kinda reminds me of when I would do metal shop. Bullet shell piling mechanic is cool. Wall jumping off of enemies is an interesting idea. Overall gunplay and enemy AI are fun to engage with.
Criticism: Wall jumps on projectiles and enemies felt a bit inconsistent to do reliably. Might just be me though. Destructible tiles are cool, though I think it would benefit from some invulnerable tiles, so it's easier to quickly traverse upwards. Level starts too quickly I think, may be nice to have more of a 'tutorial area' that tries to get the player to engage with a mechanic one at a time with less immediate threats.
So far so good, looking forward to next time.
I was expecting to like this game a lot more than I ended up liking it. It refused to go into full screen on the monitor I wanted to, the cursor did not appear in full screen, and it was acting up because I had a gamepad plugged in. Parrying is incredibly fiddly and I could only ever get it to work once. That said, it's clearly a very cool demo, and I'm curious how it will change in the future.
Damn, it turns out SFML can't even handle multiple screens in the first place. Thanks for pointing that out.
I caught up with the vod, you did pretty well given how short you played, but there's no way anyone could get the hang of it in just a few minutes given how gimmicky this meme game is. Tutorial zone should bridge that gap when I add it, I hope.
Best of luck with that tutorial, they're tricky to design.
Probably one of the most unique mechanics I've seen in a while, and the presentation is excellent as well. The game has a lot of easy to read, yet stylish choices like the armor breaking away as you lose health or the way flying enemies spin out and explode. Aiming and shooting feel nice, though I will admit I'm terrible at this and sidescrollers in general (a unique mechanic is one hell of a hook) so take the following with a grain of salt.
I gave up on parrying halfway through my second run because I could only get it work work without getting chipped about 30% of the time. If there are controls listed anywhere other than ASD, LMB, and Space I never found them. I pressed every sensible key I could to varying results. Sometimes I could perform a spinning dive but I don't know how.
Total Playtime: 1ish hour. The Void Lord ate more lead than I could carry and wanted more.
You got the controls right. The only trick to parrying is holding direction away from the object you are deflecting, and it won't work on objects directly below you. It has a lot of range (scales with speed too), and the timing has so much input buffer that you can spam both directions.
If by dive you mean the bullet form, it works with any momentum, but shooting up will trigger it really quickly - good for escape, ruining your progress and bullying the boss.
Holy cow, that's a lot of playtime considering how short this game is. Must have been several levels full of brass. Thanks for playing!
Okay: real feedback now that can actually move:
This game is a bit tricky to play. I get what the game wants me to do (spam parry to gain speed and go drill mode) but I feel like the level is a bit chaotic for a first level where I'm supposed to be learning the mechanics (if it is even meant to be a first level and not just the level for demo purposes).
I'd also recommend changing the cursor to something that stands out a bit more because I would sometimes loose it's position in all the chaos onscreen.
Overall this seems like it could be interesting once it clicks, but getting to that point is a bit of a bumpy ride.
Oooh, now that's the feedback I needed to hear. The level is indeed very steep in learning curve and it gives too much options at the start, so I should go for a separate tutorial level. Thanks a lot!
Somehow, it seems like the the movement is completely broken for me. I'm not sure how that could be the cause since others seem to be running the game fine but basically when I hold the A or D key all the character does is a microscopic nudge in the direction.
Do you have a controller plugged in? I guess I need to make controller support a little less seemless.
Ahhh, I do have a Bluetooth Controller connected. Thanks, I'll disconnect it and take another stab at it.
I love the visuals and the colours and the sound. Also the title screen looks kind of like gun barrels that is cool, and making a ramp to get up higher by pilling brass shells feels awesome. It'd be cool if you could hold shift to focus / hold breathe and make tighter dispersion at range for more focused long range fire when you need it
Thanks! Sniping could be good for an alternate character, but gunning down everything is exactly the opposite of how it should play, since melee options like wall jump are so much better and more fun. You can still shoot accurately when fire rate is slower, but I don't advise playing this way.
ok the concept of this is just incredible. even from just the menu screen the game screams "this is the shit"
it does often take longer than is comfortable to build the mountain of shell casings necessary to get up to the next bit. might be a good idea to have some mechanism to generate them really fast
the existence of platforming mechanics, the ledge grab and walljump, feel unnecessary since you can just make a giant mountain to go wherever you want. but I like their existence, it makes the game feel very extra, which is definitely the tone of the whole game. good inclusion I say
I beat the void lord worm boss by the skin of my teeth, and it's a cool boss although it does have a tendency to rush out of nowhere and slam me. It's also not all that clear when I've taken damage and I still haven't figured out what exactly to do about enemy missiles
Actually, wall jump is more essential to this game than the shells because it serves at least different 5 purposes. Shells are more like both a fail-safe and an obstruction of sorts. If you want to generate them faster, they build up faster off-screen, but that's supposed to be a secret.
You can parry the missiles easily or jump-evade/jump on top of them to hijack them.
ah I see. I think I did the hijacking thing a few times but had no idea what was going on. didn't know if I was getting hit or what
The shell casings building up is a neat gimmick, but I don't think it has the longevity to base an entire game around it. It's basically a glorified auto-scroller.
You don't actually have to wait for anything. You can get to the boss in 1 minute. You get to hover both from gun recoil and from shooting enemies, which is how you keep staying midair and preserve momentum.
You can jump-evade and momentum-evade boss attacks, as well as parry projectiles and the head, so in the end it's only risky to get stuck below him and when you are overly aggressive with the kicks.
Machine gun turrets still die to one hit from anything else than the gun, so you can take them out immediately with one good kick, sneak up or break through with momentum when that fails.
Holding trigger is for... immersion. The thought of making it automatic passed through my head, but it didn't sit right with me.
I'm not sure what do you mean by automatic wall jumps?
Thanks for playing.
>You can get to the boss in 1 minute. You get to hover both from gun recoil and from shooting enemies
I didn't even realize you get pushed back by the recoil with how chaotic it is. Why is it only when moving downwards, though? And why would shooting enemies make you float?
>You can jump-evade and momentum-evade boss attacks, as well as parry projectiles and the head
I didn't notice that jump evading was a thing. You're only told about it in a tiny message that stays on screen for a few seconds while you're being swarmed by bats. I still don't really understand how it works. Does jumping just give you I-frames at the start? I have no idea how parrying is supposed to work; "...everything is a wall" tells me nothing.
>overly aggressive with the kicks
The what?
>sneak up or break through with momentum when that fails
The game gave me no indication that stealth is possible, or that there is impact damage or even momentum-based movement. If anything, I assumed touching enemies damaged you.
>I'm not sure what do you mean by automatic wall jumps?
I only ever wall jumped accidentally, and since there's never any downtime to experiment I felt like it was happening by just pressing Space near a wall.
Recoil is always there, but it's nerfed right after the jump (the controls would suck a lot without that) and sideways it's building up gradually. Hover from shooting enemies doesn't make much sense but it does its job gameplay wise.
>>>overly aggressive with the kicks
You can dive head first into the boss and deal impact damage to it, and then also start kicking its body parts, but the last part is risky because you can lose i-frames by accident.
>The game gave me no indication that stealth is possible, or that there is impact damage or even momentum-based movement. If anything, I assumed touching enemies damaged you.
This assumption kinda makes sense since the game starts with a swarm. It's not exactly stealth, but the wall gives you an opportunity to get closer and swoop in, and you can dig from below too.
It makes sense now, I neglected the UI scaling there so the tutorial wasn't readable or visible enough.
Theres some wonkyness on the right Side going on like the Walls are changing Geometry when moving out of the Screen at the Bottom or something.
Bullets also stack up rather weirdly, they don't feel like individual Bullets or a Sea of them you're wading through, but like a moving Polygonal Shape. With that small Jump and the Bullets constantly blocking you, jumping feels very unsatisfying and not very useful.
Biggest Issue I had tho, was that whenever I started shooting for a while, or occassionally in between the Minigun would lock on to the top left Corner with a blue Circle and I couldn't aim anymore, making it pretty much impossible to kill most Enemies, unless they just happened to be right in that Corner.
Thanks for playing. What's your setup? Seems like it's getting weird analog stick inputs from a gamepad or maybe some other device. I will be pushing a fix for that just in case.
I can't really see the geometry problem, I only know the shells are completely fucked up but walls are new to me. It sounds like a chunking problem on specific aspect ratios. Screenshot would help a lot.
In general jumping only gets you off the ground initially and lets you chain different moves from there.
Seemed to be indeed an issue with the Controller, unplugging helped.
Made it to the Boss this Time, played closer attention to the Walls, might've been just a visual trick with all the deformation from the Bullets, the 'camera bending' and the slight transparency on the bottom infograph.
BulletPolygons don't stick to the ground tho, they can create some Airgaps for a while there.
Bossfight is a lot more Fun then the Level itself, I might be just too bad to jump properly, but it feels like more open Areas work better for this.