Game idea seems cool to me. I like the movement and feeling in general a lot! I like the idea of credits counting down with every action you take. Maybe it can be extended to shields as well? Was a bit frustrating to have them run out in the boss fight. Maybe it could be so that missions can be replayed and credits reclaimed by beating them faster? Kind of a reverse take on "go back to older missions to farm resources."
May be specific to this demo: I just wanted to PLAY, but I kept getting like 10 seconds of play and then 30 seconds of dialogue. The dialogue also was hard to follow for me, in terms of what is going on - I got the gist, but that gist could have been compressed into 20% of the voice lines, too. I mean, I wasn’t paying full attention… but then again, neither are most players, I guess.
The graphics have great flair, but the resolution/pixelation made the game rather hard to comprehend!! You’re obviously going for a very specific retro look, which is fine (I love the look itself), but I suspect that an actual game from that era, in actually that low resolution, would have pulled this look off while retaining more visual clarity.
I believe I got a game crash in the end. Crash screen is cute, but it was not so clear that it’s -finito- and you gotta alt+f4 your way out, bye. Bye!
Hi! I'm still catching up on demo day stuff but I wanted to reply to this feedback and clarify things for posterity!
Credits are indirectly tied to shields- if you pick up additional fuel that you can't carry, you receive credits instead. To prevent permanent invincibility, gems aren't used to power the shield directly. The green fuel bars also represent how much boost (or cloak) you can use, so there is a tradeoff between moving quickly and playing defensively.
Going back and replaying missions that you've finished is a feature that is partially implemented. Our plan is to make story missions replayable once you finish a chapter, in the same way boss fights are replayable after they are finished. The cheat code for this is AIRCRACKNGROOFTOPCANTENNA.
The team is in unanimous agreement that there is way too much reading between missions and it screws up the pacing a lot. We'll compress a lot of that text as we get around to it- hasn't been on the prio list, is all.
Visual clarity is an interesting topic for this project in general, and it's something we've been steadily improving on over the last several demo days. Adding F1 to highlight the ship in this build is one of those steps, and we're likely going to be adding some dynamic enemy highlights too (suggested from DD55 feedback, if I recall correctly) - I need to rewrite the highlighter to support that, though.
A lot of our enemy designs in the current build rely on their small size and coloration to blend in with their surroundings, and we've received a lot of mixed feedback on that decision. Part of what we are trying to accomplish with enemy designs is creating believable adversaries that look like they actually belong in their environment, and part of what we're going for involves using bright colors + motion to make enemies visible when they are dangerous.
Other clarity steps we are considering include some changes to gems on screen (automatically fade/hide when enemies or bullets are nearby), some changes to bullet graphics, and adjusting background colors to make certain moving items easier to see.
As for the crash screen, when I saw you arrive at that on your recorded video I was kicking myself for keeping that placeholder mission on map 2. My intent was for players to try out the red-difficulty missions on map 1 after completing the Garbage Worm fight. Those red missions showcase the other biomes available for procedurally generated missions, along with their different music tracks and etc.
Thanks again for the detailed feedback and we'll probably see you guys next demo day \o/
i tried to play it like a normal 2d shooter, while it's more about "managing resources", completing levels fast, handling the fuel for your boost, your shield etc.
We appreciate that you gave our demo another run! Thanks for that.
Resource management is part of the later game, yes. This becomes a lot more prevalent on the game's third map, where enemies start to put more pressure on the player's shield with suppressing fire.
Trying to shoot up to hit the one target in the tutorial was frustrating in discovering that the shots come from the tip of the ship. Would rather it be centered.
Was not expecting the game to be as bullet-hell as it is. The tutorial made it seem like it was going to be a collectathon.
Some of the enemies are really hard to actually see and dodge, and it feels like the entire blimp is the hitbox rather than the standard practice of bullet-hells to have the hitbox be smaller than the player character.
I did not find see a way to remove the FPS and total frame counter at the bottom and frankly they should not be on by default.
Why is it limited to such a small resolution? You can do fixed pixel resolutions and still have the game be in a bigger window.
Related to that, some of the text was hard to read as it was pixel fonts in a small window.
With the demo explanation/changelog, let me skip the slow character-by-character typing.
It says that this is probably the second-to-last demo before a full release yet it doesn't feel like it. Can't place my finger on why.
Hey there, Thanks for trying the demo! I can clarify some details on these different points \o/
-> All of the ships have different firing positions for where their weapons are mounted. Each ship has a unique feel for that - as you unlock better ships and upgrade crew members, your arsenal quickly becomes stocked with autoturrets and support drones that take a lot of the pressure to fire at targets off of the player in favor of simply focusing on your task as a pilot.
-> It's definitely a collectathon, just in a less traditional way. We added collectable frogs this patch, the shops have various upgrades, there's over 50 characters in the roster to unlock alongside 20ish ships (and even more gunbuddies), and more stuff is probably going to sneak in before release. The task of figuring out how to even give the player the mountain of stuff there is to unlock has been a daunting one to work through- with ten story missions per chapter, if we give you a new character after every single mission we'll still have leftovers to hand out. It's a process lol
-> Hitboxes vary from ship to ship but in most cases the hitboxes approximate the shape of the ship at a scale of about 90%. Certain features like tailfins/spoilers or hanging antennae are not included in most hitboxes. The feedback we've received on this choice has been about 50/50 in favor of tiny hitboxes or large hitboxes, and the opinions across the devteam are split this way, too.
-> FPS and framecounter are in the Settings menu. In the release version of the game they won't be enabled by default, but performance feedback is important to us! I hope the game gave you no troubles with framerate ♥
-> The resolution defaults to 1280x960 @ 4x zoom. If you are using a big TV or 4K monitor then it is possible to adjust the video settings manually in your savedata folder. If you are asking why the window cannot be arbitrarily resized (while keeping the same zoom factor, similar to games like Starbound or Terraria) - that is my fault; a lot of the game's UI is positioned manually and it would be a lot of work to correct it this late in development. It's on the list of overhauls that will probably come after the initial release, though. Depending on how controller support implementation goes, it might get fixed during that process anyway. We'll see.
-> I made that font myself \o/
-> Instant Text in the Settings menu makes the process of moving through dialog a lot faster if you want to skip through it.
-> I think one more demoday after this one should be sufficient for a demo to feel like a complete, playable test of the first chapter of the game for players. After that we'll be grinding out the remainder of the mission content and fixing up bugs and QoL to launch the game. We know it won't be perfect, but we also know it's important to finish things instead of letting them sit in development hell forever.
Thanks again for playing and for your detailed feedback! We read all of the comments we get ♥
Comments
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2138210703
Game idea seems cool to me. I like the movement and feeling in general a lot! I like the idea of credits counting down with every action you take. Maybe it can be extended to shields as well? Was a bit frustrating to have them run out in the boss fight. Maybe it could be so that missions can be replayed and credits reclaimed by beating them faster? Kind of a reverse take on "go back to older missions to farm resources."
May be specific to this demo: I just wanted to PLAY, but I kept getting like 10 seconds of play and then 30 seconds of dialogue. The dialogue also was hard to follow for me, in terms of what is going on - I got the gist, but that gist could have been compressed into 20% of the voice lines, too. I mean, I wasn’t paying full attention… but then again, neither are most players, I guess.
The graphics have great flair, but the resolution/pixelation made the game rather hard to comprehend!! You’re obviously going for a very specific retro look, which is fine (I love the look itself), but I suspect that an actual game from that era, in actually that low resolution, would have pulled this look off while retaining more visual clarity.
I believe I got a game crash in the end. Crash screen is cute, but it was not so clear that it’s -finito- and you gotta alt+f4 your way out, bye. Bye!
Hi! I'm still catching up on demo day stuff but I wanted to reply to this feedback and clarify things for posterity!
Credits are indirectly tied to shields- if you pick up additional fuel that you can't carry, you receive credits instead. To prevent permanent invincibility, gems aren't used to power the shield directly. The green fuel bars also represent how much boost (or cloak) you can use, so there is a tradeoff between moving quickly and playing defensively.
Going back and replaying missions that you've finished is a feature that is partially implemented. Our plan is to make story missions replayable once you finish a chapter, in the same way boss fights are replayable after they are finished. The cheat code for this is AIRCRACKNGROOFTOPCANTENNA.
The team is in unanimous agreement that there is way too much reading between missions and it screws up the pacing a lot. We'll compress a lot of that text as we get around to it- hasn't been on the prio list, is all.
Visual clarity is an interesting topic for this project in general, and it's something we've been steadily improving on over the last several demo days. Adding F1 to highlight the ship in this build is one of those steps, and we're likely going to be adding some dynamic enemy highlights too (suggested from DD55 feedback, if I recall correctly) - I need to rewrite the highlighter to support that, though.
A lot of our enemy designs in the current build rely on their small size and coloration to blend in with their surroundings, and we've received a lot of mixed feedback on that decision. Part of what we are trying to accomplish with enemy designs is creating believable adversaries that look like they actually belong in their environment, and part of what we're going for involves using bright colors + motion to make enemies visible when they are dangerous.
Other clarity steps we are considering include some changes to gems on screen (automatically fade/hide when enemies or bullets are nearby), some changes to bullet graphics, and adjusting background colors to make certain moving items easier to see.
As for the crash screen, when I saw you arrive at that on your recorded video I was kicking myself for keeping that placeholder mission on map 2. My intent was for players to try out the red-difficulty missions on map 1 after completing the Garbage Worm fight. Those red missions showcase the other biomes available for procedurally generated missions, along with their different music tracks and etc.
Thanks again for the detailed feedback and we'll probably see you guys next demo day \o/
i misunderstood your game last time.
i tried to play it like a normal 2d shooter, while it's more about "managing resources", completing levels fast, handling the fuel for your boost, your shield etc.
it's pretty good.
We appreciate that you gave our demo another run! Thanks for that.
Resource management is part of the later game, yes. This becomes a lot more prevalent on the game's third map, where enemies start to put more pressure on the player's shield with suppressing fire.
It's alright.
Hey there,
Thanks for trying the demo! I can clarify some details on these different points \o/
-> All of the ships have different firing positions for where their weapons are mounted. Each ship has a unique feel for that - as you unlock better ships and upgrade crew members, your arsenal quickly becomes stocked with autoturrets and support drones that take a lot of the pressure to fire at targets off of the player in favor of simply focusing on your task as a pilot.
-> It's definitely a collectathon, just in a less traditional way. We added collectable frogs this patch, the shops have various upgrades, there's over 50 characters in the roster to unlock alongside 20ish ships (and even more gunbuddies), and more stuff is probably going to sneak in before release. The task of figuring out how to even give the player the mountain of stuff there is to unlock has been a daunting one to work through- with ten story missions per chapter, if we give you a new character after every single mission we'll still have leftovers to hand out. It's a process lol
-> Hitboxes vary from ship to ship but in most cases the hitboxes approximate the shape of the ship at a scale of about 90%. Certain features like tailfins/spoilers or hanging antennae are not included in most hitboxes. The feedback we've received on this choice has been about 50/50 in favor of tiny hitboxes or large hitboxes, and the opinions across the devteam are split this way, too.
-> FPS and framecounter are in the Settings menu. In the release version of the game they won't be enabled by default, but performance feedback is important to us! I hope the game gave you no troubles with framerate ♥
-> The resolution defaults to 1280x960 @ 4x zoom. If you are using a big TV or 4K monitor then it is possible to adjust the video settings manually in your savedata folder. If you are asking why the window cannot be arbitrarily resized (while keeping the same zoom factor, similar to games like Starbound or Terraria) - that is my fault; a lot of the game's UI is positioned manually and it would be a lot of work to correct it this late in development. It's on the list of overhauls that will probably come after the initial release, though. Depending on how controller support implementation goes, it might get fixed during that process anyway. We'll see.
-> I made that font myself \o/
-> Instant Text in the Settings menu makes the process of moving through dialog a lot faster if you want to skip through it.
-> I think one more demoday after this one should be sufficient for a demo to feel like a complete, playable test of the first chapter of the game for players. After that we'll be grinding out the remainder of the mission content and fixing up bugs and QoL to launch the game. We know it won't be perfect, but we also know it's important to finish things instead of letting them sit in development hell forever.
Thanks again for playing and for your detailed feedback! We read all of the comments we get ♥
New features from user feedback include being able to highlight your ship with the F1 button, so you can see yourself against dark backgrounds.
Complete the first 3 missions (and boss) to check out the new Thicket and Summit content.
Newest patch notes are over here!
https://pastebin.com/Rjfr54xw
As always, any feedback is appreciated. JUST LIKE MAKE GAME