Pretty fun for how early it is. The spread of cannon shot can feel annoying, sometimes I'll line up the broad side shot yet miss most of it. There could also be more feedback when you hit an enemy, or when they hit you.
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Dread Pirates: Booty Hunters's itch.io pageComments
Played roughly 20m.
That Intro to the Main Menu, and the Main Menu itself is Great. The Texture work isn't, it's too low Res mostly I think, and the Hat is looking weirdly washed out and spraypainted. You also have some Flat shading like on the Wooden Leg that doesn't look Good.
No Title Music, dissappointing.
Some Text on the What's new Sign would be nice. It's a Shame that I can't fire the Canons or poke the Sail or Stuff like that.
The Gameplay is simple. I wish there were more to it, I also wish the Ocean was more interesting, some Islands, Whales, Flocks of Birds, maybe a Kraken, whatever really, instead of just the Blue Waves. Which don't look particularly nice. The Cannonballs hitting the Water do tho.
Enemy Ships seem to only ever drop Repair Kits at the Moment, it'd be nice if they'd also drop upgrades sometimes, or if I could swap Cannonballs to destroy their Sails, Crew or Hull or whatever more efficiently. Also I'd like Harbors to exchange my Doubloons instead of just floating Crates.
Says it has Music, but I didn't hear any.
Is the Aim of this to just stay an Arcade Pirate ship Shooting Game? If so, I'd probably arcade-y-fy the Controls a bit more, they're fine and feel appropriatly ship-y I think, but it might benefit from better turning if its just this Shooting Mode. If its more about traveling as a Pirate, with all thats to it, the Controls are fine. I kept getting confused by left/right Cannons, maybe a small Q/E next to your Ships sides could improve that. Maybe it'd look stupid tho.
It'd be nice if there were a Way to see what Upgrades you currently have, and if there were Upgrades that aren't just stat increases.
Also I'd like to see the Sails lowering and raising reflect on the Ship itself.
Submitted
GreenCheetahYo ho ho! I like it as an alpha test.
- The controls are atrocious. Having to do navigation and firing and other things with one hand on the keyboard, yet there's a little camera control tied to the mouse (but not as much as I'd like) was painful.
- I could tell that there's actual waves going on but the water being monochromatic made it hard to judge this. I would recommend doing something to show swells or dips.
- Two of the AI ships rammed right into each other and they just nudged each other. This is usually a death sentence for sailing ships.
- I wasn't allowed to click the upgrade card while holding any keys down, like while trying to turn.
- Also, was I only supposed to get 1 choice of upgrade from the floating chest?
Submitted
Planets For SaleI had a pretty fun time with the game, one of my biggest complaints was that it was difficut to judge how far my cannon balls were going.
I think I encountered a bug early on where pressing spacebar would bring up the help menu .
it was pretty tough at first I had a hard time gauging whether my shots connected or not but after I learned the strat of essentially just ramming the enemy things got easy.
I got fucking one shot by the big ship.
Submitted
Safety ForceThe ambience sfx, improved camera, higher poly ships, flavor particles, the charming main menu sequence are all helping the game towards the developer's vision. Liked how the cannons shot farther and faster. Toggling the ship's speed instead of holding it down felt good. Still think the movement can be faster, whether it's through upgrades or by default. Awesome progress!
Main menu is pure soul. I like the idea of the random upgrades you can get, didn't figure out how to get them to spawn though. Sea mines seemed weird, many times the first mine I place end up staying even after exploding. Something odd goes on with the stats as well, I had 85 ships sunk with dread level 0 while I only sunk about 3-5 ships.
One thing I noticed is that each ship seems to have only one sound source, making the volley of shots cut off each other instead of each of them playing out properly.
chests spawn a certain distance from the player and the amount of chests are constant so just keep a look out for them.
as for the mines there is a known bug(s) where mines will explode and persist as well as trigger a death event on an enemy ship every frame for a certain time. thats whats making it say you sunk 70 ships
Didn't play this last dd, so my first impression is its really fun. could see myself spending a lot of time with this. I think more feedback would be good, I don't know what counts as a hit on an enemy, maybe some sound effects and splintering wood particles? Would also be good to have enemy ships fight eachother, I had a hard time starting out as without any upgrades it's very difficult to fight more than one ship without taking damage. Also, tiny nitpick, but assuming this is the golden age of piracy, then you want to use the pre-union with ireland british flag, the one without the red X, the one ingame wasn't used until 1801.
Gald you enjoyed the demo. In the original demo there was floating text telling you if a shot bounced or not but it broke and i haven't fixed it! also I wouldn't get to hung up on historical accuracy, as im planning on having ships well into the 19th century in the game.
also there is factional conflict in the game but it was disabled for this demo, but in the future french and british ships may be seen fighting eachother.
What makes the aiming too hard until you know about it is that steering causes the ship to lean, influencing the height of the shot a lot. Steer into the shot = low, steer away = high. I initially blamed it on the wave heights being hard to see, but I’d still like to see that improved.
I’d also try faint(er than the shots) smoke trails for projectile paths. Argee with the rest about hit effects/confirmation (both player and enemies’). Hit sounds at minimum, and on the deep end War Thunder hitcams would be fun(ny).
I’d try slightly lower sun angles and making the water receive shadows. Would be an extra thing to help keep your bearings if you spin around a lot.
Is there no positional audio or am I going insane or is my setup busted? Noticed the same thing on Shanghai Gold.
The upgrades, weapons etc. will be guaranteed fun but it needs the shooting mechanic dialed in before being able to enjoy those.
This game is reeking with soul! I had a lot of fun with this one. I had a couple of issues though.
- Firing cannons, while being fun feels luck based since it's impossible to know if you are going to overshoot or undershoot. With a third person view of the ship this would be easier to judge based on the waves, but from a top perspective this is impossible, even when zoomed in. My suggestion is to add maybe a third person camera or some kind of projectile indication, like you hold down the fire button and you get an rough indication where the cannon balls will land.
- Getting hit and hitting enemies should have more effects, like smoke and sounds of wood getting torn apart. I was often left wondering if I hit the enemy or not.
- The mines sometime stops homing in on enemies and seems to be disabled.
Keep working and add polish on this and you'll have great game in no time, the foundation is there.
The menu is really charming and I like the style in general.
I played until the first dread admiral sent me to a watery grave.
It's really hard to tell when your cannonballs are actually aimed at the enemy ship and when they're gonna hit the water or pass over it, most of my run was me and two other ships circling each other and the only thing that took enemies out consistently was friendly fire.
Mines seem a bit inconsistent, one ship took three of them and was fine, idk if it's because they're low damage or if it might have some hit detection problem.
At one point it took two minutes from me killing the last ship on the screen and a new one showing up.
It needs some polish for sure but I can see what you're going for
Submitted
TANKGAMEthanks for the feedback! yeah the consensus seems to be that aiming is quite inconsistent which I completely agree with. I am going to play around with different aiming devices and potentially some kind of soft mouse aiming. as for the pacing its a bit hard now with the lack of content but I definitely have a kind of "rest period" in mind between engagements for the player to look around for their next target/ area to go check out.
Oh this is tough but has potential, aiming is a bit hard, if the distance was a bit more consistent it'd rock hard
Submitted
Kid Grimes Demo
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