Most of my time and runs were spent on trying to figure out if there could be a better key bindings.
Taking fingers off movement keys to change chemicals is not ideal. I have a mouse with extra buttons, which made the game easier.
I gotta say the game doesn’t really force me to switch chemicals mid-combat. I don’t think my Magicka Wizard Wars exp really translates to Alchemical. There are many status effects and chemical combos that don’t feel that useful, but that might be because the game does not have that many enemies, and you just have them ready for later.
Pretty much all enemies are weak against corrosive damage (given they are robots), and given fire also mixes with that, I need to go with freezing. Two corrosive and two freezing killed fire watcher enemies in one shots, and fire mines in two shots. Electrical watchers and other mines needed 3 and 2 shots. I could switch to different chemicals with fire against them, but honestly given the tricky control scheme, I found it easier to just shoot multiple times instead.
I tried melee only runs, but timing on dodging exploding enemies was too tricky for me.
I think a good practice is clearing exploding fire barrels before entering combat rooms. Leaving them is way too risky just to get environmental kills. If that is not how you want players to play, then I guess you could spawn barrels together with enemies.
I think the game would be better if the camera was more farther away. I would like to be able to see more enemies on screen. Many rooms felt too small for all the action and barrels.
As for improving controls, I have already mentioned on the inner council stream how a modifier key for different chemical row could lower the number of necessary keys. I also think it would be a good idea to limit chemicals to 3 slots rather than 5 (not counting combos), that is one of the changes that Wizard Wars made to the original Magicka to make the game more fast-paced and I think it worked very well.
I experienced some fps drops the first few times when using chemicals/destroying barrels. I imagine it is caused by you instantiating things before you pool them. I think it would be beneficial to pre-instantiate some more used game objects into your pools at dungeon generation.
Bug Report:
I think I found a bug, or at least I think it is not how it should work:
>Make Steam with Water and Fire
>Add Plasma
>Cancel them out with Freeze
>Add Plasma for testing
you are back with 1 Plasma Chemical that still costs water and fire and freeze, because cancelling steam with freeze does not clear them properly.
There are many status effects and chemical combos that don’t feel that useful, but that might be because the game does not have that many enemies, and you just have them ready for later.
That is precisely the case, the only enemies in the game right now are trash mobs that are only meant to test the player's ability to figure out and exploit basic weaknesses. It doesn't help that they're all from the same faction and thus have basically the same weaknesses, meaning a lot of the available combos just have no purpose right now. Future enemies should be more varied and complex, hopefully warranting the use of more varied chemplay.
I could switch to different chemicals with fire against them, but honestly given the tricky control scheme, I found it easier to just shoot multiple times instead.
Indeed, you can easily roll with the same mixture to kill everything in the build you played. I've since rebalanced the enemies, making weaknesses and resistances more extreme to force players to switch mixtures. Most notably, I made the poison Mines resistant to corrosive and the big Watchers resistant to fire.
I also think it would be a good idea to limit chemicals to 3 slots rather than 5 (not counting combos), that is one of the changes that Wizard Wars made to the original Magicka to make the game more fast-paced and I think it worked very well.
I've received this suggestion from multiple playtesters, maybe it's about time I give it a whirl. I'm a bit against it due to it limiting the amount of combinations you can make, but now that I think about it, I could make it so you can expand your tank size with an item/upgrade during a run. I'll give it some more thought.
I experienced some fps drops the first few times when using chemicals/destroying barrels. I imagine it is caused by you instantiating things before you pool them. I think it would be beneficial to pre-instantiate some more used game objects into your pools at dungeon generation.
I'm not doing any pooling right now, I should probably get on that soon.
I think I found a bug, or at least I think it is not how it should work
That is a bug, thankfully I don't have to fix it. A playtester pointed out how destructive/circular reactions are pointless and only serve to mess you up when you fat-finger the wrong key, and I agreed. I've since made it so chemicals that cancel out cannot be mixed together at all, e.g., the hotbar will flash red and error if you try to add a plasma to a water, and removed all circular reactions. I may rework this again.
Thanks for playing and for the extensive feedback! Pleasantly surprised to see it given that it's been a while since the DD ended.
I've since made it so chemicals that cancel out cannot be mixed together at all, e.g., the hotbar will flash red and error if you try to add a plasma to a water, and removed all circular reactions. I may rework this again.
There might be situations when the player wants to just remove one chemical without removing all of them, so they would use the "opposite" chemical.
I'm a bit against it due to it limiting the amount of combinations you can make
Ideally all combos should be made with one or two taps with your fingers in correct positions like
(this is even more important in your game compared to magicka, because the same fingers are used for movement)
There might be situations when the player wants to just remove one chemical without removing all of them, so they would use the "opposite" chemical.
Sure, but those are very rare situations compared to the amount of times you accidentally add an opposing chemical and mess up your attack. Not only that, I want to discourage players from holding onto one mixture for too long (mixture turtling if you will) and forcing them to rebuild their mixture to get rid of a chemical should help with that. Still, I'll think about it.
Ideally all combos should be made with one or two taps with your fingers in correct positions
Just to be sure, when I say "combinations" I mean permutations of individual chemicals (mixtures), not products from reactions. It's simply infeasible to have all unique mixtures in reach of such few inputs, attempting to achieve that would require heavy neutering of the mechanic. You don't need to create complex combos all the time, most mixtures for dealing damage take very few inputs (especially in the next build since you're able to fill your tank with a chemical by holding down its key).
If that's what you want to achieve, then maybe you could have chemicals not be limited by tank size, but clear chemicals after every use. I think hitting combinations after every shot o essentially reload could get hectic... in a fun way. If that's too extreme, then you could have some sort of stat that would keep current chemicals for x amount of shots/hits, and that number could be increased or decreased with some upgrades.
I know it's been couple of weeks since DD, but I just got an idea.
imagine this set up:
wasd movement, shift for dash, LMB for attacking and RMB for Alchemy
like, I could move with wasd, but holding RMB would change QWEASD to chemical mixing.
Players would stop to mix, but they would always keep their fingers on same keys, and if they need to dodge then there is always dashing (maybe while holding RMB, players would always dash towards the cursor)
Interesting idea! Your suggested scheme would probably help with ergonomics and would be more familiar to players who come from Magicka. Being unable to move while mixing is a non-issue, you can't do it effectively with the current controls either. That being said, there is the drawback of relegating the secondary fire input to a less intuitive binding, which might make no difference in the DD57 build but could (and likely will) prove to be problematic in the future.
What if I moved dash to space then used shift as the alchemy key? You'd hold shift, use QWEASD to mix your stuff, then let go of shift to return to normal controls. The alchemy key could also be a toggle, similar to the old mixing menu, but I fear this would muddy up the user experience by adding more buttons in the way of combat. It could result in some frustrating experiences where you forget to turn off the alchemy mode and try to fight an enemy, only for you to not move and for your mixture to get all messed up (picrel).
Additionally, the alchemy key could clear your mixture for you, removing the need for the "clear mixture" binding. This would free up the tab key for other stuff.
What if I moved dash to space then used shift as the alchemy key? You'd hold shift, use QWEASD to mix your stuff, then let go of shift to return to normal controls.
I expect those keys to be rebindable, so anyone could swap them.
It could result in some frustrating experiences where you forget to turn off the alchemy mode and try to fight an enemy, only for you to not move
just make it a modifier key you need to hold to stay in alchemy instead of a toggle. I think having alchemy mixing work only when you hold the key would be easier not to accidentally leave it on. when alchemy is turned off, you could still use Q and E key for things like weapon switching and clearing chemicals.
Basically I propose you to implement your controls as two states that change depending on if you hold down the space/shift.
for example:
None Mixing state (without holding Shift)
Q - use chemicals on yourself E - clear chemicals WASD - movement
SPACE - Dash with movement direction
Mixing State (While holding Shift)
QWEASD - all chemicals SPACE - Dash towards the cursor
I don't have much to add, aside from what people already mentioned below. It's a very solid core. Needs a tiny bit of tuning in terms of visual readability (both for spawning circles and for barrels), but other than that - just needs more content, and it's a great game.
Gameplay feels deceptively fast, but the only thing that's fast is TTK. Needs a lot of on-your-feet planning. Very enjoyable.
I'm very particular with my keybindings, and I struggled a bit to find something comfortable. I didn't quite find it, but I was getting there. The most annoying thing were how far away 5 and 6 are from WASD. And I didn't know where to put the weapon switch key. Let me change weapons with the scroll wheel and I will use the scythe, ty.
Hitting numbers keys multiple times to charge up feels cool, but it's also a bit tiring when you're going back and forth between elements. And it's specially annoying to hit 5 and 6, you pretty much have to stop moving. Another thing is, I usually just went for full charges and just mashed the number keys. But often I wasn't sure of if I hit it 3 or 4 times. For these reasons, I personally would prefer if there were 3 charges, or even 2, that would make it feel less annoying input wise for me.
I didn't figure out any complex combinations. I eventually figured out that Fire and Ice were weak points of some of the enemies, so my strategy was just to full charge them individually to deal with them. After a few runs I figured out that I could heal myself. And that's about it. But I liked the exploratory part of figuring that out (helped by the manual).
I would have liked a sort of training room with dummies or something to test stuff out. I like to experiment with mechanics normally, but I don't feel like you have too much room to try out stuff while you're fighting against dudes in the wild.
But at any rate, it feels pretty nice when you manage to do what you want in this game, it's super tight. I also felt like I learned new stuff after every run. And obviously, I bet it gets pretty nutty when you factor in chemical combinations. So yeah, pretty cool, looking forward to more updates!
The most annoying thing were how far away 5 and 6 are from WASD.
A different playtester suggested using a modifier key, like CTRL, to access the bottom row of chemicals. For instance, you'd press 2 to add one fire and CTRL+2 to add one ice. What do you think of that idea?
And I didn't know where to put the weapon switch key. Let me change weapons with the scroll wheel and I will use the scythe, ty.
Heard this from other people as well so I'll add it. I've always hated accidentally bumping mouse scroll and switching weapon in other games so I never added the binding haha. You mentioned that there's no incentive to use the scythe in the stream but there actually is one: damage. If memory serves me right, the scythe deals ~80 damage to an electric Watcher with a 4x fire swing. You're basically trading the safety of range for high burst damage.
Another thing is, I usually just went for full charges and just mashed the number keys. But often I wasn't sure of if I hit it 3 or 4 times. For these reasons, I personally would prefer if there were 3 charges, or even 2, that would make it feel less annoying input wise for me.
What about instantly filling up with a chemical if you hold its key down for a bit? I don't want to reduce the maximum number of charges since that would reduce the amount of combinations you can make by a large factor.
I would have liked a sort of training room with dummies or something to test stuff out. I like to experiment with mechanics normally, but I don't feel like you have too much room to try out stuff while you're fighting against dudes in the wild.
A tutorial that includes this is a high priority and should be in the next update.
Thanks for playing and for the stream! I'm surprised you almost beat a run without knowing you can heal yourself with your utility.
> A different playtester suggested using a modifier key, like CTRL, to access the bottom row of chemicals. For instance, you'd press 2 to add one fire and CTRL+2 to add one ice. What do you think of that idea?
I'd have to try it, but attempting that right now strains my hand, I'm not a fan. I didn't want to overload my senses so I didn't try it on stream, but I was thinking of doing R and F, so it wraps around nicely around WASD. But at any rate, just in case, I don't think 5 and 6 are super bad, they're okay bindings. And they're intuitive for someone who just picks up the game.
>What about instantly filling up with a chemical if you hold its key down for a bit?
Eh, I don't like it, it feels like it'd slow me down. Maybe a modifier to do a full charge? Like Shift+2 and so forth (no idea if overloading the dash would be annoying, but it's just an idea). Although that only would make sense if it's a prevalent strategy, I'm naturally biased because full charges are all I did.
>I don't want to reduce the maximum number of charges since that would reduce the amount of combinations you can make by a large factor.
I see. Well, do what you think it's best.
>A tutorial that includes this is a high priority and should be in the next update.
Alright, but just in case, I was talking about an option in the menu that takes me to a "playground". My method of playing was to try incorporate new things in-between runs. It'd be nice if I could hop in that mode after any run to test stuff out, regardless of tutorials. I feel like for this game in particular, having a 'lab' would be thematic.
Oh, and, personally, I'd rather have a 'lab' where I can discover things for myself, rather than a tutorial. But that's just me, I don't really recomment it for other players, lol,
"Enter the Gungeon" but you start with all weapons unlocked except there are really complicated hotkeys to activate them. For example, to get my recommended weapon, you need to press TAB-1-5-5. When you are hit by a status effect, you need to press TAB-1-3-3-E, wait a bit, press E again. Also there are exploding barrels EVERYWHERE. Enemies are all orbs, many of them bullshit orbs that seek you out and explode, or otherwise explode on death.
So your game, in the first level, is already thrice as complicated as EtG:
- Gunplay/movement alone is more complex with all the barrels
- Status effects you have to clear from yourself
- Switching weapons is a minigame
Getting to the second level rewards you with: More of the same. I think the individual aspects are honestly fine (maybe fun), but it would really help if you focused on one gimmick alone. At least at the start. For all I care, have the final levels be super complex (like the first one is now). But for the first ones, honestly, my wish and expectation would be that there are e.g. some rats, and I should use fire/poison to kill them, and then some robots, and I should use electro to kill them. And these enemies alone be simpler than the first enemies you encounter in EtG.
It also feels very unrewarding right now to combo elements. The mental effort of e.g. first drenching and then electrocuting enemies... and then it does a puny 8 damage… I suppose it does more damage if I stack the elements higher; but the game really makes you hate stacking 3x-4x because then it takes like 4 seconds until you can shoot again. I suspect the stacking better be removed completely (or limited to 2x). And going drench->electro should INSTAGIB on the first level, else it’s ridiculously not worth the effort.
Misc:
- Zip comes with "DoNotShip" folder (Linux)
- Game crashed my GPU at first because framerate uncapped by default
- Killed orbs often look a lot like alive orbs because of the ''ragdoll'' effect
- The game is called Alchemickal but apparently we do not care about all the random colourful flasks lying around
- At first I thought you were supposed to clear current chemicals by activating the counter-chem. (Would only fit the overall complexity of this game.) Then I got stuck with two tier-3 chems, no clue how to clear them, can take one (very weak) shot every 5 seconds. You can see I figured it out after like a minute.
- Why do I want to kill the boss? Apparently it is not guarding the portal.
- Enemies on spawn become vulnerable too late
- The chests are a joke. I get a couple healing orbs (not even full health) when I can infinitely heal myself? No clue what scrap is for. At least make the chests always heal you to full; or put something actually exciting in them and let me do the healing myself.
- Can’t dash through enemies, but can oddly push them away by running against them (pristine unity slop)
Keep up the grind. Honestly the base idea with mixing the Chems is nice - it needs a lot more breathing room.
Hey, thanks a lot for playing and for the extensive feedback. I'll watch the VODs as soon as I can.
"Enter the Gungeon" but you start with all weapons unlocked except there are really complicated hotkeys to activate them.
I've never played Enter the Gungeon so a lot of your comparisons fall on deaf ears, sorry. There will be more weapons the player can unlock in the future.
Also there are exploding barrels EVERYWHERE Gunplay/movement alone is more complex with all the barrels
I've received this complaint from a few separate people, I'll reduce the spawn rate of the explosive barrels and make them more visually distinct. The thought process behind the barrels was to allow the player to use the environment to their advantage, but most people just end blowing themselves up.
So your game, in the first level, is already thrice as complicated as EtG
The game is very difficult by design, yes.
Getting to the second level rewards you with: More of the same. I think the individual aspects are honestly fine (maybe fun), but it would really help if you focused on one gimmick alone. At least at the start.
The repeating level is a temporary measure to pad for time since I only have one dungeon biome made at the moment, the real game would feature different environments and enemies. On that note, I might reduce the total number of levels in a run from 9 to 6 (2 levels per biome) to avoid redundancy.
For all I care, have the final levels be super complex (like the first one is now). But for the first ones, honestly, my wish and expectation would be that there are e.g. some rats, and I should use fire/poison to kill them, and then some robots, and I should use electro to kill them. And these enemies alone be simpler than the first enemies you encounter in EtG.
I plan to add a tutorial which does just this as level 0. This is arguably the biggest problem with the game in its current state (in my opinion), people are just dropped into the game without any instruction on how the game works.
It also feels very unrewarding right now to combo elements. The mental effort of e.g. first drenching and then electrocuting enemies... and then it does a puny 8 damage… I suppose it does more damage if I stack the elements higher; but the game really makes you hate stacking 3x-4x because then it takes like 4 seconds until you can shoot again. I suspect the stacking better be removed completely (or limited to 2x). And going drench->electro should INSTAGIB on the first level, else it’s ridiculously not worth the effort.
Here's the thing: elemental weaknesses are dictated by an enemy's faction and their elemental composition. For example, the little guy that shoots a fire beam is weak to acid (because it's a robot) and ice (because it's a fire enemy). Robots are nigh immune to electric attacks, so that combo is ineffective against them. At its core, the game is about being adaptable and exploiting enemy weaknesses rather than creating cool general-purpose combos. That being said, I think you're right that there's very little incentive to trying out complex combos just now. Once there are more varied and complex enemies, those combinations should hopefully shine
- Zip comes with "DoNotShip" folder (Linux) - Game crashed my GPU at first because framerate uncapped by defaul
Whoops, I'll look into that.
- Why do I want to kill the boss? Apparently it is not guarding the portal.
The miniboss room gives you a bigger chest with a lot more purple drops, which will be important when the game is more complete. There's no purpose right now.
The chests are a joke. I get a couple healing orbs (not even full health) when I can infinitely heal myself? No clue what scrap is for. At least make the chests always heal you to full; or put something actually exciting in them and let me do the healing myself.
The healing orbs are a convenience to speed up gameplay. It can take a while to fully heal yourself from low health, even more so in hard mode since it reduces the amount of healing you receive, so the healing orbs help to reduce the monotony. The scrap will be used to upgrade weapons in the future, it isn't implemented right now.
Again, thanks for playing. I will try your demo out as soon as I am able.
First time playing this game, I didn't read the games page so it was a truly blind experience.
I played in regular difficulty, at first I was lost, because I used my weapons and didn't deal too much damage, but then I realise the game was like magicka and start defeating the enemies. The melee weapon felt weaker compared to the gun, with the gun I just go for example: full ice and one shoot the fire drones plus it freeze enemies. A basic tutorial will be helpful, it doesn't matter if it's only text, it will help new player a lot.
This project looks promising so far and the visual effects are nice, no complains in that department, keep the good work.
Last time I played this you had to select elements with the radial menu, getting rid of it and allowing for a magicka-like real-time elements mixing feels a lot better to me.
Never quite clicked the same way as magicka, I think those robot enemies in cramped rooms don't allow the same degree of freedom. Besides, having your attack dictated by your element reserves is much clunkier, you're constantly keeping an eye on the UI and it's distracting and limiting.
That being said once I developed a strategy, got in the rhythm and committed some combos to muscle memory it became easier and more fun. Basically what I did for every room was start with steam ready, rust every enemy with the pistol giving priority to the suicide bombers, then alternating ice and fire, with some electricity mixed in if there were a lot of targets. I also killed the watcher boss with the same strategy. The silencing mix didn't seem to stop the watchers from attacking, the tar didn't feel worth the hassle just for some crowd control since the electrical thing does pretty much the same, I used acid on the watcher boss but it didn't seem like it did much of a difference. If you were to take one element from magicka I would suggest the shield spell/element: being able to make your own cover would make the fights less dependent on random enemy and clutter spawn.
Also if there was a way to spend currency I didn't find it.
Basically the core is fun but the elemental stuff needs refining imo. For example you could let the players do a normal attack when reserves are empty instead of forcing them to unload the mixture first. I would also like something around your cursor indicating what elements you've selected so you don't have to look down at the UI every time.
Looking forward to play more of this, it's progressing nicely.
having your attack dictated by your element reserves is much clunkier, you're constantly keeping an eye on the UI and it's distracting and limiting.
I'm considering getting rid of the chemical stock/ammo mechanic and just letting the player use them infinitely (like Magicka), do you think that would be better? I would naturally have to make the enemy weaknesses/resistances more extreme so you're forced to switch mixtures instead of being able to roll with a combo that nukes everything.
The silencing mix didn't seem to stop the watchers from attacking
That's because the Watchers don't use magical attacks, none of the enemies in the game do yet. Magical attacks from future enemies will be very obvious.
the tar didn't feel worth the hassle just for some crowd control since the electrical thing does pretty much the same
You can combine the two :) If you do tar + electric + fire, it will chain explode everything.
shield spell/element: being able to make your own cover would make the fights less dependent on random enemy and clutter spawn.
Unfortunately that goes against a core philosophy of the game, that being "chemicals don't affect the behavior of your weapon". That said, a chemical that gives you a barrier status effect might be cool.
I would also like something around your cursor indicating what elements you've selected so you don't have to look down at the UI every time.
Aye aye.
Thanks for playing, I will play your demo as soon as I can.
Well that's hard to say, magicka had a "problem" with the spammable elements where players defaulted to a handful of combos after a while. It depends, maybe you could do a build where you set the elements cooldown to .5 and see how that plays.
Or maybe you could lower the cooldown but get rid of the charges so that mono-elements are limited to 1 and there's no reason to not mix them up. Hard to say, but I hope you figure it out.
I really struggled to succeed at this game. I found I did better when ignoring the elemental bonuses since it let me attack all the time. I felt like I was playing the game wrong the entire time.
Comments
I finished the demo on hard.
Most of my time and runs were spent on trying to figure out if there could be a better key bindings.
Taking fingers off movement keys to change chemicals is not ideal. I have a mouse with extra buttons, which made the game easier.
I gotta say the game doesn’t really force me to switch chemicals mid-combat. I don’t think my Magicka Wizard Wars exp really translates to Alchemical. There are many status effects and chemical combos that don’t feel that useful, but that might be because the game does not have that many enemies, and you just have them ready for later.
Pretty much all enemies are weak against corrosive damage (given they are robots), and given fire also mixes with that, I need to go with freezing. Two corrosive and two freezing killed fire watcher enemies in one shots, and fire mines in two shots. Electrical watchers and other mines needed 3 and 2 shots. I could switch to different chemicals with fire against them, but honestly given the tricky control scheme, I found it easier to just shoot multiple times instead.
I tried melee only runs, but timing on dodging exploding enemies was too tricky for me.
I think a good practice is clearing exploding fire barrels before entering combat rooms. Leaving them is way too risky just to get environmental kills. If that is not how you want players to play, then I guess you could spawn barrels together with enemies.
I think the game would be better if the camera was more farther away. I would like to be able to see more enemies on screen. Many rooms felt too small for all the action and barrels.
As for improving controls, I have already mentioned on the inner council stream how a modifier key for different chemical row could lower the number of necessary keys. I also think it would be a good idea to limit chemicals to 3 slots rather than 5 (not counting combos), that is one of the changes that Wizard Wars made to the original Magicka to make the game more fast-paced and I think it worked very well.
I experienced some fps drops the first few times when using chemicals/destroying barrels. I imagine it is caused by you instantiating things before you pool them. I think it would be beneficial to pre-instantiate some more used game objects into your pools at dungeon generation.
Bug Report:
I think I found a bug, or at least I think it is not how it should work:
>Make Steam with Water and Fire
>Add Plasma
>Cancel them out with Freeze
>Add Plasma for testing
you are back with 1 Plasma Chemical that still costs water and fire and freeze, because cancelling steam with freeze does not clear them properly.
I'm damn proud, good job.
That is precisely the case, the only enemies in the game right now are trash mobs that are only meant to test the player's ability to figure out and exploit basic weaknesses. It doesn't help that they're all from the same faction and thus have basically the same weaknesses, meaning a lot of the available combos just have no purpose right now. Future enemies should be more varied and complex, hopefully warranting the use of more varied chemplay.
Indeed, you can easily roll with the same mixture to kill everything in the build you played. I've since rebalanced the enemies, making weaknesses and resistances more extreme to force players to switch mixtures. Most notably, I made the poison Mines resistant to corrosive and the big Watchers resistant to fire.
I've received this suggestion from multiple playtesters, maybe it's about time I give it a whirl. I'm a bit against it due to it limiting the amount of combinations you can make, but now that I think about it, I could make it so you can expand your tank size with an item/upgrade during a run. I'll give it some more thought.
I'm not doing any pooling right now, I should probably get on that soon.That is a bug, thankfully I don't have to fix it. A playtester pointed out how destructive/circular reactions are pointless and only serve to mess you up when you fat-finger the wrong key, and I agreed. I've since made it so chemicals that cancel out cannot be mixed together at all, e.g., the hotbar will flash red and error if you try to add a plasma to a water, and removed all circular reactions. I may rework this again.
Thanks for playing and for the extensive feedback! Pleasantly surprised to see it given that it's been a while since the DD ended.
Ideally all combos should be made with one or two taps with your fingers in correct positions like
(this is even more important in your game compared to magicka, because the same fingers are used for movement)Sure, but those are very rare situations compared to the amount of times you accidentally add an opposing chemical and mess up your attack. Not only that, I want to discourage players from holding onto one mixture for too long (mixture turtling if you will) and forcing them to rebuild their mixture to get rid of a chemical should help with that. Still, I'll think about it.
Just to be sure, when I say "combinations" I mean permutations of individual chemicals (mixtures), not products from reactions. It's simply infeasible to have all unique mixtures in reach of such few inputs, attempting to achieve that would require heavy neutering of the mechanic. You don't need to create complex combos all the time, most mixtures for dealing damage take very few inputs (especially in the next build since you're able to fill your tank with a chemical by holding down its key).
If that's what you want to achieve, then maybe you could have chemicals not be limited by tank size, but clear chemicals after every use. I think hitting combinations after every shot o essentially reload could get hectic... in a fun way. If that's too extreme, then you could have some sort of stat that would keep current chemicals for x amount of shots/hits, and that number could be increased or decreased with some upgrades.
I know it's been couple of weeks since DD, but I just got an idea.
imagine this set up:
wasd movement, shift for dash, LMB for attacking and RMB for Alchemy
like, I could move with wasd, but holding RMB would change QWEASD to chemical mixing.
Players would stop to mix, but they would always keep their fingers on same keys, and if they need to dodge then there is always dashing (maybe while holding RMB, players would always dash towards the cursor)
Let me know what you think
Interesting idea! Your suggested scheme would probably help with ergonomics and would be more familiar to players who come from Magicka. Being unable to move while mixing is a non-issue, you can't do it effectively with the current controls either. That being said, there is the drawback of relegating the secondary fire input to a less intuitive binding, which might make no difference in the DD57 build but could (and likely will) prove to be problematic in the future.
What if I moved dash to space then used shift as the alchemy key? You'd hold shift, use QWEASD to mix your stuff, then let go of shift to return to normal controls. The alchemy key could also be a toggle, similar to the old mixing menu, but I fear this would muddy up the user experience by adding more buttons in the way of combat. It could result in some frustrating experiences where you forget to turn off the alchemy mode and try to fight an enemy, only for you to not move and for your mixture to get all messed up (picrel).
Additionally, the alchemy key could clear your mixture for you, removing the need for the "clear mixture" binding. This would free up the tab key for other stuff.
when alchemy is turned off, you could still use Q and E key for things like weapon switching and clearing chemicals.
Basically I propose you to implement your controls as two states that change depending on if you hold down the space/shift.
for example:
None Mixing state (without holding Shift)
Q - use chemicals on yourself
E - clear chemicals
WASD - movement
SPACE - Dash with movement direction
Mixing State (While holding Shift)
QWEASD - all chemicals
SPACE - Dash towards the cursor
Both states
LMB - Primary Attack
RMB - Secondary Attack
Scroll Wheel - weapon switch
I don't have much to add, aside from what people already mentioned below. It's a very solid core. Needs a tiny bit of tuning in terms of visual readability (both for spawning circles and for barrels), but other than that - just needs more content, and it's a great game.
Gameplay feels deceptively fast, but the only thing that's fast is TTK. Needs a lot of on-your-feet planning. Very enjoyable.
Cool game bro, here's a stream:
I'm very particular with my keybindings, and I struggled a bit to find something comfortable. I didn't quite find it, but I was getting there. The most annoying thing were how far away 5 and 6 are from WASD. And I didn't know where to put the weapon switch key. Let me change weapons with the scroll wheel and I will use the scythe, ty.Hitting numbers keys multiple times to charge up feels cool, but it's also a bit tiring when you're going back and forth between elements. And it's specially annoying to hit 5 and 6, you pretty much have to stop moving. Another thing is, I usually just went for full charges and just mashed the number keys. But often I wasn't sure of if I hit it 3 or 4 times. For these reasons, I personally would prefer if there were 3 charges, or even 2, that would make it feel less annoying input wise for me.
I didn't figure out any complex combinations. I eventually figured out that Fire and Ice were weak points of some of the enemies, so my strategy was just to full charge them individually to deal with them. After a few runs I figured out that I could heal myself. And that's about it. But I liked the exploratory part of figuring that out (helped by the manual).
I would have liked a sort of training room with dummies or something to test stuff out. I like to experiment with mechanics normally, but I don't feel like you have too much room to try out stuff while you're fighting against dudes in the wild.
But at any rate, it feels pretty nice when you manage to do what you want in this game, it's super tight. I also felt like I learned new stuff after every run. And obviously, I bet it gets pretty nutty when you factor in chemical combinations. So yeah, pretty cool, looking forward to more updates!
A different playtester suggested using a modifier key, like CTRL, to access the bottom row of chemicals. For instance, you'd press 2 to add one fire and CTRL+2 to add one ice. What do you think of that idea?
Heard this from other people as well so I'll add it. I've always hated accidentally bumping mouse scroll and switching weapon in other games so I never added the binding haha. You mentioned that there's no incentive to use the scythe in the stream but there actually is one: damage. If memory serves me right, the scythe deals ~80 damage to an electric Watcher with a 4x fire swing. You're basically trading the safety of range for high burst damage.
What about instantly filling up with a chemical if you hold its key down for a bit? I don't want to reduce the maximum number of charges since that would reduce the amount of combinations you can make by a large factor.
A tutorial that includes this is a high priority and should be in the next update.
Thanks for playing and for the stream! I'm surprised you almost beat a run without knowing you can heal yourself with your utility.
> A different playtester suggested using a modifier key, like CTRL, to access the bottom row of chemicals. For instance, you'd press 2 to add one fire and CTRL+2 to add one ice. What do you think of that idea?
I'd have to try it, but attempting that right now strains my hand, I'm not a fan. I didn't want to overload my senses so I didn't try it on stream, but I was thinking of doing R and F, so it wraps around nicely around WASD. But at any rate, just in case, I don't think 5 and 6 are super bad, they're okay bindings. And they're intuitive for someone who just picks up the game.
>What about instantly filling up with a chemical if you hold its key down for a bit?
Eh, I don't like it, it feels like it'd slow me down. Maybe a modifier to do a full charge? Like Shift+2 and so forth (no idea if overloading the dash would be annoying, but it's just an idea). Although that only would make sense if it's a prevalent strategy, I'm naturally biased because full charges are all I did.
>I don't want to reduce the maximum number of charges since that would reduce the amount of combinations you can make by a large factor.
I see. Well, do what you think it's best.
>A tutorial that includes this is a high priority and should be in the next update.
Alright, but just in case, I was talking about an option in the menu that takes me to a "playground". My method of playing was to try incorporate new things in-between runs. It'd be nice if I could hop in that mode after any run to test stuff out, regardless of tutorials. I feel like for this game in particular, having a 'lab' would be thematic.
Oh, and, personally, I'd rather have a 'lab' where I can discover things for myself, rather than a tutorial. But that's just me, I don't really recomment it for other players, lol,
First shot (tired) https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2189925511
Second shot (caffeinated) https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2192176647
I would describe this game as:
So your game, in the first level, is already thrice as complicated as EtG:
- Gunplay/movement alone is more complex with all the barrels
- Status effects you have to clear from yourself
- Switching weapons is a minigame
Getting to the second level rewards you with: More of the same. I think the individual aspects are honestly fine (maybe fun), but it would really help if you focused on one gimmick alone. At least at the start. For all I care, have the final levels be super complex (like the first one is now). But for the first ones, honestly, my wish and expectation would be that there are e.g. some rats, and I should use fire/poison to kill them, and then some robots, and I should use electro to kill them. And these enemies alone be simpler than the first enemies you encounter in EtG.
It also feels very unrewarding right now to combo elements. The mental effort of e.g. first drenching and then electrocuting enemies... and then it does a puny 8 damage… I suppose it does more damage if I stack the elements higher; but the game really makes you hate stacking 3x-4x because then it takes like 4 seconds until you can shoot again. I suspect the stacking better be removed completely (or limited to 2x). And going drench->electro should INSTAGIB on the first level, else it’s ridiculously not worth the effort.
Misc:
- Zip comes with "DoNotShip" folder (Linux)
- Game crashed my GPU at first because framerate uncapped by default
- Killed orbs often look a lot like alive orbs because of the ''ragdoll'' effect
- The game is called Alchemickal but apparently we do not care about all the random colourful flasks lying around
- At first I thought you were supposed to clear current chemicals by activating the counter-chem. (Would only fit the overall complexity of this game.) Then I got stuck with two tier-3 chems, no clue how to clear them, can take one (very weak) shot every 5 seconds. You can see I figured it out after like a minute.
- Why do I want to kill the boss? Apparently it is not guarding the portal.
- Enemies on spawn become vulnerable too late
- The chests are a joke. I get a couple healing orbs (not even full health) when I can infinitely heal myself? No clue what scrap is for. At least make the chests always heal you to full; or put something actually exciting in them and let me do the healing myself.
- Can’t dash through enemies, but can oddly push them away by running against them (pristine unity slop)
Keep up the grind. Honestly the base idea with mixing the Chems is nice - it needs a lot more breathing room.
Hey, thanks a lot for playing and for the extensive feedback. I'll watch the VODs as soon as I can.
I've never played Enter the Gungeon so a lot of your comparisons fall on deaf ears, sorry. There will be more weapons the player can unlock in the future.
I've received this complaint from a few separate people, I'll reduce the spawn rate of the explosive barrels and make them more visually distinct. The thought process behind the barrels was to allow the player to use the environment to their advantage, but most people just end blowing themselves up.
The game is very difficult by design, yes.
The repeating level is a temporary measure to pad for time since I only have one dungeon biome made at the moment, the real game would feature different environments and enemies. On that note, I might reduce the total number of levels in a run from 9 to 6 (2 levels per biome) to avoid redundancy.
I plan to add a tutorial which does just this as level 0. This is arguably the biggest problem with the game in its current state (in my opinion), people are just dropped into the game without any instruction on how the game works.
Here's the thing: elemental weaknesses are dictated by an enemy's faction and their elemental composition. For example, the little guy that shoots a fire beam is weak to acid (because it's a robot) and ice (because it's a fire enemy). Robots are nigh immune to electric attacks, so that combo is ineffective against them. At its core, the game is about being adaptable and exploiting enemy weaknesses rather than creating cool general-purpose combos. That being said, I think you're right that there's very little incentive to trying out complex combos just now. Once there are more varied and complex enemies, those combinations should hopefully shine
Whoops, I'll look into that.
The miniboss room gives you a bigger chest with a lot more purple drops, which will be important when the game is more complete. There's no purpose right now.
The healing orbs are a convenience to speed up gameplay. It can take a while to fully heal yourself from low health, even more so in hard mode since it reduces the amount of healing you receive, so the healing orbs help to reduce the monotony. The scrap will be used to upgrade weapons in the future, it isn't implemented right now.
Again, thanks for playing. I will try your demo out as soon as I am able.
First time playing this game, I didn't read the games page so it was a truly blind experience.
I played in regular difficulty, at first I was lost, because I used my weapons and didn't deal too much damage, but then I realise the game was like magicka and start defeating the enemies. The melee weapon felt weaker compared to the gun, with the gun I just go for example: full ice and one shoot the fire drones plus it freeze enemies. A basic tutorial will be helpful, it doesn't matter if it's only text, it will help new player a lot.
This project looks promising so far and the visual effects are nice, no complains in that department, keep the good work.
The melee weapon does a lot more damage but puts you at greater risk so most people roll with the gun.
Indeed, I plan to make one ASAP.
Thanks for playing! I will try your demo again as soon as I am able.
your game's fucking sick.
it didn't click with me last time, but i watched it streamed and i saw a glimpse of the intricate systems behind it.
juice overload, too
VERY hard, but it's a good thing for this genre imho
thx bestie xoxo
Last time I played this you had to select elements with the radial menu, getting rid of it and allowing for a magicka-like real-time elements mixing feels a lot better to me.
Never quite clicked the same way as magicka, I think those robot enemies in cramped rooms don't allow the same degree of freedom.
Besides, having your attack dictated by your element reserves is much clunkier, you're constantly keeping an eye on the UI and it's distracting and limiting.
That being said once I developed a strategy, got in the rhythm and committed some combos to muscle memory it became easier and more fun.
Basically what I did for every room was start with steam ready, rust every enemy with the pistol giving priority to the suicide bombers, then alternating ice and fire, with some electricity mixed in if there were a lot of targets.
I also killed the watcher boss with the same strategy.
The silencing mix didn't seem to stop the watchers from attacking, the tar didn't feel worth the hassle just for some crowd control since the electrical thing does pretty much the same, I used acid on the watcher boss but it didn't seem like it did much of a difference.
If you were to take one element from magicka I would suggest the shield spell/element: being able to make your own cover would make the fights less dependent on random enemy and clutter spawn.
Also if there was a way to spend currency I didn't find it.
Basically the core is fun but the elemental stuff needs refining imo.
For example you could let the players do a normal attack when reserves are empty instead of forcing them to unload the mixture first.
I would also like something around your cursor indicating what elements you've selected so you don't have to look down at the UI every time.
Looking forward to play more of this, it's progressing nicely.
I'm considering getting rid of the chemical stock/ammo mechanic and just letting the player use them infinitely (like Magicka), do you think that would be better? I would naturally have to make the enemy weaknesses/resistances more extreme so you're forced to switch mixtures instead of being able to roll with a combo that nukes everything.
That's because the Watchers don't use magical attacks, none of the enemies in the game do yet. Magical attacks from future enemies will be very obvious.
You can combine the two :) If you do tar + electric + fire, it will chain explode everything.
Unfortunately that goes against a core philosophy of the game, that being "chemicals don't affect the behavior of your weapon". That said, a chemical that gives you a barrier status effect might be cool.
Aye aye.
Thanks for playing, I will play your demo as soon as I can.
Well that's hard to say, magicka had a "problem" with the spammable elements where players defaulted to a handful of combos after a while.
It depends, maybe you could do a build where you set the elements cooldown to .5 and see how that plays.
Or maybe you could lower the cooldown but get rid of the charges so that mono-elements are limited to 1 and there's no reason to not mix them up.
Hard to say, but I hope you figure it out.
I really struggled to succeed at this game. I found I did better when ignoring the elemental bonuses since it let me attack all the time. I felt like I was playing the game wrong the entire time.
Video:
Quick summary of additions and changes:
Read the full devlog here.