Others have already mentioned this but the game looks a lot like Post Void which is excellent.
Speaking about the presentation, some enemies turn purple after death. I imagine this is a graphical bug. Also, more sound effects are needed.
I think chests and the like should open up a little bit sooner because the text is too close to the player to read as it is. Pickups also need some kind of effect to make them stand out more, perhaps they could have a little animation, emit particles or something.
It would also be nice to have an indicator that points to the exit if all enemies have been defeated. In Nuclear Throne the exit simply appears next to the player so this isn't a concern on that game but that isn't the case here since the exit seems to be generated along with the rest of the level.
In terms of controls I would like a quick-swap key to change weapons rather than pressing the corresponding number. That seems like too much when you can only hold 2 weapons anyways. Also, it would be nice to have a hold L-mouse to auto-fire because Nuclear Throne's pistol almost gave me carpal tunnel.
The last issue is difficult to pinpoint but I believe the game needs a stronger incentive to kill enemies and go fast. In Nuclear Throne you need to kill them and they also reward you with experience, I'm not saying that's the right approach here but as it stands there's little reason to fight most enemies except maybe bosses since they are so dangerous and drop stuff.
The art style is good, reminds me of Post Void. There's a lot of enemy variety as well which is great.
Get rid of the reload. Go full DOOM and just let me keep shooting. Get more sound in, it would help with the atmosphere and make it a bit more frantic with all the enemies. The ammo pick up notifications should be on the HUD, I clip through them in world space and can't read them.
I think the name of the game here in terms of improvements is feedback:
Some sort of sound or reorganization of the ammo HUD is needed, it's hard to tell when I need to reload there. Some sort of dry fire or click when you're out of bullets would help.
In general with the HUD I'd assume it's placeholder but you've got a lot of unused space, you could at least move the ammo counter/what gun you have widget over to the right hand side.
Add some randomization of pitch to the gun sounds too.
The tilt is fine but it needs to occur when you're strafing, not when you're turning.
When running over pickups the popups happens way too fast, I can't see what the text said. Either make it last a few seconds longer or have it up on the screen itself.
Lastly there doesn't seem to be much of an incentive to kill enemies. It's one thing if they're easy enough to avoid, but they don't seem to impede my progress to the next area nor do they seem to drop anything I'll need.
The view tilt is too extreme and too jerky. The gun goes all over the place just from making small aim adjustments.
Highlight the ammo type for your current weapon.
The helmet HUD being fake and having a second HUD on top of it feels like wasted potential.
Picking up a weapon when you have an empty slot should automatically put it in that instead of replacing your current weapon.
Opened and unopened ammo boxes need to be better differentiated. Do they even need to stick around permanently?
Enemies blend in with the environments. Environment textures should have a narrower value range.
Why are dead enemy sprites not billboarded?
Having the ammo display next to the crosshair would be nice.
I don't like how the weapons switch places at the bottom. It means you have to memorize which weapon is on which key. Do you ever get more weapon slots? If no, why not just have one key to switch weapons?
I never know what I'm picking up since the text is attached to the thing I just ran past instead of being displayed on the HUD.
All the enemies are complete non-threats with how few there are and how wide the levels are.
I don't see any incentive to kill enemies instead of just running past them. It just wastes ammo.
Showing a healthbar on screen at the start of a level for a boss I have no clue where it is and that I confuse for a normal enemy half the time just looks silly.
Some bosses spawn right next to you and start attacking you as soon as you enter the level.
Explosive weapons seem really bad. They barely do any damage.
Why can the starting pistol spawn in crates?
The 2 weapon limit encourages you to pick whatever weapons are the most efficient overall while ignoring niche weapons. It also limits the depth of the combat since the player won't be making any decisions about what weapon to use for different situations.
Picking up weapons while there's enemies around can be finicky. Make the pickup collision bigger. The box also obscures the weapon a lot of the time.
What's the point of the bosses? All you get for killing them is ammo; weapons are found just found lying around wherever. You don't even need to kill them to exit the level.
Is it too late to persuade you to ditch the roguelike nonsense for actual levels? You have a good base for a shooter, but mindlessly wandering around copy-pasted featureless mazes looking for a tiny teleporter that you can barely see unless you're standing right next to it simply isn't fun. At all.
i found it very difficult to aim with the black crosshair, but i know you fixed it already. also, having to look for the portal breaks the high speed flow of the game a bit, so if you don`t want to add a 3d beacon marker thingy an idea is to maybe add a 3d sound to it, or some sort of visual cue on the level that helps you find it.
as other anon mentioned, the projectiles look similar to monsters themselves, and I often tried to shoot them but i got used to its, so i guess its not a big deal
It was fine for a boomer shooter the only feedback I can give you is that exit portal should be more visible and if the magazine/clip is empty and you press fire it should reload your gun automatically instead of forcing you to press reload. A lot of first person shooters with reloading do this because it feels more natural.
I was able to just run to the exits without actually fighting anything. A few of the weapons felt very weak. The gunplay did feel satisfying, but I did not realize I had 2 weapon slots for a while. Explosions should deal less self damage.
Pretty good prototype. Got murked by the Yellow King, right at the end of my first playthrough, who decided to teleport inside a wall and mind explode me. The animations and art were pretty good, I'm a big fan of Post Void and Gun Godz so this felt right at home. The weapons still need a bit of tweaking though, as another commenter put it it'd be nice to have an auto reload. Also a couple of the weapons (either of the energy/laser weapons and the triple shot rocket launcher) are horrendously underpowered. They also don't seem to have any sound effects either which is jarring when compared to the pistol which does, but I guess that's already on your to do list. But strangely never saw the 3D skeleton guy, the town nor the crystal cavern from the pics. Could chalk it up to bad luck but I played through it 3 times and never saw any. Anyways, really fun game, keep it up!
I only got past a couple bosses. The game seemed very easy but then I died by shooting Wrath at the floor. Caught me by surprise. I'm sure you're aware this game needs some music. It also needs to stop dropping my input suddenly.
A devroom button right there that you can't click? That's just mean...
You have a decent chunk of game here already, I feel like most of the things I'd have to say about it would amount to you replying that you're working on it. Basically it needs more stuff, juice and other roguelite goodies. And more visual variation to the levels.
Would be nice if you auto reload when trying to fire an empty gun. Also if there was some indicator to what ammo type your equipped gun is using.
I couldn't reload the particle accelerator even though I'm pretty sure I had the ammo for it:
I entered a level ontop of a boss once.
Exits are a bit awkward, I accidentally stepped on one while fighting a boss once. Guessing the exits won't be available all the time later. Would be great if there's some sort of indicator or arrow or something to guide you to an exit when you've killed all enemies.
Even though it's a very early build, the shooting is already fun, all the guns felt good to use despite none of the bosses or enemies really being challenging.
Map generation isn't perfect, more than once I couldn't find the exit for the life of me, and imo the bobbing is nauseating.
idk how well the two-weapons limit and the procedural generation will work for replayability in the long run, but for an early demo it was fun.
Comments
Others have already mentioned this but the game looks a lot like Post Void which is excellent.
Speaking about the presentation, some enemies turn purple after death. I imagine this is a graphical bug. Also, more sound effects are needed.
I think chests and the like should open up a little bit sooner because the text is too close to the player to read as it is. Pickups also need some kind of effect to make them stand out more, perhaps they could have a little animation, emit particles or something.
It would also be nice to have an indicator that points to the exit if all enemies have been defeated. In Nuclear Throne the exit simply appears next to the player so this isn't a concern on that game but that isn't the case here since the exit seems to be generated along with the rest of the level.
In terms of controls I would like a quick-swap key to change weapons rather than pressing the corresponding number. That seems like too much when you can only hold 2 weapons anyways. Also, it would be nice to have a hold L-mouse to auto-fire because Nuclear Throne's pistol almost gave me carpal tunnel.
The last issue is difficult to pinpoint but I believe the game needs a stronger incentive to kill enemies and go fast. In Nuclear Throne you need to kill them and they also reward you with experience, I'm not saying that's the right approach here but as it stands there's little reason to fight most enemies except maybe bosses since they are so dangerous and drop stuff.
I recorded your game with commentary, and I hope you are gonna get good feedback out of it
DD53 feedback videos:
Demo Day 53 videos of games starting with letters from A – J:
https://mega.nz/folder/DdVwTYAK#ZsxVSpsd5L2yvgaqtcvBsA
Demo Day 53 videos of games starting with letters from K – Z:
https://mega.nz/folder/zBIi2A5T#DE3_eooG3HE-K3XTmpnR0g
The art style is good, reminds me of Post Void. There's a lot of enemy variety as well which is great.
Get rid of the reload. Go full DOOM and just let me keep shooting. Get more sound in, it would help with the atmosphere and make it a bit more frantic with all the enemies. The ammo pick up notifications should be on the HUD, I clip through them in world space and can't read them.
I think the name of the game here in terms of improvements is feedback:
Some sort of sound or reorganization of the ammo HUD is needed, it's hard to tell when I need to reload there. Some sort of dry fire or click when you're out of bullets would help.
In general with the HUD I'd assume it's placeholder but you've got a lot of unused space, you could at least move the ammo counter/what gun you have widget over to the right hand side.
Add some randomization of pitch to the gun sounds too.
The tilt is fine but it needs to occur when you're strafing, not when you're turning.
When running over pickups the popups happens way too fast, I can't see what the text said. Either make it last a few seconds longer or have it up on the screen itself.
Lastly there doesn't seem to be much of an incentive to kill enemies. It's one thing if they're easy enough to avoid, but they don't seem to impede my progress to the next area nor do they seem to drop anything I'll need.
Is it too late to persuade you to ditch the roguelike nonsense for actual levels? You have a good base for a shooter, but mindlessly wandering around copy-pasted featureless mazes looking for a tiny teleporter that you can barely see unless you're standing right next to it simply isn't fun. At all.
i found it very difficult to aim with the black crosshair, but i know you fixed it already. also, having to look for the portal breaks the high speed flow of the game a bit, so if you don`t want to add a 3d beacon marker thingy an idea is to maybe add a 3d sound to it, or some sort of visual cue on the level that helps you find it.
as other anon mentioned, the projectiles look similar to monsters themselves, and I often tried to shoot them but i got used to its, so i guess its not a big deal
will try again on future builds
I enjoyed it.
It was fine for a boomer shooter the only feedback I can give you is that exit portal should be more visible and if the magazine/clip is empty and you press fire it should reload your gun automatically instead of forcing you to press reload. A lot of first person shooters with reloading do this because it feels more natural.
I was able to just run to the exits without actually fighting anything. A few of the weapons felt very weak. The gunplay did feel satisfying, but I did not realize I had 2 weapon slots for a while. Explosions should deal less self damage.
Pretty good prototype. Got murked by the Yellow King, right at the end of my first playthrough, who decided to teleport inside a wall and mind explode me. The animations and art were pretty good, I'm a big fan of Post Void and Gun Godz so this felt right at home. The weapons still need a bit of tweaking though, as another commenter put it it'd be nice to have an auto reload. Also a couple of the weapons (either of the energy/laser weapons and the triple shot rocket launcher) are horrendously underpowered. They also don't seem to have any sound effects either which is jarring when compared to the pistol which does, but I guess that's already on your to do list. But strangely never saw the 3D skeleton guy, the town nor the crystal cavern from the pics. Could chalk it up to bad luck but I played through it 3 times and never saw any. Anyways, really fun game, keep it up!
I only got past a couple bosses. The game seemed very easy but then I died by shooting Wrath at the floor. Caught me by surprise. I'm sure you're aware this game needs some music. It also needs to stop dropping my input suddenly.
A devroom button right there that you can't click? That's just mean...
You have a decent chunk of game here already, I feel like most of the things I'd have to say about it would amount to you replying that you're working on it. Basically it needs more stuff, juice and other roguelite goodies. And more visual variation to the levels.
Would be nice if you auto reload when trying to fire an empty gun. Also if there was some indicator to what ammo type your equipped gun is using.
I couldn't reload the particle accelerator even though I'm pretty sure I had the ammo for it:
I entered a level ontop of a boss once.
Exits are a bit awkward, I accidentally stepped on one while fighting a boss once. Guessing the exits won't be available all the time later. Would be great if there's some sort of indicator or arrow or something to guide you to an exit when you've killed all enemies.
Keep up the good work!
Gj overall. Didn't see a bug in my play. random thoughts:
- maybe +X ammo should be on your ui screen, not world ui
- some barrel/eggs spawn in walls
- exit is VERY VERY VERY badly tought out. You need to see it from afar, you instead seem to hide it.
- projectiles with eyes seem enemies themselves
- eye weapon is very cool
- low gravity is very cool (take advantage of it by using enemies that shoot more bullets, like yellow king)
- a shame I didnt drop any weapon after the first 2 levels. had to quit because I was out of ammo
- add a button to drop weapons to solve above issue; or make punch a fixed weapon
- more on that, 2 weapons limit seems very low from this kind of game
Fav enemies are the statue with crystals
Even though it's a very early build, the shooting is already fun, all the guns felt good to use despite none of the bosses or enemies really being challenging.
Map generation isn't perfect, more than once I couldn't find the exit for the life of me, and imo the bobbing is nauseating.
idk how well the two-weapons limit and the procedural generation will work for replayability in the long run, but for an early demo it was fun.
Cool sprites too.