Hey, I think this game really has potential! I think the title screen is hilarious (whether you meant it that way or not lol) and the gameplay feels smooth. However, my main issue is that I feel like I am fighting with the controls. When it is working correctly, it feels great, but a lot of the time I am trying to get the character to not fall off when wallrunning. I think starting off with some easier parkouring would be good, because I got stuck on one of the first parts for like 15 minutes. Overall however, I think it is really good and I would love to see it continue development, good job!
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RENEGADE's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #599 | 2.376 | 4.000 |
| Audio | #664 | 1.683 | 2.833 |
| Game Design | #743 | 1.584 | 2.667 |
| Overall | #762 | 1.568 | 2.639 |
| Fun | #810 | 1.287 | 2.167 |
| Innovation | #815 | 1.287 | 2.167 |
| Theme | #858 | 1.188 | 2.000 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
The main game mode is diving deeper through each layer, you jump into the hole, pick an upgrade, come out the other side, progress through the layer or survive waves, dive into the hole, repeat
Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
I wrote all the code besides some particle triggers and things within 4 of the 7 days, models/animations/vfx/most sounds are from assets.
Comments
Hey you asked for in depth feedback on discord, here it goes.
1. The title menu is insane. I don't know how many assets you used for it and I don't care, I love everything about it and the camera animation, sounds and graphics all work together incredibly well. If you make the buttons slightly higher quality I wouldn't be surprised seeing it in a triple a game.
For the gameplay, I think you suffered heavily with either over scoping or more likely an identity crisis. It feels like you wanted to make a parkour game, and a super power shooter, and in trying to achieve both instead of picking a route you didn't achieve either.
I feel like if you spent the time you spent on shooter mechanics making the parkour better, or spent the parkour time making the shooting better, you could have had a great game in both cases. As it is it was visually marvelous but it was very finnicky and not even close to as fun to play as it could have been.
Main issue that both of the game modes shared was the awkward controls.
Shooter
For the shooter, holding ctrl to be able to shoot? Holding X to be able to cast abilities? No other game I know of does this, and for good reason. I'd probably ditch the melee, nerf the shooting slightly to make up for it but make it the standard, and then switch between abilities with tab or number keys and right click to throw the abilities. Something similar to that would make players who play shooters not have to read your game page to be able to even shoot a gun, let alone have to look it up repeatedly because it's so unintuitive.
Parkour
For the parkour, the keybinds were fine, but it suffered in the flow of the movement. I feel like if you enabled wall run by default and / or made grapple hooks land you on the platform instead of the wall in front of it, made the grapple function easier to control, slowed down the movement / falling in general, and slowed down time right after hitting a wall, the parkour mode would have been a lot more fun.
In general just making the parkour easier and more forgiving would have significantly helped the gameplay experience.
Anyway obviously the graphics are top top tier, 6/5, but the attempt at creating too many game mechanics really hurt the gameplay.
Submitted
Nuclear Shark DefenseWhat I was going for was a third-person shooter/beat em up with some mild parkour elements in there to make movement more engaging (then about half way through making levels realized some extra movement track sections would break up the action). Definitely don't want to go down the road of making a parkour game - but they do need to be fleshed out more. X was a stupid key bind for abilities and using Tab to cycle through them is a needed change. Ctrl should be rebound to dodge, and E should be rebound to switch modes between melee and ranged I think rather than removing melee entirely as it's a lot more fun than the shooting IMO.
Thanks for the feedback, it's being taken into account!
Reflecting on this feedback a little, I also think something that hurt this game's controls is that I initially envisioned it on a gamepad, but realized later on that most players would experience it on a keyboard. So controls that might make sense on a gamepad (hold a button like RB and then press a face button correlating to the attack), didn't make any sense on the keyboard (square to fireball, triangle to fire blast, circle to fire armor, cross to meteor slam turned into left click to fireball, right click to fire blast, E to fire armor, space to meteor slam which was super janky and disjointed, and on top, the layout means adding an extra button to hold would always be awkward). The gun button was Left Trigger, which became Left Control, another really bad mapping - but again, on controllers, this made some sense - left trigger for the gun, tilt finger up to LB too to aim.
I think at that stage is when I should've re-evaluated the control scheme closer and switched to a system of selecting an ability and casting them all with one button, and switched to gun-by-default.
Interesting project overall, though adding graphics and volume settings would be a good idea
Submitted
Byte BoundYeah, the lack of those really hurt the project. There's certain things like the tutorial and the settings menu I should've done first, as unfortunately by leaving them for last they got bumped out by other IRL obligations.
I've added them in for the post-rating-period patch (which also includes rewrites of the enemy AI into C++ so later waves aren't so laggy and a tutorial), hoping to turn this demo into something substantial over time :)
I tried to play the game for about 30 minutes, but couldn't get very far in the first level no matter how hard I tried, even though I had read the controls very carefully. I really was disappointed because I was looking forward to destroying some enemies. As I didn't get very far at all, i won't rate it but I'll try again later in the week.
Submitted
A Bizarre Fish AdventureNOTES
1. Please read the full controls before playing! I ran out of time (preoccupied on the last night here unfortunately) to include a tutorial in-game and it's quite a complex game so I recommend doing that to familiarize yourself. The game starts with fireball and fire blast unlocked (X + LMB, X+ RMB respectively), the other abilities are unlocked as it goes on (or from the start in Time Trials only).
2. I fully intend to keep fixing this on my own time until the rating period is over and then replace it will a lean, polished, optimized version and continue building from there into a real full multiplayer game, I will post a Devlog tomorrow with the full plans as the vision is laid out quite comprehensively. Please follow the game page to stay up to date!
3. Have fun!
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