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Boomerang Jack - Demo's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall Fun | #5 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Art / Graphics | #25 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Sound/Music | #25 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Controls / UI | #50 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Genre #1
Action
Shooter | Platformer | Slasher | Beat em Up | Base Defense | Survival | Racing
RPG
JRPG | CRPG | MMO| RPG
Rating #2
Family Friendly
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Comments
I played this game on my stream (VOD).
Overall, the game was fun but difficult! I played on the normal difficulty but didn't get too far. The art was nice, but felt a little bit sluggish. For example, it was hard to really aim/time my kicks right. I did like the lb+rb zoom in to bash the enemy finisher move thing, it reminded me of Mortal Kombat.
The swinging mechanic took me a bit of time to understand, it might be good to have the next swing-able target to shown, and the current one be un-swingable. For example, if I'm attached to pillar A, and I want to swing to pillar B, sometimes I would end up detaching from A then re-attaching to A. The circular motion was also a bit fast, so it was hard to get quite right sometimes.
I defeated a miniboss (I think), and reached a part where I was supposed to hook enemies and bring them in? I couldn't figure out how to do that, and didn't really know where to go.
Thanks for playing! I watched your VOD on Twitch and appreciate the feedback. I've never tried 100% brightness and it was SO BRIGHT OMG!
The game is designed to be intuitive to pickup and play for anyone, and it was nice to see you starting out a bit more defensive (throwing the boomerang once and hiding) and then getting more active and combo heavy by the end in the lava section. It looks like you were figuring out the 'pull and launch' tornado power at the very end. I think you are totally right that for controller gameplay, we need a better aim-assist for the swinging mechanic.
The takedowns are definitely inspired by more violent games like Mortal Kombat, DOOM and God of War :)
Of course we'd appreciate a Wishlist, and we'd be happy to send a Steam key closer to release in early October if you're interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2010010/Boomerang_Jack/
Are you in the Indie Questing discord? That way we can keep in contact a little more easily :)
Reached out to you on discord!
Hi there, this is a review from feedback quest 7!
I've uploaded my stream to youtube and you can find it here; game starts around 8 mins in:
I played on controller--an xbox compatible one. The controls are fine overall. I didn't quite get the combo-ing, nor so the pull-and-launch, but did the best I could. The game is definitely challenging, even on normal difficulty. Insane difficulty--the hardest--certainly lives up to the name!
One thing I would suggest is to slow down the text disappearance rate. I was trying to voice act the lines and sometimes they went away too quickly!
Thanks for playing! I watched your entire playthrough on Youtube earlier today, it was great!
You had some good feedback. Namely, we're looking into why your boomerang disappeared.
I know you were mostly spamming, but you pulled off a lot of combos naturally. Same with the telekinetic 'pull and launch' tornadoes - those aren't explained in-depth in the demo but you pulled it off a few times. In general, concepts are gradually explained through 'invisible tutorials' in the full game, whereas in this demo we kept tutorials very minimal.
Of course we'd appreciate a wishlist, and we'd be happy to send a Steam key closer to release in early October if you're interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2010010/Boomerang_Jack/
Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 7! My name's Hythrain and I'm one of the hosts and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!
So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.
So before I get into any particular review, I just wanna say... this isn't an RPG. At least not given what's shown here. I would call this a bullet hell action-adventure.
Anyway, when I dropped into this game and quickly realized it was not going to be the sort of game I expected, it didn't matter because I was instantly thrown into wild fun. The action never got to be too much, and I was trying to figure out why in the world I was fighting gangsters and fat chefs and exploding birds and then undead and tentacles and what the hell is going on?! It's such a wild range of enemies for which there's NO context given for (at this time). And then you're a dude throwing boomerangs everywhere?! Daaaaaang...
That said, there were two areas where I felt there were issues. The presentation of the story, for example. For some reason, the way the story begins feels very disjointed. Like, we start at a future point. We then flashback to a previous point but not the STARTING point? The starting point would've shown the player when the sorcerer and the pirate king talk and that Jack sees this, but this wasn't presented. When the pirate king was brought up, my immediate thought was "What?! THERE'S A PIRATE KING?!" Kind of a problem if the seeming main antagonist is told to the player rather than shown first.
Another issue I felt had to do with attacking. I wasn't sure if I should be spam clicking or holding because attacks were never consistent when I tried either. I tried to do light and heavy attacks and could never get them to behave right. In order to reduce confusion AND wear on someone's mouse, why not make it that you just press and hold left or right click and Jack generates a repeating pattern of attacks in a proper timing. You could make it that left click is based on hitting enemies from all sides of Jack in a circle, while right click engages in attacks that primarily go forward. You could even turn these into just toggles and put a lot more of the game's focus on the bullet hell aspect. It'd be better than a combo system that doesn't seem to engage right.
Hello! Thank you so much for playtesting our demo. We'd love to see your reaction, please send me the VOD link!
I'd be happy to provide a Steam review key if you're interesting in checking out the full game closer to release. Here's our Steam page for now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2010010/Boomerang_Jack/
You're right, the demo presents more like a pure action game. However, the full game is more of an action-adventure with RPG elements like a skill tree, branching dialogue, some non-linear sections, and a cryptic story with plenty of characters across highly varied fantasy landscapes. If that doesn't make sense, we are open to suggestions on the genre tagging / description, appreciate any help!
One last thing on genre - a few of our enemies have bull-hellish attacks, but we don't fully commit to it like true bullet-hells do, so we are hesitant to call it a bullet-hell game.
Our approach with this demo (version 2) is to throw you into as much exciting action as possible, this is why you play things out of order, with many different enemies coming together. In the full game, we introduce locations, enemies and mechanics gradually over time. The skill tree will also help with that.
The section on attacking is interesting to me, and I'd love to learn more to better understand the issues you faced. I think the VOD will definitely help with this. Speaking generally, the boomerang system is based around combos. A single light attack won't do much damage or reach very far, and a single heavy attack will be too slow to take out many enemies. Since it's hard to learn combos in a short amount of time, it's totally fine to spam. But you can press attack right as the previous boomerang launches to avoid spamming constantly, or you can wait a little longer between clicks to do a 'pause' combo. There is a moves list in the pause menu.
I look forward to the VOD and if you have any more thoughts!
Here is a link to the VOD.
Hey Hythrain! I watched the youtube playthrough you uploaded today on your channel - it was a blast to watch! The "WTF" and "What is this game" put a smile on my face as a dev.
I apologize for your boomerang disappearing, we are looking into that urgently and putting out a big patch on the demo soon.
I was really happy to see you picking up combos naturally. Even if you mostly relied on the basic LLLLLLL combo, you ended up using half our combos throughout your playthrough! I don't see us fundamentally changing the combo system in this game, but we could make it even more intuitive in a sequel. We know most people will rely on some of the easier combos, and there's nothing wrong with that!
It is more of an action RPG than a bullet hell, which you will see in the full game. I do think the Sorcerer boss fight makes it seem a lot like a full-on bullet hell which is understandable. If you like it, please give us a Wishlist!