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AstroBrawl's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall Fun | #20 | 4.200 | 4.200 |
| Sound/Music | #20 | 4.067 | 4.067 |
| Art / Graphics | #41 | 3.933 | 3.933 |
| Controls / UI | #49 | 3.267 | 3.267 |
Ranked from 15 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
Multiplayer
PvP | Party Games
Rating #2
Family Friendly
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Comments
AstroBrawl - first off, LOVED the opening splash page and had to restart so everyone else could see it too. Just sharp. *chef's kiss*
I found the game to be intriguing! Not really my cup of tea, but cute! I can see playing it to relax and unwind.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks for playing! A friend of us drew the splash page and we thought it was cute :)
Hi there! (｡･∀･)ﾉﾞ I played a little bit of AstroBrawl on stream and I wanted to send some good vibes and feedback your way. I had a lot of fun with AB, especially in my time messing around with it off stream, and I find it's a really fleshed out game! It reminded me a lot of those games you'd find to play while in your computer lab at school or something, just a classic web game that you can also play with friends.
Despite my lack of skill with it, I found it really fun to play! All the mechanics and little touches to the gameplay help keep things fresh and engaging.
My VOD:
Thanks for playing! I’m glad you had fun :)
You’re the second person that notes stomping is easier than shooting. I think we might need to fix that because if you rely on stomping and never learn how to shoot properly you won’t get very far.
Also, I don’t know how you did it but the planet with the trippy effect it’s clearly a bug. And I can’t reproduce it!
This is a novel concept and well executed. I'm not too good at action games, so didn't get very far. The pendulum for aiming is a neat control scheme. Good fun when you and a bot run around in circles on the same planet. Gravity affecting the trajectory is a neat mechanic, but I guess it would take a lot of skill to be able to shoot an arrow like the one in the "Key Features -> Gravity" gif :) Well done overall, and all the best!
Thanks for playing! Yes, the gravity mechanic is hard to master and there is a fair bit of luck involved. To tell you the truth, that shot in the “key features” gif was 100% luck and we were happy that just by chance we were recording the game :)
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.
This was one wild ride of a game. The use of physics for your shots was super interesting and led to a lot of funny moments while playing it. However, I ultimately found myself relying on stomping them far more than I did shoot due to the way shooting works. I would offer a suggestion change, but I don't think the idea would work for multiplayer.
My only other issue was when I went into survival mode, by wave 6 the enemies felt so incredibly accurate with their shots that I can't imagine how much harder they'd be at level 100. Do they know how to shoot immediately to make the bullet hit you if you don't start moving? I would be worried if that were the case.
Other than this, I do like the idea. I just don't like the aiming method.
Hi, thanks for playing! I know the first waves are too slow so it’s easier to just stomp on them, but for later waves that strategy gets too risky. It’s not easy to balance the difficulty curve, though. We’re thinking about it.
You’re not the only one to dislike the aiming method. I guess the standard way would be to aim with the mouse, but I’m not sure how to implement that with joysticks in a way that feels fair. I’m interested to know your suggestion, even if it might not work for multiplayer (maybe we can find a way to make it work).
See, to aim like a mouse was my first thought. However, I also then thought about controller and realized this wouldn't really work. Truth be told, I don't think there could be a "good" aiming system for controller because, simply put, nothing is better at aiming than a mouse. The only time I find controller can match is when it has motion controls.
That said, I think the game might be better served by taking a step and asking if aimed weapons is even the way to go. What about if every attack was just in a fix position relative to the character. So for a bow and arrow, maybe on a 45 degree angle relative to the character? That way, it behave predictably and players can more easily know what to expect from it.
Ooohhh, physics game! Calculating multi-body gravity pulls for orbital trajectories! Awesome!
Kudos for original concept, gameplay loop is nice and could offer all kind of interesting challenges, good background music too.
Only real complain is that the planets all kinda looked somewhat samey.
Also, why do the futuristic alien warriors bother adding feathers to their arrows when there's no air to care about aerodynamics?
Thanks for playing! We have some ideas about adding different types of galaxies with special planets but we didn’t have enough time to implement them yet. Thanks for the feedback.
Good point about the feathers in the arrows. I guess the aliens just buy stock arrows and it’s hard for them to find unfeathered arrows on intergalactic.amazon.com ;)
The game is fun and dynamic. Sometimes, it feels a bit unfair when an arrow shot by one of the bots or yourself reenters the visible area after several seconds of being outside and kills you. It is almost impossible to predict those offscreen missiles.
On the other hand, bots could also be good at friendly fire, which helps :)
I experience frequent lags in music and responsiveness when switching between screens.
Thanks for playing! I know what you mean about the arrows but I played so much that I learned to predict the trajectories of arrows going offscreen. Maybe I should add a small warning sign when an offscreen arrow is approaching.
Regarding the audio lag, did you by any chance play the web version? I think godot has some trouble in that area but I don’t know how to fix it.
It's a good game, the movement and gameplay are easy to understand. I only recommend that all sprites and graphics have the same style because the coins and the player are less detailed than the planets and the background.
Yes, we plan to improve the graphics eventually but we don’t have an artist working on this game yet so for now we focus on other stuff. I’m still not convinced pixel art is the way to go for this game, though. Thanks for the feedback!
I had some issues getting the controls right as walking around the planet would kinda switch the movement direction and figuring out how gravity would affect my projectile's path was kinda frustrating until I somehow got it. Maybe consider adding another layer of tutorial to it.
Anyway, I really liked the art, the sfx and music was great. The overall concept, given some friends to play with, will likely be an awesome and fun experience.
Keep up the great work :)
We definitely need to add a short tutorial, you’re not the first to struggle with the controls. I played a similar game once that had a tutorial stage right at the beginning of the game, even before the title screen. I think I’ll add something like that. Thanks for playing!
Loved this game! Was super fun and I really enjoyed the random planet types, especially when we got the slippery planets. Take this one or leave it, I did find fun with the control scheme being slightly counter intuitive with the facing of your character but the aiming being on the "pendulum timer" style definitely made it a little harder than my taste. Overall really great adaptation to this style game and had a blast playing online multiplayer with my brother!
Thanks! It’s funny that you liked the slippery planets because I don’t and I was very tempted to remove them. I’m glad someone likes them :)
Thanks for your feedback about the controls. I guess I’m used to the “pendulum timer” shooting style because I don’t see it as a problem at all. I will change it to aiming with the mouse and see how it feels. I’m worried it will affect the fast pace, encouraging players to spend more time aiming for the perfect shot instead of just shooting. But I will try it and see.
It’s great that you played online, we put a lot of effort in making online multiplayer work reasonably well but since we don’t have enough players it’s usually hard to find someone to play with.
Got a chance to play this with the two of us and it was actually quite a blast. The combination of platforming and gravity made for quite a fresh take on this style of game. The biggest feedback I would give is that the controls are a little bit wonky, I would have preferred to be able to control the aim rather than have it wildly bounce between extremes. Also some of the map layouts felt kind of rough while others felt incredible so I'm not sure if it's fully random or not but if it is, maybe the procedural generation could be tweaked a bit. To be fair too, we were only playing with two players not four. But it seemed to put us next to each other a lot so maybe it can change the spawns up a bit more with below 4 players. All of this is a bit nit picking though because truly we had a ton of fun playing it. So awesome job!
Thanks for playing! And thanks for your feedback. As I told your brother, I’ll try changing the controls to allow aiming but I fear it would change the pace of the game. I also don’t know if it will control well using a joystick…
As for the map layouts the planets are mostly random. We haven’t put too much though into them but maybe we should tweak them a little to avoid unfair situations, especially when there are just 2 players. Good catch, thanks!
I really enjoyed this. It took me a bit to wrap my head around the controls, but once I did, I had a great time! The single player mode was fun, but I could see this being a blast with some friends!
My ONLY suggestion would be controls. I so desperately wanted to use my mouse button to aim and fire arrows. I was using WASD to move and jump, so having the mouse (along with space bar for preference) would be a nice addition.
Thanks! I’m glad you liked it. We put a lot of effort into the single player mode but still the best way to play it is with a couple of friends.
I like your idea about using the mouse, but I think aiming with the mouse could give you an unfair advantage against players with a joystick. I would try and see how it feels, though. Am I allow to change the game while the jam is ongoing?
That's a great question. I'm not 100% sure. Are you on their Discord? Maybe ask in there. If you do, ping me on here, and I'll try the new controls. And I don't think that'll give an unfair advantage. Players will choose keyboard or controller, so that's on them for what they prefer using :-)
This was super fun, what a great way to start the jam!
The gameplay concept is extremely cool! It's fast paced without being overwhelming, the movement feels very cool and intuitive, and learning to utilize the gravity physics was very engaging. It's got some neat powerups as well, although I think the POW block might be a little too strong, I got some cheap shots off of it a few times.
The UI is very slick for the most part, but I find the fonts and button shapes to be a bit uninspired for how good the rest of it looks. I also originally clicked the Online Multiplayer button only for it to softlock the browser build; a back button would be very nice to mitigate that.
The graphics are pretty good! The art seems pretty consistent, and while the zooming effects do lead to some jaggies, it's nothing that I feel looks terrible.
The music was also pretty strong, it has a lot of energy and it's nice that it's randomized on each round. This is definitely a neat little game, and I think the additional gameplay modes will add a lot of appreciated content for something that would otherwise be a pretty short and sweet deal. Maybe if I can get some friends in on this I'll provide some feedback on the online as well.
Thanks for playing! I’m glad you enjoyed it. I fixed the online multiplayer panel by adding a close button, thanks for pointing it out.
I’m not sure about the art, though. It’s hard to add zoom effects to pixel art without it looking a little weird. I’m no artist so I don’t know how to fix it but I think maybe a different art style would suit the game better…