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kingbot65 days ago(+1)

Thanks for playing and leaving such a long, detailed feedback! We really appreciate it lol. 

I'll address the concerns one at a time. First, during the circle phase, you don't really have a lot of control over your positioning. This is something like the real musical chairs game where you can't just stand next to a chair and refuse to move. The idea of pickups is that you can see them in the circle phase and when it's time to rush for chairs or maybe even earlier you use a powerup that helps you pick up something from the field (1 powerup used, 2 picked up). This problem definitely gets worse as enemies get faster and faster so we have reduced their speeds during the circle phase in code. A rhythm based system would be neat, it's a good idea for sure, but I don't know how well it would fit the game. Maybe we'll give it a try.

Dialogue - that's actually a great idea, I'll see if we can implement that in time for the post jam release.

Art - It has always been hilarious to me how they just keep smiling through thick and thin lol, they need to teach me their patience. Jokes aside that is definitely something I agree with, just outside the scope of a 4 day jam to have multiple pictures for so many sushi. If we're going to continue development after the jam that is definitely something we will address.

Music - The web build should be tried for treason for what it did to music. No idea why but it resets every time. The music is actually supposed to pause every round, not restart (and it does that for us and for the download builds, web just hates it). Surprised we haven't had this mentioned more lol. When I played the web build myself it felt miserable to not hear the drop for the tracks. We'll try to find what's causing this problem in time for the post jam release.

Again, thank you for such detailed feedback! This has brought up a lot of stuff for us to consider, and I really appreciate it.

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WoodlandCatDev65 days ago

First all of thanks for the long reply too lol, hope I didn't come off as mean but seems I at least provided some good feedback, a real shame on the music, I always love music in games so that sucks, if you can get it working correctly in an update please do message me again (I've followed you just in case) as I'd really like to hear it as it sounds very good from the start of the tracks!

So for the circle phase I see what you mean with items but as I said the AI just dart off within a millisecond when the music stops so if you could add a little randomness to when they go to the center (just a random delay and the random number gets lower and lower as the difficulty gets higher) THEN I think I'd feel comfortable going for items a little more 

lmao I didn't think about refusing to move in musical chairs though XD, I do think there's an interesting idea there in being able to do that lol,

Again hope I don't come off as mean, I really like the entire concept and the game itself is already fun! 

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kingbot65 days ago(+1)

No worries! You definitely didn't come off as mean at all. It's all constructive, actionable feedback and to me that is far more valuable than simple "I liked this game" (I still like those though lol). Yeah implementing reaction time is a good idea that we've been thinking about for a while, we'll try getting it and see how it goes. I'll definitely message you when the update is out!

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WoodlandCatDev65 days ago

Awesome, good luck on the update :)

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kingbot64 days ago(+1)

Hey! The update is out, go take a look and tell us if there's anything we missed!

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WoodlandCatDev64 days ago

Good game.






Just kidding, but I ain't backing down yet lol, I do have some things to say (just want to say I made it to grand championship but couldn't beat it as I was too slow compared to the other sushi D:)

First of all music slaps as expected, I think it fits the game perfectly now, whatever score you got on audio should've been wayy higher. (one issue though, the music seems to cutoff near the final rounds of a map (did you forget to loop the track or is it a new bug))

Dialogue works like a charm!

Now the early/mid game is very good now, the delay on the sushi felt very nice, for the first time I could actually allow myself to strategize for items...BUT...I think the harder the sushi get and the quicker they go to the center the worse the game gets (at the moment), you just have no time to think, currently when going around the loop I'm holding the arrow keys to move towards the nearest plate the moment the music stops, and that still isn't enough most of the time, sure I could've got better upgrades but there's little I can do as I have no time to get items, I can't change upgrades, it just feels like a dead run, I even had a strategy of allowing myself to get pushed by the ai in the loop because that allowed me to cut them off really easily when we both headed to the center but even that didn't work that much as the ai got harder. Also the new addition of being able to see the offscreen opponents is very nice!

So I think there is a fundamental gameplay issue there HOWEVER I do believe it would not be hard to fix, to spitball some ideas: making items wayy more present (spawn far more, able to collect more at once), allowing Ai to use items, having the loop be bigger so getting to the center is longer might be a way to make items easier to handle if many are being used. (I think the dash ability is currently the best and most satisfying to use ability)

Really good job on such a quick update! I haven't even opened my project yet D:

Good job as always, I hope to see you three again in more jams!

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kingbot64 days ago(+1)

We haven't really gotten to testing the difficulty curve near the end so I was slightly expecting this lol. I'll see if I have one last push in me to make that better. Good to hear that early/mid game is alright though.

The audio thing turned out to be way more nightmarish than we thought lol, it's just impossible to get that thing working properly.  We'll try our best but no promises lol.

As for the other suggestions, they were all discussed at a point in the jam but not really sure how the gameplay will look with them. Imagine you're running to the chair and the ai drops a freeze on you lol. Ideas definitely get less black and white in terms of how well they fit the game from here. This is also a fresh release which would require more feedback to see if these things are actually necessary. They're all ideas that we should test if we want to continue development towards a release but that unfortunately seems pretty unlikely at this moment. 

Also, that was definitely quick, nice to see you playing the game again lol. Glad you still are going with the long reviews!

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WoodlandCatDev64 days ago

No problem, long reviews are just kinda natural to me so I'm not trying I just have a lot to say lol.

Well fair enough on the difficulty, I didn't quite get it right either as you know XD. Sadly I don't have many ideas on gameplay, it is indeed hard to make ai feel fair using abilities as you don't want to create mario kart, the only duct-tape solution is just having a few basic abilities like dash or just placing a small wall down but yeah I can't think of many great things, mind you while writing this I just thought of permanent stage drops, like being able to place down a speed boost pad that stays there the entire map and other such things like dart traps that fire every "n" seconds in a straight line so you want to avoid that path when heading to the center, basically I'm thinking of the game "ultimate chicken horse" a little with this. Of course I hear you may not go forward with this project which yeah I imagine very few people will (me somewhat included but I think my main mechanic has potential so perhaps after some more jams and I've improved my skills I might consider it), so completely understand!

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kingbot63 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

So after you posted this I played the game a little and you were NOT kidding when you said the final levels were hard. My god. 

Anyway, to make the difficulty more sensible the enemies now increase their speed after every round, so the first rounds are easier but you're almost certain to use a powerup in the last. I think this change fits the game well and the difficulty curve should be a lot more reasonable now (I actually beat the game for the first time ever lol)

Also the audio is actually fixed now!!!! If it decides to break again I will have problems (no I won't but I will feel sad)

There's a couple smaller changes as well, but I hope this is the last time we need to release small bugfixes to the game. 

It's 2 am right now and I'm only writing this because I am so used to the jam sleeping schedule by now that my body is not allowing me to return to normal and mid sleep I got up from bed and onto the computer to write the devlog and this comment.

In conclusion, the game is now verifiably "completable", go check it out and if there's anything else you're welcome to post another reply to this ever increasing chain lol

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WoodlandCatDev62 days ago

Perfect! I think the vision you had for this game has finally been made clear and it's pretty dang fun! The pacing of the upgrades is perfect now and I actually have to think a little when choosing now (I still think increasing your speed or lowering opponents speed is a bit too favorable compared to other upgrades or item picks so maybe make your speed increase a little more along with the  AI, just to a lesser degree maybe), collecting items is now a huge part of the game and using them is just fun! By the end of the game you've got batman's toolkit you just need to use them the right way but it's still a fun challenge that you can still mess up if you're not careful, the AI is perfect now, their speed is on point for all the rounds. I finally got to use every item and see the benefits of every one of them and I was able to use items to collect even more items, using the chopsticks  to block off the circle so I can guarantee that when the music stops I can get the item in front of me was very cool, having to teleport behind opponents within the circle to move further back towards an item was very cool too! Placing down oil in front of me to dash towards the plates in the center was awesome, getting others stuck in sauce was awesome, just everything feels awesome now! There's actually solid gameplay!

I did encounter one softlock however, on the final round of the grand championship two AI got stuck on each other and a barricade on the way to the plates and I had to reset the game, so might be worth having an invisible timer (10-15 seconds) to eliminate whatever sushi that's furthest away from the very center (including player) or perhaps you could just have a r to reset the round button, (glad this softlock happened though as my next run felt a lot different to my first due to the upgrades and items I was able to acquire being different from my first run (I had less player speed but had a higher item amount and had to use them more strategically))

The only thing I felt was missing was being able to see an item description when hovering over it in the inventory (or sidebar I guess) or having it selected, the text that appears when you pickup an item is perfect so I'd just like that to be visible when hovering over or selecting an item in your inventory.

Very glad you updated the gameplay, I thought there was an issue with it before these updates but this really cleared things up now that items are a core part of the game and difficulty is on point! Congrats for making your vision for the game become reality! Feels good to be a free sushi :D (wasn't expecting the ending music to have a unique track too! (that's also based on the main theme which is cool))

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