Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

Came over to check this out because of the pretty well thought out feedback you left on my entry. And I have to preface with that because I must admit this really is not my kind of game at all: I find thirst traps really cringe, I generally dislike roguelites, and I've never owned a beyblade! Take some of this with a grain of salt, I didn't play a whole lot, this is my best attempt to explain why I bounced off the game on first impression.

I'll start with some stuff I liked. I am genuinely very impressed with your presentation. The game is very well put together, and your itch page is fantastic. Game feel is also pretty nice, lots of good effects and the impacts feel satisfying and strong.

I think I'm most struggling with the tutorial. For how incredibly remarkably simple the game actually is at it's core, you have soooo much text explaining every little detail. I don't need to read an essay about the different types of collisions, especially since there's some physical intuition behind it. I can figure that out as I go, you're depriving me of any possible "ah-ha" moments in gameplay where things click. And I don't understand why there were 10 panels of tutorial text for the Breakneck run when it seemed like the only thing I could do was click "enter fight". 

And at the same time I felt some things were incredibly under-explained. I didn't understand any of the "Remix" choices I was presented with. What does "grind that you started stores force, and throws you both apart when it ends" even mean? It's phrased so unnaturally. Most roguelike choices I've seen in other games are way more digestible, broken down by passive or active benefit, and usually quite simple but impactful, the complexity comes from the cumulation of choices, not all at once.  And the house rule I was shown reads "Placed control geometry is drawn for everyone and holds a little longer, so the encounter reads as a command structure rather than a surprise" those sure are some words. I don't know what any of that means. "placed control geometry"? "command structure"? I saw little rings appear on the field, but nothing seemed to indicate what they did.

I'm of two minds about the actual gameplay. On one hand I do think it's kinda fun to control and play around with the abilities and the influence, watching the tops spin about, thinking about positioning and momentum. But on the other hand it feels like I'm barely doing anything at all, like things are just kinda flying around and happening and I'm not really in control, I'm just kinda mildly influencing things. I mean it's not like a traditional fighter where you have attacks, every time you are clinking with your opponent they are clinking with you too. It just felt like a game where I clicked some buttons for visual dopamine. And the abilities were difficult to wrap my head around, like yeah of course I'll press the do more damage button. Do we need 3? Is the random clinking of spinning tops strategically demanding enough to warrant having 3 different special moves that all just make you hit harder? I know it's more nuanced than that in reality, I'm trying to learn on the fly here and when I click the button and there's no immediately obvious effect, it just kinda feels flacid.

One more minor nitpick. There's a lot of information on the top bar during combat, stuff like HP and ult charge is probably up there somewhere... but I can't take my eyes off the battle arena to even look at it, there's not enough down time for that. Showing really critical stuff on the arena, maybe on the baes themselves would be a pretty big improvement to game state readability.

Anyways that's all I got, good luck!

(1 edit)

Thanks a lot for taking the time to write all this out, especially when you already knew this probably wasn’t your kind of game. This is super useful.

Two things I’d really like to understand better:

  1. If I cut the tutorial way down, what are the 1 or 2 things you actually did need explained before the first fight?
  2. On the agency side, was the bigger problem that you didn’t understand what your abilities were doing, or that even when you did, it still felt like you weren’t really controlling the outcome?

If you’ve got another 2 mins, I’d really appreciate you dropping this into the feedback form too so I can keep it with the rest of the playtest data. If you already did, thank you!

https://forms.gle/TgpNJp2bVzUuq8ea6

EDIT:

If anything, it’d be most helpful to know what characters you played. Right now, there are two characters in particular that are being almost completely overhauled. This is a very hard game to balance already 😅

(4 edits) (+1)

Sure, no problem!

1. The Controls page on "How To Play", plus the explanation of heartbreak and ring-out is probably sufficient to get started. Maybe emphasize whichever win condition is what you should be trying to achieve, just to give some direction to gameplay. Keep it simple. "Here is what you are trying to achieve, and these are the buttons you can press to get it done"

2. I played Ash, got a couple matches into a Breakneck run, but didn't finish it. I understood the LMB button, that one was straightforward and satisfying. I saw there was some strategic value for using it to force opponents off the ring (I think I did this once), but in neutral it felt underwhelming, like I bump into them real hard but it felt like little was accomplished.. Had no idea what RMB or MMB were doing, and didn't see a place to double check mid run. MMB felt like it was just "hit harder while active" which wasn't terribly inspiring. RMB... yeah... reading the description now I would have never figured that out, and honestly I have no idea when that would even be useful.

Oh dw, I filled out the form. (speaking of, I'd appreciate it if you could return the favor for our game if you didn't already, it's normally linked at the end of the game so it's kinda missable)

Regarding characters, if you have one that's intended to be easy to pick up and play, you should really emphasize that. I just picked the first character in the lineup without reading, I didn't see how I could make an informed decision before seeing gameplay so I just picked arbitrarily. I can't comprehend what an ability does in context before I've seen the combat. Honestly maybe lock all the characters except one until they've been beaten them in Breakneck, or some other condition. Risk of Rain 2 for example only starts you with the 2 most straightforward characters out of the possible 20ish to not overwhelm with complexity. If I were redesigning the gameplay loop, I'd consider removing all or almost all the abilities from the characters entirely, and just have those distributed as roguelike perks. Put all that together and you can truly make it "learn as you go."

Hey! I’m working on a major BEAT BAES update and would love your feedback again.

You’ll probably notice this message is a copy-paste because I like to work efficiently, but I specifically picked you based on your previous feedback and want to see what you think of the changes.

The next build should be ready this weekend or early next week. Play as long as you want, then just fill out a feedback form. No recording required.

If you’re interested, message me on Discord with your itch name if it’s different: beatbaes