Hey man, just played your game and I have 2 main things to say:
1.ADDICTIVE
2.FRUSTRATING
The game is nice, it has some awesome mechanics but the levels are too harsh from the start. I mean I could not pass the 4th level, the one with the up slope and lasers. When you have to jump trough the laser and dodge the projectiles that shoot waaay to fast it's next to impossible, it took my 30 to 40 tried to gave up just frustrated. And another thing when you just want to keep going you will keep the w key pressed and you will not move directly. I know it's not a bug, but it is annoying to have to let down of w and press it again. I don't know it just feels of, because you lose and you just want to jump right back in. Overall the game feels nice, but the learning curve should be a lot smoother. My honest opinion, hope it helps you.
And another thing I forgot to mention I kind of never really used the dash, I think it's nice but it does not have a place in the tiny environment you created, where you fall off if you don't pay enough attention. I jumped on a platform and backed off a little to dodge the projectiles and bam, I'm falling off the map.
Hey, I just got around to playing the game a month! I've seen a lot of people say the environmental particles look too similar to the enemy's projectiles and I'd have to agree.
My biggest complaint is, I come from playing a LOT of FPS games and the swords shooting slightly to the right of the middle of the screen makes it REALLY hard for me to aim. It feels unnatural and not having a reticle either makes it even harder to aim.
I think enemies also have just slightly too much health. I'm the type of player that just wants to hold W and keep going while shooting stuff along the way. But I found myself often pausing before jumps to kill enemies and manuevering on small platforms to try not to get shot or stabbed and that interrupted the fast-paced pacing I was hoping for. Maybe that's just a matter of preference or my personal expectations, but I feel the health was just a bit too high.
In the same vein, I often never used the Q and E dashes because the platforms were SO small and if I was between two walls, there was often a small enough gap between the platform and walls that I could fall through it even if I wanted to dash. I found careful movement was super tricky. Especially when dealing with projectile enemies. I was sniped mid-air for a large number of my deaths and since I already committed to the jump, it was too late.
I think the player hitbox needs reduced just ever so slightly horizontally. I often tried to squeeze past lasers only to get hit when I thought I could make it. Also, in one of the levels (I believe the third) I would go straight through some lasers for a bit and halfway through the level, going at the fastest pace I could, holding W the whole time without stopping, there's no safe way to immediately jump to the next platform due to the lasers. I think it's just a timing thing but I often found myself getting impatient because I had to sacrifice a few seconds and stop due to the lasers blocking any potential path despite me getting there as fast as I could.
There were also a good number of jumps where I found myself overjumping on my first playthrough. Again, I had to let go of W and hold S so I didn't overjump. I was doing the jumps at the platforms when they were the furthest away most of the time too, so this confused me a bit. While there is a lot of platforming elements, I feel that should be (slightly) second to the enemies considering they demand the most attention. To me, I feel the platforming should just be an added measure of skill for the player that comes naturally while shooting enemies. Platforming while dodging enemies and their projectiles at top speed would be the most fun for me personally. I want to be able to think about my plan of attack, but I don't enjoy having to focus too much on not overjumping on top of trying to deal with enemies and everything I listed before.
Despite everything I just said, most of those are minor tweaks and "balance" related things or my own preference. I'm not sure what the overall vision for the game was, but I picture a fast paced action platformer where the goal is to focus on enemies while the platforming is an added element of skill to help the player feel more skillful (I especially enjoyed threading the needle between lasers mid-air). Overall, I think the aesthetic and artstyle is great. I'm curious as to how it would look at night with all the environmental particles, I imagine it could potentially look beautiful with all the glowing particles and enemies' eyes. I know you probably won't be working on this much more, but that's what I envision for the game and overall, it's awesome considering you're developing another game on top of this and you did this in just a month. Keep up the great work, Matt!
Hey Matt, I'm posting this after the full release of your game.
I'm glad you implemented so many changes in just a day. The new version of the game is really fun and it feels great to play! I felt a lot of the accidents were my own fault instead of the game this time and that's awesome to me.
First the negative stuff, I wish there wasn't so many enemies in the new level. I attempted to speed run the game for a good hour or so (I'll make another post about that) and one of the only things that annoyed me was having to deal with 4 enemies at the end of the new laser level. I was never able to kill them without spamming my primary fire when I was speed running because the laser is in a place that makes it impossible to jump (at all) unless I stand at the very beginning of that block. Stopping at any point made speed running significantly more difficult and this is probably the only place I really had to stop otherwise I'd be punished for it. So if you ever update the game again, I'd like either the laser to be moved to allow jumping over the enemies or just less enemies or more maneuver room, something like that to make that section a little easier so you don't have to stop and kill them all but can just keep going should you so choose. (Edit: I found a way around this but it's kinda sneaky and it involves not killing most/all of the enemies. See the gif here: https://gph.is/2WxHykR)
A quality of life improvement I'd also like is some sort of button to go back to the main menu. This would help and encourage speed running.
I did encounter a bug a couple times. I've had trouble replicating it. But, I have a faulty mouse so sometimes when I hold left click down, it will double click really fast. At times I believe that happened and it generated the previous level as well as the next level after the fade to black. I can't guarantee it was a double click that did it because I wasn't able to replicate the bug while manually double clicking and I didn't think to screenshot it when it happened, but I did have a few occasions where the game loaded two levels at once after trying to go to the next level which could only be fixed by closing the game and reopening it. I wish I could tell you how to replicate it but I'm just not sure right now and my only lead is potentially my faulty mouse double clicking at god speeds, but I'm not sure if that's even it.
Well, that's all the negative stuff. Now for the good stuff. I'm glad you fixed the sword and added a reticle, that feels so much better and my FPS senses are appeased. Less environmental particles made it easier to see the enemy projectiles as well. Being able to one shot enemies feels fantastic too. It felt so nice lining up the crosshair and shooting just before a jump, landing, and seeing the enemy no longer there. I'm not sure if the player hitbox was changed at all but everything feels a bit more fair now, I never felt there were any deaths that weren't my fault. I still find myself letting go of W or jumping sooner so I don't overjump but that was mostly a problem I had on just my first playthrough so I'm not as worried about that anymore having played it for an hour or so now. Also, not having to kill all the enemies is a welcome change, I like it a lot.
Lastly, the flow of the game is awesome. I can go fast paced or slow and methodical and that's great to have different playstyles for the game (although my favorite way to play is just holding W and shooting all of the things).
Overall, it's a great game man. It's so impressive that you did this in just five days of this month. I can't wait for the next game a month, this one was awesome!
Sometimes the game gets confused if you held down a key while dying to enemies, I got teleported to the middle of the map and my input was locked, so it went forward without input from my keyboard. Also, I can't dash and I don't know why.
And I find it hard to time jumps at the end of a platform, It seems that I'm further forward than I am, resulting in me plummeting to my death even tho I was spamming the jump key. I think that was the main reason to my deaths :P
Otherwise, the game looks really good for being made in a month. You sure cut down time of modeling/animations by making it a fps, but I guess that's good as then you can spend time on game mechanics and other things that need more attention - f.ex. level design: where I think you did a great job.
Although there was only one path to follow, you made sure we could use different tactics to get around an obstacle and that makes it more enjoyable in my opinion, as you could challenge yourself to do speedruns or no-shooting runs if you really wanted to.
Apart from a little oversized hitbox, I'd say the game is perfect; considering time limitations and being just you making it :)
