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Tomodev2 years ago(+1)

Still don't bind to Y/Z, thank you. and even if, at least personally I find YXC/ZXC a pretty unfun Control Scheme. It also doesn't work well together with Q, E and Esc for Menues. And despite being a NES-Inspired Game you have no Controller support. And way too many Buttons, NES has Arrows, A/B for active ingame Actions, and Select/Start for less important Actions. You already locked Arrows and Start for Movement and menues, A/B for Attack and Heal, so you could bind interact on attack aswell and make it context sensitive Currently you'd be either interacting or healing on Select which is really odd and could be better used for swapping Swords which would be unbound elseway. Q/E for different menu screens would also not work on NES. If you're on Arrowkeys on Keyboard, you should maybe allow the use of Enter to trigger Buttons in Menues.

Your initial Forge Treehut has its exit too far South, you move way out of bounds before exiting. Your Transitions are also taking too long between Rooms.

Death Screen stays too long, should allow me to skip. Rockbiters can shoot through Walls and shoot while I histun them.

Attack should move me forward a pixel or two, so I can cover for accidentally stepping slightly too short in combat.

Your Interaction with NPC Area is below them, not on them, so I can't talk to them from the side very well. 

You can push the big Oak in the "Labyrinth" Area out of the Screen on top and it disappears.

Theres no invincibility frames on getting hit, so certain Attacks just outright kill you. Enemies also don't necessarily stop movement, so you often trade hits instead of being able to hit and run of any kind. With you dealing less damage and having less health, it makes combat extremely hard. 

Also not every enemy needs to shoot projectiles, just having slimes move around is enough.

Knockback and Invincibility Frames exist for a Reason. They should push me out of Harms way, so I don't get damagelocked into taking multiple Hits at once or just an entire Healthbars worth. If Tantrum jumps on you i.e., you get hit by it, since you're trying to move away, knocked back into it, and hit again, until you've been pushed through him entirely. At which Point you're dead, not even counting the Projectiles hitting you aswell. Just knock be away from the Enemy that hit me, not based on the Direction I'm facing, and further, so I end up outside of their Hitbox. Disable my Input during that, so I can't hit them or try to move back into them while being pushed out, and make me invincible, so I don't take multiple hits during the push.

Went everywhere I could as far as I know, defeated Orogon, Tantrum, Rocklord, the Reaper and got into the Tinmine.

Got Oaksword, Tinsword, Ironsword, Bonesword, Bloodthorn, Wandsword and Tonguesword, probably missed a bunch, couldn't be bothered to try out all the combinations for all the Items I got.

Also was too lazy to grind for Souls, and only got 2 Pearls.

Most of the Swords don't feel impactfull and could just be removed I think. Wood/Tin/Iron and Bloodthorn seem to be the same just different Sprites, and some shoot projectiles at full health. Bonesword as a boomerang is nice, but rather useless, compared to the speed of the other projectiles. You also got the Wandsword as dedicated projectile sword, so you don't need that many others with the same Type of attack I think. I'd probably cut them to starting sword, iron+projectile at full health, boomerang, wand and tongue from those. 

The entire 2 Swords at once and swap between them feels useless. I used it once or twice to not have to go into the menu to swap, but never infight or anywhere where I wouldn't have the TIme. And I only avoided your Menues because navigating all of them except Options is pretty bad. I don't know how many super distinct Swords there are in the End, but it feels like you don't need an entire Screen for that. Your StatusScreen also has Tons of empty Space. You don't need to display the Log, or the giant Player Character in there, you could reduce the Inventory in size if you reduce the amount of drops aswell, and instead focus on making every combination of drops sword-able, instead of only specific Ones, or at least more of them, so you get more swords with less possible ingredients. Makes People not having to grind so much for ingredients that are rarer, encourages playing around and trying out combos more, makes for more interesting recipes then all the same Thing, and reduces space required for your Inventory.

With the freed up Space (also on the Map, assuming you don't have giant Dungeons later on) you could easily move the Swords into the same Screen, since theres nothing to interact with on that screen anyway. And since you don't really need an Optionscreen in a NES Game like this in game, you could just remove that, and only keep it in the title. Or have a return to title option to select in your now combined menu aswell. That way you can get rid of the submenues and the Q/E Controls for it.

You could also move the Map from your Menu onto a Map button, which can also act as pause/return to menu screen aswell, and display an overworld map when not in a dungeon, of the explored Areas ofcourse. 

That Way you'd have A to Potion, B to Attack/Interact, Arrows to move, Start for menu with sword selection inside, and select for a Screen to return to title/adjust volume if you want, and show the map, making your Controlscheme conform to NES Inputs. Of course you'd loose out on 2 Swords and swapping, but again, that felt pretty useless either Way.

Interacting on Z instead of X was just annoying, I never saw a reason for that.

Your Ores also shine up way too slow/late, so you either have to wait quite a while in each room to see if you can mine something, or try every rock, which I ended up doing.

No Overworld Music, no Bugs.

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Olivenaut2 years ago

Thank you for giving my game so much of your time, both playing and sharing your thoughts!

I think you made a lot of solid points. Most of all your control woes, I see you made a game in RPG Maker so you're probably familiar with how common ZXC control schemes are. I grew up on them and am super used to them, but obviously they're more strenuous for most people than I anticipated. I intend to implement controller support ASAP, and along with it rebindable controls.

I never considered the character advancing slightly on attack. At first, I thought this was a pretty clever idea, but enemies universally have contact damage and this is something I don't intend on changing. At the moment players are rewarded heavily for positioning, managing to pin an enemy to a wall can end in an easy defeat, and if the player advanced when they attacked they would waltz directly into the enemy's hurtbox. I agree that this works in many games, but I've never seen Link advance in any of the top down Zelda titles, and I imagine it was for the same reason.

I've had a few complaints on  the death screen. I don't want the player to be able to instantly jump back into gameplay, I think some of the game's emotional weight can be damaged by treating a game over in too arcadey of a manner. That said, I am considering ways to mitigate the frustration of players being stuck on the screen. I was considering either letting players skip through loading screen tips, or adding an actual game over screen, with options to continue or exit. I think the ability to advance the screen quicker with player input would help a lot.

As for invincibility frames on getting hit; you do actually get some. some. The issue is that the player isn't the only one who's frail in this game. I could introduce giving the player a healthy second or so of invincibility frames, but it would have to come with additional draw backs. If the player is simply invincible for longer, they can rush enemies, ignoring damage, taking advantage of their invincibility and taking the enemy down with DPS alone. If it isn't clear, I'm more concerned about the game being too easy than too hard. This necessitates a solution, here's a few simple ones.

A: Not letting the player attack while invincible
B: Stunning the player outright
C: Increasing boss's HP, probably by a lot

I'm not saying I would never make these changes, but I like the way the game is now. Consequent to the current way player damage is handled, positioning is very important. Being in a bad position means you take damage, and being in a terrible position means you die instantly. And the main grievance of getting annihilated instantly by enemies wanes as the player's maximum health increases.

It's worth mentioning that some of the swords you described as useless, I was told by other players were overpowered. The bone sword in particular. This is exactly what I intend, for swords to be comparable in damage and application such that different swords lend themselves to different situations and playstyles. It's also worth mentioning many of these swords will be acquired in completely different orders for different players, meaning swords that seem redundant will sometimes be relied upon by players taking an unorthodox route :)

I think the complaint I most resonate with however is your obvious disdain for grinding. I agree with you. Grinding is awful. This is part of why the maximum number of materials you'll ever need for a sword is 8, often obtainable purely as a byproduct of progressing through the game. The grinding for the soul material is lame and bad! I wanted to include something else west of that bridge but unfortunately ran out of time for the demo and was forced to include several enemies that drop it at all. I promise in the full game I will work as hard as I can to disincentivize grinding for materials. It's lame and bad.

I don't want it to come off like I'm shrugging off your feedback. I consider everything, and the more I hear a complaint the more likely I am to address it in game. I immensely appreciate tear downs like this. Thank you again for your time.

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Tomodev2 years ago(+1)

My biggest Problem with ZXC comes from being on a German Keyboard, so Z is in the middle upper row, not neatly next to X/C. Its one of few regular Letters thats not the same on the Layout on 'most' used Keyboards. If you'd bind to keyboard Layout, not actual Letter it'd be better, or to something thats more same-y on 'most' Keyboards.

While i.e. Link doesn't advance, his Sprite looks a lot more active during swinging. And due to how the overlap works on enemy sizes, when you swing you essentially get 2 Tiles of hit with your regular Sword, since you can just hit something with the Tip, and that'd cause the enemy to be knocked back, while in Yancy, it doesn't feel that far, and more like you need to hit with your Swords Center, while also not really increasing enemy to player distance, since i.e. the Scorchwolfes or whatever they were named just keep running into you, even tho you are locked into the Attack animation, so attacking them from the side is basically impossible without getting damaged. 

Not letting the Player attack during Invincibility would be fine I guess, I just think currently you don't get enough "protection" against being instantly hit multiple times in a row so to speak. It would also work fine if the knockback just moved the Player/Enemy out of Harms way after an attack. No Knockback on Bosses obviously, that'd look stupid, but if I'm getting stomped by Tantrum, 3 pixels into my backwards direction, which is his center, isn't going to prevent a second hit.

Keep in mind, even how it is I still beat it and didn't ragequit in between, and as said before, am not much of a Fan of the Controls, and am not good at Videogames, so it can't be too bad as it is right now.

I'm not saying Bonesword or something isn't strong, I'm saying a lot feel redundant. I don't need 3+ Swords with range 1 that shoot a projectile straight forward 6 tiles while I have full health, just because one deals 1 projectile 2 hit damage and the other 1/3 respectively. You don't have enough health on Enemies to make that too distinct. Just regular attacks, ranged on full health, boomerang return, always ranged, tile 2 etc. are fine, those are distinct, but once you basically reuse a sword with different Values, you might aswell skip it alltogether.

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Olivenaut2 years ago

I never considered foreign keyboards. Yipes. That sounds painful. I'm glad you had the patience to play through regardless.
I think if you beat everything in this demo you're probably better at video games than you're giving yourself credit :). Thank you again!

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