I really like the combat in this one. The music and art are good too. Ran into a weird bug in the beginning and couldnt move out of the area. Also the grid seems to be shifting around either due to tilemapping or camera.
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Shinobi Saga (Demo)'s itch.io pageComments
Played a bit, like the idea very much. At first it was a bit frustrating to face new enemies and not knowing how to time doges, especially just starting out and not having muscle memory for everything yet. However after spending a bit of time, that became a bit more of the fun part for me.
Whats a bit annoying for me is the fixation on Q W and E. I totally get these three keys for the dodges, but once its your turn, there is no choice between them (or is there?), so it gets really confusing that you have to press W for attacking when you use an ability that takes arrow keys like the E guy. It screws a bit with my brain. It got worse when i used dive bomb on the Q guy, and then there was no input key shown. First i tried space, but it was Q again. I'd rather have ONLY dodges on Q, W and E, and just use space for everything else (except the arrow event of course), as it would really simplify to get your muscle memory up and running, avoiding frustration.
Others already mentioned the menu requiring the mouse, which is a bit annoying because playing the game you put both hands on the keyboard.
The style is pretty neat though. The UI might use some downscaling for large screens (someone else already mentioned it looking like a mobile game otherwise i think), but it fits the rest and seems to get the job done. Id say its on the right track but needs to focus more on usability, then it will be golden.
Submitted
PlundergroundReuploaded with some more polish and updates based on the feedback below. Most notably, I balanced the rooms so that traps are less frequent/fast and enemies and traps are placed in more fair positions. Also, enemies now wait 1 second before chasing you to give you time to react (but now move a little faster to compensate)
One inch punch for the win! Cool concept, I got into a pretty good flow with the characters moves/actions and the game became a lot more interesting. I don't have a ton of stuff to criticize as the game already feels like its basically doing what its trying to accomplish quite nicely. The graphics are cute and polished, the dialog is good and straight to the point, the story is simply but effective (I know why we are in the forest), and the audio + music is very nice.
I think you have a type in the menu for the Momoshi chartacter. It says 'Energy Shot' on the left, but 'Energy Blast' on the right where it shows the details.
The tab menu is very nice, I noticed it near the end of my play that you could see all the moves and how they work. Maybe you should automatically show the player, or hint at them to look at their new moves when they first unlock them, as I was unlocking moves and didn't really understand what they did.
Overall great job, looking forward to the next progress.
Thanks for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed!
Good catch on the typo, will fix that. I considered showing all moves at the start but wanted to give some surprises for when the player unlocked them, but for a small game like this I think you're right that I should just show everything up front. I added some text and icons after leveling up that stay on the HUD after leveling up telling the player to checkout the menu to see the new moves (right side of the screen), but it can be unhelpful because it doesn't say what they unlocked and can be easy to miss. Appreciate the feedback!
Oh I didn't mean to say that you should show all the unlocks at the start, I don't have an opinion on that. But I do think that there should be more of a push to show the player the move details once they've unlocked them - aka - "You've unlocked a new skill! Would you like to see how it works?" - yes, no. Anyways, good stuff, keep it up.
Neat idea! Got a some nitpicks though:
There's a couple of mistakes on the sprites, the green cucumber enemy loses its outline in one of the pose and yuuto loses his hat's shadow in the camera-facing sprite.
There's also some bugs on the overworld, if you get hit mid attack you can move while the battle starts and change area, but your position is reset when re-entering the overworld.
Statues can hit you with their arrow while you're entering combat.
Also not a fan of how close some traps and enemies are to room entrances, and the sprite's hitbox should be smaller than the whole sprite imo.
Combat was nice and I found a use for pretty much every attack, maybe you should be able to curse burrowed enemies since it's a debuff and not direct damage, also it looks like burning doesn't affect burrowed enemies but I could be wrong.
The fact that enemy attacks only hit their intended target means that you can dodge at the same time with all characters which I don't mind but it does make dodging way easier.
This is subjective but I don't like some of the controls, specifically I don't like having to use the arrow keys for some attacks and items because other than those exceptions that you can play one-handed.
Same deal with the pause menu, it's fine but you should be able to navigate them with the keyboard since it's the only thing in the game that requires the mouse.
I also don't like the slow item/defense/attack menu rotation and how long the victory screen lasts
And speaking of levelling up, the roguelike elements are weak.
There's no equipment or skill tree meaning that character progression is always the same and different rooms don't really matter unless they have traps in them since combat encounters don't have much variation.
It gets samey towards the end since it's pretty easy, but fun demo overall
Submitted
FantaSWATThanks for playing! Appreciate the heads up on the visual bugs and hitboxes, will try to address those. I agree on the menu, unfortunately haven't had time to properly address how to use the keyboard on the menu since each panel is a little different and I couldnt figure out a smooth way to have consistent controls on each but I acknowledge it's an issue. You can skip the combat result animation by pressing spacebar/advance, but I agree here and will speed up these menu animations.
Thanks for taking the time to play through the game and record it, this feedback is very useful. I agree the enemies can feel a little cheap at the moment, especially for what should be the first stage. I'm going to tone back some of the speed to give the player more time to react. As you mentioned, I think the biggest thing to improve is removing most of the unfairness in the map (fast traps, spikes and monsters placed right on entrances). I didn't realize how obnoxious they are until watching someone else play it
some of the ost gets kind of annoying imho
also the sprites don't look very good when in fullscreen
maybe it would work better as an android game? playing a pixel graphics game on pc with a keyboard feels kind of weird
i really liked some of the art though, especially in the pause menu
Submitted
(a)wokenCombat had some neat ideas, thought the part where some enemies fly from the left side of the screen I had some trouble with.
Submitted
Project Nortubel (Still WIP)
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