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Rabbit Hole 1.05

Momento Vivebis: "Remember you will Live" · By Shortcake_Cafe

Review

A topic by xyncht created 84 days ago Views: 321 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 4

The game seems fun overall, but the first level is a real slog. It would be nice if there were some sanity checks or rubber-banding mechanics on wealth generation, at least in the first level, so that the special rooms in that level aren't so often wasted. By level two that problem is pretty well solved, since you have potential wealth left over from level 1 plus the new 'normal' enemies drop more coins and there are more of them, on average, per room. But for the time the player is stuck on the first level and learning the mechanics, non-guaranteed special rooms feel more like a missed opportunity to kill normal enemies for money and possible hp than a positive random event (excepting the ones that give you money, which do something like treble or more your income, and the hp-shop, which is obviously amazing). That said, that's obviously a small fraction of the total game, and players who are very skilled in this genre (unlike me) might not even spend very much time in that area, so perhaps it isn't a significant concern.


Random things I noticed:

- The dodge roll has a much longer wind-up than the jump.  This is interesting, and probably a good thing, but it sure takes some getting used to!

- Selling guns man is basically always free piles of money.  This is because there is, I believe, 1 guaranteed weapon chest per floor, plus the boss always drops a weapon.  You enter each floor with two weapons and can't take more than 2 to the next floor, but CAN drop them on the ground and come back for them later.  This means if you head back to him after a boss fight you can certainly sell at least 2 weapons (totaling 20+$) before deciding if you want to sell anything that would actually disadvantage you. This is probably the single best find on level 1 where your total gold from all rooms is likely to be around 10$ but selling your starting gear for chest+boss weapon gives you an extra 21$ which you can immediately spend and the guaranteed shop for a dmg up leaving you ~16$ spare after that for level two or healing+9$ if you did bad on boss 1.  This helps even before boss 1 since the 9$ from just the pistol is usually enough to afford the dmg up *before* the fight.

- -1 current & max hp to level up a gun? Yes please! I can't imagine ever not taking this offer, even if I was at 2 hp right before the tank twins fight (the farthest I've got so far).  Lv 2 is *so* much better than level 1, it's just insane.  That's fine, though, vampire girl is rare enough it's not really unbalancing and I probably need the help anyhow; I'm not very good at this ^^;

- The bunny ears thing and the behavior of the shopkeeper seem cringy and objectifying to me, but I know that's an etic perspective so I'm trying to look past it.

- I never use the melee attack.  That might be a keyboard+mouse thing-- the additional button is physically difficult to press with my normal hand position for this game-- but I kinda don't see the point when guns are so much safer and, I *think* (but am not sure), have significantly higher dps.

- platforms in rooms are pretty much always good for the play, bad for the enemies.  But they also make the combat more complex and interesting, so I hope there are larger and more complex layouts as the game progresses.  I kind of suspect the bosses are going to all be mega-man style arenas after seeing the first two, which is fine since the bosses themselves are interesting and unique, but, while the normal rooms in floor two are much more interesting on average than floor 1, they have around the same number of platforms.

- auto-reload is on the shot *after* "*EMPTY*", but there's no required delay between the two clicks so it kinda feels like it could have just reloaded on the first one.  Perhaps this is to encourage manual reloading, though, which makes sense.

- Your guns don't autoreload between rooms.  That's maybe interesting from a speedrunning perspective, but from a normal player perspective it's just kinda annoying: you have to reload, switch weapon, reload, and maybe even switch weapons again before each new combat room.

- no idea how to get the book from the vampire girl.  Max hp is less than 9, and she won't let me kill myself, and there's no way I've seen to up max hp.  Probably a passive item I just haven't bought yet.

- boss 1 has the same attack pattern every fight.  Maybe both bosses do.  Nevertheless there is emergent gameplay and it is interesting.

Also:

- Weapon and enemy variety are excellent

-Special room variety is pretty good

-Bosses are very distinct


Also also:

-I was totally wrong about melee.  I thought it did 20 damage.  It does 50.  That's pretty solid.  Still requires getting very close, and isn't as good as the better level 1 weapons, but it's better (if you don't get hit) than the starting weapons and even some bad guns

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm glad you enjoyed your time with the game.

Even if it is kind of rare to get coins on floor 1, I still  wanted to keep the special rooms as it shows what the player can eventually get.

Also sorry for the bunny ears, it was just a design choice and I never really came up for a good reason for the protag to wear them! 

I played for three days and managed to beat the third boss.
The battle system, the unique NPCs and floor events, the boss battles, the distinctive weapons, all of these elements were interesting enough to keep me playing again and again.
My favourite weapon is the MilkGun.
And I really like the atmosphere, especially in the rabbit café! It was very cute, though the frightened look on her face when she attacked was adorable. It's already love at first sight!

Here's some feedback.
Overall, the difficulty level was very high, and even though enemy attacks had to be learnt to avoid, I felt that many attacks were impossible to avoid on the first attempt.
For example, the pumpkin's body hit and almost all of the bosses' attack methods.
As for the bosses, there are not many preliminary moves, the high rush distance and speed when attacking, and in the case of the tank twins, plus the fact that they move too much during evasive manoeuvres and hit the tank!
The process of learning the bosses' attack patterns was very enjoyable as they are fixed, but as you get to the later bosses, it gets harder and harder to get to them, and the difficulty level gets even higher as the number of practice attempts decreases, so I gave up on the last level.
The bonus for defeating a boss with no damage is very nice.
Recovery was quite tight and I wanted to be fully prepared for the bosses, but it often didn't work out.
I was a little concerned that evading would move me almost half way across the screen.
There were very many times when I had to evade or I would eat damage, but even when I did evade, I would still run into the enemy and take damage.
I hardly used jumping at the moment, so it would be great if I could be invincible while jumping or the moment I jumped, or if I could take evasive action while jumping, so I could have a wider range of evasive manoeuvres.
Increasing attack power was interesting because the lower the original damage, the more it benefited.

In general, it's a difficult game, but it's a fun game to play because it's full of more interesting elements.