itch.io

(2nd post)

I attempted to stream your game not too long ago. I found a couple of nasty bugs along the way (sound bugs, retries in Story mode not working properly, huge delay in going back to Story mode after leaving, the HP upgrade not working), so I had to end the stream early. I did a lot of yapping at the beginning, so you'll wanna start at 35:00, which is when I start playing. It was my first time playing, so pardon the fact that I currently suck (despite that I attempted to play on Hard difficulty).

(This is the first of 2 posts I plan to start with for this thread.)

To start, I think your game looks really interesting. Of course, I love the artstyle, but I think the combat's pretty cool too. Definitely a lot of room for creativity with the mechanics you have. Which brings me to my first criticism: Specials could be A LOT more diversified between fighters; currently Meilen and Lime are the only ones who have Specials unique to them. So I came up with some ideas for potential new Specials.

Jota: For the rest of the fight, each “successful” normal attack/block (no misses for player, at least 1 successful hit/block for AI) triggers an unblockable attack that does a Critical Hit

Jen: For a limited time, every 3rd attack blocked (every 1st attack for AI) triggers a Combo Breaker

Lime: For a limited time, damage received from the opponent is also dealt to them (*although Lime already has a unique special, I thought this would be more interesting strategy-wise)

Trinity: For a limited time, Free Combos and Super Attacks stun the opponent, making them unable to act on the next turn

Kinteron: For a limited time, the duration of normal attacks and Free Combos are doubled

Bug: For the rest of the fight, every 5th normal attack blocked causes a Guard Break, preventing the opponent from blocking any more attacks for the rest of the turn

Big Ben: The next Super Attack does 50% more damage; this Special can be used multiple times

Ariel: Limited time for this Special is renewed 2 times; each time the limited time expires, the current turn ends and a Super Attack is triggered

Haruky (*buff for her special): In addition to reducing the opponent’s Energy, the opponent’s Energy Charge is disabled until they perform a “successful” normal attack/block

Recently finished a stream for this game. I recommend checking the chat at the end of the stream where I bring up potential issues that need to be looked into (some of which I've listed in my previous message). And... apologies in advance for my horrendous gameplay.

Leaving footage of my first "successful" run with the game to help showcase what gameplay is like on this page.

Small review: Really solid scavenger hunting horror game. There are a couple of flaws worth addressing, but nothing that severely hurts the gameplay.

+ I like that the glowsticks are actually important tools here due to landmarks being scarce.

+ The use of a timer is a great addition. Adds a really significant extra layer of pressure.

+ Having a couple of the important items placed in the halls instead of the rooms is a nice touch. 

+ I like the different enemy types (although I'd personally have used centipedes in place of spiders).

+ The puzzle of the Enigma Room is interesting (and still at large for me, you'll see at one point I paused the game for a extended period to bust my brain trying to figure it out).

- Display settings don't seem to work, as they can't be changed. Also, no settings for sound seems like a pretty big deal. 

- I previously mentioned a bug with special rooms where their doors can't be opened again if they're re-closed; it's not as big a deal for me since I'm now experienced enough to play around it, but maybe for new players this might be troublesome... I'd recommend preventing such doors from re-closing if that's the intention. Also I realize the first room I was trying to describe where this issue exists was the exit, lol.

Interesting point of view. I'll address your points where necessary:

1. This is more so just to have a visual reminder of who you've chosen and which side they're fighting on. For 1v1s this isn't as big a deal, but for battles with more fighters this would probably be very helpful.

4. Eh, I don't see the reason why Screwdriver would need to have a similar playstyle to Ice Sword. Even thematically speaking, why would that even be the ability for a screwdriver in the first place? Disassembly makes more sense, and that was the inspiration behind my idea. If I had other ideas to differentiate other potential clones, I'd share those too.

5. The process Hammer currently has to undergo to get to its higher damage has too many steps. Currently it has to increase its max spin speed and damage by hitting the opponent, then build up to that speed and damage by avoiding the opponent. My idea would remove the first step.

8. 'Cause Bow's hella inaccurate, like many of the ranged fighters. I think that's already enough of a crutch, so letting other fighters block its arrows is overkill. Not to mention this currently puts it at a major disadvantage against certain fighters, namely Dual Daggers.

9. I heavily disagree, but maybe that's just my experience with seeing Katana V2 so far. More often than not Katana V2 can get its air slashes to max speed, and during that time that plus the damage boost the slashes get just allows it to melt opponents.

I did not know that. I will give that a try then. Thanks.

This simulator's new to me, so you'd be a better judge than me on what would and wouldn't work. I will say however, that Shuriken seems pretty underwhelming (in my opinion it's one of the weakest fighters right now). Having the shuriken disappear on hit takes away from Shuriken's ability to make them bounce more, especially since they each do only 1 damage on hit. I had figured that keeping them in play to potentially do more damage would've helped buff it up a little more.

This game is awesome. Got a couple of bugs and suggestions to share.

Bugs

1. Minor: If you redo the Tutorial, it auto-completes the Power Shot segment. (If you close the game after completing the tutorial and then reopen the game this doesn’t happen.)

2. Minor (for me): The option to disable controller rumble only disables the rumble when kicking the ball.

3. Major: The AI can get stuck on the barriers in the Tile stage if the ball is on the opposite side of them.

4. Minor: If you start the game without fullscreen, the game doesn't fill the window fully until you change the window's size/minimize the game.

Suggestions

1. Major: It would be nice to be able to select the characters the AI uses in Versus mode, particularly for learning/playing with certain matchups/team compositions.

Interesting battle simulator. I see its potential, so with an interest in seeing it improve, I’ve got a list of bug reports and suggestions to spitball at you based on my findings so far:

Bugs

https://youtu.be/qmeRl674xbM

Suggestions (I'll add more to this list if any come to mind)

1. Probably the most important one: the game needs to display selected fighters (at least their names) during fighter selection.

2. Mismatch Fix 1: Nuke’s weapon needs to do 1 point of damage on hit; not having this allows it to always win against opponents like Shield and Brass Knuckles who rely on taking hits to get stronger.

3. Mismatch Fix 2: Rock Guitar’s notes need to be able to pass through Wrench’s turrets (currently they disappear when hitting the turrets, making it impossible for Rock Guitar to fight back)

4. Changes to Screwdriver: hitting the opponent or their weapon X amount of times resets opponent’s stats to their starting level (giving Screwdriver its own unique playstyle as opposed to being an Ice Sword clone)

5. Changes to Hammer: max. spin/damage increases the longer the hammer avoids the opponent, and decreases each time the hammer hits the opponent (as opposed to having to build up momentum and max. spin/damage separately)

6. Changes to Shuriken: shuriken only disappear when they reach their bounce limit (currently they also disappear once they hit the opponent), shuriken bounce off opponent’s weapons

7. Changes to Shield: No weapon growth, weapon size stays at 2.0 (Shield does NOT need the weapon size increase effect, finding just the right size for its shield works well enough)

8. Changes to Bow: arrows go through opponent’s weapon, like all of the other ranged units’ attacks (of all the ranged fighters, Bow doesn’t need to be hindered like this, considering it’s nowhere near the strongest of them)

9. Changes to Katana V2: air slashes only do 1 damage (damage buff doesn’t need to apply to them; its ability to increase its rate of air slashes already does enough to make that attack stronger)

10: Changes To Camera: reduce duration of flash by at least half a second, or reduce scaling of flash damage by 0.5/hit

I’ve been keeping an eye on the game’s updates, and I’m now planning to review it. The game’s randomly lagging for me at times mid-race (I’ll leave a video to show this), so while I figure out the best setup to use for playback, I’ll just leave my current notes here.

I REALLY love the Custom Season mode. The freedom you have with all of the variables you can change is something I’m not used to seeing in racing games. This alone has kept me coming back to the game from time to time, even before the recent update.

Additionally, the Championship mode’s upgrade system is a really cool feature. I love the randomized elements; really adds to the feel of working with what you get. Some ideas for improving it:

1. I’m not a fan of there being more races in a season than upgrades, as this locks you in performance-wise during the later races. So if your car’s still underperforming after your upgrades are used up, you’re pretty much helpless.
2. The Risky upgrade needs to be tweaked. The 50% chance to get a -2 decrease to performance is a little too steep a penalty; just to offset one decrease can take up to 2 races if you use the guaranteed Safe upgrades, and getting the minimum +3 increase after multiple failed attempts for example isn’t worth the risk. I think a successful Risky upgrade should give a flat +3 boost, while a failure should just do nothing, as not getting an upgrade is already a viable risk.
3. At the very least, there should be options for the damage multiplier. Standard damage as it is now essentially makes damage a non-factor in races (and I know this ‘cause I’m currently a below average driver), which additionally makes the perk that reduces damage to your car useless.
4. In case you want ideas for more perks, a DRS perk might be interesting to play around with. I had ideas for “being a ghost in your first lap” and “doing extra damage to drivers you hit”, but I imagine those might not mesh too well with the sense of realism your game is going for.

Other issues that I think need addressing are:

1. AI still struggles in Brazil, particularly at the bridge, from the looks of things. Also unless there’s a way to make them more aware at the intersections of Arena courses, I think it might be best to scrap the intersections altogether. If the game had multiplayer it would’ve been okay to keep the Arenas as they are, but as a single player game, having those 3 tracks become viable for the AI's sake is more ideal. Especially for the Championship mode, which currently has to omit them.
2. AI still struggles with rain forecasts. I’ve got 2 clips for that I’ll show in the video.
3. Once you DNF you have to wait for all of the other racers to finish. If that’s a mandatory thing that needs to happen, at the very least I’d like to be able to watch the race from the perspectives of the other drivers.
4. Physics are still a little wonky. I got one example recorded, so I’ll add that to the video. I wish I was recording when I randomly flipped in qualifying at... I think it was the Germany track.

Other additional features I’d like to see:

1. Ability to enable upgrades in Custom Season
2. Ability to race on each track in reverse
3. An additional set of rain tires, so you can have different ones for different levels of rain, which would make racing in the rain more dynamic (assuming the AI can handle this, that is)

Nice game. Here's a review, 'cause I'm interested in seeing in seeing if it can go any further. Apologies for the embarrassing typo.

This game looks like it has potential, so I’ll probably keep an eye on it. Just from solo testing I can tell it would benefit from having:

1. Hitstun on attacks; as it is now players can just stay in each others' faces and wail on each other with no real consequence.

2. Counters and or parries, especially for the low kicks which can get around the guard.

This is an awesome concept for a physics-based fighting game. I can only imagine how other weapons would work with this game's physics, but if more weapons get added this could probably become a full game.

Pretty well made game. I especially like how different all 3 different styles of fighting are from each other. I'd have loved to have requested a downloadable version, but I got to this pretty late, so I won't hold my breath.

Also, one idea I have for the Simple mode: I think it might be interesting if players are required to win a round with each of the three main styles they selected in order to win the match.

Found a couple of bugs just testing out the various moves in v1.14:

1. This bug is fairly inconsequential: winning a match with Explode gives no victory screen, so you have to manually exit the match in this scenario.

2. Taking a life with Stargazer or the first hit of an uncharged Strike (unless it’s the last life) doesn’t knock down the opponent, allowing you to potentially follow up with more attacks. Not sure if that's intentional.

Nice, I'm glad you got to see the review. I appreciate the feedback too.

Since I read all of your devlogs and noticed that certain cars (especially the Mercados) had to go through rebalances, I assumed there might've been potential for imbalances, so it's good to know that the cars are actually well-balanced. Apologies for getting the AI setup thing wrong as well. I try to watch them when I can while racing, especially to see how they're nailing the turns I'm not, and when it came to driving the Audo which handles a very specific way, based on how I was seeing them drive, I had thought at that point we were all driving Audos lol.

In all fairness the wall bug won't really be a very big deal until the game becomes popular, and I guess that's where my general concern was when I addressed it, 'cause if that were to happen and you ended up adding more features for the growing playerbase (especially when it comes to online multiplayer or sharing ghost times) that bug would definitely have to be addressed at that point. No worries though, I've no interest in abusing such a thing ;)

Glad you like the experimental ideas I had. Sadly I won't have much impact on helping the game get noticed, but I'll keep my fingers crossed regardless. Best of luck with your future projects!

Alright, here's my review of your game.

Correction: This bug also happens with doors to the special named rooms that need keys. And this time I do have footage.

Found a nasty bug in the game. Entering a room with an elevator inside and closing the door locks you in the room, as you're unable to open it to get out. The door to such a room has an air vent/grate at the bottom. Unfortunately my recording didn't get footage of the playthrough where this happened, as starting the screen recording before opening the game resulted in a black screen getting captured, so I can't show what the door looks like for now.

Finally finished my review of this game since it's been updated.

Good to know, and I'm okay with this game no matter your decision. I am in fact still enjoying it; the elite cars are kicking my rear currently, but I'm getting the hang of the Audo and Chevra now. The Toyato's a little more tricky for me, but I've at least found the setup with it that works best for me, so I'll get the hang of it eventually.

Last of the new bug reports I have, and I'll try to get video footage for it if I can recreate it again, But I've had a few weird instances with level generation where the map continues past where you would jump under a checkmark to progress to the next stage. Going where the map continues in these instances allows you to continue while also allowing you to skip potential waves, and even minibosses if they would be the next stage.

2 more Possible bugs, I think.

1. a forged Megane lets you shoot on every red beat, but the description of its abilities doesn't change, so I'm not sure if this is supposed to happen.

2. If you have the Bunny Ears, moving up onto platforms without jumping is treated as a jump, causing you to automatically pick up items which are on platforms, when you might just be trying to read their descriptions.

Hey again. Finally caught wind of the new update; awesome job with it. Just wanted to report 1 potential new bug I've noticed so far - I don't think that the exploding pages (player or enemy controlled) are working.

Awesome concept for a pong game. Aside from trying to keep up with 100+ projectiles at a time (and that's not counting the invisible ones), surprisingly easy to understand. Kinda bummed this isn't downloadable. I'd definitely consider it for my collection if it were.

Out of curiosity, what are you trying to target the minion you summon with? Depending on what you're trying to go for, creating an effect that gives effects to minions in your hand might be what you want.

It'll be a while before I'm ready to give this game a proper review, but so far I'm really loving it. As far as my progress is concerned I've managed to get the hang of the first 6 cars; it's just the elite ones I've gotta master now. Not that I'd expect you to add any more features to the game, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on an elimination mode (where the player in last place slowly loses health) and on a splitscreen multiplayer mode (since a game this intense would be great to share with at least 1 friend).

Update: I didn't realize I didn't have the latest version of DS4, so my 1st comment is actually false.

Also, 1 bug to report: the display settings don't work.

I'd like to request controller support for this game, if it's not too much trouble. I tried using DS4 to map the controls onto my controller, but for some reason the Sprint button doesn't work.

Gave the game a try, and between what I've played and seeing this devlog for future plans, it looks promising, so I'll be keeping an eye on it. 

Some ideas I'd like to share: Since the core of this game's strategy is focused around tires, maybe track temperature is another element you could add. Also (maybe you've already considered this), having options for conditions to change mid-race could also make the strategy aspect more interesting.

Thanks for explaining. Although, to clarify on a few things:

Apologies in advance, but I don't think I follow completely on the one button theme, only 'cause the strategy menu is the only place where auto cycling happens. You're saying that to follow the theme any menu you have to go through after setting the rounds needs to auto cycle, right? But wouldn't that mean auto cycling should be happening in places like the pause menu and possibly the victory screen (after all rounds are completed)? If so, this game currently doesn't do that unless you have the auto cycle option enabled.

The counterpoint I'd make to your Quick Race explanation would be that the mode could just have random weather as the mandatory feature instead of always clear, as this way you still wouldn't need an extra menu for weather.

That aside, I think your new project sounds very interesting. Definitely look forward to that email.

Hey. Now that I’ve got friends to play this with I’ve been able to play this game out to its extent, so now I’ve finally found issues I’d like to share:

In the wing angle/pit stop strategy window, the GUI always auto cycles (regardless of whether or not the function is on in Options). I didn’t think much of it before, but it can mess you up if you’re thinking about your settings and you end up pressing your button just after the GUI makes you hover over something else.

Out of curiosity, why does the Quick Race mode not allow weather changes? I know you can just play 1 minute custom races for quick races in the rain, but using that option you get anything from 2-5 laps, depending on the size of the track. Personally I think the Quick Race option that ensures 5 laps on any track is a better option.

Been tinkering with the Bambi on Ice mode lately, and found that some of the tracks with jumps are actually unfinishable, due to jumps being put shortly before turns. Even if you drive very slowly at the jumps, cars speed up to take them, which guarantees crashes on most of these tracks, and in some cases DNFs. I made a list of the tracks where crashes are guaranteed, and the end result of the car in scenarios where you drive “perfectly” (hitting no other walls and crawling at the jumps to take them as slowly as possible):

Unfinishable

• Jumpleed
• Redrun (Both Directions)
• Prototype (Both Directions)
• Amity
• Bomber (Reverse)
• Astapor (Forward)
• Bigski (Both Directions)
• Bayroot (Reverse)

Finishable

• Goodski (Forward): 2 ticks remaining
• Scargill (Reverse): 2 ticks remaining
• Bayroot (Forward): 2 ticks remaining
• Dinaco (Forward): 3 ticks remaining
• Nomnom (Reverse): 3 ticks remaining
• Piston (Both Directions): 5 ticks remaining
• Nomnom (Forward): 6 ticks remaining
• Spagetti (Forward): 6 ticks remaining
• Bangkok (Both Directions): 6 ticks remaining
• Furnace: 6 ticks remaining
• Goodski (Reverse): 6 ticks remaining
• Bomber (Forward): 6 ticks remaining
• Astapor (Reverse): 6 ticks remaining
• Silvergate (Reverse): 6 ticks remaining
• Airdrie (Forward): 6 ticks remaining
• Lomond (Forward): 6 ticks remaining
• Medusa (Forward): 8 ticks remaining
• Silvergate (Forward): 9 ticks remaining
• Airdrie (Reverse): 9 ticks remaining
• Rampitup: 9 ticks remaining

 Bugs

“Pass On” probably shouldn’t be an option mid-game, as trying to continue a game you left after “Passing On” puts the game in a state where you can’t do anything.

changes to the settings for rhythm indicator visibility go back to default after you die and try again.

An item with the following ability doesn’t have a name: “100% speed and +12 damage to every 6^th dash. +1 enemy per wave.”

My 2 real criticisms:

I think the “Hop, Skip, and Jump” sections should be more platform-oriented as opposed to making players only have to jump across 1 or 2 gaps. I’d have suggested that maybe some gaps could also be bigger in these sections to make players have to do midair dashes to successfully clear them, but Gravitation is a thing, so I doubt that’d be possible...

The shelled enemies that are introduced as enemies you need to jump on to beat should be knocked over by jumping on them as opposed to dashing into them, if the goal was to make them weak to jumping attacks.

Aside from that, amazing game. Thanks to this I can finally add a rhythm game to my collection.

As promised, my official review for the game. Might be a bit harsh, but hey, I am a critic, after all.

Thanks for the reply. There was actually another bug I completely forgot to mention concerning the timer: if you back out of spinning, buying a vowel, or attempting to solve the puzzle, the timer resets. This can essentially be abused to give yourself infinite time.

Got 1 more bug to report. The game's crashed on me a few times in the middle of my play sessions claiming that I've run out of puzzles, which is impossible now since the mod I've created and am using has 1800+ puzzles currently, and at most I go through 10-15 puzzles at a time. I'm sending images of the crash log here:

I like this game a lot and I think it has room for growth, so I'm planning to give it a proper review sometime next weekend.

Correction: Now that I've read the Modding Tutorial page, I now know why it looks like puzzles were being "removed". Apologies for the false bug report.