itch.io

Just letting you know ever since the patch the game seems more unstable than usual  :\  Me and my friends who usually never have trouble with it, tried playing 4 games today, 2 of them ended abruptly booting us all back to the menu, 1 of them ended in a crash after a massive slowdown for a couple minutes preceded it, and the last 1 managed to complete when the Little Macs at the end didn't spawn in, but also one of my friend was stuttering really badly and unable to move their camera to look at anything.  

one more suggestion: either the ability to join games in progress or at least to see games in progress in the team join screen, so at least people know that there's an active playerbase.  I worry that a lot of new players are discouraged by a blank game list and assume the game is dead and quit out rather than make a lobby and wait for people to join.  

Me and my friend have been playing this a lot together and it's really fun.  We've beaten the picnic a lot and can consistently do it easily together and alone now (I've soloed it with every different weapon), and I wanted to share some of the thoughts we've had in case they help you develop the game.

- the Assault Rifle is essentially the best weapon because upgrades can make it do anything the other guns can do but better, and it spits out so many shots that procs & damage boosts make it basically broken.  I'm a sniper rifle player and I can do really well with it but even I find the AR makes the game so much easier, I can wipe waves before the next one even spawns with explosive shot which turns it basically into a grenade launcher with range.  And the damage ramp up from bullet heat makes it better against bosses than the shotgun or sniper rifle.

- the other guns need better bonuses to balance out their weaknesses, the shotgun and grenade launcher are useless against the flying enemies near the end, and don't have enough DPS at close range to catch up to how much damage AND range the AR can spit out.  Same with the sniper because it fires so slowly and doesn't do enough damage even with bonuses to catch up to the DPS of the AR.  Maybe the bosses and enemies need weak spots that make the Sniper Rifle more useful? and maybe there needs to be damage drop-off at distance for the AR. Similarly, maybe the shotgun should have knockback and the grenade launcher have knockdown or something, so enemies might get stunned by it.

- the Assault Rifle also has an advantage when breaking the little crystals to get money or health because ammunition is much more valuable for the other weapons (especially the grenade launcher), and their fire rate is so much slower that it "costs" a non-AR player more to break a crystal than an AR just having to tap it with a bullet

- the enemy pathing gets easily confused and can be gamed, maybe that's on purpose because it allows the players to use strategy, but we've found it very easy to get the Little Macs stuck to kill them easily, or get them stuck trying to choose between 2 players and just standing there turning around

- since all the players upgrade at the same time and don't unfreeze until eveyrbody's picked, maybe the game should just pause when everybody levels, that way you don't get swarmed by enemies while leveling, it almost makes leveling bad in some situations

- there should be a way to communicate with players quickly, like "come here" "spread out" etc... just simple commands would be pretty effective

- players in the room should be visible on the HUD so we know when somebody leaves the game, sometimes it's hard to know if you just haven't seen a player lately or if they've left and you should change your strategies to accommodate for fewer people

- players in the game should be visible from distance, it's hard to know where anybody is when we're all running around trying not to die and it would help a lot to be able to see where players are with a little marker that's visible even at range or knowing the general direction they're in if you're not looking at them

- it would be nice to have some sort of tank class or protection for snipers so sniping becomes more viable

- a healing/support class might be a nice addition in the future for people who want to help the team but aren't big on shooting? maybe besides healing, support could also buff teammates or debuff enemies, like giving temporary speed boosts to teammates might be pretty cool as an idea for a future power

- the low health damage boost perk should be much greater given that it's much more dangerous to be at low health and you're more limited in optimal moves with it, currently the bonus damage at full health perk is far superior as it gives you the bigger damage boost & it's a lot easier to stay at full health with the vampiric shot perk & picking up health, while to get the bonus for low health consistently you have to never take vampire shot & avoid all health pickups

Anyway, I just thought you might like to know what we thought about the game after playing it almost non-stop together for a few days.  Even in this early stage, it's really fun, and the colours, graphics, and character design are really appealing.  We can't wait to see what's to come and I've been encouraging everybody I know to play and to support the development of the game.

is development of this still on-going? (i.e. if somebody donates $10 they still get to make their own substory?)