hellow frailsnake
merry christmas
https://www.bandlab.com/track/2d5781e1-5be0-f011-819b-6045bd3096b1
(its a single song emotionally and technically, but in programming the idea is that Phase A is playing when he appears and Phase B is during battle)
(If you like it and would use it, I can send you the file or a megalink. if you dont, pretend i dont exist)
-What a fool I've been too late for so long (I wont even say how long I spent going forwards and backwards to see different rooms and try to find the right sequence)
-The level displays really put the mind for a spin, endless tricks
-"The opposite of justice isn't evil, but a different justice," as they say. He kills wolves, he kills people, he believes he's more worth of the cure than you, as a foil he seems solid. We will be there for him no matter what.
-Since battles are meant to last a bit long in general, and bosses even longer, it could just be a two-stage ailment. Water first makes you cold, or wet, and cold/wet makes you more susceptible to freeze. If Hydra and Dagon can straight up freeze with some attacks, it shows their advanced powerlevel and is fine, but the average fishes could have this small nerf to their squad. (Considering the squad too, it could be that one part of it responsible for causing wet, and the other for causing frozen, iunno how you'd prefer to design this)
-The flow was just too good to walk back and check those places once the water level was down... Thoughthe bike guy I almost got right, but I thought itd be a boss battle and left for later. Once I couldn't progress on other places, I went back there to see the fight and instead he just left. (Maybe finding his corpse by the Hydra or before Dagon to transmit the mistake done there would help the player identify that plot was cut short due to the early release)
-After I finished it I devoured the whole team and seeing Abe transform gradually actually made the monkey brain activate. Probably worth playing over again just to see a full lupus playthrough. Being able to learn Shuffle from Amy actually made it seem extremely broken potentially. If it's not planned for the full game, what I think would be interesting would be getting a small memento, equip or key item, from people you eat, just to remind you of what youve done. And a derail about my design thoughts and philosophies: If there's a world where Full Devour route has the toughest encounters known to man and is the technical hard mode, I'd make it so after some numbers of devours, the skill evolves to give you more stats from the devoured, better versions of their skills or multiple of them, and you dont even get the mementos anymore, just a "regurgitated junk you ate on accident" to show how your humanity has decreased so much you can't even control your impulses properly when eating humans (maybe you can even eat wolves at this point?). It's fun, and many more fun things can be done on top of it.
Finished the demo
Couldn't solve the water treatment plant's puzzle, I have the impression you have to be gathering items to awaken some creature, and the only item I think was left was the one above the padlock door (between two doors) which I couldn't arrive at no matter what. That aside, the doppelganger encounter was a pretty clever, and I understood it betteron the secong time walking that corridor.
The Dagon battle was a bit good, but mostly I liked the Beak and Flounder interaction. That said, should a LV0 random fish also have 1000 HP?
Ninetails was more interesting for that one scene than Abe across the whole demo. When he accuses me of this and that, and says we are not the same, it's hard to think anything of it when I'm nobody. Four places with some 12 hours sounds pretty doable though. I also got curious about the cigarrettes and burning house you can find afterwards.
I must ask, however, aren't you a bit too enfatuated with status that apply freeze? One of my hydra fights ended instantly because the whole party got frozen in the AOE. The fish encounters underground were essentially letting myself die once to get full healed and actually have a chance at the battle. Had Amy not learned the one AOE attack, i'd have been pissed at the Dagon fight, probably. I absolutely think this game needs more AOE at most, more multi hit at least.
Since both Dagon and Hydra were necessary to end the demo, I have no idea what the three optional bosses are now. I also only found 5 (6 with the mothman I didn't recruit) of the 9 characters that were in it, and can't even guess what I didn't do right to not find them.
Loan Shark was the most interesting skill, Norman's line upon being devoured also rose my interest in him as a character.
I've said most of my pieces, and what I haven't said are things I don't think would be constructive, so if there's something you'd like to know/ask for your research on the gaming experience you've provided, it's the last thing I can do for you at this point.
1) Oh, that's nice. Personally it's not that odd to me, since I'm used to "wolf" being used poetically to represent predators or aggressors. If it's there early, I'm sure people will just take it in as how this world works.
2) That makes sense, I understand now. For Head Doctor, it's embryo-like enough to be unclear if it's actually a human, so it isn't that much of an outlier. Maybe some edits to make it a bit more of an animal embryo and you can call it a day. Since it's the second enemy in the game, or possibly third if the player found Premature, it's probably better for all three to be in-theme to already transmit the idea of what you're fighting with in the game.
3) Recruitable Mothman real?
Also, thank you for your time
Since the setting of the world isn't very clear at this point, it's hard to judge if a shifting dungeon was possible or not. The warnings were pretty normal too, nothing that hinted at the
It's tangential, but I remembered/thought up some things I want to ask mostly because I live off information:
1) Between the default enemy icon being a wolf, healing items being wolf meat/sandwich and the cure for lycantropy, I could get an image. Between the fish people, Mother Hydra and mentions of Dagon, I see Innsmouth, a quite different image. Papa Beer, druids, the ghost things are a third world. If we go back to Head Doctor, there's a fourth, and I'd classify Premature Burial under the same category as Papa Beer since it's a punny enemy, but the graffiti's probably a fifth. Did you create these in a flow state and didn't mind much how congruent they were, or there is a thread I can't see?
2) Are you going for Lovecraftian or just pop culture-ish things in the overall story/setting?
3) I liked the Moth Man encounter. Addressed, set up and paid off. A bit of a jumpscare, even, with it being out the window, and then on your face when you leave. Though it could use dropping a prophecy just to feel less like it's just using a popular name without the contents of its character.
4) I actually forgot to mention in the original post and now that I've bitched so much I feel the need to build goodwill, but I like your art. That first CG of Penn waking you up Komaeda-style was actually very cute. I don't know if you're cooking it up or didn't want to do it, but having your art for character portraits in the menu would be very appreciated (the sprites arent ugly, but your art is cuter).
5) What books do you like?
I went through it, released the guy at the end and nothing more happened, didn't find any further paths, and returned to the beach. However, I played it one more time now and went around the abandoned building a bit more after recruiting Boyle too. There's doors you go through without a path back, or going forward and backwards taking you to different rooms. I presume it's an intentional shifting dungeon kind of place? Since there's no reactions from characters or mysterious SFX when it happens, I honestly can't tell if something intentional or not happened. I also sent all my team to 1HP with the vending machine (I thought I was dealing it damage and thought I had to mash to destroy it. Again, no reaction from the character and the screen flashed blue, so it didn't respond like damage.)
My exploration was then cut short because trying to jump from the top support thing towards the top of the waterfall has Abe jump down towards the middle waterfall. The only direction I haven't gone to is over there, but I can't reach it. Also, there are two different padlock exits that lead to the same place. After exiting through the first one once, I expected the second one would lead to a different place...
Also, down here there are some many sentry camera enemy icons, but defeating one of them deletes them all. Bug or feature?
A single fight is doable, I think I even beat a fish and a wolf by myself in an attempt, but then I just had no HP to endure a battle by going forward, which is how it turned out into winning a battle, going to the couch, going to the save point, then resuming going forward. There was a bear encounter that killed me instantly, so I assume I just got critted on and didn't notice that was the case.
Other than the Fire enemies that actually were terrible even with a few recruits, the encounters worked once I had Norman (easy to recruit) and amy (easier to recruit once Norman joined), but going from encounter to encounter is what created too much friction, since every two steps required returning a whole lot, or trying to avoid enemies as much as possible to not lose HP and have to use one of the healing items I got. If you consider the path going west from norman, theres three fish encounters, two bears and two fire sprites. Randomly finding a boss after that, with all my HP and MP on the yellow, just felt tiresome.
Individual encounters may not be that bad with a party, but the areas feel too crowded when you're getting little to no heals and check/save points. If there was a direction I could go that had people to talk to, minigames to do to earn money, I'd try doing that happily, but every direction I headed had enemy encounters testing me, and recruitables that demanded venturing such zones to afford the recruit.
Being able to explore the facility as a kid would justify all the rooms to me, so that feeling of "bloat" certainly would vanish. If past actions in the rooms could be seen as results in the future, it'd make these optional quests even more rewarding, even if just a visual change, or actually a locked door having a chest now.
Dragging the player into the world and almost immediately showing the domino effects of choices certainly would give the intro spice.
(And if you could tutorialize the skill to fight overleveled enemies through something like fighting against an adult as a child, I'm sure that gimmick/design would enter the player's strategizing much easier. I'll admit, I didn't get that's what it was supposed to be and didn't use the skill right while I played.)
My main suggestion would be that, while I understand doing a mystery is fun, starting with what actually goes down in the facility would make it more interesting. Growing up, being experimented on, changing gradually, and the downfall of the facility, even if through fragments that become clearer and more connected going forward, would increase the allure of starting this journey.
I let it try my patience to the limit twice and managed to play for some 50 minutes. But let me start by the edges and mention some technical stuff:
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You should make the screensize changeable, the default window is minimal.
The second door on the second floor, in front of the elevator, and fourth door on the second floor too, but the unresponsive elevator this time, don't have any text messages when you touch them.
The warning sign in the suburbs misspelled maintenance. Norman's win quote misspelled intriguing.
I died in the dark room, and after the respawn I was still a shadow sprite (used the motorcycle once and got my colors back.)
I think the yellow magic circle is a terrible choice of VFX for "Papa Bear has a small drink."
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Now, some design critique:
The first battle against the wolf already ends with your life on the yellow if you fight normally. Considering the player doesn't know what's coming ahead, it's hard to assume you should start the game burning your MP to down the enemy and not get hit (If a single attack misses, it's probably a game over straight away) . Maybe that's what you're going for and instantly filtering casuals in the first minute, but I find it a debatable choice.
Jagan's such a useless char I found the run I did devouring him right away and learning firm shake to be better than the one with him on the team. If that is by design, then I like this choice, because letting the player use the Devour mechanic right away and be rewarded for it is better than keeping them from using the game's mechanics.
Amy spending a turn shuffling after using shuffle is honestly baffling. In the time it takes her to shuffle her deck once, people around her are sending psychic waves, turning into wolves to slash/bite and swinging swords around twice. If buffing is so busted it needs a cooldown, then either every attack should have a cooldown or her buffs shouldn't cost so much you have to shuffle after using them once.
Leaving the first dungeon at lv2-3 to instantly find LV7 enemies that kill you in two touches, and they don't even come alone is hardly what I'd call tough but fair combat. Even more so because none of the four characters I got had any AOEs. And even worse, you walk a straight path forward and run on a three-enemy encounter that use AOEs themselves? And after that there's a buffer with two AOE attackers? And after all of that you walk into a random room and start a boss fight with no signs or warning? (My feelings for this will be present in my final point, so just hold the thought.)
You can die because it costs 5 dollars to revive, but you can't win any fights to get money to be able to pay that, so you just figure out it's better to load the game. But then you enter the sacrifice screen and have to write abraham or me (good to have this to be frank, two digits is nicer than the alternative), but what'd be even better is to have just a simple choice to choose to die. "Pay, Sacrifice, Explain Again, Let Me Die" would be ideal to make loading the game again faster, since paying's wasteful in more than one way.
With the water treatment's place key you get an easy way out the sewers, but you can't enter it again from that exit. I think that's silly and it should just become a shortcut for you to use into the dungeon.
After you get the motorcycle, the game should go straight to the map select screen, or at least show a popup telling you that you can use the bike to move to other maps. After you noticing there's nowhere to go, most people will figure out it's an item to use, probably, but it's smoother to just say that than wait and waste time.
The only tell for the head doctor being a few drawings around the door is something I think you'll only notice on the way out, not the way in. The facility is has 3 floors, 6 corridors, some 20 doors and just two things to do. Why so much dead space in your game's intro?
During the 40-something minutes I played after leaving the facility, what I did was win a battle, ride back to the facility, save, and go back to the suburbs to stop losing my progress every 2 minutes as I find out that enemy blocking the only way forward is, indeed, beyond my powerlevel.
And this leads to the final and overall point that permeated the entire experience:
So much walking, so many challenging battles and I have no idea why I'm doing this, or what I'm doing. There was no slice-of-life segment to make me care about Penn, I'm just told Penn existed and now no longer does. I don't know who Abe is, why should I care he's a wolf now and why the cure for it matters. I suppose I can infer the facility turned him into one, but considering the entire facility is empty and I was just hired to find the head doctor, I don't think he's got any attachment to the place, nor that defeating the doctor brought him any catharsis. The note mentions the suburbs, so he goes there, but nothing speaks of what place he's looking for, what are his feelings for heading there and what he wants when he arrives/after he arrives. I've been handed a blank slate, and asked to make it walk around and endure awfully balanced encounters for no reason or reward.
The game's all whip with no carrot in front of my face.
Ending code to make it eternal: GNVPACMJAXKTMNRTW
The battles in Cliff's quest a bit silly since the telegraphs are all the same. I'd already learned the codes with the weakest enemy, so I perfected the strongest one. Harder foe ought to have different sentences, and multiple sentences for the same action so you're actually thrown for a loop if you can't read into what you're seeing.
Much more interesting than the fights was the "fight" with Ward, and seeing how the character I'd built could say this, or couldn't say that. A much more interesting use of the game's personality system in the gameplay. That was the only such encounter in my playthrough, but I hope there's more of it somewhere.
The Cliff sidequest is a design nightmare, a puzzle where I'm supposed to read the dev's mind to have a chance to get started isn't pleasant at all. When I was almost out I decided to just type in rick, and got the hint to start with talking about the band. I'd argue that hint should be there from the get-go, but to be honest a typing section as a whole when the hole game is picking choices feels pretty random and pointless. Selections that branch out and you have to guess which conversation path leads to what you seek is much more intuitive than the guessing game with a chance to fail because you let a typo in. Different gameplay with no takes backs and no warming up period is just stress.
The story is a bit fun, but characters mostly just get their actions described and feel pretty flat. Clicking on a name to get a profile, a description, a portrait, what events you've been through with this person already, would be welcome. The outlines of characters are pretty interesting, and with enough work there's actually something to bite into. Rick I feel nothing for, Cliff under the correct anime filter looks good, the quest with Doug and completing a song together can be good with the correct investment in the character and relationship dynamics. Lindsay I quite like the concept of her being the artist behind the persona, and you being the actor inside her art. This relationship has the most potential of all, and I'd like this explored. Fatal Requiem is told to me matters, but I never felt anything for it, or for winning Sylvia's respect. Needs more setup to be meaningful. Ellen I had three encounters; one I asked her out and she rejected me. The second, she was busy and didn't talk to me. The third, I flirted with her as the raven. Somehow, after this nothing, she ends up my girlfriend and adapts her fashion to me. I felt more chemistry with Lindsay than her. She didn't get a mini-event of worth of interactions, but somehow turned into a trophy. I think it's very cheap and uninteresting to have such a relationship in.
Alignment, Suspicion and Stress never felt like something I should care about, nor that I could control. Easy to have a vague idea of what will increase the band's reputation and suspicion, but alignment and stress go up and down tremendously or trivially under a logic system that is beyond me. Personality traits are the only parameters that felt relevant, as some choices were grayed out in dialogues.
No music in a band sim and no visuals for the raven that is the main pillar of the main story makes the tale very hard to get behind. Music is a tough hurdle, but very necessary so Valravyn and Fatal Requiem actually exist emotionally within me, and what the raven looks like is relevant for me to become invested in the character.
I provoked the Trinity girl, and there was no event in the Halloween show, nor was there any encounters with her group except for finding their pamphlets. In this story without a clear foil, as even your parents are supportive once you leak it to them, their role is evident, but not present. Bullying is done by faceless nameless irrelevant beings, so even if you solve the issue, it was mostly told and never shown or felt. If at least either had a real face, what you're fighting for and against would be solidified, but, as is, it's just a smooth sail where you're told you used to be a nervous wreck but got confident, without having any dialogue lines to back up neither the former nor the latter.
Most of the experience felt like going through the sparknotes of a novel, rather than reading it. It was interesting enough to make me think "maybe I should read this novel," but not to come out of it thinking "I just read a good novel."
PS: Would you happen to like Detroit Metal City?
Typos:
Fairy at the start of the game says achiving
On the choices talking to demon there is a "better then"
Saying Wild Men to Angel, it answers with Carpe Dium, which I'm very inclined to believe was meant to be Carpe Diem, but disregard it if intentional.
Question:
Choosing to shoot joy has no gunshot and the text goes saying it steps away, but the dialogue it says implies (to me) that it is accepting that you'll kill it and just openly taking the shot. Did I interpret the tone wrong?
Review:
I think Dennis and Ending 5 Variation 1 were pretty interesting events, and the player character's past and future is intriguing, so I appreciate the two main characters to say the least.
Me-ism and Deer given the chance to be reocurring could also grow on me, I think. If the game expanded, I think a good approach would be killing, letting in and shooing away, killing ending a story there, while letting in and shooing open different branches (letting in being a domino effect and shooing letting the character revisit later and allow you to continue their plotline).
Spare Llulla route when, Pharaoh?
Not letting suspicious elements in not resulting in a different conclusion is a bit upsetting, many choices resulting in the same dialogues ditto, so as a VN I can't praise it too much, since I'd rather it just be static except for the bad end choices. Demon in particular, when you say "sounds better than here" still reacts as if you're refusing him, and then angel praises your steadfastness, so it feels very incongruent. Fairy talking about his crown seems like setup for how shooting him in the head ought to lead somewhere, but it wasn't the case either.
SFX-wise, I only wish characters had footsteps (it's unintentionally quite comedic when fairy just zooms away on the first night) and thus some characters that arent really walking could stand out as even more uncanny.
Art: lovely. the eyes and skin are such normal inspections while the mouth is so borderline fetishistic really transmits well how invasive it is to inspect someone's mouth as opposed to the rest. As gameplay it didn't feel very flexible, but artistically and narratively, it was used very well.
(I read the page better as I wrote this, and now I presume it isn't a project you'll continue working on going forward, so my criticisms on expanding the game may be worthless presently, but a worth a penny in a future project, deo volente.)
Fun game. I'd argue you didn't even need to Balatrify it with a quota to meet to win the level and gambling, it's fun to just drop the marbles and see if yours wins. Making it a "career" mode and a "free" mode for people that just want to see it go could be fun, and I can also see it having a "multiplayer" where you get to name multiple marbles and see if yours or your friend's wins. Sometimes I spin a wheel to make a choice for something trivial, and that feature could also work for that.
I like the gravity power-ups, but hard to see how it affects my moves, so I think you could be a little more exaggerated with it (and while I can understand what you were going for, it being a passive rather than a trigger on a cooldown probably would be better).
Where I see the most potential is how much you can do with the level design. You could go full Sonic level and theres tunnels in the walls, bouncy springs, loops and ferris wheels; make the marbles journey an odyssey that's thrilling to watch passively, and some areas/shortcuts that can be acessible through power ups that change your features (consider how sonic riders had the Power Flight and Speed types of racers, that could each get on a special track unique to each), and it'll become a spectacle by itself, and create in players the desire to spec builds to see where they can enter or not in certain stages.
There's some fixes and improvements to do, and also some more stuff (music, story and art) to add, so give me a while before you come back and the experience will be even better, I guarantee it!
It makes me really happy to know it hooked you enough to make you want to go back in, and also a really big motivator to start walking the path to finish it properly.
I very much share that feeling, I wanted to see everyone's works, and have everyone feel their work was seen. Sadly there's not enough time in a day to look at every entry, I found myself exhausted already nearing the 400 mark and now it's almost over. At least I could go over pretty much every browser entry and a few of the download-only ones. To me it's an art fair, and missing out on seeing everyone's art is wasting an opportunity.
Thank you for the praising the game and me! Didn't expect the latter to go noticed, it's a bit embarrassing.
Thank you very much!
Had to put a pause on all my other hobbies to get through it, but it paid off because I got lots of feedback on how to improve, things to fix, issues in my design and techniques to use going forward. I'm glad to have put my all into it, but seeing I'm behind some 70 episodes on shows is... a bit astounding to go back to.
My limit as a composer is pretty much two tracks, and due to the time I really only composed with one for this game, so it really is very simple. I want to learn how to be a bit deeper (and especially learn how to use the drums), so it's my lifetime homework honestly.
There were things I was still drawing up to the day of release, it really was a close job (and I compromised on a bunch of things which looking at now bother me a bit, thinking I shouldn't have. "If enemy attacks had illustrations, it'd probably have better fights..." and so on)
Just enough story to motivate me to keep going (Knowing why I'm here doing this means a lot to me) and steering the ship feels so great I just couldn't stop. The first three bosses weren't really great, in that they were too samey and not challenging, but Epsilon and Theta are really good. The real bosses are the walls in many ways, as enemy fire didn't kill me once, the huge spikes thing killed me once, and 99 deaths were by walls crashing on me. Epsilon's speed made me respec (very thankful for allowing this btw) into speed to not lose to the walls, and Theta's healing made me change strategies and be more aggro in the fight to outdamage the healing. Such balancing to make me engage with the mechanics and change my gameplay makes the game pretty good, only wish the first three bosses (mostly second and third, since the first one is your tutorial and should be that simple) had more of that to make the experience rewarding from start to finish.
Also, this feels very much like the prologue to a larger story, in that you get to play this character to meet the world, and then when he is killed, control transfers to the person who called him a few times and you get to continue investigating this world, the Void and the company. Using a jam to produce a doomed prologue setpiece is actually genius work, really activated my almonds.
In my case I was cucked because my controller doesn't have analogs, but even using just the basic attack to hop around already showed the fluidity of controls and animations, so even if I couldn't truly experience it the way you intended, I can tell you really put a lot into making it control well and look good as you do so.
The game over effects are so intense it looks like you died in a game where you die in real life if you die in-game, a bit at odds with how cute and colorful the game is to me. It's really minor, but maybe something to put at the bottom of the priority list and consider a redesign one day.
I like the controls, a bit awkward but if you could change your angle just a bit quicker, it'd good already, because I feel you'd be able to dodge some shots without needing the teleport with a bit more agility, allowing you to save teleport for when you really need it. I think it's more intuitive to press space again to teleport after you aim it, rather than having to left click, but that could be just me.
For the bosses, I think they lack a bit of gimmickery for their looks. Volcano and Ice are quite alike, in that they just spend most of the time shooting around themselves. Poison with the extra orbit guy changes it up, but I don't feel that as a poison planet. What I'd suggest are weaponizing your orbit and teleport system, and make these planets have AoEs around them that affect you if you're inside them, reducing where its safe to stand on your orbits, and asking you to teleport over it or face the consequences. Poison could have many gassy zones that fill up a poison condition, volcano could have hot zones that do damage as you step on them, ice could slow you down, so on.
Black hole was when it got interesting, with the reverse ring. Though when things come out of a black hole they come out as spaghetti, so maybe it'd be more clever to have it drawn in the round meteors and spit them out as spear-like projectiles. Maybe a phase 2 that spawns white holes around the arena and shoot these spears at you from all angles, evolving from the moon enemy you saw on poison boss.
And lastly, I think the range of your basic shot could be a bit bigger? I can see how it'd be awful for the game to just sniper elite your way through bosses, but you have to so upclose to shoot that depending on how your orbit is formatted, you can't hit for most of it, which I feel somewhat trivializes having the orbit control. Maybe balance it so more distant shots deal less damage, but do let you shoot from a bit farther.
I was thinking it had to do with the peaceful encounter, good to hear it actually may have been so. As the jam's almost over I'll probably soon start going over all the bugs reported and clear them all out. At the same time it's really sad to hear so much went wrong, I'm determined to make it the best I can.
(I did rate your game a few days ago, but to me it was such a seamless experience I couldnt even find something to comment. Concept, execution and gameplay all perfectly smooth. Don't put yourself on the bad artist boat, you did great.)
Inshallah you'll see it again before 2026, I promise I'll put my life into completing this beautifully. Bugs aside, there's the true end to write, many more songs and art to make, but if I could do this much in a (albeit crunchy) month, I can realistically complete, polish and test it all in a year.
Thank you very much for everything.
Let me start by thanking you for being so thorough and writing all issues you found, I'm very glad to have so much to check to make the experience better.
1) Will look into this bug (I honestly can't even presume what is causing it, maybe I'm pulling the wrong variable on the text)
2) You weren't supposed to be, I put an event to stop the overheal. If it's possible to skip it, I'll have to look into it
3) I wont lie to you, I knew there was a chance someone would see a friend and get the first battle dialogue, but I noticed it too late and didn't have the time to fix it. It's namely a simple fix, but I had so much stuff to do at the last few hours that I sacrificed it. Sorry for causing you that experience when I knew itd come to pass. And also being honest, I went for "a friend" to communicate to the player its a friendly event on early development and didnt think about it again at all, but you make a very good point. I'll try to work on that too.
4) That's lore not a typo❤️
5) The worst bug imaginable, I'll put it on the top to solve. I don't think it's related to the enemy, as the loss event is supposed to be equal to everyone, but I may just have accidentally put a switch somewhere in his attacks that activates the post boss event.
6) I'd say I'd even want a video of this to see how it goes, but now it might be too late. I'll playtest a lot to see if I can trigger it and solve the issue. I had a similar one which I solved before submitting it, so perhaps I know what this one is already. The bosses desyncing is new to me, but my playtests had bosses not despawning on losses, so maybe it is similar to that and something on the battle code is off depending on circumstances.
7) I was unsure if the normal bosses needed introductions, but I should have made them themoment I decided the semifinals and final ones had. But now that you put the idea in my mind, I'll probably give them specially illustrated intros on the full release, just so their first appearance is special. I probably would sleep on intros altogether without this input, thank you very much
8) She was supposed to be helpful and troublesome, and in my runs she often helped, but so many people who talk about her say she gets in the way... but she's plot relevant and I can't remove her. AND THERE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ASKING THE KEYDRILL WHAT THE SPIRAL IS BUT I DIDNT MANAGE TO PUT IT IN im sorry, i prioritized the books too much and didn't give the basic gameplay features the attention they deserved (because I couldn't understand others wouldnt understand it like i did). I'll add the spiral event in future updates, but I cant remove her even when out of the constraints of Spin theme.
9) It is intentional that she can't kill you, but I didn't foresee that possible stalemate result to the fight. Thank you for the report, I'll make it so she puts you out of your misery if you get to 1 HP. I'll repeat myself, but thank you for engaging so much with the game, without this feedback I'd really have such a flawed encounter forever and be none the wiser. Bugs are a thing, but this kind of design issue really shouldn't be there.
10) I set learning what the boss does to 5 encounters (3 if you eat their souls) thinking itd be good enough, but that was clearly too many encounters, considering not everyone will be eating souls when they don't know what it does. I'll reduce it so youre only really surprised at your first encounter, I guess. It was naive of me to think itd be fun to be shooting in the dark for so many fights. I apologize for the frustration.
11) I'll make the repeated encounters be shorter, probably. I felt that a bit too, when testing, but too late to start editing them. I'm glad you said that, it's an important reminder.
12) I'm a bad artist, so there isn't really an excuse or fix for the art I can give other than I'll keep practicing to be better. Not to get into my life too much, but it's just that I preferred to choose to put it out despite being bad, than forever be trapped in trying to improve until I think I'm good enough for the world. I know some people won't touch it because its ugly, but if one person can get through it and see me within the work, I'll be happy enough.
There's indeed infinite room for improvement and you've given me countless tracks to go after to continue this project, and for the third time, I'm infinitely grateful. You didn't need to go so far for me or my game, and still did on the goodness of your heart. I'm blessed to have someone like you pass by me in this journey.
The best orbit game in the jam. After I beat Light, at the same time I hoped there wasn't another boss because I knew I wouldn't be able to handle it, I was so glad to see the To be continued, because I want more of this for sure. Clean, quick, the new attacks enter seamlessly into the game and flow. The formula for this was get a new skill and get to use it right away, but just imagining the full game where you have a full arsenal and can tackle the boss trying to figure out what skills are the ones you need/can solve it with sounds like heaven.
Wishlisted before it ever even showing up on steam.
I'll have to look into that because there were supposed to be only two characters capable of hitting you at 100% dodge (two of the semifinal bosses, the wind one has 100% hit rate no matter what, and the dancing one is testing your dodge parameter, so she can get results that surpass 100%). The other ones should be mostly dodgeable unless they crit. Thank you for the report.
Thank you for praising it, and I'm also happy to hear you got far despite the confusion (and probably few of the metaupgrades), as balancing it to be able to get by without the info you unlock as your cycles go on was important to me. I didn't expect the systems to be so hard to understand, so that balance was completely wack, (as in, I assumed youd be able to figure what actions are effective against certain enemies, but due to the lack of explanations it really felt like a guessing game) but the winnability of the encounters being alright is big to me.
Precious feedback, thank you very much!
Great game. Some roulette FPS I've played here went for a you win or you lose approach on the roulettes, so sometimes you'd just be a sitting duck waiting for a reroll, but I liked very much how pretty much every result was a win here, and the results were so varied. I'd almost suggest you start the game with two barrels, so the player gets to enjoy that fun from the get-go, rather than wait until they have to beat a boss or lose enough to get the funds. I feel it's the charm of your game, and the fear that someone may drop out before they experience that is hurtful. (Could even be a really trash second barrel but you can upgrade it into the best one in the game, just as a fun sidequest.)
Bosses had really great looks, but the Mixology and Pit arenas had so many obstacles that were a bit awkward to me, and I don't know if they were hurdles really or I didn't understand the gameplay well enough to make use of them properly. Malina was my favorite boss, when the ground starts collapsing it's really exciting.
But just between us did the SMG need that much recoil and offset? Insane how far it strays from the crosshair.
Thank you very much! And to think I still wanted to write some more, but had to stop for tests and art.
What I got the most were such comments about the tutorial, so it really was a learning experience! Inshallah I never be this dismissive on the tuturial again when I make a system filled with weird keywords and RNG.
Incredibly cute MC, all round great bosses and with so many bosses, it's really a feat of characterization and design. Standing ovation for all you did here.
For me, having to do it all while keeping my mouse on top of the boss to hit them was terrible gameplay. Spinning with on top of the boss is fine, but spin ends quickly, doesnt charge quick enough to be reliable on second phases and doesn't give you invincibility, so you'll spin and die against bosses that throw a lot at once (daredevil got me multiple times with this). The shackle attack is a 1-in-3 to manage to strike the projectile and return it to the boss. But rather than make it return automatically, I just wish either the attack consumed less or no spin, so I'd not feel the attack that missed was as wasted as most of them are. Spin for a sure hit, attack for survival against the many attacks, minions and turrets onscreen. (Bosses are perfect as they are, I really just think attack and spin should be rebalanced a little to give the player some freedom to move better against them.)
Would play more, would play again.
