itch.io

At last... I have truly become (a)woken.

• Pressing F activates slow motion, and I don't know how to turn it off.
• Like Penguin Garden said, the death menu doesn't let you click on anything.
• Far be it from me to criticize another dev who suffers from Juan's cruelty and trickery... but I think the performance gives the game a bad first impression. There's a lot of juice here, without a doubt, but the weird stuttering detracts from it. It's at 90-110 fps, which is nice, but it seems like firing a weapon causes a frame hitch or something, which makes it feel bad.
• It seems like it takes a while to load all the shaders or whatever (I might be tripping), so IMO it would make sense to have a longer loading screen with the benefit of hopefully better performance, you know?
• Blorb spotted, certified GOTYAY.
• The buildings in the "arcade" level give me PS2 / Gamecube vibes--which is very cool, but also very ambitious to pull off IMO. It's kind of hard to tell what level of fidelity you're going for overall.
• Soul overload, I have to say...

This is what we in the business call a "soul offensive". The levels of soul are reaching a critical mass, I'm afraid. To be frank, the gameplay doesn't interest me at all (I never liked "Mario Bros.", it's nothin' personnel).

• The opening cutscene is pure soul. Let's put aside the cameos for a second, how did you make this cutscene? Seriously, tell me your secrets, I love the way it's animated.
• The cameos in the cutscene are such a dirty trick... I love it so much. Seriously, the random nature of it, and the sheer quantity of cameos is awesome (If I was left out I would be coping and seething though--that's the risk with this strategy).
• If I might quibble about the art (which is great btw and makes me cope): the MC has too little detail and too many "clumps" of identical pixels, when compared to the crabs. The MC still looks super charming, it just feels a bit anachronistic to me.
• IDK if this is how it works in Mario Bros., but why do you need to press a separate button in order to hit the block above, instead of just jumping into it (and not passing through)?
• You can't do a charge attack without doing an attack first, as far as I can tell.
• Punching / walking into items should pick them up 

Feedback in progress (we do a bit of idling):

It should show how much ore sells for (I know you can calculate it yourself, but still).

When you click on a ship, there could be a little quote from them, like in an RTS. Click on a miner: "Yeah, what is it?" Click on a trader: "I've got to get this cargo moving, can't chat long." Could be a bit of a soul injection. Or maybe it's a thought instead, "I hate this job", etc, but hopefully you get the idea, a bit of personality.

Similarly, it would be nice to view stats about the ship when you click on it: total profit, total resource moved, time owned, etc. This might be an upgrade later on, IDK.

At HQ level 7 ish  it felt like it started slowing down too much. I feel the progress should remain relatively quick for longer.

Swarm intelligence said it unlocked in the console, but I still can't buy it. Seems like I have the requirements.

Overall: got to HQ level 22 before I had to close the window (not a "leave shit on in the background" guy). Honestly, a pretty promising idle game, whatever my problems with the genre. I think the progress is much too slow at the start, and the non-idle features (manually clicking on asteroids, and picking up scavenger packs) should be unlocked way earlier, because later on there is less of a motivation to manually make money instead of just letting the profits roll in.

Thanks for playing! If by the last level you mean the cave one, that's fair, that level is bullshit and unfinished.

I know exactly what you mean about the free fall on the analog stick, I just need to figure out how to fix it.

-The main menu is really cool, there's a lot of soul there. 

-The ship builder's aesthetic reminds me of F-Zero GX, so hell yeah. 

-Played with keyboard.

Have you thought about making it into a voxel game? I don't know how this shit works, but would that make destructibility easier? The destructibility actually looks quite nice, but I think you could lean into it a LOT more and make that the main hook (I really like destructibility).

Rapid fire nitpicks / gripes (apologies if I'm talking about placeholders):

• Resolution said something like "temp res" the first time I booted it up, UNPLAYABLE.
• The colorblind settings are... interesting. If it isn't a placeholder, it's like, 10x more intense than it needs to be, and that 10x is literally ten times.
• After choosing the memory card the camera moves, there's no need to though, it would look better if it stayed there and the game appeared on the desk or whatever.
• Why call it "exhaust" instead of thrusters? I was confused why my ship didn't move because I didn't add an exhaust.
• This is my biggest nitpick: why call the parts "weapon1", "weapon2", etc? Wouldn't it take the same exact amount of time to call it "Gauss Gun", "Photon Cannon", "Big Tuper Deluxe", and so on. I know, early prototype, but it would still make it easier to remember which weapon is which for feedback! The slow firing one fires WAY too slow for being such a wimpy little shot.
• Just put the basic controls floating in the first room in the first dungeon instead of having them show up on launch (I know that's not final, but it still would improve the demo).
• FPS shows up as -2.222223 E13 or whatever on pause screen, literally unplayable.
• There doesn't appear to be a way to get back to the main menu from the "want to create a ship?" screen if you go back to it from the pause menu.
• The enemy spawners with numbers on them look too much like exits for the player.
• I'm not sure about the slot machine as a concept / how it fits the vibe of the game.

I watched your video... you actually did get the diagonal bounce, as far as I can tell, at 4:45. I think the thing that trips people up is that it's momentum based, so you need more horizontal or vertical momentum to move in that direction.

Thanks for playing! The camera still needs a lot of work, I know. I think it needs some kind of system where I can manually set the camera to go up or down at certain points in a level, so that a platform will be on screen, for example.

Points taken about the night level visibility, seems like everyone agrees on that!

Thanks for playing, happy to hear you had fun. I think I know the platform you're talking about, the problem is unless you already did the previous tutorial (the game doesn't force you to do that level first) you won't know how to get back up.

Thanks for playing, and interesting suggestion about the fastfall binding--it actually used to be there, but I felt it was too confusing. Wouldn't help having it as an option, though. I just need to make controls rebindable.

Thanks for playing! "most people can clear the game playing it like a normal platformer and the real blorbers can show off" that's my goal, but I still think the controls could be a lot more easy to understand.

I think I MIGHT know what happens when you bounce instead of rolling, it's not just your d-pad, definitely happens to me.

Camera is the bane of my existence, I need to make the camera smoothly transition between the platform camera and the regular camera. If people still dislike the platform camera, guess it's gotta go

Thanks for playing! My goal is for the regular platforming to be precise, yet the bouncing to be a little bit more chaotic and fast, but hard to control. Need to strike a balance, of course.

Thanks for playing! Oof, looks like you're not the only one who struggled with the diagonal bounce. Were you playing with controller? If so, maybe the problem is you were pressing jump, instead of just moving the stick diagonally (that's what I saw tripped up the streamer). I need to take a good look at the controller gameplay.

Very intriguing, and surprisingly ambitious. Maybe too ambitious, I don't know. There's a lot of soul, and the visuals are well done--but I think obviously it won't appeal to everybody. Gives me runescape classic vibes. Just gonna rapidfire some little things I noticed.

• The thermometer type UI element on the title screen and elsewhere doesn't really fit the visual style. Nitpick.
• Gee Dirk, how come your Mom lets you have THREE keys? I got one key from the statue, one for killing the goblins, and one for giving him the circlet. If you already have one, you should just get gold or SOMETHING as a reward instead of another key.
• The attribute selection threw me for a loop. I assume the idea is to let the player mess around with the attributes without limits for the demo? Or maybe they aren't fully implemented yet. Either way, it feels weird having the option to just go "give me max everything".
• You can kind of push the boxes midair, sometimes. It looks really glitchy. Hard to explain, but I don't think it's intended. Maybe only when they are stacked? Moving the boxes also just looks "off" in a way that's hard to explain, the movement is too smooth and insufficiently retro, but that's a minor gripe.
• The CRT setting doesn't seem to work. It makes the screen smaller and off to the side, I guess, but after restarting the game, everything got really fucked up and small until I turned it off.
• Might be too much clutter, but for the demo at least, why not have some key prompts show up on screen? Especially for the stat screen, took me a while to realize I had to press space.

Soulful Dirkino.

Thanks for blorbing! I assume you mean that the jump should also work if you press up on the joystick? I'll make it an option, at the very least.

Good job sticking it out on that level, the platforming is pretty nasty, especially because the moving platform camera is still WIP. I spent most of the time making the background and not the actual level, oops. The hill of no secrets actually has no secrets, I'm sorry to say. The other level is to the right, up the moving platform.

Oof, seems like that bug is more common than I thought. So sad to witness somebody get disaplorbed; you hate to see it.

Thanks for playing!

Top gob, my arch nemesis...

Thanks for playing! Point taken on the precision required, I'm trying to strike a balance between being challenging and being a "rage game". The night level is definitely too dark, I'll brighten it up. "It looks good on my monitor" TM

Melkino. I've never played this before, though I watched it on stream. It's come a long way, especially aesthetically. It looks really, really good. It's actually inspirational, so great job!

I played it on keyboard because I'm too lazy to plug in a controller. I know it would feel better with controller, so I won't fault the m+kb controls too much--one big thing though, is that you should be able to toggle running with caps lock or whatever. If you don't have a fancy keyboard, you can't hold run, a direction, AND jump at the same time (limit to key presses or something). So being able to toggle run would fix that.

Second big controls things, the controls display in the test room is really helpful, it should be on screen in the main game view, but hideable. If that's too much, at least have it on the options screen. I never would have thought to left click to air dash, otherwise.

Nitpick time:

• Some of the textures seem too pixelated in comparison to the others. I don't know if it's a filtering thing, or if I'm just going crazy, but this picture shows what I mean, if you look at the white stones on the grass and the bits of grass on the stone compared to the stone.
  
• This texture is kind of an optical illusion, it looks like it's a slope but there's a little wall there. Spooky. Super nitpicky.
• Some text on the loading screen might make it look better. A level name, or just "Loading...", to make it not seem like the game is frozen or something. I'm sure it's a WIP, of course.
• When you move the camera 180 by pressing R, it kind of goes into the ground for a second. You probably are aware of this.
• Sounds super nitpicky, but the camera should be turned 180 degree at the very start. I don't see any reason to be facing that direction, unless you want to teach the player about the camera? It just feels too weird.

Less of a nitpick, something about the MC's design bugs me, and I THINK it's that the legs are too long. I think more chibi proportions would feel more "platformer main character" like. 

When running, I think she looks a lot better, because of the different proportions. Take it with a grain of salt, of course. The animations are very cute overall!

Melkino/10, well done!

Thanks for blorbing! The walls definitely feel unfun, I know what you mean.

Thanks for playing! I might go back to 3D in the future, I just realized that I was close to actually having a finished game (close-ish), so it's silly to start something new.

Thanks for playing, and good point about the berries.

Thanks for playing (and streaming)! The levels definitely have to be designed with the extreme speeds in mind-still working on the basic movement before making levels, though.

• Art and overall presentation are great, although I do wonder about the elephant in the room in the intro. Isn't it too porny for a non-porn game, but not porny enough for a porn game? Maybe that's what the MARKET loves, I have no idea.
• I know it's supposed to be a hard game, but couldn't there be a breather level before the KISS YOUR ASS GOODBYE difficulty kicks in? Even if you are opposed to doing this for the actual game, for demo day you definitely should IMO, because people (like me) might get filtered too early.
• My biggest problem with the gameplay is the shooting. You can fire multiple times to destroy a barrier, great. Or fire just once after charging. Since you fire infrequently, you might as well stay charged forever, right? But then you are spending 90% of the time holding a button, which feels AWFUL. I'm not sure how to fix this, but it really feels off having to hold a button so much, at least on M+KB.
• I had a Dean Takahashi moment when you are supposed to jump after dashing. It works fine once you get it, but I feel that only being able to dash on the ground is unintuitive. Maybe there's a way to make it more understandable for the brainlets out there.

Very impressive overall!

Metalarmsian Kludgekino.

• I get an actual GMI vibe from this game,and I'm serious about that. (I expect a 1% royalty for recognizing this potential).
• Main menu is amazing. No notes, great job.
• I don't like the central swing mechanic's controls. What I would prefer, and maybe this would actually suck, is if you just hold the button to ready a swing, and then move the mouse in the direction you want to move the bat. I understand it might get weird since you also aim by moving the mouse, but maybe it's worth a try. Intuitively, when I move the mouse to the right, I expect to swing to the right
• When playing in first person, rolling over small objects feels bad (it launches you up way too much). I realize that's because of Kludge's wheel, but still, it feels bad.
• I feel the tutorial is pretty weak, visually at least (might be placeholder, I know). It feels amateurish, especially compared to the fantastic main menu.

Thanks for playing! I think the sign was poorly written, what I meant is that you can control the game entirely using WASD, so instead of pressing Z to bounce, you press S. Otherwise it functions identically.

WASD bros can also press S to bounce. I understand the key binds are shit, I should make them rebindable somewhere down the line. The current version removes most of the timing requirements, so it should be easier now.

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing! You technically can bounce infinitely high (afaik), but I think the controls to do that are too unintuitive.

Thanks for blorbin'! I worry about making the default turning any slower because it might filter people before they learn about the bounce flip (you are probably one of the only people who have ever done it, tbh), and the awkward movement might turn people off because it feels bad. But I do see your point.

Do you think the sluggishness is visual or has to do with the actual gameplay and physics? I think there could be something about the low resolution or parallax that makes it feel that way.

By bouncing consistently, you mean the vertical bouncing, right? It seems most people struggle with that. The problem is you need to hold jump on the way up to go higher, but not hold it on the way down to go faster and therefore bounce higher.

I feel I need to simplify it, but I don't want it to lose any nuance. Thanks for playing!

Soul alert.

• I really like the artstyle, and the way the 2d and 3d clash (in a good way)
• Zombies ate my neighbors vibes, very nice
• I would prefer if the number keys selected weapons in the "1 is slingshot, 2 is bat, 3 is gun, etc" way
• Dirty footprint mechanic is soulful, but should wear off sooner
• I think smaller levels packed with more FREAKS would be better
• When there is only a couple monsters left, there should be an indicator of where they are. Maybe you want it to be a challenge to find the last one, but there could be SOME hint at least

That's a great question. The thing is that holding down the jump button makes your jump higher (it lowers gravity, actually),so it wouldn't work unless you awkwardly double press jump.

I could experiment with removing the "hold jump to jump higher" thing, though.

Oh it's very much intended. The idea is that's where the player has to work hard, to keep the speed up if they want to really GO FAST. Level design is still very much up in the air, though.

Damn, you got me, that's totally what happened. Thanks!

Thanks for playing! 

"It's hard to tackle game engine and and 3D modeling at the same time."

This actually made me feel better, so thanks! Right now I'm finding Blender much less frustrating than Godot, but that might be because I'm still in the baby phase.

Thanks for blorblieving!

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing! I'm definitely going to redo the trees, since they are just UV spheres.

Extremely cute, I love the artstyle. Towards the end of the bad end route, there's a dialogue that's said by <null>. Doing the bad ending made me feel bad, so you did a good job making him feel real.

Thanks for playing, video playthroughs are always very much appreciated.

I'm glad you appreciate the groundbreaking nature of this game. It's going places, some of which don't have any collision or models.

Thanks for playing. I see what you mean about the smooth shading, I'm still not sure if I want everything to look like that, or just blorb because he's rounder. I think I'll try making him higher polygon first.

Very cute and soulful, get ready for some major nitpicks.

• The tutorial level seems way harder than the following level. Why not give a nice peaceful baby level to begin with? The very first seconds has you bombarded with enemies, just give us a breather first to figure out how the movement works. 90% of DD games err on the side of too hard rather than too easy.
• I guarantee you nobody will find the game too easy and quit immediately if you have a more gradual difficulty curve. The core gameplay of rolling around feels good, and it's ok to start out easy.  You should introduce the basic rolling, then the jumping, then the enemies, etc. Could be in the same level, but there should be easy breather sections in between.
• Most of the difficulty, for me at least, comes from the enemies, which seems a bit backwards. I wanna roll, you know?
• The animations of the default girl (the one in the capsule art) are bugging me. Her feet are too often planted on the ground when moving slowly, even though I think if you were actually inside a ball rolling (I've never done it) your feet would constantly be moving in small steps, you know? In fact, you wouldn't be able to have your feet static because the ball is rolling.
• The lives UI element didn't read as lives to me until I first got a game over and realized, oh shit, there are lives. The little white balls should either be half pink like the actual player ball, or should be replaced with little pictures of the current character head. I thought the lives were powerups or something.
• Even more nitpicky nitpicks: the sound of breaking the crates sounds more like eating than breaking. On the first level, there is a bit where the floor flickers (3/4 of the way through). On the grassy level, area 1, there's a tree that blocks your view right next to a tiny rock, feels bad.