I'm joking, I do enjoy making it a lot. Just wish there were more games in a similar vein as a fan of both genres, is all.

Yeah getting close to the end now since it's gonna be a standard 5 levels. And thanks, it's the style of gameplay I love myself when I can find it. Sadly it's so rare I had to resort to gamedev myself.

Thanks for playing! Glad you had fun with it. I'll redesign the bosses eventually once I get all the main content finished, they're rushed and inconsistent now. The platform jump thing has been changed, added a dedicated crouch button too which will be there next demo.

Here's another video. Not a whole lot has changed since the last version, it's still very fun and addictive to play but also very janky. I like having a dash instead of a run though, and the enemy bullets being slower makes for some really fun gunfights. But the game still has too much flashing, too much shaking, too much freezing and a lot of glitches. Path finding is still very weird for certain enemies like the knife and shotgun guys where they charge at me so suddenly it feels almost like a glitch. Enemies still get stuck in walls. Sound mixing is still all over the place too. Still wish the movement was tighter with less inertia. The bullet freeze power up feels useless. Grenade is surprisingly awesome and versatile though. Had a lot of really long hallways this time for some reason. Last is a small, extremely subjective nitpick but it always bugs me how the enemies keep their momentum even after you kill them. Makes the kill feedback unclear and thus a bit unsatisfying.

Oh man, my options screen is an unholy abomination. Try selecting xinput and then "map keys" instead of save and exit. Or maybe it was set to dinput by default? Save & exit should make your gamepad work though, so I'll have to go and check my code again. The config file should be in appdata/roaming/RRShooter, though if f4 didn't help deleting it most likely won't either.

BASED

That was a lot of fun to watch, thanks for playing! By the looks of it level 2 is gonna need A LOT more difficulty balancing.

Oh whoops, I knew I was forgetting something. Forgot to add attack telegraphing to the snake boss before releasing the demo, will fix it asap. Scoreboards and extra unlocks for 1cc are definitely going to be a thing, possibly replays too if I manage to figure out how to do it. Thinking very hard about the best way to encourage new players to go for a 1cc in general. The fuel bar just a timer to keep you going, "borrowed" the whole system from Out Zone. Seems like most people don't really get it, so I'll scrap it for a normal timer. Thanks for the feedback!

This is pretty great, excited to see where you take it. Love the visual style, the projectiles look especially cool. Homing missles and grenade launcher sound and feels awesome. The "air strike" weapon is a very interesting idea too. The weapons do need a lot of balancing, though. The purple lasers deal pitiful damage. Machine gun's upgrade seems to make it weaker. Homing missiles are surprisingly not very effective against flying enemies because they can't catch up. Grenade launcher and "air strike" seemed to be the most effective. Also the little rocket jump you can do with the grenade launcher is awesome. Enemies feel bullet spongey too since they don't react when getting shot and have quite a lot of HP. Movement overall feels really good, though I was wishing that the game would allow me to cancel the dodge roll into a jump.

Decided to record a video since I didn't do it yesterday. Collision bug 7 minutes dicked me out of my prize.  I say go the Nuclear Throne route and make the shakes/pause adjustable or toggleable, that will please everyone.  Also another thing regarding visibility, the gears/chips have a habit of getting lost in the clutter, making them more visible would help.

Thanks man! That's a good suggestion, but I ended up making it so that you down-dash if you press jump mid-air, I think that should be even easier to do.  Do you have any comments regarding the difficulty of level 1? Quite interested in hearing about it.

Thanks man! Good to know that the tutorial was clear, thought I worded some stuff awkwardly.

This is good stuff, very fun. Played it and had a blast. But then I got eye cancer from the screen shake and flashing. I think the pause when you hit enemies is excessive.  Shooting enemies point-blank with the assault rifle turns the game into a slideshow and throws off my movement.

Enemy bullets could use more contrast, and they could use some attack indicatiors because those bullets really come out fast outside of
slow-mo. The ripple effect when entering slow-mo was often disorienting since it reflects the main character and throws off my sense of my own location. The sound of bullets ricocheting all over the level is grating. Sounds in general could use some volume balancing, the sfx volume can be overwhelming. Would be good if there was some indication for when you can start sprinting again after you've already done it once, since there seems to be some kind of cooldown. Movement speed felt too fast to me, and player acceleration too slow. The sprint speed and friction is absolutely nuts, feels like you're ice skating.

1280x720, single screen

Still the same. Maybe it's a problem on my end?

Just tried it out, no effect though

Did a few runs, the video recording is of the last and best one.

The visual style is really nice, but it sacrifices clarity. Enemies and bullets are the same colour which makes it difficult to keep track of certain enemy types when the game gets chaotic. The ghost enemies in particular blended in with the bullets far too often. Not to mention the player and enemy bullets are the same colour. Not a massive problem with the straightforward weapons, but the weapon that shoots out slow moving balls and the modifier that makes your shots break into spirits make everything very hard to read. At one point I got a combination of both and the screen became such a mess that I couldn't see anything. Getting clearer feedback for when you get hit would be nice too since it can be hard to tell in the heat of the moment.

Another visuals-related issue I had is the boss health bar. It's far too large for what it is and has a nasty habit of blocking enemies and their projectiles. Lastly, the camera is awkward. It's not centered on the character so the top left corner is obscured. Having the camera move slightly in the direction you're aiming would be ideal.

The gameplay is pretty fun and addictive, and killing enemies feels pretty nice, especially considering there's no sound effects yet. Though most of the guns are too inaccurate. Anything with any sort of spread just feels like it has nothing to do with my aim or even positioning. Had moments where I shot enemies at nearly point blank range with the spread lightning and some other guns only for all my shots to miss. I know it's a roguelite so rng is to be expected but it's also still an action game, so it's annoying to have that feeling that I have no control over the shooting.  The tentacle pac man boss is tedious. Way too much health for a boss that only has 2 or 3 attacks.

Well shit man, sorry about the technical issues. Setting the sleep margin to 1 fixed the problem for some people, not sure if that will work in your case. I'll work on the visibility.

Thanks for playing! Someone reported this problem before in the threads, not sure what causes it. Can you try setting AlternateSyncMethod to 1 in the options .ini and seeing if that fixes it? I'm honestly not sure if it's my inept programming or something to do with GMS.

On the new level? Yeah it's a bit tougher than the previous one since I didn't spend as much time balancing it. Thanks!

B O O S T   L O V E R   S O L I D A R I T Y

The idea was to have gritty, realistic backgrounds in the vein of Ketsui while keeping foreground objects well saturated. But I'm a bit too inept at mixing colours right now to make it work without looking lifeless. I'll definitely work on the platform visibility, though. Thanks for playing!

Here's a vid, had a glitch that forced me to restart the game at the beginning.  Swinging around feels very nice, gaining speed with the grappling hook is especially satisfying. The ground controls are very stiff, though. Game needs at least a little bit of air control.  Wall running feels too slow, doing it ruins the flow of movement completely. Double jumping feels unresponsive at times, there were moments where I had to tap space multiple times before it decided to do the double jump. May just be an issue with my keyboard, though.

Thanks, happy to hear that you enjoyed it. Practice mode is technically in, but I haven't yet added checkpoint selection to it. So for now it's just a level select with an additional boss rush mode.

Sorry about the control rebinding issue, somehow forgot to test it.  Thanks for the video, going to help me sort out the difficulty curve.

I'll keep that in mind, thanks pal

Thanks man! Crouching is something I've considered a lot (and still am honestly), but I think having the ability to shoot down while moving is more important. Especially since I wanna encourage players to go fast. That's a good point regarding the double tap down attack. There is already an attack  you can do by pressing down+jump whilst mid-air, so I'll just change the controls.

Good to know that the work paid off. I can add it but my control config code is a disgusting mess, is it urgent or just something to keep in mind for next demo?

Here's a quick almost-clear. It's fun. Great presentation all around. The stage 2 theme is sick.

Some issues :

• Life up items spawn inside walls.
• Weird homing shot behaviour when walls are involved.
• Wall turret hitboxes/placement that exacerbates the above point (02:25 in the video).
• Level 2 midboss safe spot.
• Blue missiles are hard to see.

General thoughts :

• The lack of aimed bullets encourages a game of find-the-safespot (of which there are plenty, see level 2) rather than shoot-the-enemy.
• May just be my bad reflexes, but the attacks move too fast, I have a hard time using the shield because of this.
• The first boss' green projectile wall attack has so much RNG that I never know if it'll be near impossible to dodge or easy.
• Didn't find much use for the spread shot, while laser and homing have their own niche and fill it well.
• The bosses are pure memorization, which got really frustrating due to the game's arcade nature. Otherwise they are a highlight, a lot of fun to fight with great, varied movesets. A boss rush/practice mode would solve this issue for me.

Oh shit that's detailed, thanks a lot! Somehow I wasn't even aware of the fuel meter issue, must be fucking blind or something.

Thanks for checking it out! The gamepad support really was half-assed admittedly, I'll get that sorted next time. John Woo'ing IS the intended way but perhaps not right from the get go.

Did anything specific stand out as unpolished? Also regarding the boost, you mean you'd prefer having seperate back/forward boost buttons instead of it being tied to a direction? Might test that idea out, could be fun. Happy to know that you enjoyed it! Love your game btw, hope to see it next demo day.

Thanks for playing pal. It's nice to hear that shit feels good since that's what I focused on. And it does further cement the idea that the midboss' difficulty is too high so I woldn't say it's unhelpful

Oh yeah I know what you  mean now

Neat, thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. You did really well for a first try, and it was helpful. Convinced me that I'll need to rebalance the midboss since everyone has trouble with him, it seems. I'll remember to add d-pad support for the next demo for sure. The fuel's just a timer/scoring item now.

I'll try my best senpai!

Thanks for playing! I'll likely add checkpoints at some point, planning a "story mode" of sorts in addition to arcade mode anyway. Art is definitely my biggest weakness. 

Thanks! They'll be a thing once I add more levels

Thanks for the feedback, man. Autofire is on my to-do list, so that'll be taken care of. Snazzy graphics is the ultimate challenge. What do you mean by short  timer? As in it doesn't shoot enough projectiles per button press?