I had a lot of fun playing this game. The chaotic art style works really well. I really think you should try and turn this into a full game, it's got something special about it.
I had to stop early since the swaying was going to give me motion sickness. I think that the way you swing the bat is going to cause problems for people who play this for a long time. Otherwise I think you should make the main menu not cause when you go into options and the options background need to be darker for contrast.
If most of the development is still being done with later game systems or content that's fine, but I really think you should be working out what the quality standard of your final product is going to look like. There's a lot of low hanging fruit with visual feedback and verbal feedback that prevented me from enjoying the demo. It's better than DD54, but I was hoping for more polish by this point.
The game gave me motion sickness so i wasn't able to give it a fair shot. But the sound design needs a lot of work and you should probably make tutorial areas brain dead easy. I tried to putt, got into putt mode and didn't know how to actually swing. I think doing 1 level per mechanic would help get rid of a lot of initial confusion.
You have a solid base but it's going to need a lot of polish so be careful with adding too much content to it if you want to wrap this game up within the next 2 years. It also gave me motion sickness so a FOV slider would be appreciated.
Great 8-bit art, but the earthbound like UI in other areas is pretty jarring. A bit of story to explain the 'why' of the game goes a long way as well. The character Collison is also too big. I kept getting stuck on doorways trying to get through. Another problem is that I didn't feel like i had much incentive to kill enemies so i just skipped past them. I realized i got gold but why take the risk when my health is limited. Also a glitch at the end where the bunny boss remained white.
I see what you're going for. A real issue is how the camera is completely tied to the mouse movement. I think you want to look at how other games have done it and copy which one you think works the best. the 1:1 sensitivity is too much.
I just added a QoL update where reading something that takes up the screen (Books & the Door Note) will now pause the timer. So you're now you're able to take your time with reading those books rather than having to fit it within the 60 second cycle.
Unfortunately 90 seconds would allow you to brute force through the puzzles.
I think a jump would be cool. It would quite literally add another dimension to the combat. Still working out exactly what I want out of this game. The demo is only like 2 weeks of dev so plenty of changes can be done.
The visuals are extremely well done but the gameplay seems pretty generic for a Metroidvania. I think there a number of missing sound effects and impact needed for a bunch of enemies. I would also look at keeping track on which enemies died on each floor and only respawning them after a number of rooms or if you save. The immediate respawns made killing them even less satisfying to deal with. The biggest issue i have is with the camera. It's quite jolty and the tiny micromovements it does gives me motion sickness. I would have played a lot more if it wasn't for that.
There's something decent here but I got stuck. This will be a high effort improvement but I think you need to give the player a couple more easy wins as you introduce mechanics. The first section is good but the 2nd section has a lot of new things thrown at you in fairly rapid succession and it felt overwhelming. I'm not going to pretend like i know what the answer is but I would have liked a simpler puzzle to solve and the 2nd puzzle. Like maybe you solve a quick mystery for the gardener in order for him to help you out. The cogitative requirement just escalates a too much.
The game has a lot of soul and i really do like the vibe. But i have a lot of frustrations with the controls and I got pretty mad at the end. The fish enemies that spawn, give you zero time to react as they spawn just underneath the bridge. The rat chase sequence could do with a bit of forgiveness. I found out you could get the game to fullscreen around the end of my play through. Controller support is a must. ZXC + arrow keys feel awful to play with.
There are some people who manage to get all the crashes :( . I managed to fix the black out screen crash you got last demo day. That was unfortunately a Godot issue with subportviews & 100 different conditions that made a vulkan error occur. I got no idea what could be causing the crash this time. I'll have a play around and see if there is anyway i can repeat it.
Always appreciate your feedback. I'll do additional play testing to see if i can fix the black out and see if it's repeatable. The Soothing Mist crash is likely something i can repeat.
I'll look at addition ways to make it clear that passive mode is on. There are dancing flags around the party members, I'll probably add another flag as it seems like a lot of people miss it.
The micromanagement is going to be a flavour in the game. The game has been designed around controlling your party so adding in smart allies would undermine many different mechanics and ideas that have already been implemented. I think that overall this is the right call but I know that it's going to be a divisive mechanic.
On the overall release front, the next 2.5 months are basically all about improving the main issues you brought up in the bottom paragraph. If Healed To Death flops in the April release, I don't think delaying it until an July/August release is going to change that outcome. I can understand how the opposite could be true for different people, but when I consider my own skill set and the other person i'm working with, an April release is the best scenario.
I'm trying to get a release out for April so only some of your feedback can be actioned (some of it already is). I'm definitely going to be redoing the prologue before release. The output from the artist is way behind schedule so i've readjusted the plan to try and make sure that the game can release with some enemy variety though it's largely just going to be skeletons, ghosts and ghouls using the rigs and animations of player/party member models. Not super happy about it but I'm fairly committed to an April release so I'll just have to accept what I get.
I thought i had fixed all cases of the black screen bug. i'll look into it. Frustrating that it did that. I've changed the text to revive & i've fixed the party placement issues so thanks for reporting. For the camera turn part, left click turns the camera and right click turns the player. I'll do some changes in the tutorial to make that clearer.
Q and E are way too useful to be wasted on a mostly useless action people will do with the mouse anyway. Consider changing the default keybinds
Honestly i'll probably do that. I wanted to give people the option for tank controls but I'm probably better off forcing people to use right mouse button to turn as the default.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm really happy that people are finally beating the first level. I've had to nerf it a lot as i think you're the 2nd person besides me who has beaten the demo.
I got baited into buying shield bash
I just got an idea of how i could help nudge you into knowing it can't be bought. I'll see if making a red outline and a couple other things can help prevent this in the future.
arcane magistrate's abilities is really generous
I know but it has to be this way for the first area. The game is extremely difficult for most people as there's about 15 things going on and their brain is just overwhelmed. Greater challenges will be present in the full game. I am thinking about adding a hard mode version of the game as some point but i'd probably only do it as a patch 1.1 thing if the game got sales.
The library could use a section on the various available characters
100%. I want to have various books that let's you explore the various mechanics of the game. I'll get this done for the next Demo Day.
I get that metaprogression can be fun but when presented with a flat stat boost players might feel like they're trivializing the game by getting those upgrades or that they're supposed to grind for them if they're struggling.
It's a fair criticism and you've nailed the intent. I think a lot of people struggling will need that extra carrot on a stick as a bit of relief from a pure 'git gud' mindset. Especially if they can't quite conceptualise what they are doing wrong and why they are bad. I understand this will water down the game for people who want a purely 'git gud' experience. It's a trade off without a clear right answer but overall I think that have some meta progression is healthier for the game a whole. The costs of upgrades scale up quite quickly to hopefully discourage people from grinding and instead it just feels like a passive bonus they get while playing the game.
There's no reason to show outdated upgrades in the healer's spellbook, also upgrades should probably be sorted by spell rather than written down in the order you get the upgrades.
Agreed.
I stacked crit chance and got the extra crit upgrades for instant heal and it was hard to tell when spells critted in the chaos, I'm pretty sure that there's a sound clue but maybe the numbers could be of a different color as well, maybe a lighter green or gold? There's a lot of numbers flying around so just making them slightly bigger is not very clear.
I'll play around with how crits show again as I would like them to stand out.
I really hope to get more enemy variants in the game as well. The timeline on art has been a bit of a disaster. Will see what can be done within the next 3 months.
Some decent level design but the soccer ball mechanic isn't very intuitive. I would like it if the companions would automatically climb the ladder and jump off with me when my 'follow me' state is on. I went into this game confused about what the story was about. I have somehow left even more confused.
Thanks for playing. It's good to know that the game was beatable by people other than me. Do you have experience in MMOs?
Also you don't need the map, they just guide you to the exit. The failure of this is being teleported to the boss room. Which isn't really a failure but you do miss out on additional soul fragments and a 5% damage and healing buff for you and your party. I may buff this to also reduce damage taken by 5%.
Not sure if i want to add a debuff for failure or if missing out of the upside is enough of a failure.
After the artist is done finishing all of the character models, new enemy models will be done to replace the skeletons. This will probably happen in 2025 though.
I am genuinely enjoying this game: here is part 2. I plan on finishing the demo so expect a part 3.
Things of note: There is a module in the messy room and a security desk where where i feel like i could jump over it IRL but because i can't jump in game I have to go around. It's a bit immersion breaking. I think you need to add some glass or some addition barriers to really sell the fact that you have to go around. The environment should tell me what I can do rather than having to focus on the limitations in the game mechanics.
There is a small gap between a water tile in the sewers.
The pallets (the wooden things) are a too low res even for your game, it breaks the otherwise fairly consistent art style.
The sewers are a bit too labyrinth and samey. It could benefit from some hall marks.
There is a large flesh thing in one of the offices i wasted a bunch of bullets on and wasn't able to kill it. Everything in the game indicates that i should be able to kill it after wasting 12 or 18 shots, I decided it wasn't worth it. Not sure what your intention is but I feel tricked into wasting so much ammo.
