It ramps up a lot faster than mine, but the player in mine isn't the overpowered one so it makes sense.
I feel the "tutorial" screen at the beginning is largely pointless. The layout of your buttons and UI is intuitive enough that one can infer what everything does fairly quickly.
The equipment is probably the weakest aspect of your game. I don't mean from how many clicks it gives you, but from a design perspective. They're pretty much inferior, cooldown restricted clicks. Even if you were to balance how many clicks you get with the basic click ability, the current equipment would be a missed opportunity. I think that only one of them should be purely "activate and get lots of gold" and it should be a substantial amount of gold gained. For the other equipment I would like to see mechanics that change or influence the game in other ways. For example, activate to go into overdrive mode and double your clicking potential for a short amount of time.
I think you did well with the time we had though, and I can't blame you for the decisions made. 72 hours is not a lot of time.
Simple yet fun. I think I have a skill issue cuz I couldn't beat it. I did make it to 7 seconds left tho. The addition of the near miss system adds a lot to the simple formula. Being able to aim for a high score adds some replayability as well.
My one gripe is that you have to listen to the dialog every single time. Thankfully it can be skipped quickly, but seeing it no matter how many times I retried was mildly annoying.
Personally, I'm not a fan of arrow key movement, despite this I really enjoyed the game. The premise is simple, but executed well, and the final boss was a lot of fun to fight against. I really like the gun being used for vertical movement as well. I could see this type of character working in a metroidvania, where unlocking a specific gun or upgrade could allow the gun to launch you upwards in order to reach new areas.
Really love the aesthetic and had a lot of fun playing!
One thing I would change is to add acceleration to the movement, doesn't have to be slow to accelerate either, in fact this game would work well with a fast acceleration. It would feel really nice in my opinion. Going from 0 to max speed in one frame makes it feel jittery and prevents micro adjustments. I used it in my game if you want a point of reference to compare how it feels. (Maybe hard to see somewhat due to moving camera tho)
I was really hoping to push the gameplay even further, so that it's not purely a sit there and click incremental game, but would incorporate movement for increasing damage output. But that was a bit ambitious for 72 hours haha.
Wish I could claim having made the art/music, but I'm not talented enough in those departments. At least I can say that I chose which ones to use well enough.
I'm eternally grateful to the Crab God of Death for gracing my game with a fraction of his true power.
Animation canceling, that makes sense. I tend to spam my attack button lol.
I agree that something should discourage getting right on top of your opponent, and contact damage works, but doesn't necessarily need to be the solution. For example, could be a quick kick that has high knockback and stun.
I still think making your character always facing your opponenet could help alleviate getting too close on accident, because you won't have to walk towards your opponent in order for your attack to be aimed in the correct direction.
Something else I thought of that could help is to make movement have acceleration. Doesnt have to be alot, just enough to not be 0 to 100 in one frame. Especially when your speed stat is higher, having a few frames where you're not at max speed could be helpful for micro adjusting your spacing.
Really impressive considering the time constraint! You said this was a demo, does that mean you are planning a full release?
I understand we had limited time, so take these suggestions as things to potentially add in the future rather than a critique of what's lacking.
Various sound effects for the obvious reasons of having feedback for what's happening.
For visuals, I'd recommend having damage numbers show up whenever damage is dealt. Also, would be nice to either have healthbars visible at all times on each unit or show up when hit. If not that then have the HUD show the portrait and healthbar of the units engaged in battle. Anything that'll give me real time update on current health and damages being dealt, really.
Better indication of what powerups actually are doing.
Have the selection outline only highlight the top face of the block rather than all the edges that would be visible to the camera. It's really difficult to know exactly which block I'm selecting with the current outline (same goes for the movement and attack block outlines).
I love turn-based tactics so I'm interested to see how this game develops!
A cool concept that may have started reaching for the rage deep in my heart. I struggled ALOT with the final stretch of the game (where there's two columns of horizontal platforms with a large space in the middle) and to make it worse, I messed up on the very last jump before being free and had to start that section all over again.
The art and music are great tho! And the mechanics vaguely reminded me of rocket hopping in Halo 3.
The only suggestion I can really give this would be to add a "shots fired" counter. Could make for a cool way to encourage replaying it while trying to one up your friends.
Really enjoyable and overflowing with style! Like seriously, I love the aesthetic and the art is superb.
Honestly only a couple of things are holding this game back in my opinion. Here are some suggestions that I think would make for a more fulfilling experience:
Make it so that simply touching the boss does NOT hurt you, early on I thought its attack was triggering a jank hitbox until I realized I was dying cuz I barely touched it. I'm sure this was implemented to make one pay attention to their spacing, but it felt more unfair than anything.
The previous issue wouldn't be as bad with my next two suggestions if you wanted to keep the damage on touch. Firstly, make it so that the player character is always facing the boss, there's no utility in turning away from the enemy and makes it harder to space your attacks (also, it wouldn't make sense in a real combat scenario to turn your back on the enemy, which is more of a nitpick since it's a video game but seems appropriate for this type of game).
The other suggestion that could alleviate my first issue is to make the player's attacks more consistent, or more visually telling of why I missed. I had several times where it just seemed like I was raising my sword but not attacking. I'm assuming it's a spacing issue but maybe I just don't know how the controls actually work? If so that's my bad.
Maybe a small indication of how much health you have left?
Controlling the tank felt extremely nice, and it is the perfect shade of pink.
Mowing down zombies hasn't felt this fun in awhile!
It's a little unclear what counts as an event that unlocks upgrades, it felt like I just randomly obtained new weapons.
Would be nice if there were special attacks (costing either nitro or be on a timer) that had a big impact to really drive the overpowered feel over the edge.
Despite being overpowered with the later upgrade, I still managed to lose. Not sure if it's skill or a skill issue lol.
Was fun, well done!
Only thing that I think really needs improvement is the hitboxes because there were times where I definitely touched a bullet but didn't take damage, and others where it looked like I avoided a bullet but still took damage. Not sure how programming with Pico-8 is so maybe it's due to the limitations of the engine.
I think most of the difficulty comes from the (in my opinion) rough readability. As in, it's hard to tell what is actually happening and what you need to do in order to overcome the negative things happening to you. Even after getting a little more used to it I still had trouble keeping track of things.
There were also times where it felt like my number 1 ability was not clearing out the error 404s.
Another suggestion I have would be to change the pause button to be more accessible to the hand on the WASD keys, since there is utility to pausing and taking time to move away from the mouse or movement keys doesn't feel very conducive to the gameplay.
This was still a cool concept and was well executed in the time we had. Well done!
I know the time restraint was a huge limiting factor, so take these suggestions as potentially something to add in the future if you work on it any more.
Make the punch animation snappier, especially after the final powerup, and make it animate in the direction you punch. As it is, it's hard to tell that the direction you click is important for hitting enemies.
Add a chunky punch sound effect on final powerup. Would be oh so satisfying.
I think I won? I couldn't find anymore enemies after a certain time, but I don't know if it was meant to be endless or not, some sort of indication if it's not meant to be endless could help.
The zoom out effect felt unnecessary to me and made it hard to tell who was who. Just tuning it down so it doesn't zoom out quite as far would probably be enough.
The +100 squats is INSANELY overpowered and if you get that round 1 you are good for the rest of the game. Same with twice the animation speed. Overall simple, yet enjoyable.
You misunderstood the healthbar, that's my bad for not making it clear. It gives you the ability to see the enemy's giant healthbar. Sorry for the confusion, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Trackpad definitely isn't ideal for the original vision I had (more movement and having to adjust which direction you attack, which would validate the need to walk up and start swinging too).
This game is a banger for sure. I think I'm bad at bullet hells tho because I can't make it very far (partly due to losing my character in the particles). Not sure of what PICO 8 limitations are and if you could even make it so the player ship stands out more.
Otherwise, the visuals just feel right and satisfying. Well done.
I may have gone overboard on the cost increase curve haha. I wanted to add movement based upgrades to alleviate the feeling of just standing in one spot clicking endlessly.
The Death Crab only has 100,000 health... totally doable eventually. The real issue is that I don't know if you can buy all the upgrades before the crab dies with how expensive they get. I think having more multipling damage upgrades would make the later purchases feel like bigger increases for sure.
As you said, it does take some time to get used to the movement. I think making the movement feel better and adding a few more features would allow this game to really shine.
Overall, I liked it. It's enjoyable early on but interest fades fast.
The arm's artstyle feels so out of place (maybe that was the intention), but I think a simple to implement solution is to make the entity shapes not filled in. Or in other words, just outlines. That way the lineart of the arm matches a little more. Maybe in actuality that would cause the arm to blend in too much, would need testing.
I know things are supposed to increase in difficulty, but the powerups don't make enough of an impression or make the later game feel any different. An unfortunate consequence to this is that I lose the feeling of being an overpowered arm slingshot of death as time goes on.
You are 100% correct, innovation really screwed my last game jam (which had WAY more time to work on it lol). The limited time also squashed some of the more innovative ideas I had for this project. At least I have "number go up."
The art is thanks to Kenney.nl free assets, but at least I can take credit for gamefeel!!!
Would be cool to see more than just beams as difficulty increases, tho.
I like the artstyle and music too!
I'm torn on the black character on the black background. It gives it visual style as it passes in front of the god, but if you're at the edges you miss out on the animation.
If you do go about fixing it, perhaps instead of a adding a background, you have a faint, colored outline that follows the player (but put it on a layer behind the god so it only shows up when in a dark area).
Overall an enjoyable short experience! Definitely felt overpowered with the screenshaking lasers, well done.
Only thing I can say that needs some improvement is the rate at which you become overpowered. It was MUCH too easy. Basically, I let my stone take a bunch of damage before spamming the powerup button, never moved my flag, and still won.
I too wasted most my time just trying to make the systems work haha.
I'll update my game after August 2nd, but I've added daggers as a two tile activate, and now both horizontal and vertical lines can activate for all weapons. Also added a card that can destroy an enemy tile.
I've tested some new mechanics post upload and have added a card that can destroy an enemy tile. After Shovel finishes the winners video I'll upload what I've dabbled with.
The tile lock idea is interesting. I've been considering having the tiles be persistent anyways and i could see the lockdown even working with that in order to delay a grouping that would normally activate in order to combo more things.
Seems we both attempted to do card UIs that we've never done before and payed the price in terms of how much our vision was realized. Solidarity.
I do like the idea you're going for tho! Seems like it could be a really cool auto-battler! I knocked an enemy outside the map on the final level and couldn't beat it RIP.
I know you're aware of the issues but I'm just stating them so I can present my ideas on how to help with them:
One of the biggest problems currently is the lack of agency the player has on the actual gameplay. That is, I felt like I was just watching things happen. The one obvious one is to have more cards and ways to build out the deck. Another possible idea is to have an "active ability" that either initiates a special attack, gives a buff for a duration, or enhances played cards. My other idea is to replace the automatic card selection with making manual selections that go into a queue. Once in the queue, they will activate in the order that they were put into it. They cannot be reordered or removed once in the queue, so it takes planning to execute the cards you want in the order you want. I can't remember if potions activated immediately or during combat, but would be better to have them activate immediately I think.
Another issue is the UI tends to get in the way (especially for things below the character). The idea I have for this is to make the card area be "sectioned off." Either the bottom or side of the screen (both?). Meanwhile, have the game area its own contained viewing area to where the card UI does not overlap it and then center the character in that area.
Various smaller ideas: attack speed attribute (affects how quickly cards are used during combat). draw speed attribute (how quickly the bar fills to draw card). Draw card on enemy kill (independent of the draw speed bar) .
That's all I can think of at the moment. Looking forward to if you continue working on this idea!
Amazing. Don't know if you've played the game Lemmings but your game reminds me of it in some ways. Last few levels had a nice difficulty level.
Something that bugged me was when trying to redo a level that required a very specific placement of food I had to redo it a couple of times if I didn't get it lined up just right. One way I could see this being fixed is an indication of where a food item was when it was eaten on the previous run. (Like just a little half transparent burger/bean/etc. at the exact grid spot). That way I could redo what I did last time quickly while being able to adjust slightly as needed.
I found that some levels could be completed using less guys/food than it gave me, so something that could encourage replaying levels would be to have statistics, for example, how many guys ended up being used or how many food items were left over. Maybe assign point values to each to aim for a high-score.
Nicely done! Was fairly easy in terms of puzzles but that's understandable considering the jam timeline. Might be worth looking into preloading particle resources when the game first loads to reduce lag at runtime.
I guess it depends on the type of game loop you're aiming for, but I think being able to move the camera before launching the ball could allow you to plan ahead. But if you were going for a more exploratory/reactive experience then I'd say it's fine as is.
I didn't realize you could interact with objects while the ball was moving at first but maybe I didn't read the instructions well enough.
I don't know about having more than one way to solve some of the puzzles (especially when one path is alot easier), it kinda makes it feel pointless for the other path to exist. But again if the exploration type of game loop is what you're going for then might not be so bad, maybe even lean into it more so it's not immediately obvious that one route is the better route.
