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It more had to do with the way combinations of controls would interact with each other on the keyboard. I spoke with Vicctre about it and I think we worked through it - some of it was due to playing the game in the way that I would with my own game's control schema.

Honestly, that's not bad at all. Beats what I get for my game.

I played your game, and here are my thoughts on it:

-I think there's a solid idea here. One suggested change I would have is toggling an option to have units either automatically target towers or proceed to the goal.

-Another idea would be to have additional ways to spend upgrade points in between stages in other ways than unlocking new units. I had some extra points that I couldn't use in between matches after unlocking new unit types. I also saw that it said I had 0 upgrade points during battles - is this a bug or are they supposed to be different kinds of points?

-Hotkeys would be nice to have, such as for using the healing spell. I also wanted to be able to disable the music and sound effects while playing.

-The game runs kind of slow for me, but I'm also playing it on a laptop I got in 2017 so it's probably not something to be too concerned about. Still, having the option to reduce graphics settings (e.g no shadows) would be good.

-The dark sword icon against the green Available Units window is really hard to see - it needs to be brighter. Same with other unit types.

-There's a lot of potential to introduce more counterplay between player units and the towers. For example, a special unit that automatically attacks towers adjacent to your units, or one that powers up your units' stats while attacking towers.

-It's not clear how your score is calculated at the end of each match. 

-A way to make the game more fun would be to add additional kinds of challenges for various stages. For example, win a match on wave 2, or win a match without ever healing your units.

-I think you should be able to select groups by double-clicking on one of the units. It was annoying having to use the drag box on units that were actively moving.

-I liked how each stage introduced a new type of challenge to the player. One recommendation I have would be to visually distinguish towers that are out of reach for melee units as opposed to having them look the same as the others. This also applies for any other type of tower.

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The game is obviously very early in development, but there's definitely a good idea here! I didn't see much of an issue with the art given that the game is in the prototype stage, but I assume it will be refined further into development.

If you're still looking for an engine/framework to get started, the best way to get into it is to start with a simple project. You'll gradually acquire the skills and experience you need to work on progressively larger games that will better fit the scope of the kind of game you really want to make.

Congrats on reaching your goal. I've found that posting and engaging with people regularly on the site is a great way to gain followers over time, and you don't even need to ask people either.

Nice, looking forward to trying out the new demo!

Uhh....have you ever played Clicker Heroes? Because this game totally reminds me of that lol. But with that said, I got up to e+22 Force, and here are my thoughts:

-The game has a fair amount of complexity already, and your roadmap already indicates a lot more. Some basic documentation would really help with orienting the player; a guide that the player can reference while playing would be helpful. I didn't know what a lot of upgrades were meant to do. There's a lot of things here (Forge, artifacts, radiance, skills, tournaments, exploration, etc) but virtually no documentation on what they do or why they matter. I think that the game throws way too much at the player right at the start without giving the player a sense of direction.

-Achievements should be written with the words on their own lines rather than just one word that wraps around. Some achievements were also blank even though the UI lists what is needed to earn them. I also noticed that when hovering over achievements near the bottom of the screen, the text is cut off.

-Whenever I clicked on a skill that I gained, clicking it over and over would switch it back and forth between taken and not taken. I also don't know what to do to actually be able to take them - I just had to wait until the Skill button said I could take a skill.

-When exploring a node in one of the regions, progress stops when you switch screens but this isn't the case for many of the other forms of idle progress, such as Force and Wisdom. This should progress when away from the screen to keep it consistent.

-It could just be that the game is still really incomplete, but it never actually felt like I was working toward anything. Once leveling up slowed down and I clicked the achievements, it says I get items - but there's little to any mention of what they do or why they matter. Same thing with the exploration feature - what is the end goal? Why should I do that over something else?

-It feels like the things you are supposed to get are really disjointed. I think there's a lack of focus on what this game is actually supposed to be. This game plays like an idler, but you mention having Metroidvania exploration elements and puzzle solving. How do these ideas cohesively fit together with what your game currently is? I got the impression that the things you can earn over time are meant to go to some other mechanic that hasn't been implemented yet.

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My overall impression is that you're trying to put in all of these different things together with little overarching vision of how they're all supposed to tie into a final product. Since this game looks like an idler, focus what you've got on a singular goal that the player can quickly identify and work towards. 

That's what Clicker Heroes does - the only goal is to keep beating waves of bosses, with every 10th wave acting as a check point. The game's additional mechanics are slowly rolled out over time, but all of them focus on that single goal - beat more enemies. The point is to go as high as you can go - there's no other purpose. Everything the game introduces is explicitly tied to that goal, and this occurs over time to ease the player into the many ways you can make yourself stronger to beat more enemies. The way your game currently stands, there's lots of buttons to click but no sense of purpose behind doing any of it. The lack of documentation really doesn't help with all that.

v0.041 has been released! The elf has been added in a playable race, offering numerous bonuses and enhancements to your spellcasting power! Also included is a fullscreen mode, an option to show damage taken by the player, QoL improvements, bug and sprite fixes, and more! A full list can be found here, as well as an option to download the .exe of the newest build: https://bynary-fission.itch.io/battle-tower-royale/devlog/704022/v0041-released-... 

I also made some balance changes throughout, so any feedback on how the game feels and plays would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for playing it! I've been trying to iron out that glitch for a while, looks like I still have some more work to do. Glad you liked it!

I love being able to talk to other game developers and see what other people are working on. I'm glad to be a part of this community!

Thanks!

3D graphics require more work and (very arguably) artistic skill. My experience with doing 2D (specifically pixel) art is that it has a much lower floor than other art styles. Using small and stylized sprites doesn't require you to understand anatomy and composition nearly the same way as making a fully rendered 3D model. For artists who are just starting out and want to make artwork for their game but aren't particularly good at drawing, pixel art is something you can dive into and make relatively quickly. Of course, making really high-quality pixel art still requires a substantial amount of talent and skill.

Plus, the turnaround time is a lot quicker. I am doing all of the artwork for my game, and using pixel art means that I can create and revise artwork much more quickly than if I opted for 3D.

But I grew up on those old NES and SNES games, so admittedly I'm just a sucker for the style.

Great work! I recently did the same for my game, and it's a great feeling finally having it done!

I played your game, and I think there's real potential once you add in different kinds of enemies, weapons, upgrades, and such. An easy way to add some challenge would be to make an enemy that is similar to the one that currently exists, but it shoots bullets at you as well. 

There are ten levels, but they all play identically. I think your demo would be better received if you either cut down on the levels in their current form, or add something to later levels to differentiate them from earlier ones.

I did notice that the controls (when I was able to figure out what they were) state that WASD moves your character around, but when I played the game the arrow keys moved me instead.I would suggest making ENTER a selection key, because when that didn't work I kept pressing random buttons to find the one that did. You could also use the mouse.

I would also recommend that you get rid of the background tiles with the white lines you have in the menu - it makes things hard to read.

I don't care so much for the music, but that's more a matter of personal taste.I envision a more techno-inspired direction given the theme...or maybe you could remix Moon Patrol's theme and really dig into those old-school roots of yours. :)

Good luck with development - it's clear that this game is very early in  development, so I'm sure it will be so much better well after this review is written!

v0.040 has been released! This update adds in the Character Creation screen, which makes it possible to create your own custom characters. You can modify the player's race, add various bonuses, change the starting stats, and pick a starting spell. This has quite an effect on the game's overall balance, so I'm keen on hearing what players have to say about how the game feels and plays with these changes.

The new game can be downloaded as an executable here: https://bynary-fission.itch.io/battle-tower-royale

Just tried this game. There's a ton of potential for this game, and while it's clearly in the very early stages it's obvious there is a lot of love and thought put into this. The only thing I'd really say needs work is the control schema. The art style looks like a three-way lovechild between Plok, Yoshi's Island and Super Mario World. I dig the character designs too!

I always love reading about the thought process developers go through when making changes and design updates. Good luck!

Hey guys, I'm Bynary Fission! I'm currently developing the Action RPG Battle Tower Royale. I'm the sole programmer, artist, animator, writer, and composer for the game. I draw a lot of influence from the Legend of Zelda, Baldur's Gate, and Diablo series in making this game, and it's all wrapped up in an old-school art and sound design. New updates are being made constantly!

I'm glad to be able to meet the rest of you all!

I understand the feeling all too well - I totally stopped development of a demo I made back in 2018, and it was nearly five years before I picked up the pieces and began to remake it into the game I truly envisioned. It might feel tough now, but when you're ready you'll be able to make it so much better than it was before!

For me, pixel art all the way! I spent countless hours as a kid playing old NES and SNES games, and the influence extended even to my music composition, as the stuff I write is all chiptune! My art style isn't an exact 1-1 for the NES, but it is intentionally retro in style and the simple color palettes help to give it that old school look. 

I'll admit that much of my early designs were due to a lack of skill, but as I've gotten better at pixel art it's evolved into my own style that I've grown fond of.

Hey guys,! I compose chiptunes for my games as well as occasional other 8-bit songs for fun. I post all of my compositions in my SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/bynary-fission

My most recent upload is the title theme to my game, and in my opinion probably the best song I've ever written.

Thank you for taking the time to download the game and offer your thoughts! Your comment has made me realize that I need to change the weapon sequence altogether. You are supposed to talk to the weapons merchant a second time, but you're not the the only person who has gotten lost because of it. I am going to get rid of that second conversation altogether and just make it happen the first time, because I really don't want players to get lost at the start of the game. Once you talk to him and get your weapon then the game proceeds smoothly - at that point you can keep progressing through the various stages with minimal interactions.

Definitely noted about the intro sequence - thanks for your thoughts!

Sure, I'll throw my hat in the ring! I've got a fully functional demo of my action RPG, Battle Tower Royale available for play. It's primarily inspired by games like Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, and the old Legend of Zelda games. The demo should provide around 2 hours of content, assuming you talk to all of the characters. You can find the game for download here at no cost: https://bynary-fission.itch.io/battle-tower-royale

P.S If you listen to the whole title theme song, you'll get a visual show to go with it. ;)

I played and downloaded your game, and these are the notes I've got:

-In regards to your title theme, an issue I hear is that you've got the same backing arpeggio playing with no variation while you have a large number of dissonant chords playing on top. The idea itself isn't bad, but the way you have it mixed and arranged it produces clash that doesn't sound dissonant so much as just out of tune in general. I would recommend that your backing arpeggio matches the same intentional lack of tonality you've got going on so that it feels more integrated into the music, as opposed to fighting with it. Atonal music is tough to pull off well, but it can still sound musically coherent when done right (an atonal song I once wrote serves as my point of reference for that statement).

The control scheme could use some work. Pressing LSHIFT to run while having to use WASD to move feels really uncomfortable. I would also recommend that you allow the player to access these controls again  while playing the game so that they can reference what they are, as well as allow players to bind keys as they see fit. I didn't like having to restart my game to return to the main menu to look up the controls each time I forgot something.

Another suggestion for your control scheme would be to have the mouse be context-sensitive. For example, you could make it so that clicking the mouse when a prompt comes up instead does that thing - so instead of pressing E to pick up an item, you can instead point and click to grab it. This would feel more natural than contorting your left hand to press all of the different keys required to perform actions, IMO.

I notice that the ability to fire my weapon was not consistent - I'm not sure if this is a gameplay mechanic, but if it is I didn't see any indicator or timer on the GUI that showed me how long I had to wait in between shots. I kept getting killed by enemies because I wasn't able to fire my weapon, and I'm not really sure why. I found that to be frustrating. I also wasn't a fan of the missed shots while moving. I see why you put that in, but personally I didn't find that to be an enjoyable mechanic. This is exacerbated by the high difficulty of the game starting out. Enemies feel really strong compared to the player's low power level and slow speed at the start, which made me not want to keep playing after dying multiple times.

I'm not sure what morale is supposed to do - I think it would help to explain this at the start, since it appears to be a core mechanic of your game. Same thing with the radar - I read your devlog post on it and loved the mathematical explanation of how you got it to work, but players still need to know what to do with it.

It seems odd that you can't run if your stamina bar is at 50% or below, yet you can still deplete it to 0% if you start running when it's higher than 50%.

I think having some exposition beforehand would really help the player get a sense of why they're doing what they're doing. I can see the missions in the top right-hand corner, but because there isn't an apparent story yet it doesn't get me invested in the gameplay. But your game is still early in development so I'm sure this is something that is being worked on.

The music in the first level feels really grating after a while. I can see that you're using the out-of-tune internals and chords to establish the disconcerting/tense mood of the game, but the near-complete lack of musicality and apparent song structure just make it sound more annoying than anything. 

The 8-bit style graphics should have proper chiptune music to go with it. But I compose chiptunes for NES hardware, so I am very biased in the matter. ;)

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You've got the foundation of a solid idea here. You know your sense of art direction, and I think you're doing a good job setting the mood of the game with the direction you're taking. I like the NES-style graphics, though I did see a few sprites that could use some work (example:  the spiders are the same color as the roads, which makes them really hard to discern - the roads could be made a dark shade of gray to avoid this).

But the game definitely needs work - I didn't find the current gameplay loop to be fun, but that's more due to the current lack of polish than the actual idea itself IMO. I saw that your devlog is updated fairly regularly, so I'm confident that your game will get a lot better in the near future. Keep up the hard work!

This is a great writeup - these are the kind of devlogs I like to read. Keep up the good work!

I'm looking forward to the new demo, and future updates on the game!

No problem - I wish you the best of luck in your development journey!

I gave this a try, and there isn't really enough here to even get a sense of what I'm supposed to do. I'm not quite sure what the genre is even supposed to be - is it a click and point? What is the core gameplay loop? Are the flowers supposed to be harvested on a time limit? Does something happen if I harvest enough flowers?

I'm sure you've got a cool idea in your head, but playing what you have I'm not even sure what that idea is - you only have a single sentence on your page, nor are there any in-game instructions or forms of exposition. "Orders Completed" exists without any context, and there is nothing else that indicates any sort of progression. What I would suggest is that you flesh out what you intend your game to be - this isn't a game so much as a prototype of a single gameplay mechanic. I can't really answer any of your other questions, because there's only enough content to play for maybe a minute at most.

Not gonna lie, this looks just like a Flash game I would have played in middle school for hours while avoiding doing my homework. It looks like it has the potential to be a lot of fun, and I really dig the way the character's line of sight is set up. Good luck with future development, and keep working at it!

Alright, it's time to bump this because a LOT of updates have been made since the last post. I've added the following to the game, several of which address the above poster:

-The control scheme has been greatly simplified - one key now controls dialogue, selection, and attacking. Additionally, key mapping has been implemented, as well as volume sliders for the game's music and sound effects. I have also included a dialogue speed slider and a partially-implemented colorblind setting.

-I have finished composing the game's title theme, and it has been included in this build. Stick around to the end, and watch the title screen change alongside it. 

-Attack animations have been greatly improved.

-Numerous other animation and sprite fixes.

-Small changes to enemies and combat addressing some complaints from earlier. More to follow in future updates.

-The inventory now adjusts so that there are no empty spaces whenever an item is consumed/sold/destroyed. I haven't implemented manual sorting since this is not a widely requested feature, but if it's something a lot of people want I'll put it in.

-Various bug fixes, including the ones mentioned in this thread.

-Lots of additional dialogues appear after level 1-6.

-Substantial internal refactoring - not visible to the player, but it makes adding more content to the game a lot easier in the future.

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This is just what I can remember. This is all included in the newly uploaded v0.030 Alpha build, which can be downloaded here: https://bynary-fission.itch.io/battle-tower-royale

Thanks, man!

Got it, thanks for letting me know!

Thank you so much for playing the game and offering your feedback! The game is supposed to have five main levels plus some end-game content and an infinite mode. I'm designing all of the game's infrastructure now (minus the infinite mode) so that adding more content will be significantly easier going forward.

That's actually a really good point about having context-sensitive keys. I don't know why I didn't consider that before, even when I was thinking that the controls were a bit cumbersome. The other points are all valid too, and I'll be sure to consider them as I refine the game further.

The crash you reported was fixed in the 0.014 build, as somebody else had caught that as well. But good point about the electric barrier - I'll be sure to address that.

Hey guys! I recently released the alpha of an action RPG that I've been working on. This is my first time seriously designing a game, and I know that no matter how confident I feel in the product, there are things that can be improved and made better. I would love it if some of the people in this community could take a look at the game and offer their thoughts, good or bad.

https://bynary-fission.itch.io/battle-tower-royale