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I have push an update with the infinite loading bug fixed, and the difficulty toned down.

v0.3.4.81.

Enjoy.

Thanks for your feedback.
Yeah a lot of people are struggling with the difficulty, I'm going to apply a fix today to make it easier with less spawners, also has that loading fix, so everyone can play, you're correct about the doors I'm also going to fix them, you're supposed to glide past not get caught.

The breakable objects hiding enemies I'll leave in for now, not sure what I'll do with them yet, I might change how the destruction works on it a little so the roof crumbles revealing them, but that requires a bit of time.

An unintended side effect is that if you destroy something it pushes everyone away if you're hit by debris, when I do a pass on those destructible objects I'll have it so they damage enemies/yourself, which is something that I need in now that I think of it.

Thanks again for giving it a bash, it means a lot

I see, I think maybe you need to have that main screen to the left say "All cards" or something as simple as that, in between the deck and the cards you could have an arrow that points right too, that would help a lot.

I'm not sure how much of my feedback was helpful, they're just thoughts as I was playing, hopefully it's in a style of a todo list.

I have played the game and given feedback here: 

Ok, upon further testing I can confirm I've replicated the issue on my little brother's laptop, it's strange because my parents PC has no GPU and works.

I'm going to see what i can do in the next week to try and solve it.

Well now that's strange, did you try clicking start with the mouse?

Thanks for playing, this is some good feedback, I'm glad the menu animations and aesthetics haven't annoyed people yet.

The SFX are something thrown in, I'm agreeing with you that some are a bit annoying, I do have a random pitch set to most things, if you could tell me which SFX it is, I could have a look at it and maybe change the place holder when I do another pass on the SFX (I still need to add in door SFX .etc)

I'm glad it was easy enough to pickup and play, it means I'm doing some things right with the design, I'm gald you can see some potential with it, and it's not just me.

There's only 1 mode available at the moment, so there's not a lot of content but I'll get that sorted in the coming months, now that I have a bunch of ground work sorted.

When you say the difficulty ramped up, when did it ramp up for you? Floor #2? or mid way through floor #1? if it's floor #2, then that's good, as I mentioned to Mayo that's a good indication of things working, the difficulty curve is easy enough to fix, I was going to do each floor as 10%, but I wanted to really ramp it up to the extreme to see how people go on each of the floors.

If it was mid way through floor 1 I might reduce the spawner amount and tie them to the floors difficulty (difficulty 1 starts with 3 spawners, difficulty 20 has 12 spawners but then the difficulty for the floor will increase x1.10), I'm more or less getting a feel for things at the moment, next DD I'll increase it to 10 floors and let people go down further, right now it's 3 floors, which is easier to test and gives me an idea for balance.

I also have a few more questions:
Did you use the dash? How did that feel?
Did you find the style of music out of place? or it was fine?
Did you use keyboard and mouse or gamepad?
What was your average FPS? Do you know your PC/Laptops specs?

I've added your feedback to my notes, thanks again for giving it a bash.

Thanks for playing, this is some good insight, I'm glad you like how it's presented, people tend to find it great and not annoying which I feel is a difficult thing to do.

When you say the difficulty ramps up too quickly, when did you feel this exactly? Was it the sudden jump on floor #2? or part of the way through floor #1?

If it's floor #2 then that's perfect, that give me some idea of balance, default ship with no upgrades works till current damages x2, floor 3 is supposed to be stupidly hard, I want to get a feel for what people say about it, also it's good to see the difficulty working, I threw that in yesterday.

The entities they should be turning red for taking damage and blue if they have a shield, but I think they might need a healthbar, I'll add one in and see if it provides too much visual clutter, for next time, at least start with that, since your thoughts are the same as mine.

With the ship creator coming next DD, the enemies will be using the same system, so I'm thinking of instead of healbars they will show damage, you shoot their gun and it breaks off, that's what this new system will be able to do, so I'm hoping this resolves this problem,.

The reloads were on the actionbar before they broke, but I'm not really a fan of the actionbar, I'm thinking I might have a timer around the cursor that appears when it's reloading, or some text above the ship, it might not need a bar, when I get this ship creator in I'll look at adding weapon animations in that will help with the visual cue, I want some juice with that, I'm a big fan of some shmexy weapon animations.

I also have a few more questions:
Did you use the dash? How did that feel?
Did you find the style of music out of place? or it was fine?
Did you use keyboard and mouse or gamepad?
What was your average FPS? Do you know your PC/Laptops specs?

I'm thinking I might add some pictures to the starting room to display how it works, I also need to change that text to suit gamepad or keyboard and mouse, depends what you have selected.

I've added your feedback to my notes, thanks again for giving it a bash.

Will check it out when I rise from my slumber

Known Bugs/Feedback:
+ Boss attack patterns need a bunch of work and polish
+ Player GUI should hide while cinematic is going during boss
+ Add a bar for boss shield
+ Gamepad support for X-Box and Playstation
*11/11/2025*
+ Updated to v0.2.2.62

"-In the mode selection menu, it's not obvious you have to hover your cursor over the back button to put the game disk model down since it's occluded by the game disk model. Maybe make the game disk model be put down when your cursor isn't over it anymore instead?"
That's a good point actually, I'll add it to a todo list, but it won't be for a bit yet, when I add more content to the menus I'll give this another pass, I also need to add in the logic to deselect when the mouse is off a button, which is a bit of a pain because then I ruin the function for the keyboard/gamepad menu selection, I might have to only deselect if there's mouse movement selected.

"-P/ESC should also close the pause menu but I had to click a button"
I've got this sorted in the next version.

"-Space to dash is not listed in the tutorial"
You're correct on that, I fixed it up for th next version

"-dash kind of functions oddly where you always dash towards your cursor, but if you press the opposite direction it seems to shift the added velocity towards the direction sometimes?"
Yeah I noticed that too, it a bit buggy, I'll add that to me todo list

"-It's very easy to get stuck to terrain and walls while moving around the rooms. This can make navigating areas a bit frustrating."
I've just fixed this, the collisions a sphere now as someone suggested, it allows wall sliding, it'll be fixed next version.

"-Freezing the character on entry to every room feels very bad. I'd rather you let me move around until the enemies spawn instead."
I'm working on improving the room transition logic to be more fluid, it's got a few logical issues with it right now.

"-You get a freeze even when entering old rooms you've cleared enemies out of. That feels mega bad."
I agree with you on this, it's super annoying, I'll fix it when I go and do a room transition pass

"-Enemies often get stuck on their spawner and just shoot out from it at you. This can make it sometimes difficult to realize whether you've cleared a room yet or not as some end up being occluded by the geometry above them in their spawner."
That will be fixed with the next AI pass.

"-The razer boss that I fought needs more telegraphing before he dashes around or at you. It seemed exceedingly random how he moved."
The AI for him is not really finished, it's just got basic logic, but all of that is linked with the AI, which I'll fix when I go and do a pass on that.

"-I don't know if there's an end to the second dungeon, but I went through a ton of rooms without finding a boss. For the time being, since there's only one enemy type, I think the room count can be cut down."
I experienced this before I was submitting, I really need that map or an arrow to hint at what way to go, it confused me and I hated it.

EDIT: Also FYI, There's unlimited levels, they're just generated upon starting the level, it just generates things that are too large without a map, I failed to mention that.

"-There is some funky stuff going on on the side of the screens running the game on my ultrawide monitor."
That has been fixed for next version.

"-There was some terrain I could shoot through in certain rooms."
I'll get that sorted when I fix up the AI, for now it's sort of a feature since the AI doesn't have navigation brains.

(The two spaceship models were pretty cute. I'm more of a Ship_02 man myself.)
You know what I realized? People like the graphics and haven't said it's terrible or annoying, that's appreciated.

Thanks for giving it a bash, I'll have those fixes in soon enough, I'll release a patch later today with those few annoying things fixed so people can enjoy themselves a little more, I'm just checking out the room transition seeing if I can quick fix it to be less annoying.

"If you are holding a diagonal direction against a wall i think you should slide along it rather than get stuck there. This in particular makes the game's movement feel buggy because modern games generally don't ever get stuck like this these days."
Yeah this is currently a bug I'm fixing, it's annoying as hell to me.

"Enemy projectiles feel too fast to reliably dodge and they shoot the moment you're allowed to move on a new screen, this feels very bad. They also surround you then prevent you from moving. It was interesting after i noticed spacebar allowed me to escape these situations but that ability also feels a bit overpowered, not really sure."
Those projectiles were tweaked when the ship was faster, I might slow them down a bit, I have to fix that transition so things are a bit more fair, currently that transition feels a bit broken (Player ends up too far in the next scene), the space bar is a dash which is one of the more "melee" type of weapons I was fiddling with, I'm planning on adding in upgrades and abilities so you can play a few different styles, people's feedback has been great here.

"Enemies can sometimes shoot through walls, in one example they were stuck in their own spawn rooms in the middle of the map while shooting at me through a barrier and i couldn't see them. They often got stuck in there sometimes and i was going around checking the spawn bays for enemies to try to finish the level."
Yeah, the AI has no sort of brain about them to navigate object yet, I sort of but the ground work in and moved on to another system, I'll be fixing on a more priority, as people keep telling me about it.

"I feel like the game is too generous with health because the enemy difficulty is too high. I'm facetanking and not getting punished for it, but i don't have much of a choice."
I hear ya, it's sort of the only choice I've got till I put in more content.

"I want to hold down mouse 1 and keep shooting but i need to click again for every projectile, this will cause RSI and is just generally uncomfortable."
This was more a test of the abilities, I have the code there to swap this, I might do that for this next patch since people requested this as a problem.

"Overall the dominant feeling of the game right now is "I am getting stuck on everything" including map borders, geometry mid map, and even enemies."
That was my personal feels as well when I was testing it, it's got quite a few annoyances that I'm fixing, glad to have the same view as everyone else here, thanks for giving it a bash.

Thanks for freedback

• The accelerated movement feels bad. It feels like I'm ice skating, that combined with the small levels with blocking objects makes you hit the walls constantly
  

I'm hoping to resolve this with some upgrades on the ships abilities allowing tighter controls, the stats are there I just need to fix the shop and a bit of logic for it.

• Shooting is not accurate, I don't know if this is intended and you upgrade your accuracy later.
  

Yeah this is part of the stat system, you can level up 1 of 12 stats that deal with accuracy.

• Having to click every time to shoot in these kinds of games are a bit annoying. Make it so you auto shoot when you hold down the trigger.
  

I have the abilities with the capability for that, I do know gauntlet mode will have auto shoot toggling, I might try that for the mouse.

• Enemies some times get stuck in their spawn location and they stay there and shoot so you can't see them
  

I'll fix up the AI with the boss AI too

• I feel like the enemies are bit too quick in their movement.

Those ones are a bit fast, I did slow down the player I'll have a look into getting slower enemies in.

• Room transitions could be quicker, especially when you go back to rooms you have already completed. Waiting several seconds  just to go back.
  

Yeah it all stems down to the aesthetics, I'll speed them up and see if it's better, it does mean faster gameplay which I'm getting the gist that people prefer.

• Ship selecting menu is too slow
  

It's all about the pain and suffering of watching the pretty graphics, in all seriousness, I might come up with a slightly new design, that being too fast looks a little goofy.

• The boss kills you in two hits with full health
  

Yeah I'll fix him up.

• Boss background is still visible after you quit to the menu after dying to the boss

Unitys non buffer clear I think it was.


Thanks for giving it a bash, I got a solid goal from all this feedback to work towards.

Yeah I get what you mean, there's sort of an aesthetics thing with it when the level moves, and a mechanical reason for it, I'll take another look at it when I improve the level generator.

The enemies get stuck is just general AI improvements.

Thanks.

Ahh yeah nice, I'll have to fix that black border issue, when I redo the window sizing code, thanks, that's really helpful.

"oh yeah if I strafe top-bottom continuously then I am able to stun lock razer blade in the top left corner and he offers no additional difficulty until his health runs out."

His AI system is currently really poor, I haven't manage to fix his AI but, he uses the same system as the other little AI's which I'll do a pass on in the coming weeks, on top of fixing his attacks, I currently will have to improve it to do some other detected rather than just [Wait] -> [Move Direction] -> [Wait] -> [Target player], I think his collisions for damage is a bit bugged as well.

"I think that you should add to his movement behavior a new activity where if he doesn't trigger his charge on the existing object for 10s or more, he enters into a predefined movement mode where he visits all four corners in a random order, or something like that?"
Currently I have a custom sequence that he follows, I don't have a timer for last used ability, and I probably should do that, but that will come with a pass on the enemy AI to detect objects around, when I made this system I found out unity has a type of behavior tree thing that I might look into, but this sequencers a bit better I think, it's lightweight.

I should be asking what FPS people are getting and what their PC specs are, thanks for your comments, and thanks for giving it a bash.

"I like how the enemy can hide underneath the spawner things it makes them seem smarter like they got 2 states: 1 chase you down out in the open, and 2 stay still hiding under cover"

This is a bug currently, because the AI is super basic, but that does give me a few ideas when I improve the AI to use cover and hide, thanks.

"so you can't see exactly where they are making hitting them a little bit more challenging and getting shot at by them more surprising -> increases fun"
Yeah I might have a look at using this as part of a design for the levels.

"see this light grey patch? this is a blocker, you crash into it. so it is like a wall or a concrete barricade or something. but look at the sides of the arena, they kind of have a LoZ ALttP type slant to them, so then this middle thing should have that too, right? like the sides of the walls should "pyramid" out around it a little bit, so so that you know it has height. otherwise it just looks like a symbol painted on the tarmac that you shouldn't hit into it."
Yeah that's a good point actually, I sort of didn't notice becuase the center is non slanted, but I'll give this some thought when I improve the levels.

"next up: you need to put a super wide black rectangle behind the game scene so that on ultra wide monitors the out of bounds area is just dark, instead here you can see that to the left (and it is the same again on the right edge) there is different hues of grey and even an out of bounds slab all visible. cover it up with a black rectangular"
Ah yeah, I had the resolution fixed, but it must've broken, I'll keep these in mind.

"And lastly, the movement feels like it gets stuck too much. It IS capable of sliding as if I D (right movement) into an angled surface, I slide up it."
Yeah someone else mentioned the movement, I'm personally not a fan of how it gets stuck on things instead of sliding around it, it'll change on the next movement pass, I do believe it's a combination of not fixing it after I swapped from 2D to 3D and still used a box collision, someone mentioned a sphere can slide, I wasn't aware of that, so I might check it out tonight, if it fixes the movement I might deploy a patch for this, it's not where I want the movement to be, but it was sort of good enough, I also reduced the players speed by about 60% and haven't tested it, which makes me thing this effect worsened.

Thanks a bunch for your feedback, I'll pop it in my Todo list.

"Ship collision should be a sphere, so when I move diagonally like this I expect it to not get stucked."
Yeah I'll look into tightening up the controls, I had it going where it didn't have the curve and it felt like it had no weight to it, I have to balance this, I'll do a fixup when I get some stats and stuff sorted, so each ship handles differently.

"Ship collision should be a sphere, so when I move diagonally like this I expect it to not get stucked."
Yeah I had that issue too, I think there's 0 friction on it, I'll check out a sphere and see if that fixes the annoying instant stopper.

"- And some design is quite questionable, for this one, there are cases where I went into a room and placed next to an enemy spawner, but I can't move because of the transition, if there's an enemy there and shoots me, I can't do anything. And the enemy spawner just hides the enemies inside it"
Yeah the enemy AI was sort of thrown together, it has no ability to navigate properly, I do need to improve the ship spawn when you move to a room, it spawns you too far in on a few directions, I think that will come when I improve the room generator to have bigger rooms, the rooms are just thrown together for variety.

Thanks for the feedback, that's helpful.

Yeah, the AI is far from done, they don't have perception for objects yet, it's a bit annoying, but it'll do for now when I do an AI pass on it.

Because of this, I have learned to always make sure to play test a game, because you didn't even play it correctly, which was completely my fault, but thank you.