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This is a neat prototype and I have some feedback on its current state.

I think you could play with the challenge by making each enemy move and act much faster, as it is now the enemies can easily be kited before they have a chance to swing back. If the player's movement was limited during their attack it would give incentives to think more about how players approach. If certain enemies had different follow patterns they could make better use of the large arena, like orbiting the player or ranged enemies keeping distance.

I like the idea for the jump to help the player avoid the boss's giant swing but without other threats to layer on top of that it becomes just as simple as a standard enemy to deal with. Perhaps if this boss was assisted by additional enemies or if that boss type could show up among the groups of enemies in rooms you could get more value out of that design. I'd be interested to see what this could turn into if you returned to the project.

This works wonders in current Aseprite 1.3.17. Thank you for such a useful tool

Yeah I originally made it for that to see what other devs would do with the concept years ago and shelved the idea until recently. Collision stuff is so silly I'll have to remember that

Took me 4 minutes and 11 seconds to end smiley, I like the concept of dodging bullets with a mouse so I wanted to see it through to the end

As a monster hunter veteran this pleases me

Very quirky way to get points blobman. This was cute. I managed to get like 203 points as my highscore

Thank you Frank, I needed the closure

I rate it a 563/10 I felt exactly like John Sekiro

Appreciate the critique, I'll definitely figure out ways to make it more challenging. Would you say the 3-hit combo is the most over-tuned part of the main form? Or is it something else?

Appreciate you playing and telling me about the UI foibles. There are a bunch more levels actually, I'm guessing the save file fucked up and didn't unlock them for you after beating the mall stage, gotta look into that. 

Maybe try the mall stage again on another save slot?

I ran into the same issue with showing poise in my own game before taking it out completely recently so I definitely get the struggle.

The responsiveness thing might just be from watching the character still face the enemy when I start holding the run button and holding away, making me want to mash jump to get further away before seeing my character face the direction I want then to run. There was a little jerkiness to seeing that happen with the camera and player still being near the boss after trying to escape.

I had fun figuring out the timings on deflects. The best part of that was realizing I could get a better reward for counterhitting the boss. It reminded me of God Hand's counter hit system a little although much more subdued in terms of what I get as a reward since they still continued their combo sometimes. To be honest these two tools are so powerful I barely engaged with the rest of the mechanics you had. The only point I found for using the projectile was to teleport to the boss at the start or do deal damage to the knocked down boss after a riposte which I felt couldn't be intentional (but should totally be kept in). I've never played Sekiro though so I don't know if it's the same in that game. I'd definitely be careful with making parrying the only strong mechanic since it feels so passive.

I only found out that you already mentioned the AI was random after I had beaten them so I was prepared to talk about how inconsistent their behavior was. I couldn't tell what the difference was between her forms since they all tended to use all 3 weapons the same way. I also couldn't figure out their poise which made me play way too safe and barely ever attack since I figured she would just armor through everything unless she was specifically in Dark Halo mode charging into Human mode.

The poise being so obscure made me never want to commit to longer attacks or try out other mechanics out of fear of screwing myself over. Maybe her poise could only apply to the beginnings of specific attacks (like the great sword) so I could be encouraged to whiff punish still.

I'd like more responsiveness out of my other evasive moves like jumping away and running, I felt so suckered to the boss in the current state of these moves and opted to just stand there and deflect instead of doing anything else. Might just be my bias towards games like Ys or Wonderful 101 where I'm running around the entire arena while fighting, probably the benefit of having a fixed camera angle so far away I guess.

Overall I like the idea of the game and I'm interested in what comes next, especially if more comes out of interrupting the bosses.

The predator ball gets really satisfying with stacks at the end. Aside from wishing there was more control from catching balls or something I'd love to see some more feedback when a ball dies so I know exactly what killed it. Maybe some hit freeze and a flash effect could do the trick, I just got blindsided sometimes when multiple balls were killed while I was focused on somewhere else.

Biggest change to this version is that Bosses respond to hitstun the same way most enemies do, no more arbitrary armored attacks, to compensate most will move out of the way or defend themselves.

I've also allowed the Ninja form to be unlocked in its earliest form, give its grappler play a shot early by completing the new Winter stage or Boss Rush.

This game is pretty neat, big fan of the animations, especially the watermelon spitting boss at the end. There's a lot of character to this

The switching mechanic adds some nice variety to tactics, though I found it much better than the standard horizontal shot even at low power, my strategy became staying at midscreen to shoot the planes down before they could fire their tracking shot. I wonder if the secondary shot came with another effect like a different movement speed, similar to focusing in other shmups, that both might have more utility for the player

The tracking shot is a decent idea to force the player to move if there aren't as many bullets coming from the enemy, I wonder if the same effect would be enhanced by shooting out non-aimed bullets that wouldn't necessarily hit them just to add more pressure. Standing ahead of where the plane enemies fired would have a really odd effect on their bullets since they couldn't track me at all. Would that behavior be different if they fired much earlier? I might not have hugged the midscreen area so tightly if I had to fear them shooting before passing me.

I'm a little biased towards having a ton of bullets in the shmups I play, even if they dealt the same damage over time the trick works and encourages me to spend more time dodging than risking getting hit because the chip damage still works. This could be a result of not knowing the boss's current HP, I'm sure that'll get added later though. I wonder how differently your game would play if you upped the fire rate while lowering the damage equally.

The balance between rate of fire and damage still works decently well here as I was encouraged to play above power level 1. Otherwise the Pidgeon mid-boss would feel much tankier than other enemies. I liked that you continued to spawn other threats to compensate for its limited firing range, it was good pressure to keep me moving between it and the adds. I'm interested to see what you do with the scoring system as right now I get way more points by farming the adds summoned during the midboss than I do playing optimally through encounters. (e.g. 22,000 points from dying to the midboss while farming vs 10,000 for beating it and the gorilla boss quickly)

Overall I had fun with this and am eager to play more builds of it.

This is very solid  way to make a stealth grid based game, enjoyed a ton of the puzzles. Only had a few hiccups along the way. Namely not recognizing what tiles the thief could climb over immediately. Cutting off the enemy view cones when they're blocked by geometry would go a long way in keeping the mechanics consistent.

Grid movement is definitely a fun way to make a collecting game like this feel faster than most, though I think the top row would benefit from more reward for the risk of getting so close to spawning skulls. It would definitely help add to a score chasing feeling.

Sometimes when choosing a power-up that affects health the UI would disappear for that round.

The music stops looping at some point until death/revive.

Right Trigger should be fixed as well now

This should be fixed in the latest build, give it another look if you can.

Finally got around to fixing this, let me know if it works now in the latest build

I've pushed an update that should hopefully fix that input. Hope you can try again.

Down+Attack isn't coming out as a kick for you? What controller are you using?

I'm glad you enjoyed the game.
You'll need to check if you have the latest version, I made some changes to the options menu that should fix that.

I've changed how the options menu reads data now to avoid this so let me know if it works in this latest build

I'm so sorry that happened. Does the game get stuck in a tiny minimized window?

Thank you for playing. Can you explain the softlock a little more? Did it respawn you outside a closed room or something?

Thank you for playing, I was able to determine the levels weren't unlocking for players that died to the tutorial boss and have fixed it.

I'll replace the font next time promise

Thank you for playing more and I'm glad the axe centaur was your favorite.

I think I understand why the boss rush got locked I forgot to change the number of unlocks back on that one.

I'm curious how that clipping happened, did you walk through there normally and it was just like that? I'm assuming you had transformed into the small form prior so maybe the collision didn't change back?

Did the screen tearing happen even with V-Sync on in the options menu?

I forgot to include in the movelist/tutorial that transforming from base costs 50 meter now, that was likely why you couldn't transform against the Red guy.

What controller are you using that's making motion inputs difficult? Does the same precision issue happen when you do the motion attack from neutral?

Thank you for getting it to work, I forgot spacebar was the confirm key for KB+M

I really need to figure out why the unlocked levels don't save but if you're in the options files anyways you can change the saved levels text from 0 to 4 to get the rest

Death truly is virtue's last reward.

This game is sick aesthetically and thematically. Unironically love it when the killing game is interrupted by a wiki deep dive, though the ones in this chapter could've been spaced out a bit more. 

I really dig this concept and the execution is pretty satisfying once I get the hang of it.

Initially I was overwhelmed with having a full party and list of spells, I wasn't sure how to target specific heroes for a while, it's much easier to click on them in the menu since there isn't as much feedback clicking on them in the overworld (e.g. a highlighted aura for heroes I mouse over)

I assume in the ideal game you'll have a smaller party at the start and less spells.

I think the mana regeneration could use some work. It makes sense as a way to punish a poor rotation of spells but since I can get it back by just waiting around I don't feel pressured to go into the next fight unprepared so I'll just wait around. It might as well just refill automatically after every encounter. Maybe if I had to siphon enemy MP or search for potions instead? Something more active could be interesting.

A feature I would like is the ability to change targets mid spell channeling because there were often times where I'd want to swap my cast to a different party member as the battle changed but was unable to without canceling the spell, even though I was allowed to click on them it would only affect the person I targeted when I started.

"Error: Couldn't load project data at path ".". Is the .pck file missing?" happened when I tried to download but browser worked fine.

Hitting an enemy/taking damage could use a lot more feedback, Hit stop, flashing frames, clearer visual effects. I couldn't tell if I had damaged the slime until it split apart as its health bar didn't deplete until it entered its final form. I noticed when attacking any enemy they would be invulnerable to any other attacks unless I moved away? It wasn't clear if they were in an invul state as they didn't flash or show anything different about them. I would mash the attack button against the mushroom and only the first attack did anything.

Orca was very annoying since it never telegraphed its attacks, especially the underwater one since it does like half your health.

The castle walls prevent you from moving anywhere once you touch them but slashing them lets you clip through and trivializes the encounter, was this intended?

Alright here's the blind menu combo to fix the resolution

1. Launch game
2. Wait 10 seconds
3. Start/Esc
4. Down x3
5. X/A/Enter to select options
6. if still nothing shows
7. Down x4
8. Right x4
9. Down x 3
10. X/A/Enter to select save options

Ah sorry. Try deleting the options file in AppData and re-installing

Thank you for playing, what would you say is the hardest part of the boss to deal with

Biggest changes:

• - Overhauled Mad Bomber (Mall Boss)
  • Slowed down rate of attacks
  • Added new moves and re-worked old ones for variety
• - Overhauled Godsteed (Factory Boss)
  • Increased movement of previous attacks and made them more complex
  • new Axe Throw move
• - Changed enemy attack selection to be pattern based than pure random
• - Completed animation update for Armament Form(Sword)
  • Longer range attacks and cooler poses
• - Added Boss Rush Level
  • Survive the 6 bosses to unlock Pursuer Form (Bike) early

Game is pretty sick and stylish. Car controls pretty well, I was expecting drifting or running into zombies to give me a speed boost of some kind to try and optimize the races, maybe those two actions will do something later on? I had a rendering issue where zombies and targets would be on a weird layer. When I chased the white guy his "neener neener" voice would loop endlessly after I had lost sight of him. I also wish the mission giver's text would go faster or could be completed by pressing continue.

I appreciated your playtest, it made me instantly separate the menus so a save overwrite like that wouldn't happen again. Also sorry for the bullshit boss, those bomb deflections were signaling that you were invul but it's not really clear when they still explode so I'll have to fix that.

I'll expand the tutorial and replace the font as well.