itch.io

Thanks for trying the game more and for giving me more feedback, very much appreciated.

You already mentioned most of the problems with the boat, there was also the fact that it was not intuitive to control and how awkward combat was on it. I made the mistake of thinking I could make an FPS game and add a vehicle to it and then figure things out but levels suffered because of the boat and the boat suffered because the game only really happened on land.
I had to decide which part to throw away and I decided to keep land combat but as I said I think the boat could have a special section later with its own bosses and challenges. 
Even after deciding to do away with (or at east delay) the boat I still think the ground sections are barely just okay.
Maybe I'm cramming too many tough combat encounters next to each other because I'm "stress testing" combat and the game would have better pacing with quieter sections between tougher ones, kinda like half life does it.

Balancing on all skill levels is hard too and having difficulty levels don't always work because people refuse to lower it when they're having trouble. But like you're probably right that the javelin enemies need more spread so they don't sniper you at all ranges. The boss I think only needs an easier arena and maybe less summon, but yeah it's probably not level 1 material or could have an easier arena with more cover for him to blow up.

hope I'm not being too negative but it was my experienceTM

Don't worry about it man, it's always useful. Thanks again.

Take a look I made you a video.

https://s1.webmshare.com/KJGJq.webm

Double checked that the seed is for file1 btw

So uh I fell off the edge and you know that "untitled unity project" meme with the cube infinitely falling into the void?

Cool to see where those chicken and weird running guy models are being used though.
I will play your next demo if you keep devvin.

Fun gimmick, but gimme some enemies!

hmm, can't get it to work with max assist either.

Am I missing something?

Thanks for playing!

When you press a button in the UI that moves you to a new level the game kinda freezes for 3 sec with no feedback

I should probably get around adding a loading bar, you're right.

It got pretty hard sometimes

I might have gotten carried away with some encounters considering that it is meant to be level one, sorry about that.

Hey man! Thanks so much for the fanart, it looks amazing! I really appreciate it.

and I hear a popular way is to keep it on physics frames but render them one frame behind and interpolate

I will look into that.

“Down” is “Next” and I’m tired of pretending it’s not.

Invert mouse wheel option by next build.

I don’t think this is the intended way to this secret, I got there with a shotgun jump from down below,

No that is the intended way, you can drop from above but it's janky and you might get stuck. I spent some time testing shotgun jumps to make sure there wasn't any egregious shortcut. The only failing is later in the boss arena when invisible walls are way more obvious.

I didn’t finish the first mission, died trying to shotgun-jump to the mutagen near the lighthouse and the checkpoint set me back further than I wanted. I didn’t check if there was quick-saving but I’d appreciate if there was.

Dang it. Some players trigger checkpoints before they finish an encounter and then die before the next checkpoint. I should probably give checkpoints a cooldown instead of disabling them once reached? 
Forgot about quick save, I'll add it and then teach it in the tutorial.

Thanks again for the fanart and the feedback!

Thanks for playing and thanks for the comment.

Only just realized that this game and its name is inspired by Heart of Darkness. Even moreso with the original roguelike version, where it was a linear river.

Yeah the riverine theme is getting a little lost with all these updates. Heart of evil is getting ship of ship of theseus'd pretty hard. I should change the name too since there's a half life 1 mod themed after apocalypse now with the same name.

 dart throwers

I've been trying to refine ground combat so that enemies ask something of the player. The ranged enemies make the player dodge now. I suppose their aim being thrown off by jumping kinda defeats that, I can make it so they only lead their target horizontally.

I pressed Onwards and nothing changed?

Yes I removed level 2 and 3 because this build was meant as a boatless test and I didn't want to potentially leave new testers confused.

I didn't really enjoy it as much as last time, when the boat was still a thing.

Sorry to hear that but would you say is the boat you miss or just the freedom and calmer pace of the disconnected island encounters?

Either way thanks so much for taking the time to play again!

Hey thanks for playing and thanks for the screenshots.

I had a lot of jaggies even tho it was set to 4x msaa so not sure why that was.

Yeah your game seems to be running at a super low resolution for some reason, can I ask what resolution you were playing on? 
Anyways thanks for the rest of your feedback, I'll consider your suggestions. A Lot of people have asked me for crouching in particular but I'm conflicted about it, I'll see how I feel after some testing.

Hey thanks for checking out the game again, I hoped for some feedback from returning players.

They're the most common enemy, but they never stop being dangerous, due to predictive aim.

Yeah in this new build I decided to take a more "gamey" approach to balancing enemies where they require something from the player. Spearguys require you to change direction, shieldguys are easier to kill if you get close and bait their attacks and so on. I think it works better.

 I think every weapon should have an animation for trigger pull without ammo

Doable.

I sadly have to admit I don't miss the boat that much.

Yeah I have to admit it did not work, I just barely got combat to feel decent on the ground.
I might bring it back later in the game for a few levels as a gimmick for some water bosses, we'll see.

Thanks again for playing!

Very cool concept.

Busted out pen and paper after reading the manual but to my great shame I couldn't get the first glitch to get a chroma starter to work. Thought it might have been some framerate related thing but limiting the game to 60 did nothing. Spent like half an hour trying, changed seeds and save files but I can't seem to trigger it. RIP.

Thanks for trying the game out, I appreciate the video and the feedback. Feedback from an inexperienced player is always valuable.

Maybe there ought to be some easier combat before I toss the player into those combat encounters maybe, I noticed you didn't realise that the spear enemies lead you and you need to throw their aim off for example.
The player being able to walk forward, trigger checkpoints and then forgetting to save after killing all the enemies can also be a bit of  a problem, maybe implementing a quicksave button and teaching it in the tutorial will be enough to solve that.

To top it all off I had a sinking feeling that I wasn't going the right way

If the game lets you go somewhere you're either progressing the level or finding a secret, there's no wrong way to go.

Thanks again for the video, sorry the game was stressful.

Good to know you're working on it, looking forward to playing the new version when it's ready.

Finally tried this but on a friend's PC so I didn't take my time reading what skills did so (with easy mode disabled) I had an easy time spamming attacking through the oni and the witch boss.
The knight boss required some cheesing: I did jump attacks until I could trigger the execution thing.
Didn't attempt the vixen boss properly, she looks like that the first "l2p or die" boss.

I'll try playing this "properly" when I have the time.
The models look great and the waifubaiting is excellent, music is nice too.
Very nice, had fun.

Thanks for the feedback and thanks for checking out the game. 

except for not killing spawn mobs and spawning 123 squids after the boss died

It's like a small "oh shit" moment to be cheeky. I might remove it if testers die too much from it. 

Playing on a laptop and I wish I could rebind keys to something I'm more comfortable with than default.
Also wishing that reset started the level right away instead of kicking you to level selection and that there was a 5 or so seconds grace period where time doesn't start running if no input is given.

Got 47 seconds on level 1, only thing I dislike is that it's hard to rocket jump from walls since your guy snaps to walls and aims at the opposite direction if you're too close.

Edit: Wait this is DD 66's page...

I think I skipped the easy levels and went to the cloud ones. At one point I collided with a falling key and it disappeared. I could not finish the "blorb is the key" level.

Blorb has caused my efforts to be in vain, I am disapblorbed.

Overworld movement is an idea, one of the things that Darkest Dungeon lacks is proper choice in how to approach a dungeon but idk if it's necessary to have move points and turns, a simpler system where the player moves somewhere and maybe triggers an encounter or doesn't would be better. Similarly let player use their items whenever.

When it comes to combat there's really no reason to split normal attack and skills and there's no real reason to have an MP system (although there's no real harm in it if balanced properly with ways to rest). I don't want to just point at Darkest Dungeon and tell you "do that instead" but it's undeniable that your game is taking inspiration from it and that game does things the way it does for a reason. Sometimes less is better and unnecessary submenus that lead to one single attack actions are never better.

Cool looking game though, I wish the gameplay would be more interesting but I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves.

Played a little bit just messing around, couldn't really find the exit it's easy to get lost idk if I missed a map or anything.

I think it would be interesting to more party management for stuff like changing party composition, items and level ups but then when it comes to battles and resting it's tedious.
Instead of only cycling through actions some hotkeys to select specific actions would make party management less of a chore: D and 1 switches to defence for the first guy, A+1 is attack and so on. 

Haven't played many games like this so I can't really comment on balance but I think maybe I'd like it more if it were focused around map encounters rather than random encounters. Like defeating enemies to reach "safe spots" you can rest at or loot points/secrets that gives you stuff for your character.

Once it crashed after meeting a group of 20 enemies. 
Looking forward to see where you take this.

Sorry, can't really remember what happened prior to those bugs I reported except that it was the browser version.
I'm on a different computer right now and the music not resuming after the pause isn't happening.

For WASD controls, which buttons do you think would work best for punching and jumping?

I use WASD and JKL for 2D games like these.

frame limit / vsync option please!

I like how the general look and the models.
The blood seems a bit exaggerated considering that enemies explode when you kill them with a pistol but I like the effect, in some rooms it gets on the ceiling and it looks like it's floating in mid-air.

I immediately went to check the lockers and then I thought I got stuck in them. In reality my inputs were disabled because of the dialogue but the dialogue UI immediately hides if the character is touching a wall, happens with the opposite wall too. A couple of times the flamethrower ammo failed to appear in my inventory on pickup but I can't replicate it reliably. 

Cool start, I'm looking forward to see what proper combat plays like.
The sawblade gun sucks btw it's a worse shotgun. 

Lots of small audio bugs: music not restarting when unpausing or punch sounds disappearing after a while, desynched enemy attack sound when they're attacking the floor.

One time the game got stuck on level 4 and never went to level 5:

Got repeatedly filtered by wave 15.

The brick area you hit when punching from below doesn't seem to be consistent: sometimes you will jump at a crab and the blue bricks are much smaller and you'll nudge the crab forward instead of stunning it which is very annoying because that crab goes from ammo to problem. idk if it's supposed to be a mechanic and I didn't get it.

Rebindable keys would be great I usually play these kind of games moving with WASD and doing the rest with my right hand.

Sometimes enemies spawn from the side of the screen instead of doing the normal drop thing.
Sometimes hitting the enemies with an upward punch changes their direction. I think this is intended but occasionally it doesn't work, although it might be some wonky physics where the enemy is technically changing direction but is in mid-air except too close to the wall to fall until the knockback from the upward punch has ended.

I wish punching kept a smidge of momentum instead of stopping you completely.

Lots of fun overall.

I like how it looks, it's very charming.

I was trying to get my dudes to build a 8x5 wooden house but they were taking forever and I couldn't figure out how to reassign them to build the basic cooking station first so I tried quitting to menu and that didn't work so I quit to desktop and now when I open the game again the buttons don't do anything, which is a first. 
This persisted after deleting the folder and a reboot, alt-entering the game to force it to run in windowed mode doesn't help either. Does your game save anything externally?

Anyways my only real feedback for now is that I wish you could queue tasks the sims style and that the UI showed you the character's needs without needing to individually check each one to find which of them is starving. 

I could buff the player's baseline alchemy stats and nerf the tank upgrades? Do you think that would alleviate the issue?

I feel like something as crucial as the tank capacity upgrade is always going to be too useful to ever skip. It's the only thing that helps when fighting many enemies of the same type.

The only way I could see myself not saving for it first is if weapons had more upgrades that helped with stock consumption, but then I'd save for those instead, kicking the can down the road.
It feels like a similar situation to that build before you added cauldrons where tier 2 elements were an upgrade so I always got that one first, that's why I think getting tank upgrades from bosses or in the store would be better. 
But if you want to keep them as an upgrade then yeah making the baseline better could make the alchemy upgrades feel like training wheels for new players? Like a safety net that's good to have but good players can play without, maybe.

Neat.
Could use a "press tab to view manual" at the start and a slider for mouse sensitivity.
Got the bad ending first and the good ending second after I realized that there's a symbol above the opponent's blast door. I was disappointed that you can't see the fight but I get that it would have been a lot of work.
I think the game would have been creepier if you were actually working on a creature instead of a metal thing. Like a fetus sort of creature that rises like dough in the microwave and then screams when you put it in the heat/cold/electricity machine or something like that.

Bugs I found:

The computer UI should just be a fixed size instead of a 3D object you can walk into. If you are too close to a wall you can't click on the manual. The L-M-I meat patties things vibrate on their dispenser, the module you need to microwave clips through the tube chamber floor and softlocks you.

Very nice, finished the hardest difficulty with a pet build:

Pets are so much more convenient than weapons since you don't need to also buy the movement modules to make them function. Wireless Wireworks.
I wish the demo was longer, maybe even have an endless mode to see how strong a build can get. 

Had fun.

Hey I recognize those ammo sprites!

I'm not much into the idea of a time trial target thing as opposed to, for example, a sidescroller with actual enemies.
It feels like it'd get repetitive fast especially if there's no time limit and you can clear levels by taking your time.

Great job with the juice, the weapons and sound effects are punchy.
The arsenal seems good enough for what you're trying to do, the shotgun doesn't seem to really have a place I'd make it have some knockback so it doubles as a mobility tool, TF2 force-a-nature style. It's a fun trope I even added that in my game. 

The only thing I don't like about the movement is that you can't fire up or down when sliding on a wall: it's easy to accidentally snap to it when trying to hit a target that's above you. 
It also might be nice if holding down while mid-air gave you downward velocity, it could be used to get on downward slopes faster or just better air control depending on how tricky you intend to make the level. 

Cool start though, I'll check this out again next time.

Sorry to hear you got stuck.

The normal way to proceed is through the other side of the canyon where there's a cave entrance covered by grass.
But you can also skip the cave by jump over the canyon with a shotgun jump or a grenade jump if you've found the grenade launcher. 

Are there enemies that can ride along your boat?

Yes the eeldogs (4 legged monsters) can jump on your boat. Fishes can also do that and they'll eventually die. 

Thanks for the feedback, I'll be more mindful of things like that in the future.

Very generous with crystals this time around and I finished the whole thing without a single combat upgrade thanks to the turret power. I felt that combat upgrades are like a tax that you have to pay, it's annoying to waste your hard earned mineral on something that's a token "get this so you don't die" upgrade. Even with the new enemies combat feels like a token phase that interrupts your mining. Personally, since you've already implemented mouse control, I'd make it so the lil dude can walk around and shoot guns. You could even make it so there's random guns to find around so exploration would reward combat without sacrificing progression. Whatever way you choose to tackle it I think combat is the weakest part right now.

The final sequence was cool and looking for objective around the map was nice.

This thing stole my minerals and doesn't seem like it did anything.

The extra vision was a nice buff to get but the camera being zoomed out caused a jittering effect which was annoying.
Having these little side things is a fun shakeup from the monotone mineral mining, good addition.

Very charming look, I like it a lot.

It took me a minute to realize that you're supposed to bring loot back to the mimic, but it's a boring to backtrack for individual pieces of loot that you have to hold with both hands like the silver pitcher. There's an exploit where you can move the sack by running into it which lets you carry more loot around and it's faster.
Trying to get specific items is a pain especially from a pile but also like singular coins have a very narrow angle from which you can grab them.
I also thought the camera was annoying, specifically it's hard to read what the farmers are saying because they are so much taller.

This guy got stuck there making his talking noises over and over. It got unstuck when I walked close.
After the goat got me once it broke and couldn't aggro to me anymore. 
There's a ring in the goat's chest that I can move but can't pickup. 
I wonder what the little toad next to the goat is for, looks like it would trigger an eater egg if brought something. 

Cool game overall I want to play more of it. 

Fire trial is much easier, I think you might have disabled the other trials for testing and forgot about it because I only found fire trials in like 4 runs.
This guy got spawned outside the map by one of those boss turned regular enemy in floor 3:

Good twist by the way, it works well as a regular enemy.

I entered a boss chamber on floor 3 and it got filled to the brim with floating orbs, thankfully the virulent update plus steam is great at thinning hordes like that. Virulent update + fire trial buff also caused some fun chain reactions that cleared whole rooms.

The new boss was good. I found it easy enough to keep track of both of them and I thought it was neat how they can damage each other.

Whenever I get set on fire I usually do water + health but if I do that with the barrier upgrade I get neither water nor health and I die. 

I think maybe the chem tank upgrades should be given in some other ways because they feel mandatory to get first.

It was fun to finish again.

Hey thanks for checking the game again. 

Because I think the only really crucial thing to replace now would maybe be the GUI

I think I'll leave all UI stuff for last, gotta settle on its final design before making it look good

As for the player and the enemies, you could use some momentum

The player does have a little bit of friction/momentum when moving, but it's not really noticeable unless you're in the air. 
I'll see if the game feels better with it. 

Do pickups retain whatever you don’t need?

Everything except the crates and weapons you already have.

That dark shaman should really make some sort of noise when he teleports

He should be doing that but I noticed that certain sound effects don't play properly sometimes, or maybe in your case it was just buried behind other sounds, not sure. I'll investigate it.  

and it causes the performance to get a bit spotty on my old rig

Yeah performance has been a pain especially considering how simple the game's visuals are. It's mostly enemy physics causing framedrop issues from what I've seen, I'm going to try and see if I can simplify some things and make it better. 

Also having his attacks be both hitscan and AOE that hits you through walls is especially annoying

I will add a check so that explosion doesn't damage the player through walls. Technically the explosion is not hitscan: it spawns on the particle effect so it's possible to fling yourself away before it hits you using a grenade jump or a shotgun jump but the timing is too precise so I don't think any player will organically discover that trick. 

I really don’t like how it doesn’t remember which weapon variant you were last using when you hit the number keys, the trenchgun is way more situationally useful than the coachgun and it’s a pain having to switch a second time.

Good point, I'll change that. 

Ended up stopping after the first level

It's okay there really isn't anything new since last demo day past the first level aside from like the music.

Thanks for playing again! I do think that there's something off about the game, might be the movement system like you said but I think combat is too shallow. Things die too quickly and enemies don't really do much beside running at you. Or maybe I played too much of it and I'm seeing problems that aren't there. 
Either way, Thanks for the feedback. Always appreciated. 

Hey thanks for trying the game out again. 

I think ammo might be a bit too generous right now, since I never really worried about it unlike my previous attempt

Yeah I've erred on the side of caution this time. Balancing for both the players that explore and those who don't will be hard. I should probably make them scale with the newly added difficulty option.

but his jump slam attack seems to trigger even when he lands on objects that aren't the ground

Didn't consider that. I should be able to make it so he breaks the sandbags when landing on them without triggering the slam that oughta fix it. 

Thanks again for the feedback!

Caliber Fortuna got renamed? 

Not a long demo but what's here is pretty good. 
Nitpicks/suggestions:
I don't like how much recoil all the guns have, you're not really aiming at anything as much as towards the enemies. I also wish your own weapons switched to ADS faster when using bullet time. 
This seems like the kind of game that could benefit from sliding or sprinting around like in F.E.A.R.
Let me detonate demo charges by shooting at them.
It would be cool if dash always smashed through walls. By the way I did the whole level on hard without realizing that you can gib people by dashing into them. Very fun mechanic.

My favorite gun was the heavy pistol, good damage and decent handling unlike the carbine ungodly recoil. Best sights too.

Fun demo, I'm looking forward to playing more. 

Writing down feedback as I play:

The game opening with a loud baseball bat noise before the player can adjust volume is good, good games always deafen players and send them scrambling for the option menu. It asserts dominance.

I expected the tone to be more lighthearted considering that the game is about a kid killing green dudes with a slingshot.

I'd like to be able to hold the fire button to fire the slingshot continuously considering that the slingshot has infinite ammo.

Tried a controller just to see if it played better but the reticle is much easier to aim with a mouse, usually in twinstick shooters you rotate the character in a general direction instead of moving a reticle. 

Let me quit the arcade minigame without having to die 3 times please.

The character moving off-center feels bad, I think it would work better if the camera became offset from the center instead so you didn't move closer to the edge of the screen when you move. 

Sometimes the hurt noise is pitched up to presumably sound like a kid but sometimes it isn't and it sounds like an adult, seems unintended.
The pistol sounds like it's being fired underwater in another room.
The bloody footprint effect is nice, I only just noticed it. 
The suburb level being a square you can roam around is dispersive, maybe when there's 10 or so enemies remaining you could have an arrow pointing at the closest one. 
1 and 2 being previous and next weapon is unorthodox for keyboard controls, I'd rather have each number key select a gun, guess I'll stick to the mouse wheel to select different ones.

City part, I was searching for the last 2 enemies for 5 minutes so I decided to check if you can fall in those holes.
You can fall in those holes. 

I used a grenade and picked up a molotov and now I can't pickup grenades. I think there's a limit on grenades in general instead of by types. Some UI indication would be good also regular grenades have are very hard to time right because of their long fuse.

The blood effect looks bad because it has a cooldown. I think you have a single particle in the enemy scene that is set to emit when hit which means there can only be one active at a time, a better solution would be to pool more than one or instantiate them as needed. It sounds like a small thing but it does a lot for weapon feedback.

School level, I like it more than wandering around looking for kills. 
The fence here does not extend all the way down and I went out of bounds: 

Even going out of bounds I couldn't find the last enemy.
Boss got stunlocked by the m16 for most of the fight then I shot it a bunch with the shotgun and it died, not super interesting. 
Was the last enemy the boss? I've been conditioned to clear levels and ignore area transitions so I thought the counter was broken.

I think enemies need to be a bit more interesting, I never needed to dodge and I barely needed to sprint. 
The dog enemy could have a lunge attack for example that require you to dodge out of the way instead of being able to backpedal away from it. 
I'm not a fan of the two city levels being so open and dispersive, I'd rather the levels be a bit more linear and have properly planned encounters, the levels being less open would also make it harder to backpedal away from everything. 
There is a lot of ammo and it didn't feel like guns did anything much different from each other. There's no real reason not to use the shotgun or assault rifle for everything. I think a reload mechanic could add some ebb and flow to combat, right now you just kinda walk backwards while firing at everything. 

The style is charming but I still have whiplash from the kid's parents getting butchered and then seeing those silly little goblinoids taking a car for a joyride.

I don't clear slots after all the items have been used on purpose, so you don't have to reassign them if you find new ones.

Right, that makes sense. Maybe food items or duplicate weapons could have a flag that doesn't slot them in the hotbar automatically, or all food could be pooled into a single slot to reduce clutter. 

Scatterbrained feedback:
A master option for the volume would be nice. 
Can't click the slide bar in the hotkey menu and the list doesn't scroll properly when I use the arrow key to navigate it. 
Enemies get stuck on chests and traps, they have trouble navigating around the library room.

^doomcaller stuck on traps

Items stay on the hot bar even after using them all. Is there a way to rearrange them? 
Enemy status effect should show up on their health bar
Fire shield description says "lasts _ seconds" 

I killed the boss, did a couple of floors and then got bored so I started running past enemies, I think that part is endless?
I don't like melee combat in this game. The power bar is glacial and it takes too long to reach the red part so it throws away your timing. 
Also it's hard to gauge weapon reach by eye and holding S plus sprint while timing a strike over and over is not that fun. 
Could use some dodge/stun/block/push mechanics to be more interesting. 
I picked up a fire book from the initial chest and never used anything else. Mana replenishing automatically means that it's viable to use as your only weapon.
My suggestion would be to balance around (an improved version of) melee combat and leave the spells as buffs/debuffs or a limited pool otherwise everyone is going to use nothing but spells considering that they're so much safer and more effective. 
The dungeon itself gets boring quickly, the only cool thing that happened was finding a secret in a library but even that gave me like 10 apples and nothing else. 
Visuals are not great, not talking about the enemy sprites but the dungeon itself: it's so blurry, repetitive and evenly lit, it's an eye sore.

I think you should re-evaluate the core melee combat mechanic and find ways to make dungeon rooms more exciting. I don't mind the billboarding sprite but I think they're only justified if you have a ton of enemies, people will expect either 3D models or more detailed and properly lit sprites. 

The game starts without mouse capture so when I saw the turret moving on its own I thought it was following the cursor while I was using the gamepad, turns out the tank auto aims which is always lame. 

I like the models I think you did a good job there. 

Some thoughts on each phase: 
I prefer moving tanks with the D-pad (or keys) because they are able to pivot on the spot. 
Your tank struggles with this, it looks like its rotation rate is linearly dependent on its speed, maybe it could have some higher minimum value for pivoting. It also keeps moving forward or backward if you hold A or D.
Gameplay-wise you're moving around and spamming sluggish auto-aimed shots, not very interesting. 

The helicopter controls fine, I prefer when helicopters have a throttle since that lets you do tighter turns.

The plane physics are really forgiving, you can slow up so much that it basically hovers on the spot. Still, timing strafes and avoiding missiles was more fun than the "throw off the enemy aim and hold the fire button" gameplay of the other phases imo. Tanks are a menace even when you're flying at max speed which is funny. 

It was neat. Not having to aim and the overly simple controls didn't grip me but that's personal preference.