itch.io

Other bug I found: 
This bought "IN" is staying on the board even when I remove it, it's not game breaking, I can move it and it will be considered placed but if I click it or right click it stays there with a shadow below it. I have the +1 hand size perk if it matters.

By the way this game needs the ability to see the board once the game is over and also a log to see what triggered what:
at the end of this game I used the backwards spelling perk to spell "DENS" and it turns out "SNED" is also a word so both counted and both were vertical and both retriggered so I unexpectedly completed the final round in a single turn by placing down 2 tiles, it would be cool to see the math/reason behind how many points you get.

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. 

Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

I'll make the main character taller and eventually I'll have to rework both the mutant and dog enemies, they're too simple and wooden at the moment. 

Almost suspected the glass floor/wall to be destroyed and cause a new phase.

Good guess. It was meant to be a non-functional elevator just to hint that there was a way to get to that floor before the crane opened a hole to the side, but I never got around modeling it so for now it's just random glass in the middle of the room.

Mutation wise though, I feel like it's too many options to choose from, would rather have 3-5 instead of all 15. They also don't seem quite balanced, some seem much better than others

Yeah, I added the new ones a couple of hours before DD so they haven't been tested very much for balance. Stacking all the ones that make you slow is miserable, for example. The mutation system is due for a rework as well, I agree that giving a bunch of options to the player all at once is not interesting. Needs some limitations and unlocks. 

Game felt overall fun, story felt cheesy but enough context for what we're doing. Seems to be on track for me, but always room for improvement.

Thanks again, I'll do my best and I'll keep working hard. 

Fun! The setting is cool and I love the fast combat.
Mechs and grapple hooks is a combination made in heaven.

I manage to die in the first arena and when I respawned the character was stuck and I had to go back to the main menu and start the level again through debug. Second try I don't know how after some combat I ended up back the start of the level and I couldn't progress. Tested the other levels through debug.

Up and down can be disorienting but that mostly because of the uniform metal corridors not making it obvious.
Physics is really smooth I like that. Sometimes the camera clips through walls. 
Cool music too. 

Hope to play more of this. 
Vsync and FPS limit options would be appreciated. 

but wouldn't that simplify things too much?

The chain itself is fine it's just that my brain sees blue and thinks "fire" and then it sees icy white and thinks "fire" and then it sees neutral white and things "fire?" and only one of this is correct and it always throws me off when I see a bunch of blue, white and cyan circles next to each other. Countering blue with purple is not as immediate as countering red with blue. Maybe electricity should be yellow?
Please note that it's just my tired brain playing a hard game's hard mode after a long day, it's probably not that big of a deal if a player is paying attention and has a fresh brain.

I could make it so self-inflicted statuses don't trigger the barrier, but I'm not a fan of breaking generality like this.

Applying fire to myself would have resulted in me having no status effect so it felt unintended but if it's working correctly then I see no issue with it, it's just a quirk of the effect that the player can work around if needed.

I could highlight the player's current recipes in a dedicated UI gizmo

My first instinct was to check the almanac, maybe that can have an indicator of what you can currently make. Like a lock icon or something.

Fun! But not too much to say since it's so short. 
Only issue I found was that if you go back to the previous area enemies don't reset when you come back so they can hit you while the screen transition is happening. 

Hope to play more of this. 

Scatterbrained feedback as I play:

Still controls like you're walking on ice. Do you need to decelerate so slowly? 
I prefer putt mode to shooting. It's more precise and easier to predict. The aim line in putt-mode is slightly misaligned from the center of the ball.
You can enter putt mode while the ball is still moving and it'll roll away. Seems unintended.
Saving only saves what floor you're in and not your in-floor progress? I saved before entering the third floor and found myself back having to do the second one. I guess next time I'll only save if I'm down to the last ball? imo just get rid of this save system and give the player checkpoints, nobody wants to do the same minigolf courses over and over and it cheapens the creepy elements.
Still has the same problem from last time where not having a barrier towards the player means the courses that start uphill will waste your whole attempt because the balls rolls out of bounds.
Standing in fish seems to drive my guy mad with stress.

My brain will never get used to countering electricity with ice and water with electricity.

The UI for the elements should be arranged like the QWE-ASD keys imo, stacked on top of each other instead of in a line. 
Unless I'm mistaken, the barrier spell's calculations does not consider current elemental afflictions. So if you're wet and use fire on yourself the barrier breaks leaving you wet because it thinks you are going to be set on fire. 
Sometimes the melee bots gets confused and stand around, probably happens if their infighting target dies. 
There's one particular room which is a narrow rectangular box with a stripe of traps in the middle that on the third floor spawns an ungodly amount of turrets, completely packed. It killed a run and almost killed this one. Also the super narrow new one with the exploding bots is a nasty one if you stand to close to where they respawn without noticing.
Glad to see that the chasms don't kill you anymore it was a very silly way to lose a run. 

I love the new elemental look to the various rooms. The rooms look much more varied now.
The cauldrons are a good idea to allow for spell progression. Between them and the challenges it's starting to feel like playstyles differ more between playthroughs. Although it does cause some "wait do I have that in this run?" moments. I know that there's an icon on the bottom left but it's not exactly immediate. 
I think volatile tar used to be harder to make, now it's much easier to use and combo with fire. 
The challenge rooms are a nice addition but I only manages to do the water and ice ones, the fire one explodes me instantly.
The abyss summoner ability is really good because it zones enemies out and you can time your shot to spawn new one by getting the last hit on enemies inside the whirlpool. It's also really good on the fire boss variant because you can kill its summons in one hit and spawn a bunch of vortexes around it. Also it triggers on steam kills but I think that's intentional. My favorite new thing.

Anyways, good progress, had fun. 

Out of curiosity, do you remember if the tiles used to play WAX were bought in the shop or duplicated with a rune?

I can't remember, sorry.

Scatterbrained feedback:

I didn't realize that discarding passed a turn.

The rules for placing down multiple words in a single turn is unclear. Unless I'm misinterpreting what the bounties are asking me.

The tutorial doesn't need to be so verbose imo, people can figure out what each shop tab does by themselves.
Look at this SWEET "Yacht"

An in-game word validator would go a long way. I grabbed the letters needed to make "Chibi" but it's not valid. 
Also "virality" isn't valid?

What's wrong with "Wax" here?

Show tiles could be toggled by pressing alt or another key. Hotkeys in general would be nice. 
If you have an extra tile and discard one tile it wastes your turn since you don't get that extra tile back.
Music is kinda intense for a relaxing scrabble-like game but it's not bad. I like that it gets more intense as you play turns.

I grabbed Wuthering Heights and won by mistake after putting down "Ovum". I say by mistake because I was waiting for my last C to make "knock". Before that I had the usual scramble moment of waiting for the one vowel you need for a bunch of turns only to get two of them in a row (It was a U for "Quiz") but it's nowhere near as painful because you don't have competition blocking the board and stealing your letters.
Yeah, this game is gripping. The tutorial was a bit annoying but it is a more fun and more strategic version of scrabble. Very fun.

Early build so not too much to say. Please add some basic options for general volume and FPS limiting next time.

Seems a little clunky to individually control crewmen I don't see why the player would need to play anyone other than the commander. 
Having to use the cursor is an unnecessary extra step every time you want to take an action. A "look at a prompt and press the use button" system would be much smoother.

Looking forward to seeing how a proper mission plays. 

Just got done watching this, thanks for the video it's very useful.

I can see I did a poor job of communicating some important things and maybe that's why some people are finding it harder than others. I'll make sure gun pickups and supply crates are more noticeable. Rags tells you that the chieftain's camp is the harder of the two available levels but In retrospect it's obvious that if I unlock two levels at once they should be equally challenging, or at least I should add some difficulty indicator on the map screen. 

In my game's defense I think playing it with a timer trying to rush to the boss is counterproductive since a lot of resources are rewards for exploring but I agree that at the very least pistol and shotgun ammo should always be plentiful. I'll be more careful with balance going forward. 

Thanks again for streaming my game! It'll be more fun next time.

Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

I realize these are probably the first few levels but I found the game pretty easy even without the lifesteal upgrades (which made several parts trivial)

Balance is going to be a challenge. Some people tell me the game is too hard and other tell me the game is too easy apart from the bossfights. I think it comes down to experience with FPS games and using mutations well. Either way I think it's better if the game starts a bit too easy and gets challenging later on. 

I like Rag conceptually but wish he had a bit more personality

Noted, poor Rags was made in a day so he didn't have a ton of care put into him. He's meant to be a sidekick of sorts because I didn't want the player to feel like they're just a henchman, I might make the crew larger down the line if I want different characters for different roles.

some textures clash with eachother and the game overall looks a bit washed out to me. I honestly dont mind but it could put some people off

This will also be a challenge. I'm learning texturing as I go so some textures are different because I'm experimenting with things. I'll be sure to settle on a style and standardize existing textures before I can start churning out content. 

but the boat still doesnt feel very tied in with the main gameplay

Yeah, it's a level design issue, redoing the first level to be more boat-centric will be a priority. I could ditch the boat entirely for some levels though so the player doesn't have to go back for the boat after finishing them.

I think its neat. I would buy this game on Steam.

I am planning to put this on steam when I'm done so I'll do my best.
Thanks again for the comment, much appreciated!

Thanks for playing again, good to hear that the game has improved in some areas. 

I like the skybox but they’re very high res compared to everything else and clash as a result

I don't think it matters too much if the sky looks better than the rest of the game but I will be experimenting with lower res ones, especially because the ones I'm using are free assets and there's only so many different skyboxes I can make with those. 

but it’s really annoying that turning the boat doesn’t cause you to turn while standing on it

That sounds like it could be disorienting but I suppose I can test it out and see if it works.

You can walk right up to the boat but can’t jump high enough to actually get into it.

Noted, I'll make jumps from shallow water higher, that should do it.

For some reason when I got close to the shore the game’s framerate nosedived and the main thread started rocketing at max speed

Dang it. This happened to me a couple of times but I thought I had fixed it. It's something to do with the boat colliding with the shore at some specific angle, now I suspect it might be because of Godot's axis lock setting, if that's the case it should be an easy fix.
Sorry about that.

Thanks again for the feedback, it seems like I still need to iron out some kinks in visuals and gameplay before I can focus on adding content, but I think I'm getting close. 

Hey, thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback.

Too much grenades thrown at his second phase, his ground pound shouldn't be that powerful I think

I think a bigger arena with an extra row of columns will be enough to make him a more fair fight, also I need to find a way to teach players that "ground slam" type attacks can be avoided by jumping.

but normal shielded enemies were almost immune to the explosions

Unless something is broken they take two nades, which yeah I'll bump it down to one.

I didn't like the animations for human enemies too, they're very basic

They're the first enemies I made so it's good to hear I've gotten better. I'll make a note to redo their animations.

Pickups are very bright which on one hand makes them easier to find, but they also stand out from the surroundings a lot.

I've gotten some feedback about that, but I like having something that I can use to guide the player's eye towards secrets or the way forward. I guess they are a bit jarring. I'll have to think of a substitute if I do end up making them more plain.

Regarding lore

I didn't want to explain too much for the demo, I was thinking of adding an intro level down the line that would explain things more clearly.
Basically the idea is that, while rapid mutations caused the collapsed of modern society, by the time the game takes place contamination can be treated and most of the danger is from the mutated creatures themselves. Mutagenic serum is not the same as the industrial contaminant, it's meant to be stable and controllable so people can use it to give themselves useful genetic mutations. I understand that this might be counter intuitive, there's a chance that I might scrap the mutation system in favor of various equipment that does the same thing. 

And since people devolved why they managed to form tribes and even cooperate with other animals?

The tribe you fight are more like dumber aggressive humans than feral beasts. They are capable of having language, a social structure and even domesticating animals. Lore-wise the big fishmen enemies should be fighting with the tribals in the chieftain level but I didn't get infighting ready in time for the demo. Speaking of domestication, there's a pup that you can adopt in the lair level, it's right before the bossfight. Rags has unique dialogue if you bring it back before doing the chieftain level.

As a linear game it might not be as fun and replayable.

I did toy with some procedural generation but I found that it cheapens the exploration and it's a pain in the ass to set up. I'm definitely going to add more things to find in levels, and the mutation system could use some more depth yeah.
I just don't think this game can be anything more than a linear game, I'm hoping that a complete mutation system will give player different enough playstyles that replaying levels with different ones will be fun.

Anyway thanks again for the comment, much appreciated!

Short demo but flying around is fun. Some feedback:

I'd find it easier to fly if the camera was first person or if it rolled with the plane.
I thought it was lame how the plane wasn't affected by gravity and could stand still mid-air indefinitely but once I had to avoid missiles and get behind shields that control came in handy. 
I did kill the core by hovering next to it and spamming missiles though. 
The guns felt underpowered considering that you need to aim them and keep on target while you fire.

What's there is promising, I'm looking forward to playing this again.

Look at this CLEAN breakout:

This game feels like you're playing as a SWAT tank team the way you're slicing pies, like doorkickers but tanks.
It's a bit weird because peeking around corners in a way that doesn't expose you too much takes a lot of finesse with the commands but once combat starts if you're in a good position you just need to sit there and watch as the enemy vehicles funnel themselves in a killzone one after the other. If you turn the corner and there's too many enemies you pop smoke, fall back and wait, if you think you're lose you fire rockets. It plays well so far but I'm wondering how much variety there will be if all engagements can be resolved by baiting an enemy push into a firing squad of tanks.

For the loadout system I moved the big tank's optics to the second "Turret F" slot and used the freed slots to equip more rockets which I used liberally. 
idk if you can see it here but modules are being placed over eachother might have something to do with me swapping the k-50 for another k-75:

I can move modules and place them around but they leave a "fake" module in the background that I cannot click and I can place other modules on top of, those two "R8" modules are the same module and that "3R8" module is actually loaded on the k-75.

Infantry: their current implementation works fine as enemies but I couldn't get much use out of them. If they're caught by an enemy tank they are basically dead. My instincts was to use them as recon and have them spot enemies while hiding but buildings don't seem to give them a camouflage or cover bonus so if an enemy gets LoS they get vaporized.

Anyways, fun demo.

For the starting dialogue skip should complete the sentence first instead of skipping it right away. 

First run I got to the area with the conveyor belt thinking I would save there before starting but I got instantly killed by a jumpscare and it sent me back to the beginning. I think putting players in charge of saving the game and having that save cost limited resources is a recipe for frustration.
Second run got ended by an uphill + V-shaped barrier shot that I couldn't do. Uphill shots like that are much harder because the ball rolls back down and out of bounds which immediately fails your current try, if there were a barrier or the ball got reset to the starting position you could at least practice the shot 2 more times before starting your next try.
Last run I was doing the corner thing and I didn't realize an enemy had spawn and it killed me. I did hear the thing open but I thought it was another load of fish. Enemies could use some sound when attacking.

Last time I played this it had a putt button. I suppose holding down a single button is more elegant and less random but it is counter intuitive.
The camera smoothing is nauseating so I disabled it immediately but also the way the character moves feels bad to control, it's like you're dragging something heavy on ice. 
Bullet decals apply to the ball and the coins.

It took me a while to realize that I can reload a partly empty shotgun by pressing right click and that the lever on the shotgun indicates how many shots are left. 

Got to the jumpscare guy again, I realize now that it's a roaming monster and not something that's meant to kill you as you go save, which is a problem because I didn't save (didn't have money) and I got cornered.
I understand that you're trying to make the game more tense but I don't think this resource management system is doing it any favors. Spooky monsters would be enough imo.
Also causes some randomness problems because those courses with the barriers you have to shoot to raise are an ammo sink.
In some courses the ball can get wedged between an obstacle and the course's edge and it's hard to get an angle to hit it.

I still think the golfing is really fun. 

In the one room you can enter you slide against the right wall but not the left wall, this happened in my game because it was a convex polygon collision imported form blender without backface collision allowed

Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!

I tried being in the air while it performed it, didn't help

It should but maybe it's not working as intended. I'll check it out.

Why is there a distinction between available and consumed mutagens? Why would I want to not consume them?

It's a holdover from when there was a trading system and items could be bought and sold. I'll cut that.

most of my kills were from just circling the structure and using the mounted gun and the harpoon

That's intended, to a degree. I'm all for players cheesing a couple of enemy kills, if I want to force them to engage with an encounter from up close I can make enemies spawn or aggro through trigger areas. 

The chieftain fight was underwhelming. those health upgrades made things so much easier

Balance is in an horrid state right now, getting the right upgrades makes the game so much easier. The health on melee hit is so strong you can outheal a lot of encounters by standing still and swinging your machete. The chieftain's health was nerfed a bit because some players were having trouble with him, it's too easy to burst down as a result. It's the lesser of the two evils, the arena is too small and it's hard to avoid damage if he lets off a grenade + SMG combo. I guess he's due for a rework as well. I'm focusing on getting combat and movement feeling right so that's more important than trying to make it properly balanced for now, I will probably have to scrap at least the first two levels at some point anyway. A lot of people pointed out that the boat is not used enough and I agree, I was focusing on nailing down regular combat first so I made those levels as a series of land combat arenas and that isn't good enough. Given, not every level will have ample space for sailing but the first one sure should.

Thanks again for the notes! Much appreciated.

Not much to say since this is old levels.
I just now noticed that the Itch.io gifs show enemies flashing red when hit but that doesn't happen in game. I assume it's something you've removed? I think it looks nice.

Even with the framerate limit of 144 my game was running at 2500+ FPS until I enabled v-sync.
This also happens in-game but it goes down to 400 FPS.

This pier is wrong:

this is a trial run of the actual demo I’ll be putting up on Steam next week.

Best of luck!

Hey thanks for playing and for the video, I'll watch it as soon as I get the chance they're always so helpful.

I don't know if this should be removed. Finding exploits like that feels pretty cool.

That mutation will need to be reworked because it's possible to out-heal most encounters with the machete alone but yeah I'll try to keep them strong.

They have same attack as slugs, but slugs were much harder even in the Chief level when I had all the weapons.

I think part of the slug's problem is that their weakspots are not obvious enough: It's not quite their heads, is their mouth and the small thing they have on their backs. The idea was to give the player an opportunity to deal more damage as they're about to shoot but that was poorly communicated, I should make weakspots more obvious in general.

Are old weapons obsolete?

The SMG deals 25% less damage but gets half of that back when hitting a weakspot, it's meant to be slightly less ammo efficient. The double barreled shotgun has a wider spread but that's not really an upside. 
The reason why they are different is that I'm still trying to figure out if I want earlier weapons to have their own niche. That is the obvious path to take but if I decide to have some sort of loadout system I can add a lot more weapons and leave it up to the player to pick what they prefer without worrying too much about them overlapping, as long as they are all viable. 
Gun upgrades are also on the table but I need to figure out the basics first, SMG + double pistols + single pistol is already too much for a single ammo type for example.

 the huts the leech dogs sometimes sit in bug me a little

The huts are built by the humanoid mutants, the implication when the dogs are in a hut is that the huts have been abandoned, but they are domesticable.
There's actually a pup that you can adopt. It's in the Jumbo level in a cave right before the bossfight. Rags has some special dialogue if you get it before doing the chieftain level and it has a special non-canon dialogue if you interact with it after unlocking freeplay mode and loading up the area again.

but this time I think there's not enough sailing

Yes, agreed. I made the levels too foot-centric because I was focusing on making land combat feel good. Not all levels will be focused on sailing but the boat should be more prominent. Giving it a gun, lights and a supply crate made it more of a gameplay element but the levels should be reworked at some point. 

Thanks again for the comment and the feedback, much appreciated!

The dome gun stops all momentum when you're out and then it resumes when you hop back in, seems unintended.
Music "desyncs" from the horde timer when you pause to buy upgrades.
I was able to fire the incendiary ability while on the gun somehow.
Sometimes when you mine a tile it pushes you too close to another tile and you have to back up if you want to mine that tile. 

7 chips were a bit excessing for this demo, you run out of useful stuff to buy quickly.
During some waves I felt like I was forced to buy damage upgrades which is the point of having the offensive and progression trees being separate but stopping your progression to not lose doesn't feel good. Maybe if there were things you could shoot during the exploration part it wouldn't feel like you've "wasted" a day.

Carry capacity upgrade made it much harder to carry items because they'd detach from you much more easily.
It would be better if you could attach and dethatch pickups by mousing over and pressing E so that you don't accidentally pickup something you don't want and can dethatch excessive weight whenever you want or reposition pickups to be in the middle of a path ready to be picked up as you're walking back to the dome.
It would be cool if having more than enough mining upgrades to mine something in one hit would let you mine that tile without being knocked back.

The core design works: you're upgrading things to get better at getting upgrade materials and having more time away form the base so that much is functional but it's not exactly captivating.

This is the best gunship game I've ever played.

I beat two bosses and I'm not sure how to enter the light domain, I'm assuming it has something to do with the shrimps asking you to do quests nearby. 
I don't love that the two bosses were about avoiding area of effects or "indirect" attacks instead of the threats coming from the bosses themselves, but that's just me and I'm sure the other bosses are different enough to keep things fresh.

Dying to the boss gave me whiplash because it respawns you in the middle of the bossfight but with worse stats, it doesn't feel great.

Very fun gameplay over all.

Hey, thanks for playing. 
Chieftain arena is due for a rework, I agree. In the hotfix I just uploaded I also added an extra crate and medkit outside of the arena so that it's a bit easier.

Never found the grenade weapon, so that might be why I was struggling so much

Did you do the chieftain level before the other one? A couple of players did that, the NPC tells you that it's the harder of the two level but I guess I should have added some indicator or color coding for difficulty levels.
My solution to weapons potentially being missable was adding several instances of them to each level, you must have gotten unlucky to miss it until the chieftain fight. There's two different grenade weapons in the same floor with the gate lever, past the hole. I'll make a mental note to make areas like that more obvious, sorry.

Ammo feels a bit too scarce, it doesn't feel like it's enough to kill everything in the level with despite having that show up on the score at the end.

I think part of that is playing without the grenade launcher but also I might have gotten carried away with putting ammo crates in places that are out of the way. My intent was to reward exploration but I suppose pistol and shotgun ammo should always be plentiful.

Thanks again for the feedback! I'll do a better job balancing the game next time.

Just a heads up: setting the framerate higher than 60 causes some issues. Hotfix tomorrow, it's ready but I want to test it to see if there's anymore problems I didn't catch.

Hotfix is out

The tutorial was a good idea because I had no clue what I was doing last time. 
Good to know that some mutants are feral, for example. They are hard to spot.
It's a lot of frontloaded info though, you probably don't need to explain emergencies like the grill catching fire or the rats.
Also I didn't realize that there was a scrollbar on the tutorial so I missed half of it the first time.
Sometimes mutants ask you for one single raw ingredient and it took me a while to realize that they still want it in a bowl toast or shish. 
Killer corn keeps killing me. I don't know what it wants. Am I meant to keep the mouse on it?
The note with the list of things to do is a better way to handle information than a tutorial dump. I think it would be cool if they were sticky notes around the track.
I didn't get far but I think it's fun.

Do you think I need to state these relationships more explicitly?

I think players would forget if you made them use it in a tutorial. Maybe some more intuitive color coding would help? Having the purple enemy be countered by the white attack and vice versa doesn't make immediate sense. 

What's your suggestion? More homogenized room shapes?

I think enemies could to handle corners better, rooms with a ton of cover are so easy because enemies get caught on each other and the terrain as the same time as they try to get to you. Fighting in rooms like that feels like the game is handing you a freebie. 

Hey thanks a lot for playing and thanks for the gameplay video, I'll watch it as soon as I get the chance.

I like piloting the boat a lot, but it kind of felt like a side note to the gameplay

Yes I agree I think I was trying to make regular land combat feel good so I ended up making levels that made the boat kind of an afterthought. The gun upgrade, lights and the supply crate make it more useful compared to last time but levels need to be built around the boat to a degree.

His final form had an annoying tendency to jump and hit a pillar in the arena, instantly triggering the damage and killing you

Yeah that fight needs some touchups for sure, sorry about that.
I realize it's not communicated at all now that I'm writing it, but that attack is meant to be a shockwave so it's nullified by being in the air, if you jump when you hear the noise it won't do any damage to you even if it hits the pillar right away.
Again I should have probably polished the fight more, my bad.

There's a gun you missed in a cave near the lower scaffolding and some ammo crates around that might make the fight easier, if you have enough ammo for an IED or two you can cheese part of the fight that way, it does a lot of damage.

I'll be more mindful of balance going forward, thanks again for the feedback and the video!

Okay, took me a few hours of trying but I beat it: 

Locking tier 2 reagents behind an upgrade seems a bit punishing and it messes with my muscle memory but it works if you want to give the player a sense of progression.

Every time I play alchemickal it takes me a while to readjust my muscle memory and remember that Ice counters electricity but not fire and electricity counters ice but not water. Took me a while to get back in the rythm.

Color coding is still off: Fire explore should be fire colored instead of red, neutral ice and water enemies are hard to distinguish when they're being summoned which can end your run if you're trying to scythe one of those neutral enemies and you realize too late that it's a cryo mine instead,

The aggressive blade enemies that charge you complement the ranged ones I don't mind them.

Turrets are fine in small rooms but in larger rooms like the boss room they can feel unfair when they're shooting from off screen. The turret rotation noise is a little grating.

New boss is cool, more fun that the old one because the old one had that multiple bouncing ray attack that was hard to dodge.

This type of room is satan incarnate and it was responsible for most of my failed runs. 

I think you've got a room balance problem on your hands: The ones with pillars you can move around are super easy, the ones with small pockets you can hide in are also more forgiving, the other ones feel completely different and so much harder especially in the upper floor where you have no room to maneuver and doge the initial attack by the whole wave of watchers. 

Difficulty-wise I kept drying to pits, self damage, mines and barrels instead of enemy attacks. Once I unlocked tier 2 I started using steam + electricity + ice and that's a combo that clears rooms of all enemies fairly easily. I never felt the need of experimenting or mixing my tactics unless there were a couple of enemies left to speed things up.
idk if it's even viable to use anything but revolver + AoE mix on hard.

Still very fun and the new enemies added some nice variety to the rooms.

Thank you so much for the video, just finished watching it. It's been helpful especially the thorough testing of the controls.
Man, I didn't realize how hard I made that first level. I actually did the other two first so by that point I got so used to the combat that I made it way too challenging, at the very least I should have started the player with a couple of medkits.
Also this cable was supposed to be there but Godot sometimes removes my shader material from the cable objects for unknown reasons:

 Anyways thanks again for the feedback! 

Thanks for playing!

 I had thought I was just playing as some guy

The lore isn't there yet but it is a world where everyone's mutated to a degree. I haven't decided if I want mutations to be the primary mean of player progression / character building or an optional thing, but them being available right away is for playtesting.

I don't like the map system. The game gives a nice early 3D PC game vibe that it is at odds with

At heart it's just a level selector, not much different than Painkiller's pre-level screen for example.
It certainly should be moodier, it's a placeholder.

Something about changing weapons during/after reloading a save let me use the revolver but the first shot after each reload was a shotgun blast

Good catch, the fix will be in the next build.

I died because, seemingly, a fish jumped out of the water onto land on a suicide mission to damage me once and killed me

I'll make it so the fishes can't attack you if they're on land. They suffocate after a few seconds so them jumping on the boat is meant to be a funny thing and also a source of free healing. Fishes jump on boats all the time so I thought it would fit.

Sorry about making the game too difficult, it's hard to judge these things. The game is in a bit of an identity crisis right now, it's going to be hard to blend the "surviving -> exploring -> conquering savage lands" theme with the gameplay of a somewhat fast paced shooter, and also I obviously don't want the boat to feel like a dead weight you're dragging around, it's going to take some iterating to get it right so I really appreciate your honesty. 

Thanks again for the feedback, it's very useful.

Hey thanks for playing.

I think if you gave a thought to some vertical level design, mixed with more movement abilities (superjump? dash?)so you can jump and glide between cliffs and buildings, in more confined areas so enemies are more of a threat, it would feel really fun.

True, the levels were not as thought out as they could have been. The main problem with making levels like that is that I'd like to have a lot more mutations while keeping all of them optional, it'll be a problem to solve at some point. Technically the chieftain level was designed with some of it in mind as the player is able to glide onto some roofs or distant building by grenade jumping but it's the first of the three levels I made so it ended up basic, It's going to get a giant rework soon enough.

Enemies feel like they have a very long reach

True, they do. I found that if they had a reach that matched their attack perfectly they would have a lot of trouble hitting a moving player. I need to make them move while attacking if I want them to have a chance, or just make most enemies ranged. I'll rework them as soon as I can.

and I noticed that my guns clipped into a wall whenever I walked against it, maybe the player camera is too far back?

The guns clipping is because I haven't gotten around giving them their own viewport yet, but I suppose moving the camera forward would make the hitbox feel more fair? I'll test it out.

I look at the screen and it looks like it's saying CTRL V to go down, when it's just CTRL and the down symbol. for whatever reason, my brain tries to push CTRL and V almost every time

That's funny, it is text though so your brain is not wrong. I'll change it to a symbol, why not.

Thanks again for the feedback, very helpful.

Both the fog and saving issues are solved with the hotfix.

Damn never had this and dont even know why would it happen 

Happens in my Godot games sometimes, maybe something to do with inputs being processed during the micro stutter that happens when the game first loads? I added a 0.1 seconds time window on load where inputs are discarded to prevent that from happening, it shouldn't cause any issues when loading since it's such a short time but it might stop players from accidentally starting the game while looking at the ground or the sky.