itch.io

Thanks for the clarifications! Yeah, after a few more runs (I've done like 7 at this point), I did end up getting the monocle, realized just how much of the game's mechanics were hidden, and decided to just start using the wiki whenever I got an item I didn't recognize, lol.

I feel like the items in this game fit into two categories: So minor/subtle you'll never figure it out without the monocole (most stat-boosting ones, or that backpack that only does anything if you know you're supposed to skip a turn for it to work, or any item that breaks TT's rules so fundamentally there's no way you can know you have its effect unless you're literally TOLD you can place traps under lured cogs now), or obvious enough that not having a description actually kinda works (any item which "announces" its effect in-battle, like the alien glasses, the dinosaur one with the meteors, and most pocket pranks).

A game like Risk of Rain can get away with a vague item description or two, because the items with those items usually have instant, obvious effects. "...And his music was electric", and all your attacks are suddenly doing big, flashy chain lightning attacks. Checks out, you know? But the game still explains all of the non-obvious effects, because there's no way to know otherwise.

That being said, I am still really loving this game. The characters have super interesting gimmicks (I'm in the middle of a run with Bessie, she's super creative, and my first item this run was the wizard hat which makes it 10x more interesting), the item effects are really cool when you understand them, the game's various "twists" are incredible (my jaw dropped when the game presented me with a 9x14 matching puzzle and I was like... you can DO that??), and the original music has been stuck in my head ever since I started playing. Special mention goes to the factory silo platforming room where it starts filling up with paint, that music and the final boss music are two of my favorites.

While the game is pretty noticeably different from Toontown in some ways, after playing for a while, I honestly forget it's not Toontown, and it's genuinely astounding y'all managed to recreate it this well in Godot. The controls/physics are at least 90% there, and the visuals are *totally* spot-on, and I can't imagine how hard it must have been to port everything so well like that. It's only super obvious anything's different when the game looks "too good", like the lava platforming room in the mints (which is a really cool effect, by the way).

The haunted golf course area is super cool, too. My only complaint is I can't see 2 feet in front of me, meaning I had to tap W instead of holding it for most of my time there, and the one time I did hold it, I fell right into an oil pit I couldn't tell apart from the floor. Aside from that, the "classic creepypasta" vibe of the place brought me a kind of nostalgia I wasn't really expecting! I had a dumb smile on my face the whole time I was there.

The faulty factory is amazing, too. I was taking screenshots of the cogs to send to my friend the whole way through. And I've had a lot of fun messing around with what it unlocks when you beat it!

This game is great and perfectly captures the Toontown feel (with a few extremely minor details as exceptions), although some elements are rather frustrating, such as some of the near-kaizo-level platforming (I lost a god run to flame jets in the room with spinning platforms in the molten area). Especially when 99% of the game's platforming challenges are more in line with TTO in terms of difficulty, so the super extreme challenges coming out of nowhere feel like bizarre difficulty spikes. It's really frustrating to get 3-shot by something that's totally separate from the "main gameplay" of turn-based battles.

Also the fact that the items don't tell you what they do means they might as well be placebo, because you can't really plan or strategize around items in this game. You just have to hope they're doing *something* for you. The only time an item's effect was really "obvious" to me was when it caused me to start missing half of my attacks. Made me wish I never picked up those stupid glasses, or that I could at the very least drop or get rid of them. And when one of the only memorable items effects was actively negative, it makes me want to avoid picking them up at all.

Considering you don't know what any of the items are going to do, the "next area" selection feels pretty meaningless.  It pretty much amounts to "how many anomalies do you want?" Or "what cosmetic do you want?" Because the items may as well be cosmetic with how few of them actually seem to do anything. Same goes for the shop. You're rarely able to afford anything that costs double digit amounts anyway, unless you get the pay raise item (that one was fun, I was rich by the end of that run).

Also a lot of systems aren't properly explained. The fact you need to hit esc to open an extremely important menu should either be explained to the player early on, or there should be an on-screen button for it. Putting a book icon in the lower right would probably help, because most TT players could reasonably intuit that it will open a menu with important information.

And can you hold 1 usable item or 2? Flippy seems to be able to hold 2, but Clara only holds 1? But this isn't said anywhere in their character descriptions? Or is there some other mechanic that dictates how many you can hold? In my first run, I had 1 blue and 1 green and could swap between them, but on my second run, I couldn't hold multiple no matter what combinations of colors I tried to hold. It was really frustrating realizing I spent my jellybeans on nothing, because I suddenly couldn't actually take the item I thought I was receiving.

Speaking of poorly explained mechanics, are the gags used in a certain order or not? The game seems to change its mind constantly. During the intro I was convinced squirt always had to come first, and I operated under that assumption for the whole run, only to realize near the end that I was wrong, and could use gags in any order? And then on my 2nd run, squirt forced itself to the beginning of the move order again! Is it a squirt-specific mechanic? If so, why doesn't it say so in the description when you hover over it, if it's a mechanic that no other gag track has??

Also the intro is fun, the bait and switch is an excellent way to start, but it gets tiring once you have to slog through it a 2nd or 3rd time. Please make it skippable after the first playthrough. Just have the elevator fall under the toon on the character select screen and have the title card pop up there, there's no reason to make me go through an entire battle that doesn't even matter, especially when I know about the bait and switch already. The surprise wore off, there's no reason to try to surprise me again by doing the exact same thing all over again.

Those are my only complaints so far, though. This is a wonderful project, and extremely well put together, I just wish some of its rougher aspects were fixed. Mainly, better explanation for the mechanics, actual item descriptions, and maybe make it so hazards don't 3-shot you when they're already so precise. The battles are fun and engaging, and this fangame is a perfect realization of a dream I've always had for a Toontown roguelike. Even with its faults, I'll continue to play it, because it's still really fun when I don't get screwed over.

The link doesn't work. I was really hoping to give this a try.

I'm glad you appreciated my feedback! :D

I feel like, if you're going to have a dedicated flag button, right click should be reserved for that, as changing it to some other button would mess with muscle memory too much. Alternatively, if you wanted to change how flags work (for example, the "tiered" flags concept), you could try using the scroll wheel for the flag mechanic? Right click a space to select it for flagging, scroll up or down to increment/decrement the number?

Then maybe left clicking a tiered flag auto-uses the lowest tier of regular ammo required, which could be disabled with a checkbox if you want the normal behavior of it using your selected ammo? Or maybe the ammo selection menu simply has a "smart select" option, and using that "ammo" automatically picks the correct ammo based on what number is on the flag? In that case, it would be worth deciding whether to have it use better or worse ammo if you don't have that exact tier, or if it should just pop up a message saying "no ammo" to tell the player they have to choose their desired ammo manually?

Could give the feeling that you right click and scroll to "aim" your weapon, and left click to "fire". For anyone without scroll wheels, they could just type the number with the keyboard. Number keys could also be used for the "Minecraft hotbar" idea, and a good way to prevent overlap would be to have the numbers enter numbers onto the selected flag tile, and you can hit enter to "confirm" the number, returning the number keys to their hotbar functionality while no "text field" is selected? Same for scroll wheel potentially being used for hotbar. Of course, you could add an option that disables the number typing entirely, for those who don't want to bother hitting enter before selecting their ammo, especially in cases where they actually have a scroll wheel. And a reverse option that enables number typing, but dedicates the scroll wheel to hotbar selection.

Or maybe you could also make it so right clicking to flag a tile, and then clicking one of the enemy "profiles" on the right, uses the selected enemy to determine the flag used? So if there's a 1 on a corner, you can right click the tile, click the level 1 enemy, and then a "1" flag appears? Would be slower than the other ideas, but very convenient for touchscreens, or people who prefer "intuitive" over "quick".

There's lots of ways you could go about making a new control scheme, but I'm a game design nerd, so I figured I'd give you some of my ideas. :P

Oh wow, I wasn't expecting such a fast turnaround! It works great, now! Only small issue I found is that closing the settings menu gets the board stuck to the cursor, forcing you to click whatever random tile is underneath it in order to get it unstuck. A remaining mine count would also help, especially in situations where you have to guess.

Wish this had the ability to click on numbers like regular minesweeper. That would've made this perfect!

First impressions for this game are honestly pretty bad. The game looks nothing like the screenshot, and when I tried to go to the settings, video options were grayed out with a note telling me they're only available in the full version?? I'm sorry, you're telling me VIDEO OPTIONS are PAYWALLED?! That's not a good look when the game is fixed at a resolution that's way too high to see everything.

Also, whoever does the voice for the narrator doesn't fit the role at all. The game description mentions a "darkly sarcastic" narrator, yet instead we get... sweet, kindly cowboy? Why is the VA doing a cowboy voice anyway when this is supposed to be a sci-fi setting? Not to mention, their delivery is awful. You really should have gotten multiple takes, or at least explained what the intended tone for some of these lines was supposed to be. I feel like I could do better, which isn't great.

Where can I get the music for this?

This is a fun and promising game! I think it could be really great with some updates and tweaks! If you do plan on updating this game further, I have some feedback:

1. Switching between ammo types is a liiitle bit annoying to have to do between every shot. Could be nice if there was a way to auto-attack all flagged spaces. How would it know which tier of ammo to use? Maybe right clicking multiple times could cycle the tile through different "tiers" of flag, based on the floor and what types of enemies are on it.

2. The lack of a way to reveal tiles in bulk slows down the game considerably. In minesweeper, you're usually supposed to be able to click the numbers to reveal all adjacent tiles IF the number of adjacent flags is equal to the number on the tile. I can see how that would be a bit complicated here, but maybe my earlier tiered flags suggestion could help with that. Maybe even make it so clicking the numbers auto-attacks the enemies if you have the right tiered ammo? Could be an optional toggle, at least.

3. It would be nice if the number of enemies on the right decreased with each one defeated, so I wouldn't need to count all the v1.0s just to make sure they all add up to 10.

4. Level ups don't really feel impactful. More health is nice, but I tried my best to conserve level ammo because of how it scales with your level, making it by far the most valuable ammo type. I never even used any before reaching the ending, which makes me feel like I hoarded it for no reason. Maybe you could gain new abilities with level-ups, making it easier to clear boards quickly. Then, you could make the game harder by either ramping up the number of enemies, or reducing the amount of ammo, making said abilities feel more necessary, and make it so skillful usage of them is critical to success.

5. The fact that you can misclick on an already-revealed tile, and yet it still wastes ammo, feels bad. Ammo should only be used when revealing new tiles, because there's no situation where shooting a revealed tile is useful or desired. ...I mean, it could be if you got really creative with new, special types of ammo, but all of the ammo in the game is pretty basic, so...

6. I'm not sure why the scroll wheel spams the shoot sound effect, especially because it doesn't actually use ammo or reveal tiles.

All in all, this game has some great potential, and I'd love to see it develop further! I also just wanna say I love the "old Windows" aesthetic, and the midi music adds to it so perfectly!

Really fun and interesting game, although there are a few things I'd like to provide feedback on:

1. The game is sadly very short. I know it's an early version or demo, but even this version could have replayability extended greatly with an endless mode, where enemies could get harder over time.

2. The UI is very unresponsive. The lack of moving elements outside of the battle scene gives the vibe that the game is frozen or lagging, making it unclear whether your clicks actually did anything, especially when many actions freeze the game for a second. Having more things change when you hover over them (such as gaining an outline) would help this issue greatly.

3. A lot of people got the impression there's no way to view info for runes being crafted, but that's because the tooltip only shows up when you take your hand off of the mouse. Having it always be present when your cursor is over the item would help greatly.

4. There's no way to view info for runes that you already have unless you view them in-battle.

5. A lot of mechanics go unexplained. When a rune says it adds whetstones, or blood, or coal... I have no way of knowing what any of those mean or do. Additional info boxes describing the relevant keyword (similar to how Risk of Rain 2 does it), or any other way to know what various resources or statuses do, would help greatly.

6. Also, never underestimate the power of hover tooltips, which I found to be missing for status effects.

All in all, despite its faults and rough spots, this is an extremely promising start for what could be an amazing game! I don't expect you'll continue developing it given the note in the description, but I would be overjoyed to be proven wrong.

Wish I could play this, but I'm not gonna install a whole new browser for just one game. Guess I'll wait for the downloadable version. Someone poke me when that's out, I suppose.

Glad to see this indie classic's back on the internet! I was wondering where it (and the site it was on) went.

I feel like that still doesn't solve the issue of the game incentivizing the player to spam click until their finger hurts, but it's a start! I still think a true autofire function would be the easiest approach, but of course, it's not the only one.

Tried to send feeback using the ingame menu, but it said "ConnectionError", so I'll put it here instead.

Having to switch between active skills using hotkeys is really annoying, and makes the game feel like a juggling act that gets in the way of the main gameplay of aiming, timing, and enemy prioritization. So I usually forego alternate skills entirely. Also, when the cooldown gets too fast, you're incentivized to spam click in order to activate it as soon as possible. Honestly, that can even happen at longer cooldowns, because every second you don't use your ability is wasted damage potential.

I feel like both of these issues could be solved by having an autofire toggle of some sort, where you check a box next to the skill icon at the bottom, and it automatically activates at the cursor's position every time it's ready. Maybe even make it so that holding down the mouse button activates the skill as SOON as it's ready.

An alternate way to solve the issue of the player being incentivized to spam click in order to not waste cooldown time would be to allow the player to hold multiple "charges" of skills. That could be a fun thing to make upgradeable as well. If that feels like it would be overkill to have available from the start, maybe the player could still build up to slightly above 100% charge to begin with. 110%? 150%? Something like that. Just to prevent carpal tunnel.

Besides that, it feels disingenuous to not label this as a demo ANYWHERE on the game's page. The entire "features" section is a lie, because none of the stuff listed is actually available in this version. It's a bait and switch, and I feel less inclined to wishlist the full version thanks to that deception.

Well no wonder you couldn't make a less vague reply if you only skimmed it. What kind of opinion about what things?

What's all this I keep getting about essays? I just tend to ramble a little. Is that really so alien to everyone else on the internet?? Well sorry I couldn't be more "concise" for you. You know what they say, "if I had more time I would've written a shorter letter." I'm not gonna sit here and go through multiple drafts of something that I don't wanna spend more than maybe 15 minutes writing.

Also it's not marketing techniques, and I didn't say you're not allowed to like it. I'm just saying that there are many things about it that have been ruined by EA, the company PopCap is currently a subsidiary to, and the company that replaced the producer for PvZ 2 because it wasn't "enough like current free-to-play games".

Besides, I was never talking about whether the game was fun or not. I've played a couple mods that fix EA's mistakes (like re-tooling or otherwise removing the leveling system, removing microtransactions, removing many of the more detestable updates, etc), and there is a game that WAS at one point GOING to be good. It's just that it didn't turn out that way. And what do I think after playing these mods? Eh, it's okay. Could never beat the original in a million years, but if a diehard PvZ fan just wants "more PvZ", then (modded) PvZ 2 can certainly be described as "more PvZ".

No, I just find it pretty ridiculous that you attacked someone just for not liking a fairly mediocre game. You made an account JUST to attack them. That's, uh... pretty extreme. I'm just trying to get you to see why people have that opinion. Opinions aren't universal, and you can't expect people to share yours, especially when there are MANY good reasons to dislike the game.

Uh...? It doesn't meet my standards for how long an essay should be, but if that's what it feels like to you, sure?

Well good to know it's not for mac or anything weird like that, but my issue still stands. I haven't published a game on Itch before so correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you're able to specify platforms on a per-download basis. Just mark "PvZ in GML Release v0.1.0 - Download.zip" as being for Windows and people will be able to install it via the Itch app just fine. For some reason, if the creator does NOT specify the platform for the download, even if it's the only download option available, the Itch app literally won't let you even select it. It's a pain sometimes.

Can't be installed by the itch app due to the download not specifying what platform it's for.

Alright, jokes aside, don't think I don't know what's going on here. You're a big fan of PvZ 2 because you're at the age where you don't really mind if a game is an obvious cash grab, and don't get turned away by the typical awful design that mobile games usually have. And when people attack a game you like so much, you feel offended because you feel as though people are attacking you personally for liking it. Trust me, I understand, I was like that too.

But someday, you'll start to understand these situations for what they are. You'll start to learn the many tricks that mobile game developers put in their games to try to force people to spend money. Even if you feel accomplished for playing through the game without getting frustrated enough to give EA money, the game wasn't designed for you. It's designed for the kind of people who WOULD give into that frustration. They're like gambling addicts, except their dopamine hit doesn't even come from earning part of their money back, it comes from succeeding in something that was designed to have them fail.

Microtransactions in games literally wouldn't exist if there was no point in using them, so developers come up with ways to make people want to use them. And of all the companies that do, Electronic Arts, the publisher of PvZ 2, is by far the most infamous of all of them. They were literally voted the most hated company in America at one point, and have made it to the top 10 in plenty of other similar votes. There's literally an entire Wikipedia article dedicated to criticism of EA, and given Wikipedia's strict rules on notability, that's fucking saying something.

So in short, Plants vs. Zombies 2 is:
- Published by EA
- A game that locks plants, including plants that were literally available for free in the first game, behind paywalls
- Mobile exclusive

Even the original producer of the game talked about how bad PvZ 2 turned out.

So when people say a game is bad, don't just automatically assume they mean that it's IMPOSSIBLE to have fun with, or that the people who do like it are wrong for doing so. I have plenty of games that I despise, that I still have fun with. Clearly there was a game here that the developers cared about making. But then they got acquired by EA mid-development, and it all went down the drain. Developers try to make good games, and executives like these try to get them to make bad games (that make more money) instead. Naturally, since the executives have complete control over the developers, this goes about as well as you'd expect.

My condolences.

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The following features required to run Godot projects on the Web are missing:

Cross Origin Isolation - Check web server configuration (send correct headers)

SharedArrayBuffer - Check web server configuration (send correct headers)

Can't install via Itch app due to downloads not being marked by what OS they're for.

Ridiculously loud, can't find the volume controls, and the game tells me to press controller buttons even though I don't have a controller plugged in. Playing post-jam version, though I'm not sure why it's not the default version.

Nice! Though I'm not really sure what the Discord bit has to do with anything.

Is the unbearable lag going to be fixed in future version(s)?

So, did you get in trouble for stealing your parents' credit card?

Best time: 37:30
Pretty interesting game, but I do have a few issues with it.

1. The shielded enemies are overpowered. I don't know the exact mechanics of the game well enough to explain why, as this issue only really becomes apparent due to the issue I'm about to name.

2. The enemy spawning is REALLY weird. For the entire time I was playing endless mode, the bottom two rows would ONLY spawn the shield enemies. I had to focus ALL of my firepower on said bottom two rows, because replacing even one of the lasers with a gatling gun or lab would've ruined everything. This is even with the upper 4 rows containing gatling guns almost exclusively, upgraded with scattershot to be able to help with the bottom two rows. I pretty much never saw any enemies come from any row besides the bottom two, which is what leads me to feel they're overpowered. Although this might not even be noticeable if enemy spawns were even instead of weirdly focused.

3. Feels too reliant on RNG. I had several games at the start where I had twice as many labs as I did actual weapons. It doesn't help that the shock weapon seems totally useless, meaning it's a coin flip whether a tower you get is actually useful. And in some games, I only got one column on a given row, and literally had no way to defend it, as there was no room to place a second gun.

4. Upgrading via the labs is VERY tedious. Just nonstop clicking. And you get to a point where each individual damage upgrade matters so little you don't even know why you continue to bother clicking on them. The only reason I even lost when I did was because I got bored and decided to just sit and watch the outcome. Surprise surprise, it was the shield enemies that did me in.

Potential fix for #4: Make it possible to buy lab upgrades in bulk. Maybe if multiple labs are ready to provide an upgrade, choosing an infinitely-stackable upgrade causes ALL labs to provide that upgrade, and go on cooldown. I feel this would make it a lot less tedious, but this is just one idea for how it might be fixed.

All in all, interesting concept and I'm glad I checked it out, but I probably won't be trying to get a better time.

Can't install via the Itch app.

What happened to my save? All my progress just got reset.

Why does it cost money if it's a proof of concept?

Iron Helmet: Adjacent clothings get +1 block
Red Hoodie: Does not get +1 block

Hoodies are not clothes confirmed.

Isn't it just supposed to pass on effects? The weapon doesn't give anything else an effect, it just can't be next to a weapon, which it's not. If I had to guess what was causing this bug, they probably use an invisible effect to track weapons being adjacent to others, and this invisible "technical" effect is being treated like a regular effect, despite not being listed in the stats at all.

Glitch: ...What nearby weapon?

I miss when you could skip the tutorial and start with a rare item. It made it a whole lot easier to get invested in a run from the start, since instead of just going through the motions and waiting for something to replace your boring wooden sword and shield, you're already visualizing what kinds of builds you could do with your starting item.

Latest version seems to freeze very frequently. Hope it gets fixed soon!

Tried archery for the first time and got a new best run! Was fun being able to do 3462 damage each turn!

Encountered what might be a bug. For some reason, my game started lagging really badly the moment I got this ring of doom. The framerate standing still is pretty alright, but it seems like using anything connected to the mana network causes a lag spike.

Best run so far! Died to that enemy that adds spikes every attack and hard-counters my build with nothing I can really do about it.

I really hope the Kickstarter does well, all the stretch goals sound so nice that it'd be really upsetting to have to know "what could have been" while playing the full game. :(

On that note, are there any plans to add stuff that didn't make it in via stretch goals through other means, like followup kickstarters or DLC?

For some reason when I downloaded the game, I got some error about needing to start Unity in dev mode or something like that. I don't even have Unity, how am I supposed to play?