itch.io

1.) A bit frustrated at the randomness.

2.) I played twice, and both times got the "Cadet" rating, which, based on the description, I assume isn't good.  The issue is, I didn't feel like that was my fault.  The first time around, the game refused to give me the ship steering event, which it seems like you need to get in order to steer the ship.  I ended up sitting there, all events done, waiting for it to give me the ability to not die.  The second time it was generous with the ship steering events, but I ran out of fuel and only got one invasion, therefore being unable to steer the ship more.  I have no idea how you're supposed to get further than 5 days except hope for better RNG.  Therefore, I'd rate the game about a 3/10 on difficulty for the things I felt I had agency over, and a 10/10 on the things that I didn't.

3.) The enemies feel pretty week.  I think their health is good, because most invasions required almost all of my ammo to deal with, but they really don't do much to you.  Even taking bullets to the face it only took 1 or 2 health pickups to get back to full, something they basically always dropped.

4.) Unless I'm missing something about the game then yes, I felt like I was informed on what I had to do.

5.) It's a bit weird to pick up the space crystals from enemies since you need to have your body over the top of it.  When I first went to pick one up I expected it to be the feet that needed to overlap since you have a 3/4 perspective going on.  I also never got to 10 crystals, even though I completed every invasion event I got.

6.) I kinda hate to say it but I didn't really have that much fun.  It seems like the game you guys are going for is a hectic, juggle many things at once sort of game, but I felt like I was waiting for the next event more often than not.  The worst event was the "everything seems calm on the ship" event, since at least I got to do something during the other events.

7.) If I am missing something critical about how to succeed in the game, I'd try and make it more obvious to the player.  If not, I'd amp up the frequency of events.  I think the player should usually fail because they are overwhelmed, not because they were unable to steer the ship or gather fuel to do so.  When I fail, I want to feel like it's my fault, and that there's something I can do better.  If my perception of the game is that the only thing that could be better was my luck, then I don't really feel like I want to play it again.

1.) I think the dash feels pretty good.  I wasn't sure how long the iframes were on the dash, but it felt like I could dodge through an incoming attack and not take damage.

2.) I think the enemies felt good.  I died on the level with the two jumping enemies, and I think I could get through that with some practice.  I'm not sure I could get through three at the moment though!

3.) I feel like the game is pretty well balanced.  My main suggestions would be for things outside of balancing.  You guys say you're working on animations under your planned features which I think is good, since I feel like the more frames of animation you have the clearer your attacks and movement will be to the player.  I also got confused going through doors at some points since the background looks similar, so I'd look into making it more clear to the player that transition happened.  Overall, however, I think the game looks quite good!

1.) I think the running and walking speeds feel good, and I don't really feel a need for an intermediate.  The jump also feels good, although I didn't really feel the need to use it.  The one thing that doesn't feel good in regards to the controls is the camera, which jumps around really badly for me.

2.) I think the map has a good amount of clutter, and I like the models.  It did feel a bit strange to clip through all of the environment though.

3.) I couldn't figure out how to pick things up, I'm not sure if I wasn't close enough, too close, or just not pressing the correct button.

4.) I think a health meter, or at least some way of seeing how damaged you are, would be useful on the HUD.  Otherwise, I think your planned features are good.

5.) I felt pretty lost as for what to do.  I knew from your presentations in class that you could pick things up, but I couldn't figure out how to do that, so I ended up just wandering around the map for a bit.

1.) I think the cooldown on the grapple can work, but there are two things going against it in my experience.  First, the random level generation can be frustrating to navigate with in some configurations.  In some places I felt like I couldn't grapple to where I needed to go very easily, and being under the time pressure of the lava made that feel a bit frustrating.  Second, I couldn't tell when I would next have the grappling hook, which made me jump to my doom a few times.  On the plus side, I felt the cooldown made me think about how I was going to grapple a lot more than in your previous prototype.

2.) I think either way you mentioned would work fine.  Personally I think I would prefer a number, perhaps near the bottom of the screen.  I think on top of that a number showing the distance you've climbed so far would also be good.

3.) I never got to that point (at least I don't think I did), so I didn't experience the quick lava.  That being said, I think changing the grappling hook's cooldown would make it very frustrating to know when it's available.  Instead, I'd recommend thinking of some way of slowing down the lava instead.  Perhaps some sort of collectable?

1.) I think the dash feels good.  I didn't realize it gave iframes (I probably should have), so I mainly used it to back up away from enemies quickly.

2.) The enemies feel decently easy as a one-on-one, but I imagine more than that would be difficult.

3.) I'd like to see a jump.  I realize this means you'll likely be needing to add jump attacks, but it feels weird to me that the game mostly takes place on a one dimensional line.  There's the one enemy that can jump, but since the player can't jump it acts more like an "invincibility state" than a jump, at least in terms of design.  I totally get if you don't want to add something like that, but as I was playing I kept thinking "Man, I wish I could jump"

1.) I think the grappling hook does have a very high amount of force, but I don't see that as much of a bad thing.  I think with lower force a lot of obstacles would be much more annoying to navigate, so I think I'd keep it as is.  The only real downside to having it be so fast is that you can outrun the milk lava very quickly.

2.) I think enemies/spikes that you have to avoid would help keep players from just spamming the grappling hook, but I also don't think that enemies would fit in such a small space as you have for the volcano.  Honestly I don't think you could add any obstacles at the moment, it would be too frustrating.  If you scaled down the player to about half size I think then it would feel fair (or scaled up the level sections to double size).

3.) I don't think I saw the milk lava the entire game.  Even when I finally decided to jump down and see how far I'd come my velocity was fast enough that I didn't even see the milk before the game over.  So I guess that probably answers your question, I'd say too slow.

One other thing that you didn't ask about- I'd very much consider decreasing the size of the character.  The one level section where you have to squeeze through a small gap is more frustrating than anything because it feels random if you can even get in or not.  I imagine the frustration would be multiplied many times over if I was on a time limit because of the milk and I couldn't get through the section.

Also, I'm not sure what the purpose of the walking and jumping is.  I never used it, except for one time when I clipped into a wall and I walked out of it to get back into the level.

1. How do you feel about the length of each in-game day? 

I think the length of each day is good, although I found it difficult to tell the purpose of the day counter besides a counter to doom.

2. Is the amount of time you get before your oxygen runs out a good amount? 

I think the oxygen time is fine based on how its refilled.  It did confuse me that when I went to the oxygen room I couldn't refill my oxygen all the way (only slightly more than half).  The amount it filled up felt alright, but maybe if the whole bar is being used it would be better to have it go down faster.

3. How intuitive are the controls and the events? 

I think the controls are intuitive enough.  The things you do in the events are pretty self explanatory (I did have trouble finding the fire extinguisher the first time I got a fire event, but there wasn't much to search).  I think the thing that's difficult for me is understanding the impact of ignoring the events.  It seems like there's a "doom" clock in the top left corner and most of what I do doesn't affect it.

I also had an issue where a fire spawned right at the trigger to go through the door.  Whenever I tried to put it out, I got teleported to the main room before I could.

4. What do you think about the enemies (how they play, their health, the damage they deal)? 

Enemies felt pretty weak to me.  The only time I took damage it didn't feel like a lot.  I'd keep the enemy health the same (since you have to deal with them with limited ammo), and make them more threatening somehow.  Faster, more damage, ranged, etc.

5. What do you think about the item drop rate from enemies dying? 

I actually kind of didn't like the items dropping from enemies and personally would have not included it.  I think it would increase the frantic aspect of the game if, after a fight, I had to choose to go a medbay room or the oxygen room to refill my bars.

6. What do you think needs to be improved to make the game more intuitive and fun to play? 

I feel like I lacked a sense of agency while playing your game.  Part of that was that usually I had enough time to do everything I was told to do, with only a couple of events per day.  I'd actually try and increase the number of things happening at one time.  The text box system at the bottom wouldn't be able to accommodate this, of course, but perhaps a list on the side could be helpful.  I'd also like to see what the impact of ignoring an event is.  If I know what the impact is, I have the agency to prioritize fixing one event over another.  So I guess that's it.  If the game is MORE frantic rather than less, and I have to choose to save the things that are valuable to me I think I'd be more invested in the game.

7. What would you rate the difficulty of the game as (between 1-10) and why?

I'd give it like a 3, although take that number with a grain of salt.  I felt like I handled everything the game threw at me (except the rogue fire that could not be put out), but I could be totally wrong.  I was focused mainly on the event system, and did whatever the pink box at the bottom told me to do.  Occasionally I'd have to take a detour for oxygen or ammo but for the most part it actually wasn't that stressful.  If I was missing an aspect of the game because it wasn't showing up in that box, then I could be totally wrong about difficulty.

Feedback questions and important info for the first playtest are located on the game's main page- please check there!

Thanks, we've gotten a lot of feedback about the way swapping arms works so we will probably go with the left mouse fires left and right mouse fires right.

Also yes, I made the music :)

Hey, I think you're missing some core files for the build since I only downloaded an .exe.  For our team we zipped up the whole folder Unity makes and that seemed to do the trick.

(This is Henry)

1. I didn't feel like I was missing a different movement ability while playing, but I think it would be fine to add one as well.  I think the answer to that question really depends on what you're going for.  Maybe that could tie in somehow to my answer for the fourth question.

2. I'm not sure what projectiles you're referring to, as the only projectiles I saw were the ones coming from the bird (maybe that answers your question, haha).  If you do mean the bird projectiles, their travel speed was fine, and spamming them was also fine.  If you're referring to the dive bombing birds with this question, they were very hard to evade when they dive bombed the player right at the start of a stage, and I think they could be slowed down a bit.

3. I made it to level 2, stage 11/3, so I'm assuming I would have passed that level with ease.  The only thing I ended up taking damage from were the dive bombing birds, which, as I mentioned above, felt a bit fast and cheap.  Pretty much all the damage I ever took, at least from what I saw, was at the start of a stage.  I think the player could have less health, especially if the speed of those birds is tweaked.

4. I'd like two things related to shooting.  While playing I ended up just mashing the left mouse button, so I think I'd prefer to be able to hold the button down to save my poor finger the effort.  That being said, I also think it would be good for the player to have some reason to not be shooting at some point- maybe they charge up power to do more damage on the next bullet when not attacking or are able to move faster.  Even if you don't end up implementing a "hold the button" solution I think the game needs this, as the optimal strategy for the game is to just shoot constantly.  If there was some sort of penalty already in place, I didn't notice it while playing.

(This is Henry)

1.) Walking around and picking up items felt intuitive enough.  The "K" ability made sense to me because I remembered the way the maze worked from your previous presentations, but I feel that it could be confusing to a player that doesn't understand that just because the arrow is pointing a certain direction does not mean it's the right way to go.  I ended up holding this key down the entire time, so it felt less like an ability to me.  It might feel more like one if it was restricted in some way, but that might also not be desirable.  The "L" Ability confused me quite a bit.  Pressing it while still on the starting screen (which felt like a safe place to test my abilities) didn't do anything because I wasn't moving.  When I finally started moving and using the ability, I thought maybe it was speeding me up over time, or it was a "slow walk" button or something.  It didn't help that I thought the icon was a hamster wheel, which threw me off more.  Only after going into my first room did I remember that it was a time slowing ability, again something you mentioned in your presentation.  This ability didn't feel super useful to me, mainly because it slows the player down as well.  I basically never used it after figuring out what it was.

2.) Overall the controls are solid and the game feels pretty good.  I think my only major complaint would be the enemies, which start to camp the entrances to the next room when you take a wrong turn, and you can get hit for damage that doesn't feel very fair.

3.) As I mentioned above, the enemies spawn camping the entrances to rooms is the main thing that feels un-fun about the experience.  Besides that, things are pretty much fine.  I remember from your proposal that you mentioned the game would be more story and mystery focused, and as this vertical slice lacks those elements all that's really left are the movement mechanics.   I imagine the time slow ability was an effort to spice up gameplay, but as I mentioned above I didn't find it particularly useful.  It may not be what you're going for, but something like a dash or dodge roll that gives you brief enemy immunity could be a more interesting movement option.  Either that or allowing the player to move at full speed may make the time stop ability a bit more fun.  Either way though, I understand that as a story-based game that may not be what you're going for, so feel free to ignore this suggestion if you like.