hythrain

It's now the final day of my streams for covering FQ8 games and, sadly, I've not heard anything regarding getting this game played. As such, I'm unable to provide any feedback to you. In addition, it seems that folks are no longer able to download the game as a $1 minimum price was set back on.

GadgetSmack | Pre-Alpha Demo | NEED FEEDBACK jam comments · Posted in GadgetSmack | Pre-Alpha Demo | NEED FEEDBACK jam comments

Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 8! My name's Hythrain, a co-host and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!

So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.

I'm going to be honest: Very few things in this made sense to me and, for most of the time, I had no idea what was going on.

For starters, where's the player's health? I'm clearly taking damage from enemies but I don't know how much health I have at any given time. As such, I never know if I should be playing defensively or if I'm free to go ham.

Next, at no point did I understand how I was supposed to proceed to each additional area. In fact, the few first areas it seemed like I didn't make progress until I died. I had assumed it was based on killing a certain number of enemies in each area, but if that was the case then either the whole system was bugged or some areas, like the very first one, had way higher demands for kill count than other areas did.

Third, I don't understand why the Juice Bar fills up to past the bar's limit. Is there a reason for this? Better yet, why does it go from such small fill-ups to some giant ones? I feel like it should be more consistent. Also, part of the bar is always blinking out of existence.

Then there's the fact that some enemies can be clipped into walls, making them non-threats. This is most easily done on the demon guys, but I feel like I also saw the hammer guys get clipped in.

I also regularly found myself getting caught on invisible walls, likely from enemies that hadn't properly despawned. Something to watch out for, as that sort of a bug can cost the player and can lead to frustration.

Lastly, I'm just not a fan of the whole purple path puzzle thing. It's obvious to me that the purple blocks are 100% random in how they're placed, without any sort of pattern for the player to discern to get through. However, this is absolutely the sort of thing you'd want to make a pattern to the player has a chance of actually getting through thanks to their own ability rather than through blind luck. There are all sorts of ways to do something like this and have a recognizable pattern to it, so it's up to you to find what you like the most.

Loop Hell jam comments · Posted in Loop Hell jam comments

So right off the bat, I want to note some weird behavior I noticed. First, if you hit ALT + Enter to make it Fullscreen, it also registers the Enter key for starting the game. Probably not something you want happening. I also noticed when I got to the end of the game that it says to press ESC to Quit but this just brings up the pause menu on top of the Victory screen, making a huge visual mess.

The game's concept is very simple, though it took me a moment in the tutorial to realize that I was supposed to be drawing around the blocks. I had assumed it was a shooter of some kind at first. The set up of being nearly invincible unless you're also "attacking" is very interesting to me, and absolutely paints this as a risk vs. reward type game with its bullethell gameplay.

With that said, there was one thing I constantly wasn't a fan of: the high rate of fire on the spinning blocks that had 5 or more points to shoot from. I always felt like there was never enough room for me to navigate around. Whenever I dealt with these blocks, I felt like it was just a better idea to brute force my way through and get it down to at least four. This was also true for a lot of other blocks, where I felt I was unlikely going to get out unscathed and decided to do that (especially on the second boss). If this is the sort of thing you want players to do, then you're all good. However, if you're NOT after players trying to brute force their way through then there may need to be tweaks with some of the more challenging parts to make it more doable without this strategy.

Honestly, that's all I got. I otherwise had fun with it. Keep up the great work!

9.8 jam comments · Posted in 9.8 jam comments

A fun and rather interesting concept for a game, though I'll admit that I wouldn't be able to play this in normal mode as I needed the free rocket replacements to make any progress.

During my playthrough, there were three things that all came to mind that I felt could be improved. The first was to allow the player to control the camera to change the orientation of everything. Trying to land on the other platforms was just far too challenging for me at times, and I found myself constantly wish I could change the perspective to put any platform I was landing on facing straight up rather than trying to get turning to work properly.

I also found myself wishing I knew what sort of effect each ship upgrade was going to have on my TWR before I had purchased in. More often than not, I found myself not going for upgrades that could help me with a current mission due to not being sure how it would affect the TWR.

Speaking of missions, I wasn't a fan of the fact that your missions are dropped every time you lose a rocket. I'd rather it be where the player can accept and drop quests at any time while that the quests remain active for multiple rockets. Having to remember to accept missions became... well, rather annoying for me.

These were the three things that stood out to me, anyway. I hope this helps out!

Ikimashou! jam comments · Replied to umineko in Ikimashou! jam comments

"In Ikimashou, Casa Loma and the surrounding George Brown College are the sites of an imaginary school. Dupont station is nearby, no?"

The only thing I'd then argue is that it shouldn't be referred to as a university, as George Brown is a college and colleges aren't seen as on the same level as universities. Now I get that this is suppose to not be 1-1 copy of real life, but I'm generally of the opinion of "if you can make it closer to real life, why not?" It creates a bit of familiarity for people who either already know the locations (like me) or who play the game and then end up visiting one day. The only thing you'd need to do is avoid using any sort of names that could be copyright (for example, the George Brown name) but could still refer to the area.

Also with regards to Toronto Island, I'd still argue she should travel east to the ferry that takes you into the actual island since that's what her plan is. Getting stuck in an airport seems silly, y'know?

I'd fight you if I could for BeaverTails.

Ok, so I'm now going to take the time to do the thing that I've been wanting to cover for a while with regards to her just taking off (and why I think it's important that certain things be changed or done to make immersion better).

First, there's the issues her age would cause (which would result in a lot of legal issues). If she's a minor, then her doing certain things just... wouldn't/shouldn't be possible such as buying train tickets or getting a room at a hostel. I can't remember for train tickets offhand, but I do know that for hotels and hostels that you'd need ID, and the moment she flashes an ID that says she's underage there's going to be problems. On top of this, there's the fact that her adoptive mother would likely call the police and report her as missing, at which point her identity would likely be spread across Canada to various police to try and find her. Now whether they do is another question, but it's bound to be that someone, somewhere, will recognize her. For these reasons, I think it's important that you define her as being of an age where she wouldn't be questioned. This would have an impact on her "school" stuff, namely because you'd have to likely make it that she was done school, but personally I think this would be better.

Second, there's the financial issue. From the story presented, Zinnia's adoptive mother doesn't have a lot of money. Similarly, it doesn't sound like Zinnia worked some sort of part-time job to save money up as she instead spent all her time going on adventures. So how is she affording all of this? There should be something to explain how she can afford this. Personally, I think the plot point around Zinnia's adoptive mother not having a lot of money should be dropped (I also think the tuition thing should be dropped) as it adds to this problem.

Third, safety issues. First, Zinnia is a girl all by herself, going to a place where she knows nobody. I feel confident you can agree how dangerous that can be. While it's obvious that Zinnia can be an airhead, I feel like she should be smart enough to know to keep herself safe. It doesn't need to be something you actively show in the story but instead be based on her choices.

Personally, when I look at these issues and how to fix them, what I see is this...

Zinnia should be between high school and college/university and be at least 18. She should have been saving money for some time now (Maybe she took on a part-time job in her last year of school, then took on more hours once school ended). The issues between her and her adoptive mother could be because the latter wants her to get into college/uni right away but Zinnia wants her adventure first. After she saves enough, she puts in a two-week notice and, at the end of it, takes off. At least in this scenario, you deal with her age, the financial side of things and also that her adopted mother knows what she's doing and can't fully call the cops to report her as missing (maybe Zinnia should also text her mom every few days so her mom knows she's okay. This would be one of those things to show she's trying to keep safe). While this may not fit what you wanted it to be for her, it would at least make more sense and there's nothing wrong with having a bit of realism considering you're going through actual places in Canada.

And just for context to all of this... I do story writing myself, with one of my stories being based in Toronto. Even though the story is a magical girl one, I still try to keep realism there and keep whatever aspects of Toronto that I can intact.

Break the Blues jam comments · Replied to axerwan in Break the Blues jam comments

I wasn't sure I was going to either but after I decided to start doing two 5 hour streams a day if enough donations came in, a bunch of folks made sure I did just enough of them.

Also, my whole old man rant was because I'm 40. >_>

Warlord Wheels jam comments · Posted in Warlord Wheels jam comments

Generally a run top-down shooter. I enjoy how the car slides around when making sharp turns.

One thing I'd like to suggest is remove any need to spam your left click to fire and instead give different weapons just different rates of fire. Spam left clicking is bad for one's hand health, and is very difficult for people who already have problems going on.

Another thing this game could use is the ability to turn the camera. Right now, it's in a fixed position that favours the north for vision. Being able to turn the camera would make it that people get that bonus vision at all times.

Lastly, there should be a feature to keep weapons and be able to switch between them once you acquire them. It can be frustrating when you're on a weapon you like, only for a random pick-up to remove the weapon you got. Normally for games that do this, they'll clearly show you what the weapon you're about to pick up is so that you can avoid it if you don't want it.

That's all I got. I hope to see more of this in the future!

Rogue: Secret Shadows jam comments · Posted in Rogue: Secret Shadows jam comments

This game felt a little strange to play, primarily due to how it would jump each time you moved a tile. I was also pretty confused about what I was doing, as the player is just dropped in with there being a lot of different things going on that they need to familiarize themselves with. Obviously, this means I think it should have a tutorial to help teach the player how to play. Just a few of the things I never understood by the time I stopped playing was why I would sometimes have an image of a skull above me, what the books did, and if there was supposed to be a way to progress the turns while hiding (because if there isn't, why bother having it).

I also encountered some bugs, particularly with the fact that I couldn't escape enemies once they had seen me. This was regardless of what I did, like using invisibility or teleport spells; the enemy would just continue to follow me forever until I was dead.

These were the stand-out things for me. However, I do see a lot of potential in this and I hope to see more of it.

The Animating Principle jam comments · Posted in The Animating Principle jam comments

This is quite the wordy visual novel, containing a great deal of lore in its writing. Nothing wrong with that, of course, as I'm the sort of person who loves getting into lore. I'll note that in my playthrough, I got up to the point where the "attack" on the city was ended and our hero had home and had just woken up.

As a visual novel, it's hard to really give good feedback as the primary aspect of any visual novel is its story. Unless it's designed as a very short experience, something that can be done in no more than an hour, then it's hard to judge the story. As such, I usually focus on the writing in front of me; trying to find typos, point out sentences that seem odd and looking for inconsistencies in what's told. I have several here which I'm going to cover in the order I wrote them. I'll likely start with quotes from the story for a lot of these to highlight what was in it, followed by what should be corrected and why.

First, what gender is the main character? When I was choosing how the main character was to look, I assumed it was a girl. However, then the player is taken past a portrait of what I assumed was to be of their parents and them as a child given how they refer to it as "simpler times." This portrait claims the child is a boy. Then it's stated later on that the player character is a girl. So what's up with the whole portrait?

"... handing back the torn pieces back to a stunned clergyman." Having the word "back" in this sentence twice is redundant. I'd recommend removing the first use of it. so it reads "... handing the torn pieces back to a stunned clergyman."

"... then the people of the city would be encountering some serious wild magic. Spirits are unpredictable and wild." This is basically the same as above, with the description of "wild" being redundant. I'd recommend removing the wild descriptor from the last part.

While I can't identify the exact line for this, I did remember that the player character described it as being afternoon while they were making their way to the temple. However, later on Uncle implies it's still morning given he wanted to do some pre-lunch shopping.

"Before you can fully realize what's going on, you stop feeling his warmth on my wrist." The use of the term "my" is wrong here. I assume it's supposed to be "your wrist."

My next note is going to be a bit different. It had to do with your choice of a curse word to include. I'm going to outright say this: don't use that word. The presentation of the story and world feels so disconnected from the real world, which is a good thing. It's easy for someone to get immersed into this world. Throwing in such a real world curse just breaks that immersion. If you want the character to curse, I'd say make up your own words for this rather.

When conversing with the spirit known as Liaison, the game labels it as "Spirit." I think it would be better to label is as "Liaison" after it requests to be called that.

"Three clergy member surround the machine, surrounded by a small group of curious spirits." So this isn't redundant, but I'm just never a fan of seeing larger words used repeatedly in a single sentence. In this case, it's the word surround. I think it'd be good to change one use to something else. Maybe change the second use to be the term "encircled" ?

I also noticed that the last line of dialogue between the player character and Liaison isn't labelled. This line starts with "The recent activity will make the journey back difficult."

"They do mean no harm." While I get what's trying to be said, this sentence just doesn't make sense. It should just be "They mean no harm."

"We will try out his hypothesis of yours." This one is just a typo, where the T from "this" is missing.

"the events that happened on the spirit world." Another typo, "on" should be "in."

"You have done well, and for both your and your family's efforts I humbly thank you." When I first read this sentence, something about it felt weird to me. Technically the sentence is correct, but I think it could be done in a way that makes it feel less weird. Perhaps something like "You have done well, and I humbly thank you for the efforts of both you and your family."

That's where my notes end. I hope this helps!

Dogwood: Action-Adventure Restaurant Sim jam comments · Replied to Team Soleil in Dogwood: Action-Adventure Restaurant Sim jam comments

Yea, I'm fine with that! You can find me on the Indie Questing Discord server. :)

SNEAKALOT jam comments · Replied to BMi Studio in SNEAKALOT jam comments

Keep in mind that I wrote this comment while streaming, and that running streams does make use of one's graphics card.

That said, I tested both the Steam version and the version here on Itch without the stream software running. In both versions, the game runs smoothly at Low settings. At high settings, it starts at a 30+ framerate but begins to drop as the game begins demanding more of my RAM.

That's why this likely hasn't come up before; this performance issue at low settings is something that streamers will deal with due to having to run software that is pulling resources that the game also wants.

Rogue Football CardGame - AmiGameJam jam comments · Posted in Rogue Football CardGame - AmiGameJam jam comments

I'll be honest... a lot of how this game worked didn't make sense to me, even after reading through your page on how to play. Let me explain...

I did several rounds where neither myself nor the player got a point. This was because the way the game works is very bizarre. So I get that the objective is to get the ball to the opponent's end and try to get a goal, but what I didn't really understand was that, rather than having the right cards in play and then hitting the button to continue your turn... it's set up where you have to click a completely different button to ACTUALLY attempt the goal; there's no automatic attempt from having the required card. Not realizing this screwed me up until I came to write this feedback and realized what it exactly said in the instructions. So right off the bat, there's something I dislike: that you have to actively click a completely different, arbitrary button to make your goal attempt. The only requirement should be that you get the required card to attempt the shot.

Next, I didn't understand what was going on with the number of cards each team got. Starting from the player's side, I usually got five but sometimes I got 4. It didn't make sense to me. Meanwhile, some opponents only ever got 4 while one of the was getting 7 or 8! I'll be honest: I stopped playing after I had gotten the ball to the net was just having the worst luck with getting a shot card, only for the team who would get 7 to 8 cards to then take that ball from one end of the field to the other, get the card needed to attempt a shot on my goal and get more than enough kick power to ensure they got it. Every single card that could be a level 2 card was a level 2 card. It was insane, and at that point I was just frustrated at not understanding how the game was supposed to work.

Lastly, it felt like picking cards was purely random in the worst way possible. It was when I had two turns in a row where I got the turn end card despite there not being any sort of reshuffle of my deck. I also had several times where I would go through my entire deck and wouldn't get a single turn end card. As such, it became apparent that I had no ability to predict what cards could be in my hand at any given time because any card from my deck could appear at any given time, regardless of where they were.

However, even if this was fixed I feel confident I would dislike how the game plays due to one thing: RNG. See, I take issue with the concept of RNG as something that a game heavily relies upon, with two primary reasons why. However, only one of them really matter for your game. This reason has to do with how it takes any semblance of control from the player. The more deeply embedded the RNG is into the concept of "winning," the less likely the player is going to be able to have control over what's going on and to tip the odds in their favour. In this game, you're bound by the RNG of the cards to make any progress; don't get the cards you need at the right time and you're screwed.

Along with getting it to stop being pure random, there needs to be ways for the player to have some control over the situation, a way to get or have the cards they need at the right time.

American Flesh Farewell Tour jam comments · Posted in American Flesh Farewell Tour jam comments

Ok. So... um... okay... apparently I made a very, very smart decision prior to playing this game. Anyway, this... is interesting. Wow...

I'll start by saying that this games could do with some graphics optimization. As I always tell people, Unreal Engine is difficult to optimize but it's always a good idea, especially if your game doesn't have graphical settings that can be changed. For context, I use an avatar in my FQ streams and I unfortunately had to turn it off for this game as the game uses just enough of my GPU to slow the avatar down.

I also think this game would really benefit from a map. It could be one that gets filled out as you drive through it, to help the player keep track of places where they met people and such.

I'd also recommend something in the bus to say when and where the next show is rather than needing to hit ESC to see it. In addition, I think that when you're driving around, there should be something to indicate to the player which direction there going.

Essentially, my ideas all revolve around memory related things.

Otherwise, this game is amazing. If there hadn't been another game to claim the title in my mind, this would absolutely be the best game of FQ8.

P.S. Are you on the Indie Questing Discord? If so and you see this message before Saturday night, shoot me a quick message.

Within the Bunker jam comments · Posted in Within the Bunker jam comments

This got really fun to play, especially once I had all the vision related upgrades and it created a pseudo 3D effect where the shadows being cast by walls due to my light instead looked like giant walls, making it look like the view was actually from a camera moving along the ceiling. XD

The core gameplay loop is fairly solid. I think my only concern was with regards to item spawn, where there was clearly a limit for how many of a specific item could spawn. I note this because I basically never ran out of medkits because I just seemed to naturally move towards wherever the closest one was but multiple times nearly ran out of ammo because several of them spawned in a small area far from me. However, I'll admit not being sure of the best way to fix it. Every idea I have in my head I can see backfiring, so I don't want to suggest them.

There is, however, one thing I need to bring up. When you read the computer, it says you need to deliver 40 cans of gas to the exit door on the north to escape. However, when I first went to the door to deliver some gas, I noticed two things: it only required 35 cans of gas, and that it already had 11 in it. Obviously, something here isn't working right. Whatever is wrong, hopefully notifying you of this will help you out.

Rhyolite [Demo] jam comments · Posted in Rhyolite [Demo] jam comments

So I had planned to try and play this with others for my first experience. However, I'm down to only a handful of games left to cover so I decided to do it solo. This game is a lot of fun. I can see that this will get very chaotic very fast, as it was already doing that when I was only after my second train in normal mode.

In all honesty, there were only two things I could think of to help improve the game in some way.

The first is in regards to the ladders for the Contain and Reactor cars. I think both of these should be a bit further away from other objects on the top (aka the dish and the hatch wheel). The reason I feel this is because I worry that when in a frenzy, people will accidentally hit the ladders instead of the other objects in question. I had this happen for me while I was in the tutorial while on the Contain car and why it came to mind at all for me.

The second thing has to do purely with solo mode. While I love the fact that the player is automatically given an automaton when playing solo, I feel that making use of Frank in solo is a lot more difficult than it can seem due to the fact that Frank can't go up and down ladders, but you ALSO can't take him up and down while he has a tool.

This led me to think of ways to fix this. At first, I was actually going to suggest that there be a second automaton that existed purely for solo mode that didn't have the limitation regarding ladders. However, as I've been writing this out I think there may be a far easier way to solve this: create an upgrade that Frank also automatically gets in Solo mode that gives him two two improvements. First, you can have Frank hold an item and then pick him up. Second, his battery will last longer. The second one allows the player to more effectively use Frank on the roof, since now he can just operate up there for a greater period of time, while the first will make it that you don't need to make multiple moves and trips when you want to switch Frank from inside the cars to the roof or vice-versa.

This is about all I got. Though I'm wondering... what's up with the cage in the armored car?

You Are the End jam comments · Replied to AgrMayank in You Are the End jam comments

"On the narrative side, the prophecy and tagline were more of a reflection of your moral choice, as different playstyles will give different prophecy. Like if you choose to help your units by saving your population or use them as meat shields while attacking from behind. But I guess I made that too cryptic while aiming for a medieval feel, and is something I definitely need to revisit so it makes more sense."

I wanted to respond to this because there's a bit of an issue here I feel: until you unlock the king, there's no difference in play style. You're just making units to try and defend against the inevitable.

With that in mind, I can now see how to correct this problem. First, make the king playable from the start but weaker than what the king ends up being later on. Second, make it that all units are available from the start. Now, shift the upgrades from being static and always available to being more random and based on how many enemies the player defeats (Not enough kills? No upgrade for you). Now you shift these upgrades into three categories: the People, the Enemy and the King. Upgrades about the People will do things like improve your population and reduce the cost for units (doesn't need to be just this). Upgrades about the Enemy will do things like reduce their population per wave and make them weaker. Finally, upgrades about the King will do things like make the King stronger or give and upgrade abilities that affect either the soldiers or the enemy. From here, you can now more clearly define playstyles using the various upgrades.

Another thing I'd suggest as part of this would be to change how waves work. Instead of each wave just coming, make it that a wave has to be completely cleared out before the next can begin. Also make it that the damage enemies do to population if they get all the way to the end is percentage based and that each wave will always have more than enough population to win in a single wave, even if you get all the Enemy category upgrades.

These should help make the playstyle thing work and help shape the narrative stuff better.

Kritter jam comments · Posted in Kritter jam comments

IT'S BACK! IT'S BAAAAACK! Wait, wasn't Kritter supposed to be released by now? Oh well, can't help to give it more time.

So after playing this game so many times and seeing how it's changed... I don't think there's really a lot I can think of to improve it. So instead, my feedback is going to focus on little issues and general observations I had.

First issue... why won't the game show me keyboard controls throughout the title screen and while checking the settings before going into the game? Just strange, y'know?

Also... how do you input a kritter name when you're on controller?

Speaking of controllers, you have the proper button labels for X-Box controllers but not for Switch or Playstation controllers? This is weird, considering you put in Switch controller support (I CAN PLAY THIS WITH THE SWITCH PRO CONTROLLER YAY!)

I noticed a couple of times that there was text dialogue missing. I know it was missing because there was a spoken dialogue from Mark that didn't at all match the line, and instead the text dialogue would sit on a later line the whole time.

Repair is spelled wrong in English. The spelling is more in line with the French word, reparer.

I'm so glad that there's now a line where Mark points out the fact that he's a French robot and thus has an accent. XD

I noticed that sometimes enemies will get stuck on terrain if the player attacks them.

In the keyboard controls, you list using the special skill as A but it works on Q.

Lastly, I made an interesting observation... when I was fighting enemies, using the mouse and keyboard felt better because aiming was easier with it while movement didn't feel nice since it was a lot more rigid and having to spam shift to dash just wasn't fun. However, when I was just running around in exploration, controller felt better because the joystick made movement so much smoother but made aiming a nightmare as certain skills couldn't be aimed properly. The use of the right stick to have controlled aim was nice, but it then takes your hands off the buttons you need for everything else.

I'm going to try and get some friends to play this with me after the event, so I can see how well it works with others.

SNEAKALOT jam comments · Posted in SNEAKALOT jam comments

hythrain24 days ago (1 edit)

Unfortunately, I actually can't play your game. Even with the lowest graphical settings, the demand on my computer is too high. If I viewed anywhere but down the alley to the right of the start point, my frame rate would drop to 5 frames a second or less. I'm pretty sure that even if I wasn't streaming (which automatically has to take 25% of my GPU's processing power at minimum to ensure the stream doesn't fall apart), my computer couldn't handle it. While there have been several other games that were poorly optimized and thus demanded a lot of my GPU power, typically I was still able to get a decent enough framerate that the game was at least playable. This... simply isn't.

Thus do I have only one thing I can say: you need to work on optimization. The way the game is now, I imagine only the beefiest of computers can handle it because not only is it very demanding on GPUs, it also wants over 5 GB of RAM to run. For context, my video card is a GeForce GTX 1650 Super.

This is honestly the only thing I can say. It's all I got. Sorry, friend!

Edit: Wait, I realized there was one thing. Mouse sensitivity. It's insanely high, and I don't think the slider for changing mouse sensitivity works as I basically dropped it all the way down and there was no real change in how fast the camera turned.

Final Frame jam comments · Posted in Final Frame jam comments

So... omg... it's Zeiva. It's been so long since I've seen your name. While I've not logged into the account in a very long time, I'm certain I followed you back when I used deviantART. Getting to play a game you made and give feedback on it is certainly an interesting twist for me.

I have a variety of notes over small things I noticed while playing, but there's also one very huge narrative issue I have with the story presented. I'm going to cover the smaller stuff first, starting with saying that you absolutely need to get this off Flash. Mayshing told me that it was something you were working on but also said I should still mention it, perhaps to help stress how important it is to get away from it. Getting it off Flash is the most important thing to happen for this game (besides dealing with the huge narrative issue I'll be covering later). I also would like to see it that the player can access settings and such from the starting screen rather than having to wait until they're in the game to change audio stuff or to use the top bar menu stuff for visual settings.

Another thing that needs to be fixed is what happens when you use any button that sends the player to an external webpage, and that's that they open the page in Microsoft Edge by default. I'll say that this could just be an issue with Flash itself, in which case this just highlights the need to get away from Flash. If it's not, though, then it's important that this be changed to work off of the player's default browser as people can have reasons for trying to avoid Microsoft Edge.

My next few notes all relate to just general writing stuff. Mayshing informed me you don't have a proofreader, so hopefully having this will help a bit. I'm going to quote the lines I read that had errors in the writing, then explain the error and how to fix it.

"Inside the envelope are a letter, an air ticket and a bizarre card."
- This line was delivered in a flashback, thus it should be in past tense rather than present tense. The tense is defined in the word "are." Instead, this word should be either "was" or "were." Either should work.

"Lose it or you might die."
- There are other lines like this, but this was the one I was looking at at the time I wrote the note down. I assume what people are trying to say about the H card is "If you lose this card, you could end up dying in Hitaki." In that situation, there are two ways to fix it. Either it should be "Lost it and you might die" or "Keep it or you might die." Again, either should work.

"I'd better off do something else."
- So admittedly, I wasn't too sure what this sentence was trying to say (and my memory is so bad that I can't recall the full context for when it showed up... >_>). I'm assuming it's supposed to be saying that the speaker is better off doing something else besides whatever it was they were doing. As such, this would read better as "I'm better off doing something else" or as "I'd be better off doing something else."

My last two notes are both in regards to the chess board puzzle the player is given. The shorter of these is that the hint button should indicate that there are multiple hints available and what hint the player is asking for. There also should be a way for the player to look at each hint again (for memory poor folks like myself). The longer of these is that the player should be told what the objective of the puzzle is before they hit the button to make a guess. As a player, I'm not going to attempt to make a guess at a puzzle when I don't even know what the objective of the puzzle even is. As such, the vast majority if not all players will just keep hitting the hint button to try and figure out what they're supposed to be doing and end up having the game solve it for them. This makes the experience completely unsatisfying. It can be even more frustrating when the player realizes the idea was they needed to guess a word, as the hints provided actually make a LOT of sense for guessing the word. All it takes is one line where the player is told they're trying to figure out a word. I'm even going to perform a test after my stream to prove that this information needs to be given upfront.

Ok, now it's time for the big problem I have in the narrative; Takaya's ability to see his own death and the "rules" surrounding it. There's one massive plot hole in all of this: how did Takaya figure out the "rules" the first time it happened? As far as I'm concerned, Takaya should have died that first time. Let me explain... Takaya was 8 years old when the incident that gave him this power occurred. Now we don't know how many times he's seen this, nor do we know how old he was the very first time it happened. However, let's logically look at how that scenario would've looked...

Takaya: "Naoko! Look at this picture!"
Naoko: "... it's just a normal picture."
Takaya: "No, it's not! It's a picture of me and it shows me dead!"
Naoko: "... no it doesn't. It's a picture of -whatever thing Takaya was trying to take a picture of-"
Takaya: "IT'S A PICTURE OF MY CORPSE! -Proceeds to describe the picture in detail-"

In this scenario, there's only one conclusion for Naoko to make: that Takaya is hallucinating. She would have no reason at this point to assume anything else. Takaya also wouldn't know at this time that this scene will happen in seven days nor that he could avert it. As such, seven days would pass and then Takaya would die. End of story. Now sure, Takaya is a smart kid. However, I would doubt that he - or anyone - would be able to figure out what's going on and avert the first time. The idea of this ability only works if Takaya is able to figure out how it works, and he can only figure it out by it happening multiple times.

Now I'll admit, I'm trying to think up ideas for providing a plausible narrative explanation for how Takaya figures it all out. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to focus on this solely right now. As such, I'm going to come back to this when I do have the time. For now, I hope what's here helps you.

Tower of the Immortals jam comments · Posted in Tower of the Immortals jam comments

While I can't say why at this time, playing this has been an enlightening experience for me that I hope will be useful in the near future. So first off, thank you.

Before I dive into the bigger stuff, I want to say that I recommend changing certain keys being used. You have a shortcut to one's inventory on I, a shortcut to spells on B, and then the menu in general on M. However, two of these three keys are all in the middle from where the player's hands will be: the left hand on A and D, and the right hand on the arrow keys. Instead, these should be placed in a more convenient spot so the player doesn't need to move a hand away from one of the other spots. My personal recommendation would be... well, Z, X and C. Yes, I know spells are on Z but I also think THAT should be changed to be Q. This would put all the active keys on the ASD line or above (since the item slot is on 1) while the menu keys are right below it. Since the game doesn't pause during menu usage (which I think it should if you're in the settings menu or the ESC menu), having easy access to these buttons would make jumping into your menu be something that could be done in combat (at least in theory).

So I'll admit I didn't get to the end of the slime area. I'm not too beat up about it, though, as I feel like I encountered enough things in that area to give some quality feedback for you. This will be split into two sides: player gameplay feedback and enemy exclusive feedback. Let's start with all the player stuff first.

The first thing that I felt was a problem was attacking facing northward (or up) vs. facing southward (or down). I noticed that when facing southward, both for the player and enemies with melee weapons like the skeletons, that their ability to land a hit was much worse. For example, I had a time where I was facing southward and attacking skeletons with a broad sword. I noticed that the tip of the broad sword reach the waist of the skeleton but the skeleton didn't get hit while the skeletons had a much easier time hitting me. This also applied in reverse, where I realized fighting the skeletons while I faced north and they faced south made it so they couldn't harm me. As such, I feel that southward facing attacks need to have an improved range to make it more likely that they'll hit. Right now, the balance is off and northward facing attacks are far superior.

Another thing I felt was that spells were slow to execute. Mind you, I only had the spells for healing myself and buffing my physical damage but the heal spell definitely felt very slow. I had to make sure I was far from enemies to make use of it. I don't know how things work with offensive spells, but I do think defensive and support spells should be faster so they can be more easily used in the heat of combat.

The last thing regarding player gameplay has to actually do with the knockback done to enemies with melee weapons. In short, I think it should be increased, primarily for enemies that use melee weapons. The way it is right now, you can knock back an enemy but they remain close enough that they can get back in melee range and attack before you can knock them back again. However, a good design here would be that you are capable of keeping them at bay the entire time, so long as you're attacking them. To help highlight this, take a look at the top-down 2D Zelda games. Enemies are knocked back so far that they are far outside of your own melee range, to the point where if you're fast enough you can even squeeze in a ranged attack for more damage. The point, however, is to make breathing room for the player.

Okay, now for enemy exclusive feedback. First, let's talk group composition. There are many encounters where you'll have a swarm of enemies just grouped together, waiting for the player to get close. When they're melee enemies it's not so bad. However, when they're primarily ranged enemies it can become a problem. For example, the last stage I did featured multiple sets of a spellcaster enemy with water tentacles and getting into range to attack them was very difficult. Group composition should be given greater consideration, mixing melee units with ranged units to give more engaging combat. To give a practical example, let's go back to the spellcaster/water tentacle sets. For the first encounter (which was 1 caster and 2 or 3 tentacles), change the caster to - let's say a skeleton - that the player needs to deal with first before they can get to the tentacles. Going forward, I'll be using this idea to explain other suggestions.

Next, I want to discuss group tactics. Enemies should try to work together to make a more engaging challenge for the player. For example, going to the idea of a skeleton with the 2 water tentacles (I'm going to remove the potential third one for reasons at this point). For the player to fight this group, they need to first take out the skeleton. However, at the same time that the skeleton is engaged to fight, the tentacles should also be engaged. While the player is fighting the skeleton, they have to deal with projectiles from the tentacles. Now they can choose to either keep fighting the skeleton, in which case they need to dodge the tentacle attacks until the skeleton is done with, or they can try to go for the tentacles first and avoid the skeleton. Furthermore, to prevent the player from just luring the skeleton away and kill it on its own, the skeleton would have a leash point; once they travel a certain distance from where they started, they'll stop fighting and return to that point. This concept doesn't need to apply to every single group, mind you.

My next area of discussion is in regards to patrolling enemies, or the lack thereof. Right now, enemies just stay where they and won't really do anything until the player gets within a certain range. I think this should change, with there being some enemies that will move back and forth between two points. At some points, the player can lure patrolling units away to take them out. In others, the patrolling units would be part of a group of enemies and intended to make it more difficult for the player to dive deeper into a group of enemies to take out specific targets first. And sometimes the patrol routes are so big that you could get into engaging one group, only for a patrol to waltz in and now you have a new threat to deal with. Let's cover all of these ideas using the example. So you have the skeleton and 2 tentacles, but you also have ANOTHER skeleton that patrols. In the first example, this skeleton will patrol from the rear of the group to the front of it. However, its aggro is not tied to the group and instead is just based on proximity to the player still. The player wouldn't want to engage with the group until the patrol is removed, so they'll wait until it's at the front and lure it away. Now let's change it up and say that the patrolling skeleton stays in the back area. If the player tries to run past the first skeleton to attack the water tentacles, they'll cause the patrolling skeleton to get involved. Now they have two skeletons to deal with. This makes fighting the tentacles first a much bigger problem and forces the player to take out the first skeleton first. They can still fight the tentacles after and try to avoid the patrolling skeleton as it's still as difficult as it was with the original group, but it's not harder. Now for the third idea. Instead of the patrolling skeleton only patrolling around that specific group, they now have a bigger patrol route that sees them patrol past three groups of enemies, with the player being able to choose to engage with two of those three groups. The player would then wait until this patrol moves away from the group they want to fight before engaging, but once they DO engage they're now on a time limit to get everything killed before the patrol returns.

Alright, that was quite a lot. We have a couple more things to cover, but it's not going to be as much writing to explain. First, I want to talk about the speed that enemy projectiles travel. Simply put, I think most of them are too fast. The reason I feel this is because if you try to engage with a group with multiple enemies doing ranged attacks, your only real recourse is to get them to start attacking and then run away. If you remain close, you won't have a large enough window to avoid the projectiles. This is even worse for the water tentacles, which will fire three projectiles with a fairly quick rate of fire. Instead, I think that both the speed of enemy projectiles from enemies that don't need to charge their attacks (like the casters) should be a bit slower while the rate of fire for enemies that will lob multiple projectiles in a short window is made to take longer.

And now for the last suggestion, one that is a bit different: I think the way the yellow slime works should have completely different behaviour to make it a more engaging fight. Right now, the set up is that it fires a projectile when you get in range and then it tries to melee attack you. After a certain period of time, it'll fire another projectile. Finally, when it dies it'll split into two smaller slimes that you need to take out. While I love these ideas individually, I think the order they're done in should change. Instead of the slime shooting a projectile out at all, it should just try to engage in melee. Once the player gets it down to half health, it then splits not into two smaller slimes but into FOUR. However, these small slimes won't try to melee attack the player ever. Instead, they'll fire their own projectiles, with the time between each new volley of shots being a little longer than the time it would take for a player to kill one small slime. Now the player needs to get to each slime one at a time and take them out while dodging the shots from the others. Of course, you can feel free to not use this idea at all. It's just something that popped into my head and thought would be interesting.

Sect Leader's Decree Demo jam comments · Posted in Sect Leader's Decree Demo jam comments

Y'know when you start playing a game and you give yourself a limited amount of time to play it but then you start getting into it and before you know it it's 1 AM? That was this game for me. I really like how slow paced this is. It doesn't require you to rush due to some limited amount of time per day. You just get to take your time, plan every move carefully and just watch at you make progress at the pace you want.

So I kept a bunch of notes of various bugs and issues I came across, but before that there is one thing I want to cover. For everything I said about enjoying the pace of the game, I do feel there need to be something to create a drawback. In trying to keep in line with the game's concept, I'd like to suggest that you have some sort of stress measurement going on. The way I see it working is that if you have units performing tasks every single day (especially if they're the same task, with an exception for cooking with regards to the "same task" part), they begin to build stress. You then need to give them days off in order to relax. This could then be used in time with the Meditation upgrade, where you instead assign them to engage in meditation for a turn to reduce a lot of stress (and if there's something you have intended for Meditation, you can make it still do that when stress is below a certain value).

Alright, time for the list. I'll just cover these in the order I wrote them.

1. I noticed that the turn summary was being shown twice for the first few turns, though this also seemed to correct itself eventually. This may be related to the tutorial, as I only remember seeing the issue while doing it.

2. If you have a unit who is reading and book and you go to change it but then change your mind about that, you can't reselect the book they had to keep them reading it. You instead have to hit Cancel, which removes the book from them. You then have to go back and select it again.

3. I noticed that if you go to do the "Decorative Calligraphy" upgrade for buildings that the title is spelled wrong, instead being written as "Decorative Callighraphy."

4. When going to gather Pine Wood, the Basic Forestry icon covers some of the text for the required cultivation.

5. When I first learned about selling resources for money, I had noticed Pine Wood was set at a price of 20. However, when I went to sell some after doing some gathers I noticed it had dropped to 5.

6. If you get the Breakthrough event, there's a typo in it where "bottleneck" is spelled as "boittleneck."

7. When doing upgrades, the upgrade gets greyed out if you lack the required materials. However, this doesn't happen when you go to the kitchen to learn new recipes. I legit thought learning recipes was broken until I realized there was a material requirement.

The last two things I have are just minor suggestions that I think could help the player experience. First, instead of every task requiring the player to hit a button to begin the task, why not make it that just selecting who will do the task does that? You'd then only need the Cancel button. The only exception for this would be Cooking, since you have to also specify who is eating it and may not necessarily fill all slots. Second, a helpful function for trading resources would be to be able to choose larger sets of numbers. For example, being able to set 5 at a time instead of just one. If there's not another 5 available for the item, it defaults to whatever is left.

That's it for me! Keep up the lovely work!

Untitled Toxic Werecoyote Yaoi jam comments · Posted in Untitled Toxic Werecoyote Yaoi jam comments

Ok, so before I get into anything else, I just want to cover a couple of oddities I saw in the writing. I do think there are more, but these were the two that stood out as errors. I'll just be quoting what I read (it won't be the whole sentence) and then following up what I expect it's supposed to be.

"He seems be leafing through..." Pretty sure this is meant to be "He seems to be leafing through..."

"Taking care to not to make any noise..." This one has two variations, both based no removing the word "to." It's simply a matter of which one you remove.

Now for the game. First, I assume Canis Inmanis is frequent customer of Acme. He seems like the type to buy all sorts of machines for... some reason. I also get the feeling that he will regularly walk off cliff edges and not be affected by gravity until he stops, looks down and notices the several hundred feet of air between him and the ground. I also assume that Fuguret Mortuum has a habit of running a lot and sticking out his tongue at people. ;)

Obviously, I can see where you got the idea for your characters and... honestly, I love it. It creates a huge dynamic between the two when you understand the references that goes beyond what the story itself tells. It also leaves a lot of questions over just what these two characters are supposed to be. If you're planning to continue this out then I'm in. My only request would be to keep it SFW, as if it gets NSFW then unfortunately I would be out.

With that said, there are a couple of issues I do have with what's presented here with one being at the forefront: I feel like everything that happens doesn't connect well. Like, the change from one topic to another is so abrupt every single time that it makes it hard to follow. This then becomes worse when the story will change from speaking to internal thoughts to speaking again very quickly, making it hard to keep track of everything. To paraphrase something that Canis himself says: short term memory loses a lot of what's going on. The quick jumping between everything can lead the player to not be able to follow things properly.

There is also something else missing here: a lack of input from the player. Everything presented here is just a fixed story, with no choice from the player to affect things. Games, even visual novels, are supposed to be an interactive experience, but right now this is no different than reading a book. As you work on it more, there needs to be choices for the player to make that change the direction of the story.

I'll outright say I'm not a fan of yaoi itself. It's not something I seek out. However, much like the other yaoi game in this event (which that dev has said will remain SFW), I'm very interested to see where this goes as the story so far goes beyond romance and dives into what could be some twisted backstory between these two seemingly supernatural beings.

Bloody Boarding House jam comments · Posted in Bloody Boarding House jam comments

I'm feeling a bit torn here. On one hand, every jump scare in the game did get me. On the other hand, I know that the primary reason why was because of how loud the sound was compared to everything else going on. I know this because when I restarted the game after accidentally dropping the flashlight near the end (it disappeared into the ground), I began speeding through and when I just bolted for the letter explaining the breaker puzzle the jump scare there still got me a bit. However, if I muted the sound then none of the jump scares could get me.

There was certainly good build up at points, particularly after the first scare happened. The whole situation of having to clean up the trash kept me on edge as I was suspecting I would get a new scare during it, but this was never paid off. However, after that I didn't feel the tension was there anymore. Like, when I got through the bathroom part and started making my way back to my room, from a distance I could see the red light from room 3. At that point, I expected the next jump scare to be closer to it or even inside, thus I felt no tension when the second scare came along. Thus, much like the first scare, it got me for a moment but its effects didn't last. If anything, the feeling of my heart racing from the jump scare went away even faster than the first time.

That said, I find myself wishing this was a longer experience. Between two jumpscares happening at times when I wasn't expecting them, having more time in the game after that second one would've likely led me to become more tense and for it to remain as now the game had twice caught me off guard. I would've been more worried to do certain actions, like I was when it first came to going into room 3 as, just like with the trash, I was then trying to expect the scare and wondering when it would show up made me tense. A longer playtime would've also allowed for having more creepy stuff happen to unsettle the player and help make more build up, as well as to spread the jump scares out a bit more to allow each to have more room for tension build-up.

In short, it was good but I know it can be better.

One thing I would suggest is that when the player gets up for the first time and has to deal with the breaker, there should be a strange sound or something that appears at a distance for just a moment to push the player into a "Oh crap, stuff is happening" moment and thus to get the tension building in them. For me, I didn't feel any tension prior to the first scare, which has its own pros and cons (catches the player off guard but also doesn't affect them as long as a scare with build up would)

With all of this said, there are some notes I kept that I want to cover. I'll order these from smallest to biggest problems.

First, there's a typo when it comes to the note on the grave. It misspells the word "strange" as "starnge."

Second, I find it a bit weird that the button for picking up the flashlight is different from everything thing. I'd say don't worry about letting the player drop the flashlight and instead just have everything work on E.

Third, when I was reading the note I had it suddenly get pulled down from me. While there's a button command to say when to stop reading, it seems if you take too long then the game just boots you out of it.

Lastly, you absolutely need some optimization in this. Whenever I was facing towards the boarding houses, my GPU's usage would jump to 100% despite the low quality graphics at play. This wouldn't be a problem under normal conditions, but I'm both streaming and making use of a vtuber-like avatar. When any game starts demanding 100% of my GPU while my stream is going, there's always going to be problems as OBS is set up to always use the minimum amount it needs to operate smoothly. Some optimization will help correct this problem and, unlike Unreal Engine games, this should be a lot easier to manage.

Star Dust - A Journey Through Space Demo jam comments · Posted in Star Dust - A Journey Through Space Demo jam comments

Before I dive into proper feedback, I want to let you know I had issues getting started with your game. Sometimes it would open in full screen and sometimes it would open in "window." When in full screen, I couldn't make it switch to the monitor I normally play games on as it would instead just move a white window over and keep the game on the wrong monitor, nor could I minimize it to get access to the various things it was now hiding to move them. While it was in "window," it took up not even a quarter of the full screen size, making text impossible to read, and I also couldn't get it into full screen. So yea, something weird there.

While this looks like it's a good ol' shoot-em-up experience, what comes out is anything but that. Where as schmups often make use of tight controls for the player and planned forms of attack for the computer, the controls on this see it that momentum never goes away while every aspect of enemies is just random: where they spawn, how their attacks work and even what the enemies are! This can lead to a frustrating experience. For the player to change directions, they need to first fight against the momentum pushing them a specific way. Only then can they move how they want. Meanwhile, the random behaviour of enemies means that the player can never really plan ahead for what's coming as that will be different any time. While it IS still possible to make the experience good by making enemies easy to dispatch, putting more focus on just hitting an enemy once rather than having to whittle their health down, that's not the direction you took this. Instead, your ship has laughably weak weapons, taking numerous shots from the start of the game to kill the first enemy you encounter. While the ship has a decent fire rate, the size of projectiles is also very small. In fact, everything is very small, making it incredibly difficult to hit enemies.

To compensate for all of this, you have an upgrade system so you can improve your damage. Unfortunately, this also has problems with the first being that the currency you need to upgrade your weapons is the same currency you lose if you die, something that happens a lot with the current systems in play. Then there's the slow rate of acquiring said currency. To get your first weapon upgrade, you need 100 star dust. You get 1 per enemy killed, plus another 10 if an enemy drops collectable star dust. If I had to guess, these star dust drops have between a 5% and 10% drop rate. However, much like everything else these collectables are also tiny and you have to touch them with the ship to collect them. Meanwhile, the amount of star dust you're likely to get on the first wave isn't even enough to get that first weapon upgrade unless you actively leave after said first wave and replay it and leave again.

Lastly, there's another thing that the player can collect. Using an alternate weapon, players can destroy rocks on the surface of the world to collect gems. I honestly don't know what these gems do just yet as I only had 20% research into them when I quit the game to write this. However, like many things in this game, even these rocks are out to screw the player over as touching them before they're destroyed counts as damage.

Everything I described is the experience I had with the game. The furthest I ever got was to the third wave where the sheer number of the small, wriggling enemies made it impossible for me to get far as I couldn't destroy them fast enough. Honestly, once I saw how many there were I knew that a lot of my feedback was going to feel negative. However, I still feel like a lot of this can be dealt with while not having to completely throw away everything in your vision.

First, instead of momentum always staying until the player deals with it, make it that the ship loses momentum over time. Yes, I know it's a space ship and lack of gravity and yadda yadda, but the player can always think "Ok, the ship has a system that works to counter drifting momentum." Having momentum fade off will make the ship a lot easier to control as now the player doesn't need to fight against as much momentum to change directions when they want to.

Second, have more control over enemy spawns and behaviour. Always have the same enemies spawn at the same time in a wave so that the player knows what to expect. Make it that the worms will always travel a set distance out from the right before they dash forward instead of this being completely random (Sometimes they'll go half way across the screen before they finally dash and sometimes they'll never reach a quarter of the way across before they do). Also, give the worms less health so that they're way easier to kill. Like, it should be that they take no more than 3 hits with the starting gun and that by the second upgrade the player is killing them in one hit. This would compensate not only for how hard they are to hit but for how hard they can be to dodge when they're in packs (which they almost always are). It should be that players are attempting to wipe them out quickly instead of having to try and dodge them, but between their small size and the small projectiles this would only be possible if they're really weak. Later in the game you can introduce stronger variants to have them still remain a challenge.

Third, make it that the player only needs to get within a certain range for star dust and gem collectables to be drawn to the ship. This will make it easier for the player to collect these without excessive risk. Also, put in a star dust banking system where after every wave, a certain portion of star dust is stored away and can't be lost if the player dies. This would give the player the ability to make some progress on upgrades if they so happen to have a lot of bad luck.

These are the primary ways I think that this could be improved to make the player experience better and to make the gameplay loop stronger. Other things I commented on, like the low rate of star dust and the fact that gem rocks hurt you, wouldn't even matter if these things were done as those issues would be dealt with by executing the above ideas.

Sugar Sling Showdown jam comments · Posted in Sugar Sling Showdown jam comments

Unfortunately, my experience with this game wasn't all that fun. I found aiming to be challenging due to the angle the game is on and the method for slinging candies to, if I'm being honest, frustrating. If a mine was by the candy I was trying to sling, the game would regularly grab the mine instead of the candy even if the candy seemed to be closer. I also wasn't a fan of how you had to walk towards enemies to sling candies at them as, if the enemy was too close, this could easily result in the player getting hurt. Which happened to me. A lot. I also didn't really understand the reason for the things I was doing. Why am I cooking food for the children? So they grow up and be productive members of this society? Okay, so what do the various buildings I'm constructing offer? Do they do anything to help further whatever my mission is? Do they provide me with bonuses? I ask because if they do provide me with bonuses, then there's reason to do certain things at certain times. Otherwise, I'm better off just doing them in the order the campaign wants me to and thus having any "choice" in it makes no sense.

Now before I get deep into the gameplay loop, there are two smaller things I want to cover. First, there is an obvious peaking issue in the sound effect when candies spawn. Even if you turn down the sound effects, the distortion behind it can be heard. The original file is just way too loud. Second, if there's going to be a thing in the mines or any area where there's a collectable reward upon clearing a floor, the player should not be allowed to leave before clearing it. Otherwise, you'll have players who get upset if, on the first time they're doing it, they so happen to not understand what's going on and accidentally proceed to the next area without getting their reward.

Okay, now for the gameplay loop. So I'll admit upfront that I've never been a fan of aim mechanics that require the player to put themselves closer to what they're targeting in order to aim. By this, I'm not talking about if you just have to get closer to make your aiming more accurate. I'm referring to where you stand in a spot, you do what you need to do to start your attack, then you need to move towards the enemy to finalize the shot process. This sort of system often results in players getting hit because an enemy is too close and they can't do what they need to do to aim the shot right. This is made even worse by the set up where you need to be further away from the candy you're slinging to get it greater velocity, meaning you can't just do short shots as you're likely to not even get the shot past you fast enough to hit a close enemy. I found myself spending way more time just running around, waiting and waiting for the right moment to be able to shoot.

Then there's how enemies just spawn anywhere on the map. Just in my last attempt, I nearly got hit three times because an enemy spawned almost directly on top of me. Given the aiming mechanics, this is even worse as you could grab and begin aiming a candy for a different enemy when suddenly, there's an enemy in your face. Now you have to abandon your shot and run. Of course, there's an easy way to fix this without changing it: where the enemy will spawn is telegraphed early. So let's say an enemy spawns. About half way through the timer before the next spawn, a pillar appears on the field in a spot. That spot is where the next enemy will spawn. Now if a player sees a pillar spawn near them, they know to abandon the area and move away.

Lastly there's the boss. I'll be honest, this boss infuriated me because it seemed to be random when it would start and stop attacking. So many times I would expect it to stop attacking because it seemed to fulfill a quota I had previously observed... only for it to change its mind and leap at me as I was trying to set up an attack. After thining about it, I eventually realized that it likely is just random (otherwise, there's no explanation for why it fired the cone of rocks over 10 times in a row while the fight was very early). Thus my only recourse came to be that I'd just run around until I knew it had actively stopped and hope I was near a candy to fling at it; otherwise, I was going to end up still running until the conditions came into play.

Ikimashou! jam comments · Posted in Ikimashou! jam comments

But as someone who has been in FQ events multiple times with this title, you know this. Hello umineko!

So real story, I had planned to play more of this than I had in previous jams; I had two hours before my planned end stream time (which I'm currently 10 minutes over now) and thought I could do a lot more. What I didn't plan on was for me to just dive into looking at the places shown and named in the game and go over them with Google Maps and my own memory to do some strange sort of fact check. Not because I thought you were wrong, but because I wanted to keep track of movement and try to follow the adventure. I also spent a long time talking about my own personal knowledge of the locations, which ate a lot more time than I expected. For context, I got to the part where Zinnia was going to go to Hamilton. I'm pretty sure this is the same spot I got to in a previous playthrough.

With that said, I actually wrote down a lot of notes about various things... some that I feel pretty confident I've brought up in past FQ events but can't for the life of me remember if you ever addressed. All of my notes relate to either issues I have with the story being presented, places that I couldn't verify and am just curious to know about, or just things where I felt like there was something more interesting that could be done. I'm just going to go through my notes in order, starting with something I've always been meaning to ask but never have: are the songs you use original? The ones with singing. I mean, I'm pretty sure they are because I think it's the same voice actress you use for Zinnia, but I've always wondered. I'm also going to note, you probably don't need to repeat what places are in what provinces multiple times. I noticed this particularly when it came to mentions of Ottawa.

Now for the real notes. My first question is in regards to what you refer to as Zinnia's hometown. She says it's Montreal, but then this is immediately contradicted by the fact that Zinnia is original from a rural town in Northern Ontario. Unless she left that place at, like, a few years old, I feel like that place should be what she calls her hometown because... that's kind of what a hometown is. For the vast majority of people, one's hometown is the place they were born or grew up. It sounds like Zinnia did spend a significant portion of her childhood, possibly even going into her teenage years before she moved to Montreal. This would make this Northern Ontario town make more sense as her hometown, at least to me.

My next note is something I feel confident I've brought up... how old is Zinnia supposed to be exactly? I've always had this idea that she was a teenager and possibly not even of age yet. Because of this, I've always been bothered with how the story sets up her adventure, where someone who is essentially still a child just runs away from home to go on said "adventure" because she thinks that if she doesn't then she never will and her childhood dream would die. There are so many problems with this, from legal issues to financial issues to downright safety issues. Like, I can detail so many reasons why this is not only just a stupid idea but how she simply wouldn't be able to do it. I won't detail these right now, because there's so many and I don't want this comment to just purely be about this one issue. However, there are so many problems here and I feel like I've brought it up before.

Next, I just want to point out that Zinnia calling all of this an "opportunity" she was "given" is just the most incorrect thing ever. This was not something she was "given," because that would imply she has the consent of her adoptive mother and said adoptive mother is helping her. This is something she's forcing and it's something I feel like she needs to recognize and admit to even if she can be air-headed.

The next note is actually in regards to time, specifically the time of the train ride from Montreal to Ottawa. In game, Zinnia says it's been 3 and a half hours since she left Montreal. However, I've done this train ride a few times and it doesn't take that long to go from Gare Centrale to Ottawa Station unless there are delays (and I'm pretty sure you're not writing in delays like that happening). It'd be more appropriate to be just over 2 hours to 2 and a half hours. Now if you're saying it's been 3 and a half hours since she left her house, that I'd find more acceptable and in that case the wording needs to be changed to make it clear you mean since she left her house and not since she left Montreal.

Ok, this one is a pure curiosity note. What museum in Gatineau did she want to go to? While I was following the story via maps and checking the museums around, I couldn't see any sort of free of charge museum in the area of where she was. In fact, the only museum I saw in the air (which doesn't appear to be free of charge) was the Canadian Museum of History, which I'd argue isn't a museum on local history.

The next item on the list is more of a writing error. Shortly after Zinnia gets to Toronto and she's trying to figure out where to go, she says "I spy a spot that's open 24 hours..." However, this is then followed by her checking her phone for nearby establishments. Either way, something here is messed up. I'm also going to include this here, but if she's using her phone to check for places nearby then she clearly has a smart phone and is using something like Google Maps. In that situation, wouldn't the app indicate if the place is supposed to be open? Of course, I do acknowledge that it can be an issue of "Well, perhaps something happened and the store had to be closed down or perhaps the map app isn't up-to-date and either hours have changed or the place has closed down," but in that case I'd say Zinnia should make a note of this reasoning.

Ok, here's where we're now going to get into consistency issues as my next note is about the location of Cafe 6ix (real quick, great name. To reference the 6ix means you either listen to Drake or you have knowledge of local terms and how many Torontonians refer to Toronto as the "416" or 6 for short (416 is the primary area code in Toronto). So you say that the cafe is located on "university grounds" and later say it's right beside dorms. This would likely be the University of Toronto. However, Zinnia goes to Dupont Station. This is a full station stop past the closest station to the University of Toronto when taking the One Line. The best station for her to get off would be Spadina Station. I also did a check and there's not even any buildings labelled as part of a university or college that are closer to Dupont Station than they are to Spadina Station.

My next note is in regards to several dialogue lines that show a symbol to say they have spoken lines but simply don't. The first instance of this is when Zinnia tells the barista of Cafe 6ix that she's leaving.

... Okay, so... I want to just say that my next two notes involve a lot of capital letters. In order to maintain how I felt during these moments, I'm going to make use of some all caps during these. Note that this is supposed to be more on a comedic level. Ahem...

ZINNIA, WHY ARE YOU GOING SO FAR AHEAD THAT YOU CAN'T HEAR WHAT THE PERSON GUIDING YOU IS SAYING?! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?! STOP THAT! GET SOME HELP! AND ALSO STAY WITH THE PERSON WHO OFFERED TO HELP YOU, YOU DUMMY!

Also, really? Jamaican patties? You had the perfect set-up to do a reference to the utterly amazing BeaverTails and you didn't take it?! IT'S LITERALLY RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER (based on what I assume is the movement) AND STANDS RIGHT OUT, BUT YOU DID JAMAICAN PATTIES?! HAVE YOU NOT HAD ONE?! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?! STOP THAT! GET SOME HELP! I MEAN, SURE, I GET IT, I HEAR ALL SORTS OF STUFF ABOUT HOW THE JAMAICAN PATTIES IN TORONTO ARE AMAZING, BUT THESE ARE ALWAYS ABOUT THE ONES FROM FOOD TRUCKS AND NOT FROM CONVENIENCE STORES! BUT THEY'RE BEAVERTAILS, SOMETHING THAT IS FAR MORE CANADIAN FITTING THAN JAMAICAN PATTIES! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Okay, I got that all out now.

My next note is in regards to what is likely a typing error. Zinnia plans to go to Toronto Island using the ferry, which she says is "four blocks to the west" of where she is. Now I'll say upfront, this confused the crap out of me as when I tried to plot out the route Zinnia was taken to get to Harbourfront, she likely would've ended up right by where vehicles drive in to board that same ferry. It would've been not even a block to the west to get to the terminal entrance for people on foot. I know this because I've taken that very ferry myself. Now you may be asking why this is a problem? It's because the image you show at the time of Zinnia saying "four blocks to the west" is, in fact, four blocks to the west of that very same terminal! She would need to go four block to the EAST to reach the ferry. The only ferry to her west (again, based on the picture) would be the ferry that takes people to the island's airport where there's no way to get further onto the island. So this is a long way of saying that Zinnia should say that the ferry is to the east of her and not the west.

Alrighty, now time for my last note: when Zinnia mentions that her adopted mother had to pay tuition for her. Now I'll admit that I'm not as familiar with education in Quebec as I am in Ontario, but I'm 99% certain that Quebec has a public education system just as Ontario does and that it goes up through high school; there shouldn't be a tuition. The only way that would apply is if Zinnia went to a private school. This, admittedly, would make sense given that her high school friends wear uniforms and I don't know of any public school that has uniforms. I've only seen uniforms from private schools and from religious schools. That said, if money is apparently so tight for Zinnia's mother then why in the world is she in a private school? Also, if Zinnia's plan for her going on her adventure was to remove that cost from her mom then boy is she going to be surprised to learn that that's not how it works with private schools. They're still going to try and make her mom pay because by accepting Zinnia they didn't accept someone else who would've also paid that tuition. However, now they can't get that student they turned down and thus can't get that money, so they're still going to come after her mom for the money. Now her mom has to deal with both that cost AND the fact that her daughter ran away from home.

And that's all the notes I got. When I get the chance (and if I remember), I'll add a reply detailing all of the issues regarding Zinnia's actions that really, REALLY need to get addressed.

Trash 2 jam comments · Posted in Trash 2 jam comments

Let me open by first saying that you, madam or sir, are crazy. In a good way. We've never had someone who built their game from scratch during the submission period, so seeing this finally was interesting. Joining this event was NOT a bad idea and I'm glad you did, as it means it's something we can ensure we clarify in the future. We're not a tradition game jam where you're expected to make a game from scratch during the submission period. Regardless, we're happy to have you here and I hope that you'll consider being a part of future events! As such, I just want to give a brief rundown of what Feedback Quest is and how it works before I get into talking about your game. Our event is intended for game devs who are developing a game and want to get feedback on to improve it, or for game devs who have a finished free game that they want feedback on how to improve for a sequel game.

The premise for your game is simple: pick up trash and dispose of it properly, with more trash falling in from above from the messiest people ever. As you said in the disclaimer, there were certainly bugs in it. Since the gameplay loop is very simplistic, I'm going to focus this comment on covering the bugs I encountered so that you can then try and fix them. :)

So the first bug I encountered was from the very start. I would grab the banana and dispose of it, but when the next item fell I couldn't interact with it at all nor with any subsequent items. I then reset the game and allowed the second item to fall before cleaning anything up, at which point it seemed to work fine. In subsequent restarts, the issue of the banana glitching things out stopped happening.

However, this then led to the second bug where if I tried to grab an item as a new item popped in, the game would grab that item instead while the original item lost its ability to be grabbed. The reason I know it grabbed the new item is because I'd try to throw the item I grabbed, only for an item to come into the top of the screen and then it'd suddenly bounce up in a way that matches my throw attempt. This issue became more noticeable as items dropped more frequently. I have a suspicion that whatever is causing THIS bug is what caused the first bug, as my first attempts at the game saw me be slow with putting the banana away.

The last bug I encountered... well, it's possible this was a game over screen, but the way it happened makes me think it's not. After the area was filled with too many items, the game just outright froze. If there's a game over state programmed in when the numbers get too high, it doesn't respond properly. If there's not, the game just freezes once the numbers get high enough. It's also possible that the grabbing bug is causing other issues that result in the game freezing, as with more items you're more likely to have more bugged states going on.

I hope these reports help you out! Thank you for joining Feedback Quest! I hope you'll consider joining again in the future!

Dreaming of Sand Castles jam comments · Posted in Dreaming of Sand Castles jam comments

FALSE ADVERTISING! THIS IS -NOT- A GAME ABOUT BUILDING SANDCASTLES AND HOW DARE YOU GET MY EXPECTATIONS UP! I WAS ALL EXCITED ABOUT BUILDING A SANDCASTLE AND I WAS ROBBED! ROBBED, I SAY! NO SANDCASTLES WERE BUILT THIS DAY! HOW DARE!

Okay, moving on! :D

So I played this on computer and I'll admit that the controls didn't entirely sit well with me, at least for vertical movement. You need to hold shift and then use W and S to move up and down, but when starting off you're likely also pressing space to jump and either A or D to move horizontally. This results in the player using their pinky finger to hold shift down. I think this would be improved if the Shift key was just removed from the equation, and all you had to do was jump and approach terrain to automatically grab it. Then if you happen to jump while climbing, the game would push you off the wall to prevent grabbing again immediately.

I also don't think using Enter and Backspace in the controls is a good idea. The game is designed around the player's left hand being in the area of WASD while their right hand is on the mouse, while Enter and Backspace are effectively in the centre of that. This forces the player to have to move one of their hands over. Instead, I'd say you should use Q and E as these are in the perfect spot to use for this.

Other than this, I encountered a few bugs and small issues that I wanted to bring to your attention. I'll just do these in a numbered list.

1. When the player opens the Help menu, it says on the bottom to use Backspace to return. However, this doesn't work. Instead, the player has to use the H key to close it.

2. Sometimes the game would require me to double click in order to place sand blocks.

3. At one point the game was interacting with the menu you get from the ESC key but doesn't show it. I didn't know what was going on at first as it was only affecting the W and S keys, but I guess after I hit Enter at some point it got into the Video settings and got to the Upscale control, at which point pressing A and D caused the value to change and cause weird visual stuff in my game every time I moved. While I don't know the precise reason it happened, I can note that I had tabbed out of the game to write a note down for this comment then went back in.

4. Speaking of the Upscale, if you change through it rapidly it causes the game to flicker with black screens. Not sure if this is even fixable, though.

That's all I have. Keep up the great work!

Blok jam comments · Posted in Blok jam comments

This was quite an interesting concept for a puzzle platformer. If I'm being honest, I think it's biggest issue is just how slow it can be to move blocks along and how easy it can be for the player to mess up. When I was doing the puzzle where the floor was mostly red and I had to shift blocks on the ground along, the movement was so slow that at times I'd forget that the tool for moving blocks wasn't bound to the character and thus I'd forget to move my mouse... then swap a red block to be right under me and I'd restart. Meanwhile, certain parts (like dealing with the final level) just felt slow because you had to move so many blocks ahead of time to even solve it.

There are two improvements that I think can be made to the concept. First is to allow the player to change the size of the flipping box at their discretion, ranging from a 2x2 box to maybe a 5x5 box. That way, the player can make larger changes should they desire. The second would be to allow the player to make swaps vertically. The best way to achieve this would be to give the player a control to change it then have a set of arrows appear on either the side or top of the grid box depending on which mode it's in: arrows on the top pointing to the sides would be for horizontal movement, while arrows on the side pointing to the top and bottom would be for vertical movement. That way, you can expand the gameplay into more and create new puzzles.

Up on the Hill jam comments · Posted in Up on the Hill jam comments

For something listed as a visual novel... I'll be honest, I expected there to be more. It's not a big deal, I'm just surprised is all. That said, given how short it is I don't feel there's a lot of room to give feedback on it. I'll do my best, however.

First, there were some typos and other weird writing at parts. First is when the little girl says "We don't get as many mails as we used to nowadays." At first I was going to let the use of "mails" go, given this is a little girl talking and so there could be just developing speech stuff there, but later parts made it more obvious this is more likely a typo. In addition, the term nowadays is honestly redundant here. It makes it feel less like a person talking and more like a script trying to pad a little out. Just make it say "We don't get as much mail as we used to."

Second, when referring to picking up the mail as an item, just call it "mail" and not "a mail."

Third, while the spelling of "racoon" is considered correct, it's also a less common spelling. Normally, this is spelled as "raccoon." Not a big deal, though.

There is one non-typo issue that I feel should be fixed, and that's teleporting dad. Specifically, he shouldn't teleport up. If you want him to get up there before the little girl, at the very least we should see him go by. Otherwise, it'd be better if he comes up behind her. Maybe have a brief cutscene where he does this right before you get in vision of the grave. This may not seem like a big deal but given both what a short game this is and the sort of stuff at play in the story, I think maintaining a level of realism and consistency is a good idea here.

Break the Blues jam comments · Posted in Break the Blues jam comments

hythrain25 days ago (1 edit)

This was such a cute game. I was so sad when it just suddenly ended. I'm not even into yaoi stuff but I was interested to see how this develops.

As a visual novel, it's really hard to give feedback as the primary element of any visual novel is its story. It takes a lot more before that sort of feedback can be given. So instead, I put my focus towards the script and trying to find any spelling or grammatical errors. There were a few here, so hopefully this list will help out.

1. "So. Can I ask how do you know this spot? It's the first time I get company here."
Change this to: "So, can I ask how you know this spot? It's the first time I've had company here."
This will make the sentence more casual and more grammatically correct.

2. "... but I thought you were either dating or really best friends."
Change the last part to either: "or really good friends" or " or best friends"
The reason why is you don't need to include "really" when describing best friends.

3. "You know what kind of questions comes next."
Remove the S at the end of comes. Since "questions" is a plural, you don't need the s for come. If it was singular, you would.

4. "I do pastries as a side hustle too sometimes."
Change to: "I do pastries as a side hustle, too."
Don't need the "sometimes" on there, and there should be a comma before the "too."

5. "Your remember the last conversation you've had with your mom."
Change to: "You remember the last conversation you had with your mom."
Not only was there a typo in the first word (your instead of you), but since this statement is in past tense (compared to the correction in #1, which is present tense) you don't need to include "have" in here, which you had contracted down to 've.

6. "Your sister and Alisa's mothers..." - This may not be a typo, I just want to confirm if "mothers" is supposed to be plural, aka Alisa had two mothers. If yes, ignore. If no, that S has gotta go.

This was all the stuff I caught. Hope this helps! Have a good one!

P.S. OLD MEN?! YOU CALL THESE TWO OLD MEN?! THEY'RE, WHAT, NOT EVEN 40 YEARS OLD! THAT'S NOT OLD!

Attrition jam comments · Posted in Attrition jam comments

But you know this all, since you've had other games in the past! So let's skip the preamble and get into the meat.

First, this was just a small thing I noticed but there was a point where the word "assigned" was spelled as "asigned." Want to get this out of the way.

Now onto bigger things. I felt like this game was absolutely dominated by RNG in the dice rolls. During my playthrough, I did the tutorial and the first two stages of the campaign... however, it was primarily the last stage I did that ate the majority of my play time with over 38 minutes on it for one simple reason: the computer, for most of the match, maintained a better rate of high rolls compared to my own. I wish I had been tracking all of the rolls as I'm pretty confident that the computer was well into the double digits when it came to rolls 11 and up while I had made 10 of these total. I even got cursed with the lowest roll possible of 3, something the computer avoided (we both rolled double ones twice, with me getting 3 and 4 total while the computer got 4 and 8 total).

Because of this, I spent so long trying to maintain some sort of frontline only for it to be destroyed in a single turn as the computer would roll 11 or 12 and would wipe out 3 or 4 units at once and just destroy all the progress I made. I'd never be able to get units moved up from the rear to support, because if I didn't use my more forward troops to defend then there would be nobody for the rear units to bring support to. It's worth noting that the computer only got a third base once. After that I was the only one who got the third location. This was within 5 minutes of the stage beginning. Basically, I spent 30 minutes trying to get the rolls I needed to have a front line that could survive more than one turn. Now I get it, the game is called Attrition. It's supposed to be a war of attrition. However, I've never been a fan of games where RNG dictates whether you can make progress or not. This is probably the number one complaint I've made in this event.

The question is how do you fix this? In truth, I don't really know the best solution here. At first I thought about suggesting you get a third dice if you control three bases, but then there's the issue of if the starting rolls favour the computer and allow them to get the third base first. Now they're getting three rolls and the player is going to be screwed due to just how much more efficient the computer is with its moves. So this idea wouldn't work. Other ideas I had also wouldn't work because you're clearly designing the game where the player and the computer have an equal playing field, so any ideas I suggest to give the player would also need to be given to the compute (this is also because of the multiplayer function of the game). So honestly, how you resolve this is something I think only you'll be able to come up with.

There are two other things I also want to pick at. The first is how the red bases work. So I get that it allows the person to fire at someone from two squares away instead of one, but what bothers me is that it can't be used diagonally. I just generally think this should be allowed, as at least then if a red base is surrounded on all cardinals then the unit inside isn't completely useless and guaranteed to die. Second is in regards to how you can't attack a red base tile from a grey base tile. I won't lie, this doesn't make sense from a gameplay standpoint. I believe the idea is that the red base is a tall building and the grey base is a small building... but then units on the ground can somehow attack the tall building? I feel like someone climbing to the top of a small building would have an EASIER time attacking a unit on a tall building compared to someone at ground level.

In the back of my mind I feel like there was something else but I can't remember, so I guess this is where my feedback ends. Keep up the great work, LMG!

Dwarf Legacy jam comments · Posted in Dwarf Legacy jam comments

This was a treat to play. I was really enjoying myself with it and the various side missions.

There are three areas in particular that I think could use improvement (though I'll also admit, I forgot this game was supposed to be considered a bullet hell so one of these areas you may just outright disagree with).

The first is control over the gun. The way the gun fires can feel very frustrating since it requires very specific conditions for each thing: on the ground to shoot two bullets up, in the air to do one up and one down, and on the wall to shoot horizontal (with the second shot going in a diagonal). However, I often found I wanted to be doing horizontal shots while on the ground and simply couldn't, forcing me to dodge around to try and bait enemies above me. If there was one thing we could get, it'd be some sort of control over the gun and the way both bullets shoot. I'd rather have a means to shoot both vertical and horizontal from one position than most of what I'm going to say here.

The second is in regards to the size of certain obstacles and the room the player is given. The first time I felt like this was a problem was when I first encountered the spinning blades in that tiny little vertical corridor. The window becomes so very narrow and problematic for a lot of reasons, especially for what's essentially one of the early levels. I also really felt it on the first mission to only use the left wall, as the final jump has this spike that is so incredibly hard to avoid given how early into the game it is. This, I feel, is also the one you'll disagree with.

The third issue had to do with invincibility frames. The player gets two hits before they die, with the first hit represented by losing their mining hat. If they recover it, they regain the hit. The problem I had was that 9 times out of 10, I would be hit in such a way where I would not have the time to react once I regained control and would just immediately be hit, as the invincibility frames seem to be only half a second or so. If I wasn't knocked back in the perfect way when I got hit, I was basically dead. It was really frustrating to have this happen. I do feel the invincibility frames should be increased to give the player more of a chance to regain control of the situation.

Those are the three areas I can think of. Otherwise, great job! I can tell how much you're putting into this game!

Grinding Guilds jam comments · Posted in Grinding Guilds jam comments

I'm someone who once played a lot of Diablo 2. It was a huge part of my late teenage years. This game gives me a lot of Diablo 2 vibes with how gearing is done, the hired allies and the whole transmute thing. Of course, it also has a lot of differences so I'm not saying it's a copy. It's just the vibes I get, which I consider a good thing.

However, its gameplay didn't make me feel the same way. I did ONE go at trying to control my character and promptly decided to not try again as I wasn't a fan of using your mouse to move and aim but using a keyboard button to attack. To go back to the whole Diablo 2 thing, the way it was set up there was if you left clicked on an opponent, you'd do whatever was your left click skill. If you didn't click on an enemy, you'd move. As such, the mouse became both the tool for moving and attacking. I think this is something this game could benefit from, allowing the player to bind to their left and right clicks first and THEN to different keys for extra stuff.

For the most part, I kept it on auto and let the game fight it out. This made it more of a gear management game, where I needed to keep up with gear, keep my spell upgrades going, etc etc. In this regard, it becomes a bit of a mixed bag. While leveling up and getting gear from fights is simple enough, it gets a lot more problematic when you get into the other systems. For example, I could not ever figure out how to do the binding gear crafts. The only ones I ever used were pacts and upgrading gear quality level, yet even these I wasn't a fan of the execution of either of these. In terms of pacts, you're only able to use one of each pact. I only learned this when I bought a second Summon Goblin to combine with an Isolated pact (as I assumed the non-hired help applied to the Goblin). However, I found out you could only use one at a time. If I was interpreting the Isolated pact correctly, this means you can only get the effect to apply once as Summon Goblin is the ONLY non-hired help. So not only can I not use two of the same pact, but the shop will even sell me pacts I can't use. As far as I'm concerned, the shop shouldn't even sell pacts.

As for upgrading items, my biggest issue was how completely random what you got out of it was. You could put any three items in and get any random item back. At least when you crafted an item in Diablo 2 via transmutation, you knew what item you were going to get back as the recipes were quite specific. I think an easy way to fix this would be to make it that the item that you get out of it will always be the same type as one of the items you put in. So say you put in gloves, a knife and an offhand orb. When it comes out, you'll always get some manner of gloves (even if not the same type of gloves), some type of knife/dagger weapon or some type of offhand orb as the output. This would then allow players to control the output by putting three of the same item in. Now if a player is trying to get an upgraded item for a specific slot (so that they can, say, test out the binding crafts), they can now do so.

From here, there are two more issues I had, after which I'm going to detail various things that I suspect are bugs. The first deals with the reroll function. When you use reroll, you lose the ability to choose from the static rewards - gold, combat points, shards and exp - and if you happen to hit continue on the next screen instead of choosing one of the new rewards, you lose the reward entirely. Rather than have this continue button, just keep the static rewards and force the player to choose a reward to get out.

The second has to do with endless mode. The way it's set up right now is that you just let it run until you're done, then you hit the X to exit. However, the X in question isn't a "let's just end endless mode after this fight" button but rather is a "run away from the fight" button. Not only does this mean you're running away in the middle of a fight (and thus any units who may have died are just gone now), but based on the code's design the player wouldn't even be eligible for rewards for all of the waves they DID clear. Obviously, I'm against this. The way I see it, there should be a button that just turns off endless mode and finished the current fight, then gives you rewards based on the number of waves you did. So say you let 9 waves be done and on the 10th wave you stop endless; you will then get 10 rewards. Since Endless mode is something made more for grinding, I'd argue that all but the last reward should just be the static rewards. You can even program it to be only one type (which I think would also fit this idea), so if you pick exp then you'll get whatever that level gives in exp from the static reward times the number of clears you did minus one; the last reward would be a full proper set.

Okay, onto the list of potential bugs I came across. First, there's an effect on items that reads "No translation found for '' in GrindingGuilds." I assume this is a missing text explanation for a specific magic effect. Next, while running a mage build I occasionally noticed a mysterious blank buff on me; its image was a white box and hovering over it provided no text. This may be related to the previous bug. Third, the buff that talks about giving mana regen per stack that gets consumed when you have 5 stacks spells the word "consumed" wrong. It instead says "consummed." The last bug I noticed was that at times, MURDo didn't seem to want to do any MURDering. He'd just stand there and take a beating. Sometimes he'd reset mid wave, but usually it wouldn't be until the wave fell that he reset.

That's all I got. I hope to see more!

Smart-Attack! jam comments · Posted in Smart-Attack! jam comments

An interesting idea. Honestly, I just have one real problem with it: what's the point? I always feel this way about high score games as I'm a very narrative driven person who likes an intended end to a game, so it's always something that crosses my mind in games like this.

Beyond that, I do feel like this could be better. For starters, it starts off a lot harder than it ends as the number of items on the field seems to decrease as you collect more. I get this feel that as you acquire more of the objective item, items on the field that are outside of your vision will change into whatever you're after instead of having new items populate the field. This makes the "bullet hell" aspect of it diminish greatly, even when factoring in how the trail behind you does have an impact on your vision if you loop too fast on yourself.

I also feel like it shouldn't just stay at the same letter until you mess up, yet it also shouldn't change letters when you DO mess up. What I think would work is if after a certain number of items, the letter changes and you have to acquire new stuff. Obviously it shouldn't be sprung on them suddenly, instead telling them. Of course, there's one another idea that I think could work: the letter changes EVERY time and you have to form words. I'll use the word goblin for an example. You first find an apple with a G on it, then another apple with an O on it. Then you find the floating butt; this qualifies as the B. With this, you now introduce a lot more of a challenge as the constant changing of letters will keep you on your toes. On top of this, you also wouldn't need to "change" items when you start running out of items related to that letter. You instead just need to keep spawning new stuff in. Each game could be based around a set of words, and you just always spawn items from the entire set of letters (with some weight towards letters seen more often in the set of words). This, I think, would also fit into the whole "smart" idea of the game as you're now doing something smart: spelling. I could then see this being a great tool for teach kids how to spell and recognize both letters and objects that start with a letter (though in that situation, a few of the objects will need to be redone. I don't think parents would appreciate the nude or the butt images, even if kids would find them funny).

That's all I got. I hope this helps you! :D

Knight's Errand jam comments · Posted in Knight's Errand jam comments