itch.io

Quite disappointed this ends on a "thanks for playing the demo" cliffhanger despite being labeled as a 1.0 version; it should really be called v0.1

Anyway, the demo has potential, but it has a couple issues. First, the sword's color-changing happens too abruptly, and it changes to a random color rather than having a reliable pattern it cycles through. This makes combat a chore since you end up spending half the battle waiting for it to change colors again so you can get as many hits in as possible before it changes yet another time.

Second, the bosses aren't really designed around short-range sword combat. Both of them beeline towards the player and do large-area melee attacks of their own--which is not only lazy enemy design in itself, but it forces players to spend the whole battle running away from them and baiting their attacks, then WAITING for said attacks to finish before they can finally rush back to the boss and get a few more hits in. These bosses would be passable in a twin-stick shooter, but as Zeldaclone or hack 'n' slash bosses, they just pad things out, further hampering the game's already-stunted pacing.

For an example of how to design bosses well when the player is forced to use short-range attacks, look at the Helmasaur King from A Link to the Past: it does technically also have a melee attack, but it comes from behind and around the boss--on the opposite side of its weak point--and the boss's length stretches across most of the screen, so the player will be quite a distance from it and have more time to react and avoid it while also being able to go right back to attacking the boss afterward. The boss also has an attack that comes from its front--directly from its weak point, even--but it's a slow-moving projectile that can be walked around, and the projectile even hovers on top of the boss for a second before being shot, so again: plenty of time for players to notice and react and dodge, all without having to go too far from the weak point or do too much waiting or running away, thus the game maintains its pacing.

As I said before, your demo has potential, but it also needs more work to reach said potential.

Did you mean for the puzzle in challenge level 9 to be less than 4 seconds long, or was that a mistake?

Is there another website we can download/play your games on?

I beat it and thought it was okay. The only bits of feedback I have are: 1) let us use the up arrow key to perform an action the same way the W key does, and 2) don't make us time springboard jumps on moving platforms, because that just results in making the player wait for two differently-moving things to line up. I also noticed it wasn't consistent or clear where the signs' ability-changing zone was, but this never resulted in a cheap death; just a bit of confusion.

Music could do without the quacks, though.

Bit of feedback: don't make the player wait on slow enemies that can't be killed; it's makes the game boring. Same goes for when you duplicate the exact same jump/level-segment multiple times in a row.

Also, in this spot, there isn't enough room for the player to reach the ladder before the guard turns around and attacks:

Clicking on the Main Menu link doesn't lead to Showtime - Cabaret - Revue, but instead to an unrelated track called Rhythm Factory. I had to manually highlight+copy the link and paste it into the address bar to get the right one.

Itch sometimes recommends random games after I download other ones, and recently, I started to notice the "Submission to [jam]" tabs on the upper right, so I thought I'd check out the [other] top entries in those jams. I'll also sometimes click the "view all by" tab to see other games made by those users, and those people's previous games were often entries in other jams, so I look at the top entries in those as well. I have a lot of tabs open right now.

When I beat the final boss, the other mobsters kept shooting me and killed me, then the 'retry' button overwrote the 'continue' button and I had to fight the final boss again.

Grab and attack should be separate actions so we don't accidentally grab the princess when trying to attack enemies (or attack when trying to grab). Even if you want to stick to NES limitations, grab could be down+attack like in SMB2, which also lets you give grabbing further reach without interfering with combat. Movement could also be less slippery.

I died during the enemy gauntlet near the end, and when I continued, the path back into it was blocked off so I couldn't progress. 

How do I start at the Mirkrooms? I stopped playing there because I thought the game had an autosave feature, but when I tried to resume my game, it kept starting me at the beginning again. Even the Customize Difficulty section doesn't have an option for starting later in the game.

Room 13 is kinda tedious since you have to do basically the same level three times in a row under a time limit without making a single mistake. I suggest making it so the player only needs one of the red/blue keys instead of both.

Whoa, a spiritual successor to The Guardian Legend! I never did get around to beating that game...

As others have said, the gameplay is solid on both fronts. The only things I think could be improved are 1) more enemy shot patterns for the shmup segments (a few enemies shot directly at me, but that was it; most were on innocent joyrides before I swooped in and murdered them), and 2) the lockdown rooms in the Zelda segments should stay empty after being cleared instead of relocking and respawning the enemy waves if the player dares to get turned around. The boss was also very easy, so if you won't change its pattern, maybe lower its HP so it takes one or two fewer hits to die. Also, maybe make the sword deal more damage to enemies so it has a use besides breaking the crystals.

Given how often the bosses dash/teleport off-screen, I think the game would be greatly improved by zooming the camera out so the player can see the whole arena at all times. Besides that, this was pretty fun!

Would you be willing to add an accessibility option that adds brightly-colored outlines to the enemies? The cameras are hard to see until after they start shooting (and sometimes even then), and I once turned a tight corner and ran directly into a cop and died. I'd also appreciate an accessibility option that adds dashed lines connecting each camera to its corresponding spotlight to make it easier to know which one(s) to disable to safely get the tag.

Oh, and is there a hotkey to skip to the next song during gameplay? That'd be nice.

I tried playing the browser version, and neither the arrow keys nor wasd would move my character. The only thing that worked was the mouse, but since that only moves the invincible character, I can't get past the first few seconds. The download version worked fine, though.

By the way, where can I download the game's soundtrack?

Um, no I'm not? You can clearly see that the author is Garage_Dungeon, not me. (it says so in the URL and on the top-right of the web page next to "View all by" and "Follow").

And even if I was, I certainly wouldn't hand over development to someone that hasn't even played it, let alone someone who hasn't published any games of their own. How do I know you can make a good game if you haven't made any games? How do I know you'd stay true to my vision if I don't even know whether or not you even like what's already here? Why didn't YOU play the game first to see if it's something you'd even WANT to develop further?? Why didn't you play the game first before asking for the source files?? Heck, you didn't even ask for permission to take over development; you just commanded "give it to me," as if you felt entitled to it. And besides, did you honestly think I somehow missed all the other comments even though I read and replied to yours? Yeesh, no wonder you got downvoted; you could have easily figured this stuff out by thinking about them for a few seconds.

Hmm, I think as long as you keep it private between you and your friend, you should be fine. However, if you ever want to make something for the public, I would suggest not using any of these assets (not even the time-stopping mechanic) even in a free product because, again, you don't have permission to do that. 

Yes, actually! If you download Unity Asset Ripper, click File > Open Folder and select the game's Data folder, then click View > Commands and you can Export Primary Content, which includes Animation Clips and Textures. Just don't use them in a commercial product because you don't have the rights, obviously (I think that's why you got downvoted).

Ohhh, the mechanics are inconsistent! Normally, grabbing a gem above you would cause the gems above it to fall on top of you and kill you, but in this specific spot at 0:29, you can just walk up and grab them safely! I would have never figured that out myself! Thanks!

No, because like I've been trying to say this whole time, the gems fall into the acid before the third rock, and even if I use the "ctrl+direction" move to try grabbing the gem without going into the acid, it still kills me. The only way to get that gem is to put a third rock in the acid pool before it falls.

That does not show me how to get the leftmost gems below the blue key at all. Can you upload a video showing you getting those gems and the key from the start of the level?

When I try to play the game, it says that Kasperkey broke the export and to try disabling it, but I don't have Kasperkey installed. Even redownloading the game got me the same error. How do I get past this message and start the game?

How do I beat level 6a Acid? I need three potions to get three rocks on the left side of the acid pool to prevent the gems from falling in, but the only way to get the third potion is to get the key that's blocked by those very gems.

What happened to Existential Crisis 2? I have a prototype on my computer that's missing half the levels and boss music for the first two bosses, but when I checked for an update, it's not listed on your profile at all.

As far as bullet hells that send you back to the start of the game when you die go, this one's not too bad. If you won't add save points, I only have a few things to say:

1) The level 3 bullets that explode into a bunch of projectiles look too similar to the ordinary circle bullets that spawn when enemies are defeated. They should have a distinctly-different shape or color to better stand out among the crowd of bullets.

2) The bullets in the difficulty selection make it seem as if bullet patterns are what get altered between difficulties, but in my experience, the only thing that changes is enemy HP. Although this does indirectly reduce bullets since enemies die quicker, there were still times where there were so many bullets that I couldn't figure out how to get through without using a bomb--even on Easy. If it's not too much trouble, I suggest reducing the actual amount of bullets shot by enemies on Easy mode.

3) Whenever I beat the stage 3 boss, the game goes straight to the final boss, skipping level 4. How do I reach level 4? Are you counting the final boss as its own level?

4) Where's Road Warriors 1?

EDIT: Oh, and a way to remove the marquee would be nice so the game just has black letterboxing instead.

I noticed the album credit for a couple of the bgm tracks in this game is for something called "Daemon Detective: City of Lost Hearts," but I can't find anything about it online. What was it, and what happened to it?

The difference between having no powerups and having a few powerups is too drastic. It's not just that having a few powerups causes all enemies to die near-instantaneously (and bosses die in just a few seconds) from your homing lasers, but having no powerups turn bosses into tedious slogs that take far too long to kill--which is exacerbated if they can regularly block your shots like the second boss can. The core shoot-em-up gameplay is solid, but enemies and powerups should be rebalanced and the harder difficulties should have meaningful level-design differences instead of merely being "no health bar" and "lose all powerups between levels," because that's just lazy and doesn't properly address the lack of challenge in Normal mode.

Also, I'm not a fan of how losing all your lives puts you back at the start of the game. The game should at least save level-to-level progress and let you retry from the start of the last level you reached.

Where can I download the soundtrack?

Oh great, now if someone wants to demake https://tallbeard.itch.io/color-jumper for Mega Drive, they're gonna have to call it Color Switch! :P  

Will there be an update that, at the very least, adds some invisible walls so we don't fall through the terrain at dead ends? It's frustrating thinking I'm making progress when suddenly the game kills me and I have to start the whole thing over (and that "don't walk into darkness" message isn't helpful when it happens well before going out of bounds).

I like how when I download a game, I get told about twelve other games I might be interested in, but I notice that it tends to suggest the same games over and over. How do I get the site to stop that and start recommending other ones? Like, I've already played Deepest Sword; I don't want to play it again; I want to play other games. Sometimes, it suggests a game that I haven't played, but that I'm just not interested in, and seeing it continue to pop up doesn't make me more interested in it. Is there a way to prevent a game from being suggested to me again? If not, I guess move this thread to the Ideas & Feedback subforum because I'd like to suggest that feature.

Tried the web version (not sure if the download version is different/updated), and it's pretty solid, though I'm not sure if the gameplay can be expanded much further than what's already here. 

As for feedback, my only real issues are 1) the "Don't Move" segments last too long and kinda kill the pace, which becomes especially tiring on ???-mode, and 2) I'd appreciate a short grace period at the start of the opponents' special moves where pounding the table still makes him eat what's in front of him; it was really annoying to have him start making all the food rotten as soon as I tried to make him eat a preexisting rotten food and end up wasting that two stamina. Maybe also have the lights go off as soon as the "Don't Move" text appears (instead of only when you're supposed to stop moving) since that mechanic caught me off guard the first time, and having the more drastic change happen sooner would be a better warning for new players.

Lastly, if you do plan on expanding this into a full game, I suggest getting rid of the healing mechanic: me healing myself meant I never had to worry about losing, and the enemy healing itself just dragged the fight out longer until I finally broke our stalemate and won.

UPDATE: After analyzing the game's error message and messing around with UndertaleModTool, I managed to fix the crash I was having on my own. I'm leaving the original upload up just in case this breaks something else, but if you get the same crash I had, you can use this build to get past the empty falling room and reach the final boss: https://www.mediafire.com/file/36a9zuotzb6pgtc/WilliU_1.1.5.0.√-1+crashfix+versi...

You're kinda in luck, because I DID download it in time but didn't get around to playing it until now and discovered your comment when looking to see if it had any updates. However, when I played through it just now, the game would always crash at the same spot near the end of level 3, and according to web.archive.org , there was a small update after this one that I didn't download which might have fixed that bug, so you still might not be able to play the whole game. For what it's worth, though, here you go: https://www.mediafire.com/file/vysys9frqvcpcrd/WilliU_1.1.5.zip/file

Level 5 says the soldier is on the lower left when he's actually on the lower right, LOL. Also, the game could really benefit from an undo button.

When there are three units in a row, the mouse-over text for the rightmost unit is off-screen and can't be read. There could also be better feedback for what the attacks are doing when they happen, especially for enemies; maybe have them move toward their targets for a split second and briefly show damage/healing numbers on top of the affected units. I also felt the game was too easy and kinda boring overall, so if you plan on expanding this into a full game, I suggest having more consistent challenges and get rid of luck-based mechanics like how your spider enemy can sometimes randomly decide to attack 0 units.

The sign says I need to get the missile to hit the + block to speed it up so that it doesn't stop when touching the spiderweb, but the + block is too high to reach:

 The button to disable the red laser (to let the wind keep going up) doesn't stay pushed, and without its continued updraft, I can't jump high enough to put the arrow block to redirect the wind into where the + block is. How do I beat this level? Is it even possible? Where can I download the soundtrack?

> The radio transmissions are... a really, really easy to miss visual easter egg

Maybe you should've called them video transmissions, then. :P

(btw letters thing works now, thanks)