This demo is quite promising. If I may make a few suggestions: 1) make it so the player can push a button to advance the dialogue instead of having to wait, 2) when level 1 starts, have the protagonist say something like "Wait, why are the soldiers joining the rioters?" so that detail is actually in-game instead of just relegated to the description, and 3) make the enemies stand out against the background more; I got sniped by the first two orange-laser-shooters because I didn't notice them (EDIT: making the background darker would be an easy fix for this issue). Also, maybe make it so the helicopter only shoots one missile instead of three; it happens abruptly and the player's movement speed isn't quite fast enough to react to all of them that quickly.
Imaynotbehere4long
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I mean, of course the Gamecube port would have lower-poly models and lower-quality textures; that's a given. I'm also aware that, even beyond graphics, it would likely require building a new engine since obviously UE5 has no "export to Gamecube ISO" option, but I guess that's your way of saying it's not worth it, which is understandable. Oh well; thanks for responding.
>I understand that [the hitbox] wasn’t made super clear
It's more than just that, though (if I didn't make myself clear last time). Graphics need to represent the hitbox if you're going to make a game requiring precision; that way, the player can literally *see* what to do, like in Rocket Bits. Once the required opening is smaller than your sprite, however, you as a player can never be sure HOW close you can get without trial-and-error (and then it's something you have to remember instead of something intuitive). It's the same problem a lot of bullet-hell games have.
EDIT: also, in regards to the Halloween levels, you shouldn't overlay the required white fuel cells over the white decorative background tiles because that makes them easy to miss.
>not having time
What do you mean? The game is self-published, right? What's stopping you from delaying the release for a bit to make sure everything works as intended?
I played using the SDK, which gave me a popup warning that it runs faster than a normal Playdate, and I think that explains others' issue with the gravity being too strong. Even with that in consideration, I felt the difficulty curve wasn't completely smooth, with hard levels being followed by easy levels (an issue that Rocket Bits also has). Notably, the ability to keep energy cells after death means you don't have to worry about backtracking in the final level since you can just die to get back faster. Maybe a good compromise would be to have them work like standard checkpoints and respawn you where they were, then have all levels utilize them to some extent? There were a few non-energy-cell levels I felt went on a bit too long, particularly the ones that had the Y-formation saws that required very precise moving around despite the player's hitbox not being all that clear-cut (it was better in the first game).
Pretty good. My only issue is that the third boss spawns the cars a bit too quickly to react, especially near the end of the fight where you have all the other bullets to avoid (I happened to be right next to where the car was about to spawn and got hit). I also think the dash move could've been better introduced in the first fight (with something like the fourth boss's bullet walls) since I thought I was stuck in the corner during the second boss, but I figured it out after a couple deaths.
If you're gonna make another game like this, would you be willing to swap the health bar for more frequent checkpoints? I'm okay with one hit deaths, but having to redo the first half of the fight each time I die on the second half is kinda tedious.
Again, everything else is done well, and I liked it overall.
P.S. Where can I get the music?
The game is very buggy. There were several times I tried to connect two squares that were several tiles apart, but when I dragged my mouse across the board, the line disappeared half-way or so (did I move the mouse too quickly?), or the game suddenly shifted to the tile-removal phase and prevented me from finishing the line. Once, the unfinished line even stayed up when the game went back to the line-connecting phase, and I wasn't able to select that tile again. The game even soft-locked on me: while fighting the 3rd mandatory battle (the purple snake/dragon thing), I connected two tiles as soon as my timer ran out, and the game stayed stuck on the enemy's turn with the board removed; I had to refresh the page and lose my progress.
My suggestion: instead of having the tile-removal phase happen randomly during the player's turn, give the player the option to do it manually (maybe even show a preview of the connections' damage/healing during the line-connecting phase). Also, have it happen automatically when the time runs out so the player knows those final connections actually do something.
P.S. There also doesn't seem to be much to explore, but maybe I just didn't make it far enough.
The game has potential, but the rabbits' AI needs some more work. First, why do the rabbits only jump when I land on the ground? That makes it awkward trying to jump over the floor lasers, even with the ground-pound (NOT double-jump like the game says). To make things more frustrating, the bunnies kinda scatter upon doing a running-jump (even without doing a ground-pound), some not moving forward at all or even going *backwards*. It practically guarantees that some of them will be hit by the laser.
My recommendations: The bunnies should either jump at the same time as the player or jump after a split-second delay so they jump at the same spot the player pressed the jump button. Also, I recommend keeping the player's jump height the same as the rabbits' jump height so the player can better gauge how to get the bunnies over certain obstacles.
As for the running-jump bug, I suspect this is because you gave the rabbits collision with each other, so maybe you could have them group into formations like Pikmin so they move/jump as a group without hitting each other and losing speed. If it seems like too much to make formations for every possible amount of bunnies, you could make shorter levels with fewer rabbits per level (like how Sonic 3D Blast only has 5 Flickies per area). I do think this game could be really good and I'd like to see more levels, but the challenge should come from level design, not awkward pathfinding.
P.S. I also recommend significantly lowering the amount of time the sliding doors stay shut. It's not fun having to stand there and wait for them to open back up.
As someone who had the same issue as rodrigocapitelli, here's my suggestion: limit earthshaping instead of jumping. That way, you can still have alternate solutions while also preventing the player from just making block rows for everything. You can even make it so different levels let the player move a different amount of blocks depending on how you want the puzzle to be solved.
On the off-chance you're still working on this, I have a suggestion: kill the momentum. In games like Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man, etc., you move at top walking speed as soon as you push forward; those are responsive controls. Here, it takes a moment to start moving and another moment to slide to a stop, making the controls slippery.
Plus, when I got the "50 coins = 1up" message, the game didn't pause, so the momentum carried me into the path of an enemy before I closed the message. In fact, why not remove the lives system entirely and let the player continue from the last save point? Having to redo what we've already done just to get back to where we died is not challenging; it's tedious. This is on top of the fact that the knockback and short invulnerability means an enemy can damage you twice in a row before you can do anything.
If I may leave a suggestion, more checkpoints would improve the game. There are a bunch of screens that are nothing but padding, slowly pushing the crate to the only other possible spot it can go; then, if the player dies in a later screen when hazards are finally reintroduced, the player has to redo all the slow, boring stuff again.
Just finished the demo. I know the interconnectivity is (one of) the game's major selling point(s), but whenever I realized the solution involved going back to an earlier screen, my reaction was always frustration. I prefer games where everything you need is already on screen and you already know what everything does, but the puzzles are still hard to solve, like Mitoosis (which is free). Would you consider going more in that direction for your next game?
P.S. I'm also not a fan of games that keep introducing new things so part of the puzzle ends up being simply figuring out how to use the new thing(s). I bring this up because the demo does this; I know there's a chance the main game stops introducing stuff after the demo ends, but I've been burned before on this and want to ask that your next game not fall into this unfortunately-all-too-common pitfall.
Before I go through everything required to set it up, I have a question: can you lock-on to enemies in this mod like in the original Metroid Prime? I've played a few other FPSs, and I think that's one of the main things that sets Metroid Prime apart from the rest: since you can lock-on, you can focus more on dodging attacks instead of hiding behind cover and aiming.
The bug where the player doesn't move with the platforms still exists in the browser version (I haven't tried the download version yet).
As for feedback, the last level was a bit too riddle-y, a bit too divergent from how the rest of the game is built; I kinda wish you'd just stuck with platforming challenges. Also, on the semi-final level, I got stuck on the right wall of the center platform (all I did was walk off the left side of the right platform), but since walking right to get unstuck results in a fail state, I got sent back two levels. I recommend having a checkpoint after each level instead of sending the player back to the first iteration each time.