"a lot of thought" might be a stretch lol. I was happy how the concept kind of all fell into place. Adding the pointers in really made a difference to gameplay so I'm glad I had time to implement them.
The control scheme needs work and a tutorial type first level might be a good idea should I choose to continue work on it...
The tutorial system is really good, nice work on that one.
From a game design perspective I still believe some of the enemy placements result in 'cheap shots' on the player. For example, the player switches to a new screen and an enemy is basically right on top of you before even having a chance to react and move the player out of the way. You basically just take a hit instantly and I don't think that is fair and shouldn't be incorportated into the 'difficulty' of the gameplay in my opinion.
The graphics are obviously much nicer now... I actually really like the look of the theme overall :-)
I figured that the delay was intentional to challenge the players ability to hold longer and longer sequences in memory for longer times. I just found myself always pressing keys before I was allowed to and it started to feel a little bothersome after a while. Don't feel that my comments warrant changes to your design, it's good how it is :-)
I was expecting to tap left and right to change lanes rather than the car sliding around like it does. getting through the gates is easy enough, however tighter controls would make picking up the gold more fair. The challenge doesn't seem to be collecting gold, instead the challenge is keeping the car from oversteering and missing the gold which I don't think should be an aspect of gameplay.
The player should be rewarded for picking the correct lane to collect the gold and changing lanes at the right time to collect gold inbetween lanes... as it is, the player is penalised by being 1 pixel away from the gold's hitbox which is far to easy to do imo.
Other than controls, it's great fun and a nice take on the theme as well :-)
I enjoyed this. Overall it looks nice, simple design, executed well.
I would have preferred to enter the numbers at my own pace though... waiting a couple of seconds between number presses takes a little bit of the fun out of it I think. This way, you could measure speed as factor in overall score.
For example; Enter the correct number within 1 second for +10 points, with 2 seconds for +5 points, and later than that for +2 points...
Nicely done. Well balanced in terms of viewing time vs size of maze etc. Fully featured in terms of being able to set the seed and replay certain mazes. High score table is a nice touch as well... Very enjoyable :-)
Visually it looks nice, a little dark at times I feel.
The gameplay of "go here and pick up a thing, then take it there" is a little lacking.
I would also avoid using 1x tile wide corridors in your maps as they make it hard to see where you are going at times and they kind of hide the location of the tiles of interest.
It would also be useful to be able to view the whole map with a hotkey or something otherwise it seems like you are just kind of rolling around randomly hoping to stumble on something.
It could definitely be made into a nice little game with a few gameplay / visual tweaks :-)
The presentation is great, nice clean graphics, artwork for the intro is fantastic and comical, a very nice touch.
The introductory gameplay / tutorial section is integrated beautifully into the first level. A 'learn as you play' approach which I love. It also doesn't feel 'shouty' when you replay the game, the first level is still a normal level, just with some extra text prompts.
The addition of the compass and zoomed out mode are nice. I found that once I zoomed out, I just stayed zoomed out as it makes the combat easier. If I could make a recommendation it would be to have the zoomed out mode be default when travelling outside of combat, then have it zoom in once you engage an enemy (a change in music could assist in this transition). This might add an element of tension to the battles.
I may not have played far enough, but are there upgrades to your ship at all? Extra health, weapon modifications etc? If not, I think this would go along way to improve the enjoyability of the gameplay. I also felt the red ships could have been made more different to the yellow ships as far as combat goes. It seems like they have double the health, but they still move at the same speed and engage the player the same way. I can see from the screenshot that there are blue ships as well and they appear to have different weaponry... I just feel the red ships could do with a slight upgrade :-)
I didn't hear any music or soundFX, this would make a big impact in overall impression...
Agreed, the confusing New Game button appears to do nothing (although it probably does). Having to X out of the menu to play seems counter-intuative but that's already been said.
I found the difficulty to fluctuate quite a bit. Some areas have a single enemy, then the next area has about 700 at once (exaggerating of course). I never found any swords... are they implemented in this build?
Overall the movement was nice, the graphics were consistent, the gameplay, however limited was fun. It's definitely a good start :-)
The original plan for input was to support touch controls for mobile devices... however that was abandoned due to time constraints. I would like to revise the input at some stage.
There is a video link to a short demo of gameplay but it doesnt appear on the itch.io jam page for some reason. Not sure why this is. I might add the link into the description as a backup...
The story elements are what make it fun in my opinion. It's sufficiently silly enough to overcome the sometimes unfair enemy placement and stair jumping (why does she need to jump up the stairs exactly ;-) )
I played through it a couple of times and did manage to finish it. I didn't use the map whilst playing the game but I did test it later.
It's great fun to play and has a lot of potential for expansion...
Here are my constructive criticisms: - Remember the state / position of buttons and menus between simulations; - Consider more intuitive default locations for some of the UI elements (avoid overlap); - Center the workspace when the screen size changes (ie, the grid should be in the middle of the screen by default);
Some bugs I discovered; - Sometimes the polygons slip through small gaps when mass is high; - Occasionally the polygons just disappear all together; - When using the COPY polygon feature I can place the polygon outside the intended workspace area;
Nice, very nostalgic as 'a link to the past' is one of my all time favourite games...
My tips would be to have the delay in-between robot enemy movements to be slightly longer to give the player a chance to move in for an attack before the robot darts off in a random direction again.
As for the Boss battle, the attacks should be telegraphed in some way (like they were in Zelda) so the player has time to position themself to dodge the projectiles.
There is no skill involved otherwise, it's mostly luck and persistance.
Good concept, I think a grid might actaully help a lot here with the ability to predict the trajectory better...
Also, varying ball sizes might also add another element to gameplay as bigger balls (hehe) will be easier to hit, but harder to fit in between other balls...
I like the idea of this. In its current form it is very hard to know what is going on, or how to even play. I agree with the other comments that a range indicator and circular orbits (instead of square) would make this more playable...
Very fun game... Character animations are spot-on!
Music is relaxing, and the pacing of the puzzles is perfect. Goes to show what you can do with a single simple game mechanic, no need for tutorials, you just learn by playing...
It's very satisfying completing some of these puzzles... though they look simple, they can sometimes require an enormous amount of forward thinking to get them to complete successfully.
Graphics are simple but very well suited to this type of game.
The controls are the real troll here :-D not the boss at the end!
Not sure why the choice was made to have the player move in fixed X/Y axis (isometric) and not be able to rotate freely? When you're using 3D models with animations it seems like you would make full use of that ability.
As for the theme, I'm not sure that collecting an item after being instructed to do so to progress really counts? Isn't that just, well... normal gameplay?
I got teleported to a room with the boss and I couldn't move and died instantly.
The graphics used are nice, and if the controls and gameplay were refined into something less frustrating this could be a nice little game...
It's a cool idea that could be expanded on. The GUI needs to be a little more intuitive as it took me a second play through to actually figure out how to get to the second level...
The smooth scrolling camera is something I implemented as a stand alone thing a while ago, I use it in basically every game that I work on…
The character voice acting was a last minute edition and I didn’t even have a proper plan, just recorded me saying a bunch of silly stuff then pitched it up a bit. It did add atmosphere and a sense of achievement to the gameplay so it I'm glad I had time to add it in…
Fixing the item spawn issues was on my list of things to do before submission but I was burned out by the end…
The portal wobble effect is really good... The last level was a little tricky... 3 levels is a good demo, more levels with a steady increase in difficulty would be nice..
The controls do take some getting used to and if the battery is far away from the snake it can take some time of just falling down the green strip to advance...
This could be really fun if it was a bit more fair on the player... Seems like Justice is being served in reverse!
Great looking visuals, I particularly like the lighting, although a little variation would be a nice touch. Also, having a slight delay before enemies shoot at you would also make it a bit more fair. Enemies spawn from the doors and before you have had time to aim your gun at their head, they have already got 4 shots into you.
And yes, where are the health pickups?? You take so much damage so easily and have no way (that I could find) to replenish your health.
Overall a very nice entry, just a few tweaks and it would be a very fun game!
