itch.io

1

Just completed the game. I have a bunch of things to say so be prepared for a long comment lol. Although I must say I’m not an expert for this genre, I’m just trying to be critical with my current experience. But hopefully my feedback is useful!

I think the concept is interesting. It combines tower defense with a first person combat mechanic. It’s also interesting that you can change weapon to a mage. The replayability is there, because there are many things to explore. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to explore all the upgrades haha, I think the game was a bit too short. Maybe you can add a freeplay mode where the enemy is spawn randomly instead of restarting the game.

Now, for the combat mechanic. I don’t like the fact that spear attack combo moves the player forward. I think it is too frantic for a starter weapon especially in first person perspective. It is too easy to miss the target with this combo. I think the intended way to play the spear is by moving backwards before triggering the next combo. I think it’s a fun weapon if tuned properly, but for now this seems too advanced for a starter weapon.

Also, the staff seems way overpowered LOL. The first skill is a long range AOE with infinite range. I think it can easily beat the whole game with only the first skill. So yeah, some balancing is necessary here. This is also related to the spear mechanic, I think the spear doesn’t provide good enough utility while being harder to use than the staff. Balancing is hard, but it’s an important thing for a game like this!

Some nitpicks:

I think the description for the 2nd upgrade of the tower is a bit off. It was along the lines of “Reduce the attack cooldown to 2.5s”, but me as a player doesn’t know what is the original attack cooldown, and I certainly don’t want to measure it lol. I think you can either make it vague like “increase the attack speed 2x”, or be super precise like “decrease cooldown from Xs to 2.5s”. It’s up to you to decide.

Maybe, you can also add description for the skills. Took me a while to figure out what the 2nd mage skill was haha.

There is a bug where the enemy can get stuck in the outer castle wall. This can happen because of the knockback from the mage first skill push the enemy inside the wall. I was confused because the level didn’t end even though there didn’t seem to be any enemy left.

Phew, that was a long comment, I’ll stop yapping now lol.

Yo, this is a very interesting concept! I think you executed well on the atmosphere and art for this game. Well done! But of course, I have some other feedback about the puzzle design and also some general UX.

I’ll start from the spoiler-free one feedback first: It’s quite a nitpick to be honest, but when you rapid click the dialog, the voice will overlap. I think the voice for the previous dialog should be cancelled before the new one is played.

I also wish that the walking speed of the character can be faster lol. Maybe if you double click on the target location, the player speed can be doubled or something.

Now onto the feedback on the puzzle itself. I’ll try to talk in code to avoid spoiler, but just in case I’ll give a spoiler warning.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SPOILER ALERT! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There are three keys that the player needs to find. I think I found the hints for the first two keys accidentally, but it’s immediately obvious that it’s the correct answer. I found it by hovering on some elements as instructed by the bear. I personally think the experience is positive since I get the “surprised” and “aha” moment when I got it. BUT, I think the hint can be cheesed, for example by “inspecting the element”. I found the hint to one of the key by “inspecting” the sound related stuff without needing to know the piano and organ in the game (I still don’t know if the piano and organ are red herrings or not haha). I think a good way to fix this would be to “left” some information on the piano/organ. So knowing all the hints from the document wouldn’t tell the answer immediately without figuring out which one is the key.

Then, for the “right” key, I brute forced this lol, and I have no idea what’s the intended solution. The book on the right end seems like the correct direction, but I can’t find anything from there. Googling doesn’t help either.

That’s all from me. Let me know if the above feedback is confusing lol. Maybe we can talk further in the discord to avoid spoiler.

Good game! I enjoy playing it! The thing that I appreciate the most is the smooth onboarding experience to the game, the gameplay felt very intuitive!

Great game! I think other people have pointed out most of feedbacks that I want to share haha. But, as a thing to consider for post jam, I think you can add a rhythm game element to this. Maybe you can check out rhythm doctor for an inspiration.

Nice little game! I played up until the level with two black snowmen and a bear and a snowman. That level was a difficult one! It was a nasty combo because the two black snowmen keep throwing the spear and “protect” the snowman. Not sure how to beat that one haha. Also, nice atmospheric music! Well done!

A small nitpick though: I think the music is set to be too low on initial game load. I can’t hear anything on my first run lol.

Just played the game and I got destroyed on level 2 lol. It’s a hard and fun game! It reminds me of dark souls, maybe you can get some inspirations from it.

I like the variety of insult messages that you get whenever you lose the game lol. I think it’s funny and it adds personality to the game!

Seems like there’s a little bit of lag after the player died though. I think removing this lag would make the game much better! But during the gameplay, killing the enemy seems to be smooth though. I’m not familiar with the 3D system in godot, so yeah, I’m not sure what causes this.

On the difficulty, I think you can consider adding a heart system. This would make the game less punishing on a mistake and in my opinion making it more fun! You can still have it be difficult by only tolerating one mistake.

A little bit of nitpick: maybe the camera angle can be a little bit higher so that the enemy wouldn’t be blocked by the player. Also, I think the shield timing can be tuned to make it feel better. I personally like it when shield timing feels instant, so I feel that I reacted to the enemy’s movement properly. But, this is something that you should figure out on your own since you might have different vision on what you want the player to feel during the battle.

Oh and one more little thing: I like the cow in the background! When you add audio stuff, you should add a moo sounds once in a while lol.

Overall, good job! I hope you have a lot fun during this gamejam!

Thank you for the feedback! I’m glad you like the game! Totally agree with the character indicator for the controlled character. It’s definitely high priority on the list of things to be improved for this game. Also, thanks for the bug report, appreciate it! Will do some bug hunting later haha.

Great game! Had a lot of fun playing it. Well done! 

Oh and btw, I can confirm that the audio works fine on the Safari browser.

Actually, I enjoyed playing this game! The art reminds me of a game named "Paper's Please", but it involves a completely different gameplay. This game is a rogue-like with buy and sell mechanic with rng mechanism (gatcha!). 

I really like the cutscene art! It felt polished and mixed well with the music. However, compared to the cutscene, the main scene is quite rough in my opinion . I'm not sure what's wrong since I myself doesn't have much experience with pixel art or art in general (sorry!), but I think it's an issue with the pixel resolution... Maybe... Probably...

Onto the gameplay, it's actually engaging! Like, I play this game for 30 minutes without losing interest lol.  But it gets somewhat monotone over time, and maybe it's because of a bad rng, but I rarely able to sell things successfully. I feel like the progression is too slow, and it can be made faster by changing the rng parameter to benefit the player. Hence making it less rng-based grind and more strategic.

All-in-all a good game! Great job with your submission!

You're a lifesaver! Thanks for the feedback on the game description! and for explaining what the rule is in a better way!

Finally!!! I beat the easiest level!!! LOL

So, my biggest complaint is the steep difficulty when trying to learn the control. It's quite difficult to aim for the farmer. It took me about 5 restarts or so to be able to hit the farmer somewhat consistently (read: skill issue). I think lowering the difficulty can help smoothen the gameplay experience. There are a lot of ways to do this, one that comes to mind is to make the farmer not shoot the geese until the player hit the first farmer. It's because, at some point, there are lots of farmers in the game that it's almost impossible to target them with all of the bullets on the screen.... which in turn, makes it harder for me to learn the aim.

Once the geese become larger, it becomes easier to target the farmer and at that point, I've become comfortable with my poop aim (I can't believe you made me said this lol). When the RPG farmer comes, it doesn't seem too challenging. 

Now onto the good part! As others have mentioned, I think the art, the music, and the SFX are great!  It mixes together nicely with the gameplay. Good job on that part!

Also, for some reason, I have this strange feeling of satisfaction once I defeat the easiest level. It has the feel of a souls-like game to me just because of the poop-aim mechanic. I think you can somehow take advantage of this (maybe with another type of bird with a different mechanic or harder types of enemies).

Overall, great job! 

Ah sorry about that. I guess my choice of words was bad. As others mentioned, the more accurate wording is "Guess what the scale measures".

I think the mechanic is interesting! The puzzle also has great level design. Great job!

Also, I think there are lots of potential fun mechanics in this game, especially with the open rule where you can do anything.  One that comes to mind is to skew diagonally so that the shape becomes a non-rectangle.

Thanks! It is checked using an AI a set of keywords. How it’s checked depends on the level, most of the levels check if any of the keywords exist in the guess. Some of the levels require all of the keywords to exist in the guess.

Phew, it took me a while to realize that the same door led to the same room no matter where it was placed lol. I was confused on the x and y position requirement before realizing that. I think a proper tutorial might help to onboard to the game better. For this gamejam specifically, maybe you could add more gameplay hints on your page description.

That aside! I really like the game! The art and animation are polished, and the gameplay is unique. Great job!

Beautiful game, great work! The twist to the 2048 game is refreshing to me.

Great work! It’s a fun and relaxing game. I had my fun with the tetris level lol.

Now onto my nitpicks:

I liked the details that the pebbles at the menu screen can be clicked and be played around with. Maybe you can do the same to the pebbles at the level selection also.

Regarding the gameplay, I noticed that you can sort of rotate each pebble by bumping it to the floor or the other pebble. Not sure if it’s part of the intended gameplay, but I think it can be a bit annoying if a pebble rotates in the middle of a level. Maybe you can add the proper way to rotate a pebble.

Thanks for the very detailed feedback! I really appreciate it!

Noted that the start can be confusing. I agree with you that the tutorial part is quite lacking. I'll polish it once the voting period is over, just for the sake of the completeness of the game.

About the error that you found, that's a nice catch! Actually, the scale freezes is part of the joke lol, but the audio being cut is definitely a bug, thanks for letting me know!

Thanks for the feedback! I added a how-to-play guide on the itch.io description to help explain the game mechanics.

About the level with two countries, I must say that the "glitch" is intended as a part of the joke lol.

Thanks for the feedback! You're right about the many interpretation issue. I didn't even realize that alphabetical order is valid for the first level. I guess it was a level design flaw on my part, I should've tested the game more with my friends. Relating to this, I'm glad I added the skip level feature because otherwise, it would ruin the entire game experience.

Regarding the bugs, I must say that the "bug" in the level with two countries is intended as a part of the joke lol.