itch.io

Thank you for the extra feedback! Visuals and sound are the main focus for the final version so that's coming.

Other people also specifically mentioned some of these things which I was oblivious to as the maker! "Level transitions"  are explained in a different comment below, so I will look into adding some sort of notification on the screen.

Also for the upgrades you can't buy, I assume it was just not easy enough to see that the button was slightly grayer?

Hold to fire was also mentioned, but I still have to decide on it :)

Thank you for the kind words, I'm glad it was fun!

I agree with the juiciness, and that will be the main focus for the final version! I'm glad you liked the artstyle, I think everything fits very nicely even though it's from different asset packs (one of them had the MC, so I don't know if it was inspired by Red but it definitely looks like him :))

Thank you for the feedback! In fact, there are no discrete levels (or at least you would have to consider them very plentiful), since the spawn rate, health and damage of zombies increases every 10 seconds or so by a small random multiplier. I do like the idea of having a brief popup notification for this, though, so I will consider it! Some indicator for the changes on the enemies will also be added.

Thank you Oli!

• Yeah "take a break" literally breaks the game in itch.io/html embed, this is because it's supposed to be a quit button and that's just how that's handled here I guess
• The button does become "inactive" if there is not enough money (even though it still responds to hover) by becoming darker, maybe I need to make that more dramatic
• Score tracking is coming (at least with a money counter in the game so you can watch it go up), also, the point is to struggle in the beginning :)! It is impossible to beat without a good chunk of the upgrades, so the grind is a gameplay element :))

Thanks a lot for your review!

• Yup, juicing it up with hit sounds/animation and health indicators (among others) is first on the list of additions
• I forgot about the project description under the game! Added the controls there
• No continuous firing was half intentional, it happened when I switched to using new input system for which I only check if the button was pressed this frame instead of if the key is "down", but I thought it was cool to give the player more tactile feedback since it is a two button game after all. Is it really annoying? Some other people mentioned so I might change this. Also the firing on release is really weird and idk why it happens, might be something with new input system also.. However it might be a good balance between continuous firing and spam clicking :)

Level Design:

• Really nice visuals! I like the details of the background, it doesn't get boring. I would maybe add a more interesting sky if you find a matching asset.
• The playable area does, however, get repetitive and that's the biggest thing you can add to make it much more fun! Something like an object being placed randomly in a space reserved for it would add an infinite number of combinations, and of course adding different objects (perhaps the same hitboxes just reskined with different assets?)

Issues/Bugs:

• I tried going as fast as I could by doing repeated jumps, and at some point, my Y coordinate is now above the hitboxes of all the objects, and I run over them. This seems like a problem with the jump not being super precise in returning me to the original Y position then.
• The hitbox of the elevated box to the left seems just slightly too forward, however, this might be a perception issue, as the middle box seems fine

Overall design and feel:

• I  think the music you chose is really nice, both on the menu and in  the actual game.
• I like the idea, similar to Subway Surfers which people really like, an addition then might be adding some sort of powerups?
• Since the coins don't reset between runs (I assume intentionally), I suggest adding a simple score counter for distance to reward the player further, or adding a place to spend the coins on upgrades.

Level Design:

• I like the choice for the infinite playfield
• The simple background works well for keeping contrast with the enemies, but some of them blend in with the zone
• The variety in enemies is nice
• I think you could find a premade asset for the sprite of the player and enemies to make the game look even nicer

Issues/Bugs:

• I didn't notice any bugs! This is nice considering the number of enemies and how they interact with each other and the player

Overall design and feel:

• This is one of my favorite type of game (reminiscent of e.g. Vampire Survivors) so it was quite fun, even though I think the health of the enemies is a little bit too high, making it hard to kill them with no option for piercing when others surround them (thus no EXP, maybe a small amount of passive EXP would be good? or getting a proportional amount of XP for damaging the enemy instead of lump sum for kill)
• The abilities are cool and satisfying
• It is nicely optimized and feels good to play, considering the amount of stuff on the screen

Level Design:

• I think the UI looks great with the shining crystals against a black background! (They also look nice in the game as well, perhaps either a black floor or sky would look good?)
• I think it would be good to round the e.g. speed increase values to 1 or even no decimal places, so it is easier to parse quickly, in general the text disappears quite fast but I understand it might clutter the screen if it stayed too long in the center.
• Objects on the ground might look nicer with a texture instead of solid color (and maybe different shapes), to complement the complexity of the crystals

Issues/Bugs:

• Fruits can spawn outside of the visible platform, but this is because the hitbox for the ground is larger than the sprite, so one of these should be fixed.
• I think it would be better if the obstacles on the ground were more "slippery", i.e., the angle at which point the player slides past the obstacle is shallow, making it easy to get suddenly stopped
• I am not sure if this is a problem of running in the browser (or how to fix it), but the frame rate is quite low and the game feels choppy for me
• This might be an itch.io scaling issue, but the hunger bar running out doesn't correspond with dying, it takes a noticeable amount of time to die. I also think this bar could be larger and/or placed somewhere more prominent (center bottom?), since it is quite important.

Overall design and feel:

• I really like the idea and I think it is quite versatile. You can make many different styles of game with the feeding and effect mechanics (I HATE the camera flip though ;( )
• I think making the hitbox of the player larger could be nice, I walked past fruits sometimes when I thought I would touch them
• I think the sensitivity of the camera is too high, but I use a high DPI on my mouse so that might be the problem also.

Level Design:

• I like the aesthetic and style of the visuals
• I assume that the generation of the order of the different premade parts is random, so that is nice to add a little bit of variety. The transitions are also quite seamless (though this might be because of the speed)
• I liked the branching paths, and if possible it would be nice to see it in more rooms (this ties in to the fact that adding additional rooms would always be better for this type of game)
• Some background music is always nice

Issues/Bugs:

• I didn't notice any bugs, this is nice considering the interactions with the enemies and ghost pathfinding which I would think would be prone to buggy behaviour

Overall design and feel:

• Overall I think the game is good, but for me, the speed seems a little bit high. Maybe it would be a good idea for the speed to start off slow and build over time, introducing a type of progression (maybe the speed could at some point be even higher than it is right now, but that would require the speed of the knight to change appropriately as well..)
• It would be nice if there was some incentive for the attacks. The main use I saw for them was to knock back slimes, but that is both hard to time, and it is also easier to just jump over them in every situation. Maybe attacking the slimes or ghost could award score?
• You may consider adding a screen after dying to slow down the pace, restarting immediately after is a bit jarring.

Level Design:

• I've never done anything with procedural generation so that is quite impressive and adds to replayability.
• I didn't mind the default texture (in fact if you plan on having different textures for more variety it could be a cool snow hills type level)
• I didn't understand what the different colors of the ball represented so it would maybe be good to add some clarity regarding that
• There's many things you could do with the sound (BG music, rolling sound, checkpoint sound)

Issues/Bugs:

• The camera for me was a major pain, sometimes it would glitch out around checkpoints if it got too close or turn around randomly. I never quite figured out how it worked. I would much prefer it be fixed at some point behind the ball or something similar (just less dramatic, the way it is right now feels too sensitive)

Overall design and feel:

• Overall, it's an interesting idea, apart from the camera, the driving feels good.
• Maybe adding some very simple/dumb AI to race against would be nice

Level Design:

• I like that the level is spacious with different buildings
• Adding some background music is always nice, similarly with textures
• The particle effects are nice, but the chicken explosions make my browser lag 😂 (I thought it was funny, but maybe you can look into what is causing it i.e., is it only because it's running in a browser or something else)
• I like the aiming animation for the player; more animations, such as for shooting/throwing grenades, could be good.
• I would increase the spawn rate of the chickens
• The biggest thing would probably be implementing a goal, it could be as simple as adding a counter for the number of killed chickens, or adding things to collect around the map

• Because I always back up a little before I'm ready to shoot when a chicken is close, I end up turning around, and because of that, my shot hits me instead
• Not sure if this is intentional, but pressing shift applies the velocity increase while in the air, which is a little counterintuitive

• The sprinting speed is perhaps too high, though jumping and moving in the air with that much speed feels quite good. I think lowering sprint speed while also lowering the gravity could be fun
• It was slightly unintuitive that the regular projectiles don't have AOE damage because of the particles. I think adding a little bit would make it feel better, even though grenades serve a similar purpose (maybe the argument would be that grenades are harder to aim and have a shorter range, while the zaps are precise but have a small AOE range)

Another thing, if I wanted to change some value, such as the damage dealt to each enemy, I don't know how to do a "temporary prefab update," which would go into effect for the duration of the zone and be applied to all enemy instances, whether already spawned in or not.