With a name like Pogo Girlfriend I have to play it. The sprites are epic in a sort of memey way, this is a pretty fun Getting Over It kind of game. I feel like the part where you have to use the bathroom is rather unnecessary, the game should start with the main character seeing the rocket take away his girlfriend as the opening doesn't have anything necessary in it and you have to deal with some janky cutscenes and room transitions. The only thing I wish this game had was the ability to change the strength of hops you can do. It would also be really cool if you can collect currency for a store where you buy upgrades or aesthetic changes for the character as a little extra incentive to do completely counterintuitive things. Where it's at though this is a standout title of GDEX and can only go up from here.
Seems like it's still in it's early stages, I've been using a controller and the tongue doesn't seem to work when I want it to or how I'd want it to. I can't seem to shoot my tongue up-right at all. I'd suggest having some kind of cursor so you can preview where you're going to shoot your tongue/eggs and then pressing a button (like clicking the stick) to shoot. Pressing Up to jump/flutter when I'm usually just trying to aim up also causes inconveniences. It might be better for keyboard users but not for controller users, I dunno. I don't want to sound too harsh on this but the music for me was anxiety inducing for me and took a lot out of it. Levels also felt like you dropped a bunch of fruit and rectangles everywhere and while I can vibe with a more abstract game it would help if there was something to gravitate to, like fruit only growing in background trees. Still, I think you got a great concept going and it seems like you're very early into it and I'd love to see you continue to put effort into the project and polish the gameplay.
Experience an action packed adventure as Bugsy, a cockroach with a hammer who loves exploring. A lizardman kidnaps Bugsy's friend Mayo while mumbling about needing a new sacrifice, and an earthquake triggers, causing Bugsy to tumble into an further into uncharted depths.
Searching for Mayo and the mysterious lizardman, Bugsy discovers a maze-like labyrinth full of crumbling ruins, mysterious relics, and loads and loads of monsters. Will he make it alive, and what mysteries does the underground labyrinth hold?
-Fast-paced, action packed metroidvania-style goodness that does not hold back!
-Battle against hoards of crawling, rolling and flying insects. Perform combo attacks with your hammer and sub-weapons, and even juggle enemies!
-Fight massive bosses with intricate behaviors. Learn their patterns and weaknesses, and become the boss of them!
-Explore a massive map with lots of winding paths, secret areas and shortcuts. Multiple playthroughs and speedrunning are greatly encouraged!
-Every cutscene is skippable with an auto-skip option. If that isn't enough for you, you can activate a turbo mode!
-Loads of abilities to discover. Sub-weapons, movement tech, and equippable augmentations are all at your disposal! Mix and match abilities to how you see fit in your playstyle. No two playthroughs will look the same!
You're welcome man, my game's combat is a sort of lighter take on that action game genre but in 2D, there was a couple things I noticed that I learned when making my game. I'm really looking forward to trying the punishing difficulty when it comes out then.
So I spent the time to take a look through the demo because it was one of the most interesting games shown at GDEX and it was really promising. I was expecting more of a Zelda kind of game but the actual demo makes it seem more like a Devil May Cry kind of game. I think I'm just gonna ramble on some criticisms and suggestions I have on the game's combat, because that's 90% of what the demo focused on:
The combat is pretty solid overall but I feel that having 3 attack buttons is kinda redundant. I never really felt like needing to do more than just spam the light attack button, the heavy attacks seem too slow and not powerful enough to consider using instead of the light attacks, and the slide attack could be accomplished just by having a running start anyway. I think I'd rather just have a single attack button where you have a combo with 3 light attacks and a heavy attack at the end. I like the charged spinning attacks but I think I'd rather just spin the analog stick and press the attack button like in Zelda, and possibly have other moves where you use inputs with the stick/WASD. The special attacks are very clear in their purpose and I can understand you're just simply in the process of continuing to polish the game. I really love that super spin attack. It seemed like you can juggle enemies but it seems really under baked, not sure if you're going to polish that further or it'll just be a special kind of stun for enemies.
The armor pickups and secrets immediately made me think of Doom, which is handled really well but it makes me wonder if the final game is going to be structured with scripted levels or if it's going to be more of an open world experience like a lot of the pathways you can't go down would suggest. I enjoy both types of games, and I'm definitely going to watch this until it's completed.
Best Wario Land game I ever played. Movement tech may be a bit too galaxy brained for me, I kept fat fingering down and up on the D-pad at moments when I had to dash and jump at precise moments. I don't think it's a big deal, if I were to practice the levels it might feel better over time, but I also mention it as it would never hurt to have alternate control schemes. I'm watching a gameplay video on the side of typing this and notice so many neat movement tricks. Even the taunt is useful in a way I didn't expect. As a person who works at a pizza kitchen with a blue uniform I highly approve. Hope you can customize his costume/color in the final product.
I've been hearing a lot of complaints about the Enter key being used to Pause/Unpause. When I first got into gamedev it was the standard that nobody batted an eye so it always struck me as odd. What's a more acceptable Pause/Unpause key used these days?
If you're just beginning in game design, than in terms of menus and controls, you're doing great. Most everything else could use some work, mostly coming from just learning from experience/not being so lazy. The sword is really hard to see, making it hard to judge the distance you can hit enemies from, I legit at first thought it was like 2 pixels long and was a meme game for it. You should get a better description for what the abilities are, I assumed the Super Jump was something where you had to crouch to use first or was another name for a double jump, had no idea what it meant because it was vague. Otherwise, keep working at it, you're doing fine.
---IMPORTANT FOR ALL THOSE WHO PLAY WITH KEYBOARDS--- If you are experiencing problems using the hammer, change the controls in the options menu so that Attack and Dash are bound to different keys.
That's really helpful thanks. Sometimes you just don't notice certain things when you're doing almost everything yourself. I added an additional sign in the tutorial area explaining how to pause and unpause the game as I've had people in the past complain about it as well. What I figured out with the keyboard controls was that in a very old build I had attack and dash bound to the same key and the game was designed around that, but now it's definitely not. I thought I fixed the default controls so that you used X to attack and C to dash but I guess not.
Thanks for the feedback man, I immediately went back and checked the game to see what the problem was for the controls. I used my controller and it felt fine, but when I used the keyboard, I immediately understood what you were talking about with the attack animations working wrong. That'll be a high priority for me to fix. You use Enter to Pause/Unpause btw. It's very much more a controller based game than a keyboard based game, but you're supposed to do everything the same on each.
I can get what you're saying with the graphics being insistent, the collision tiles would be easy as just changing room tiles to better represent a ruleset for the area. As for other stuff, a lot of things in the game got edited in iterations while others were ignored, but what would you suggest I put the highest priority in redrawing?
Really nice game, only thing I'd suggest is to streamline the controls a bit, or at least show the controls on-screen. My friend who was watching said it was very charming.
Really promising looking game, but I ran into a few issues, biggest one being that text wouldn't display on screen during cutscenes. At first I thought the controls weren't working for me for some reason because it only showed the protag's mugshot sprite and the buttons wouldn't do anything for me until I clicked a couple times and then I could move. The second cutscene made me realize what was going on.
Another thing I have to say is that while it might just be my machine, having the main character not being in the center of the screen in a game where you use the mouse to look around is really bothersome, uncomfortable but not in the right way like say a spooky game would be.
The last issue I ran into was getting caught into a corner and not being able to move out, but honestly it was the thing that bothered me least. If you get either of the first issues fixed I'll try it out again, keep working at it. Love the spritework and atmosphere.
I think this game should have a more clear indication of how you're supposed to move (on-screen controls, if nothing else), and the arms' punching ability to be stronger. An on-screen meter to show how much you've charged would be helpful too
This game needs a whole lot more streamlining with the movement. Analog stick deadzone is way too sensitive, making me run even if I rest my thumb. Hyperactive mode should be way more hyper, even if it involves draining stamina faster. Making you stop and take a break when you deactivate it is a complete waste of time and your speed increase is so small that you'd likely waste more time with the break than just running across a space normally. In short, there should be a more noticeable difference when you activate hyper active mode. Locking the wall jump to hyperactive mode just doesn't seem right, as does losing control of your left and right movement. If you want people to use hyper active mode smartly to speed through levels, it should improve your movement and abilities at all times, with the only cost being the stamina meter. It's a good foundation, but the movement in this movement focused platformer is just plain bad.
I'd say having a skippable demo that appears before you start the game would be ideal, there's a lot of arcade games that do it that way, because otherwise figuring out how to use the balls as projectiles is pretty unintuitive.
I'd also suggest completely getting rid of the stamina system, because it forces you to look at a bar away from the action in the screen. I think you could get away with the melee attack not even doing damage to enemies at all, or something ridiculously low like 20 shots to get one enemy (might be good for score farmers).
This game has a lot of potential, you should try experimenting with different types of weapons as powerups.
