absolutely amazing demo, played the first chapter and there were tons of incredible ideas appearing there already
I feel like combat could benefit from being simplified, I don't quite the purpose of all the stack overflow stuff you have
the password system is a little clunky and confusing, it would be cool if instead of memorizing these commands you could collect verbs like you do with cards and pages
looks create, music is really charming as well, cool to see people still developing with GZDoom!
might be cool to unlock the player's mouselook so they can see up and down, it would allow you to add aircraft and stuff in later assuming that's not already a feature
not totally sold on the way enemies attack, might be interesting if game was based around slower moving projectiles the player could navigate around. Right now you can't do much but soak up damage and pray
Feels really solid, things feel fun from the moment you start moving. Not sure if you made the music but it's bussin on god fr. Looking forward to playing more! :>
Hey thanks for giving it another shot! Once you pilot something you gotta type pilot again to get control of your guy back. I'll put another reminder message in the terminal so this is less likely to happen.
Movement speed is something I've been really struggling with. A lot of people have come to me with similar pieces of feedback. The issue is that when I jack up movement speed it becomes really easy to run past everything given enemy reaction time. The obvious solution is to lower reaction time and raise movement speed along with the player, but doing stuff like this makes the game way more demanding with everyone blazing across the screen.
I added the ability to sprint (with spacebar in case you missed it) to help with this issue but its not a perfect solution. I'll keep experimenting with numbers between now and release.
Lemme know if any other solutions come to mind. I'm gonna cart this thing out in about a month and I'm using the rest of my time to adjust things like this.
Too hard 4 me. Was filtered by level 2. Really love the movement system, alternating between jump and grapple verbs opens up a lot of possibilities without overcomplicating things. Pixel art looks cute and everything is really clear despite the limited color palette. Really love the level design, and how punishments are determined based on your relative position to previous challenges. Game feels a puzzle a lot of the time, you have to figure out the correct sequence of movements before attempting to execute them. A lot of games like this don't have this so it felt refreshing to play.
Movement feels a little floaty and imprecise for what the game demands of you. It also might be interesting to see how grappling resetting your jump vs allowing your jump would work out, but that might trivialize the game so idk.
Great start on a vampire survivor's like. Really love the animations and creature designs, especially the big purple guy. Running animation vvv cute. Nice variety of enemies right away which is cool. Enemies feel fun to kite around, it feels like some of them have collision detection against each other.
No gate spawned after level 3 leaving me locked. It said there were no enemies left so I'm assuming this is a bug.
Also not sure about the inclusion of ammo scarcity. Seems like its way too easy for a player to get screwed through no fault of their own. Looking forward to playing more! (OuO)
Absolutely gorgeous art and presentation. There's so much charm built into this like in the slime chair in your house and the cute smartphone interface.
I have two little gripes, one is I wasn't able to figure out how to open the cell phone menu, seems like something you should just be able to click on. I might just be dumb and missed the game telling me something. The way I ended up progressing was just going to the settings menu and then backing out until I was in the cellphone main screen.
The movement is also a little bit confusing. There's a crouch button but it doesn't seem like you can move while its held. Dashing seems to let you go through tight spaces but only sometimes. I played on mouse and keyboard so that might not have been ideal.
I know you saw the Stream but I thought I'd summarize my thoughts on here. Really love the concept, feels almost more like a puzzle game that induces panic than an RTS or tower defense. Some of the art is clearly there as a placeholder but I really enjoy the core elements of your presentation, including the foodsteps all the dude's make and animations. The menus are a little hard to use but icons will eventually help with that and the issues may be unique to running this game above 1080p. A pause button might also be nice although it would detract from the panic of trying to manage things in real time. Really enjoyed the core gameplay, looking forward to seeing more progress on it!
Ended up really loving this. The sense of humor you're going for is extremely up my alley, like how the soundtrack initially gives you the impression that you just yoinked something off of open game art but becomes so weird a few levels in with opera break core that it feels totally intentional. Reminds me a lot of frog fractions where a simple concept builds into increasingly absurd situations. Game feels really good to play, experienced some framerate issues but that's pretty much it. Grinding especially feels really fun and good.
One thing that feels odd is the default keyboard layout. Seems like moving left and right should be done with the left and right arrow keys instead of up and down though this might be done to make the balance mini game more clear.
Had lots of fun playing, looking forward to seeing more progess.
Played this several demo days ago, seems like you've made some amazing progress. The interface has been improved a tone and everything is a lot clearer. Love the concept and the cool horror elements you're working with. Art and presentation is top notch too.
One addition I'd request is a button to skip forward 20 days all at once, it feels a little silly to just smash the buttons twenty times. What counts as a networked building is still unclear to me. This became apparent in level 9. Not sure if it's a bug or just something I'm failing to grasp.
Full of soul and charm, definitely gonna make it. Looking forward to seeing more progress.
Super fun! Particles look great. Especially love the way arrows fly out for that subtle 3d goodness. Idk if you make your own music but the soundtrack is lowkey bussin on god especially track 2. Looks great too!
Really really cool concept. Ran into a couple of issues. It was hard to tell what direction I'd be facing on the line which sometimes locked me out of killing enemies. The angle you're facing also seems to snap, making some enemies impossible to hit. Adding a little smooth interpolation on the direction the player is facing would be an easy solution to that. It also felt strange that you only find out where enemies will be half way through drawing your line. It felt like I could screw myself without any knowledge to go off of.
Super cool idea for a puzzle game! The menus look real top notch too.
This feels like it was made for a tablet so some of my issues with the interface might have to do with that. It would be nice if deleting drawn sections could be done with the right mouse instead of having to toggle between the two mods. I ran into a bug where individual dots spawned from clicking the mouse button down could not be deleted. I might have missed the reset button but one of those would be nice if it doesn't exist.
I also ran into some frustration with the physics. It felt like a lot of my time was spent tweaking a solution to work with with physics after I had figured out the answer. Giving the ball a little extra force as it comes out might go a long way in helping with that.
Turning the cube with the arrow keys also felt a little awkward. It would be nice if the cube could just be rotated with the mouse.
Love the art style! Description said the enemies were placeholders but they honestly look great. Presentation is real real cute, love how the lil' bombs bounce behind you. Animations (especially the bomb throwing are also great). Nice job on the shaders too.
Feels pretty dang awkward to play. I'd be curious if this concept would work better with a non-isometric camera. Slow down feature feels pretty strange too.
Fun gaem! Your lil dude feels good to fly around. Shootin feels good. I like how ridiculously powerful you get over time. Recharging health felt maybe a little too generous early on. Nice work!
Love the art style! The particle effects and explosions look really nice. Slug enemies are super cute. It's cool how the sniper AI can ricochet its shots to hit you. Seems like there are a lot of ways you can expand this going forward. Character feels a lil slow considering the size of the levels but that's all I can really complain about. Looking forward to seeing how this develops!
Love the art style! Skeltal hands are very cute, along with the lil animations they do when you're interacting with stuff. Some of the menus can be overwhelming when first booting up the game. Might be cool if you had a introduction sequence where you get to run around as Mr. Skeltal before dealing with management stuff. Time limit on my first level felt kinda discouraging. Maybe start things off without a timer so dummies like me can figure out what's going on. (✿˵◕ ɜ◕˵)
Amazing presentation! I love the clean presentation and sound effects. The way levels are constructed and deconstructed is just *chefs kiss* I managed to get through the tutorial and opening batch of missions and there were are many neat ideas here already.
One complaint I have is the restrictions on camera movement. There were a few times where it felt like I had a solution but couldn't get it because I wasn't allowed to rotate the camera a certain way. It would be nice if there was a little more leeway in the game recognizing when you've lined stuff up to, but that's probably way too much polish to expect this early on. I also found this really really challenging! But I'm a dummy so that could just be me.
Awesome concept. Really unique and interesting. Love the art, sound, and the spooky elements you're incorporating. I'm just gonna dump a bunch of miscellaneous thoughts and feedback.
-Figuring out what 'networked' meant was pretty confusing. It would probably be clear enough if you just said "on the same landmass" or something like that
-It would be a lot more elegant to have a commit button that cycles through each day and reports on how your town did, instead of hammering sleep over and over again. If you've played any factory puzzle games they usually have something like this.
-It's really easy to screw yourself in a click so an undo button would be a nice feature if it's not there already.
-The dark forest sprite can block view of you own buildings making it hard to tell how I lost on some levels. Could be fixed by making them shorter or maybe by making stuff transparent when you're hovering over something behind them.
-It's hard to micromanage how many days everything has left until destruction, having a little number pop up over every building at the end of each day would be nice.
-I had a hard time figuring out how various purple tiles worked, wished there was a little more handholding there.
-I don't get the point of having to put down timber and then put down a house. Seems to make the game needlessly fiddly. I get that it extends the amount of time it takes to place a house but this was never an issue.
Had lots of fun plaything though it. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out!
Thanks for checking it out! A couple other people have had issues with the snapback command (and others), so I'm sprinkling additional helper messages in the terminal itself.
This is so much fun! The combat has a really unique flavor to it. The art style is simple but really charming, clear, and cohesive. I really appreciate the design symmetry: how friendly fire is a thing, how traps work on enemies, how enemies seem to use the same skills the player can use.
I only played for an hour and didn't see anything, but the mages, thieves, and goblins were all fun to fight against. The enemies without tells are a little more meh. Taking damage from stuff like rats and bats that just run into you felt a little more awkward and random, it would be cool if they had a 1 frame windup animation too.
There are some changes I'd suggest but they might be too big given that you're planning on releasing later this year. Given the robustness of the loot system, and all the abilities tied to enemies, I feel like strict classes are working against you here. It would be cool if you could mix and match stuff more. You could also generate adventurer based enemies with more variety by mixing skills around like this.
I'm also not sure if the perma-death is the best inclusion given that levels seem static. It would be cool if there was a mode where you could keep your dude but maybe have to start over from a uncommonly spaced checkpoints. It's interesting that you keep all your floors unlocked but starting from the beginning felt necessary with a fresh character anyway.
Had lots of fun, will definitely wishlist this and pick it up when it comes out!
thanks for recording footage! I did indeed watch all of it and was able to fix a bug where the AI froze up thanks to you.
To answer your confusion about the guns turning over time, that behavior is indeed a feature and not a bug. The idea is you're meant to "swing" your weapon using the mouse cursor instead of hovering it over your target. Alternatively you can aim your weapon before entering an encounter so you don't have to wait for it to spin around. Guns are all procedurally generated and rotation difficulty is one of the stats they're created with.
I get this feels really weird and unintuitive but it's a unique spin on top down shooting I wanted to experiment with.
Sorry if this wasn't explained well. You can type 'pilot' again to unpilot them, and 'snapback' to put your camera back on you. Thanks for checking it out!
Presentation is absolutely sublime. The noises and simple but elegant looks are flawless. I feel like some time based / speed solitaire mode would fit great in here.
hey thanks so much for recording footage! I found a few little bugs and managed to stamp them out. Watching people play is super helpful. I'm working on some stuff to address movement right now you're not alone in thinking its too slow :P
