Thank you for all the comments on things you noticed. Really appreciate it.
In the final version of the game you won't have infinite food to feed your pet. I should probably make it more obvious that the DD builds I'm pushing are basically just my testing area.
There is no way to heal in the demo. And I did consider modifying the health bar to kind of go down to the left instead of just change colors. I definitely will add this.
Every other critique you made I can't really say anything to other than I will be working on that lol. Thanks again for playing; this feedback is invaluable.
Hey,
Lots of questions relevant to lore will be answered when I've nailed the core gameplay down a bit further and have a demo that gets into some actual dialogue.
I'll make the washing/pooping interval a bit larger next demo. I kind of added in the feature in but it doesn't affect anything *yet* so I apologize if that stressed you out. The pet will grow and evolve (and evolve into different evolutionary branches depending on how well you take care of them). Perhaps he will get sick, too. I think the next demo I'll have the pet features fleshed out a lot more and they should feel more impactful (and hopefully fun).
The scarcity will be better in later demos and the full release. Right now my demos are just big maps to test out stuff in so there's infinite items in the vending machines.
And thank you for finding that bug; It's something to do with the camera clipping into objects and occlusion culling I'm sure. It shall be noted down and fixed in DD66!
Thank you for all your kind words. I appreciate them and the bug you found.
Cool idea to have a sports game be both real-time and turn-based. I ran into no bugs; everything on the gameplay side seemed quite polished. Seeing the ball go over the head of one player and then it go over the head of another starting further back than it was was a bit jarring, but I understand it was just showing every player within proximity of your shot getting their chance to try to block the ball. I assume you have plans in the future for how to incorporate that more seamlessly into the visual side of the game(?).
Unless I missed it I don't think think any actions showed their % chance to succeed (if I understand from the itchio page, the chance for success is comparing stats + some random number being rolled). Would like to see this in the future to more quickly ascertain how potential actions will play out.
This was my first blorblike game and it was surprising to see Blorb stepping away from 3D and moving into 2D. Everything seemed to work well enough control-wise. I'm not sure how much I would like Blorb if my squish jumps were limited in any way (I think the demo said somewhere they would be in the full game(?)). Level was fairly short without much going on so I don't have much more to say. I didn't really run into any bugs.
Hope I can see Blorb in 3D again in the future.
The general idea and look of the game all seem to suggest a finished and polished product, but there's still a lot that's rough around the edges here.
1. I had major issues with using my PS5 Dualsense controller with the game. Even after disconnecting it the level menu kept having Boku always move to the right.
2. The prompts for buttons, at least in the level select, seem to be given for both controller and KBM. You should change this to give exclusively prompts for one or the other; I think it will confuse players to see keyboard controls given if they're on controller and vice-versa.
3. Jumping for a second time seems to just teleport you to a certain positions and then give you an upwards velocity rather than giving you upwards velocity at the current position of Boku. This looks extremely weird and jarring and makes the double-jump feel quite awkward at times to use.
4. Cancelling out of selecting the direction of your dash with a jump is taking too much control away from the player. Just allow them to cancel out of the dash direction selection without having to jump upwards (as far as I can tell there's no way to do this).
5. The remote bomb you have to touch before you can set it off should give some kind of visual cue to the player that they have touched that bomb as well as the explosion radius of the bomb. It was very hard to understand how this component worked, especially being that the controls prompt to "use the bomb" disappeared a short distance away from it. This made me think the remote bomb had a distance I needed to be within to activate the bomb (where I could see the prompt), but I always ended up killing myself because the controls prompt disappeared within range of the explosion (so I kept activating it within range of the explosion when I could see the prompt).
6. One of the levels had lasers you could rotate from any position. Being that I just came from a level where I had to touch a component to use it (the remote bomb) I thought that I had to do the same here. It was not apparent that I could control the lasers from anywhere until you told me on stream that was the case. You should make an effort to make this far more obvious to the player (perhaps make the introduction of these lasers REQUIRE the player to use them at a distance, and see multiples of them moving, to get rid of a monster before proceeding anywhere in the level).
7. There were some visual artifacts/bugs I encountered with the fog in a level being higher than it was supposed to be (I wouldn't have known if not for BokuDev telling me this). I also recall seeing a spinning diamond thing have some odd shader issue where it got superimposed on and cut off by a part of the level
8. Not sure why, but I seemed to get hit a few times while in air even though the enemy attack was on the ground.
9. It seemed at least one of the enemies in a level acted a bit sporadically with shooting tons of bullets out and killing itself on occasion.
As far as I've heard and know, it seems like a lot of Bokube is already completed level-wise(?). If that's the case I think the next step you have that is extremely important is just polishing the glitches/bugs out of the game so it feels better to play, and improving the tutorial experience and introduction to gameplay elements such that they are understood and picked up quicker by players.
VFX looking stunning as always with Jusha.
I think it's an interesting direction you've gone with turning the game more into an action adventure as opposed to a boss rush. I personally still think the initial idea of Jusha being a boss rush roguelike(?)-esque game is really cool and I liked that first demo of it I played a lot. With this new demo there's a lot more lore given to you and you talk to a lot of NPC's; things are still kept kind of vague as to what exactly is going on, but I think the monster design and atmosphere of Jusha sells an interesting story better than the writing in this demo. None of the dialogue captivated me as much as my imagination did with coming up with what *might* be going on in the first demo.
That said, the game still looks really nice. The fire VFX are pretty stellar (both the magic attack itself and the flaming sword). The effort you put into the water simulation definitely paid off. Even if it's only in a few parts of the game it's one of those things that really feels good to see despite it not regularly being on screen. It's a very nice touch. Combat is fluid and everything feels quite satisfying to land a hit on. The dashing is incredibly fast and is better movement than just holding down a WASD direction; it doesn't feel good to know if I want to maximize movement I've gotta' spam dash. Not sure how you would want to change this (maybe a cooldown or having it be a parry instead?).
I did run into a few bugs I'll list out below:
1. Saving & loading seems to wipe your hotbar for using items, but they're still there it's just that the icon is gone. I can't seem to get the icons to appear again either when trying to reassign items to the hotkeys.
2. The cube puzzle has some issues with being able to move the cubes around from off-angles.
First time playing Acrolyte; Expected great art direction and atmosphere and got just that.
I'm not sure if the underground area the demo takes place in is considered fully finished yet, but I think its "length" could be cut in half. Currently it does not feel varied enough environmentally and a lot of it is running past the same small enemies without much change in scenery. If the level is varied a bit more in the future or the length is cut in half I think this section would be a lot more interesting. As far as the movement upgrades go, I think they were positioned well enough but the the direction you need to go after obtaining the slide could be telegraphed better.
The boss looks very good, but there's something about him that feels a bit janky with regards to getting hit by his body. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but maybe if there was more telegraphing to when his body slams down on you (maybe he moves up first instead of just shaking?) that attack might feel more fair. Also having him be able to be so far offscreen and not getting any feedback for when he's preparing his rush move feels *bad*. It's a very fast attack where he slams into you with his body so if you have him on screen and know it's coming it's hard to avoid but when you also create distance you don't know when it's coming which doesn't feel great.
EDIT: Oh, I also was having issues with jump inputs being dropped on controller (PS5 controller/Dualsense).
New game from Mr. Kalemonvo himself. All the combat mechanics and gore seemed to work well. I didn't encounter any bugs. Still very early in development so I'm interested in seeing how things develop.
Only critique I can think of were that the running animations were too fast for the speed the character was moving at (you can use root motion or just adjust the animation speed down).
Keep up the good work Osur.
Whoops, I should have said the attack delay I wanted to be longer and the reach to be longer. The attack delay is very short and quick right now.
Also, even with all I've given on feedback try to keep your own vision in mind. The combat you want to make might not ever line up with what I enjoy and that's okay.
Visual novels aren't the type of game I usually play so I don't think I can give much feedback on how well this compares to others in its genre, but I do think the setting of Hong Kong in the 50's(?) is pretty neat.I played through a chunk and listed some bugs and other things I noticed below.
1. I had some issues with the settings menu as well as backgrounds/pictures loading in the first time I started the game up, but those issues didn't crop up when I continued my saved game starting the game up for a second time (Not sure what happened there.)
2. When I started my saved my game the dialogue mode was in 'auto' but 'auto' was not highlighted in red. I had to click 'auto' to put the text advancement back in manual mode.
3. I didn't initially realize you could scroll the map with W & S. Might be something to add an indicator for in the future.
4. I noticed that the SFX for hovering over buttons has a slight delay to it. Feels odd to me when moving my cursor over stuff and then the SFX comes in slightly after it.
5. There was an instance in the narrative where Hazel is said to feel like she was just something to be bargained for or owned by her husband, Leonard. It's a pretty direct statement about her feelings early on where we don't know much about Leonard and I feel like the story could benefit from maybe implying this through character interaction as opposed to directly telling the player through the second person narration. (More showing and less telling.)
The UI for the game is well-done and everything is pretty readable and easy to navigate. I think the color palette for the game in general does well at setting the mood. The background art is quite painterly and eerie and the map of Hong Kong does a good job of cutting the explorable areas up into chunk while drawing your eye to the various quest markers.
I'm also just realizing as I'm writing this that Undying is an otome game. The vibes I got from playing it now make sense lol. Looks like you've made a lot of them.
Thank you for your kind words.
Apologies for the shitty options menu. That was a holdover from previous demo days I haven't gotten around to making it better yet. This goes for the fast camera speed as well.
I'm curious how you managed to use the flashlight instead of shoot. Was that with KBM or controller? In both cases they seem like fairly distinct buttons that wouldn't get mixed up, but if you can elaborate I'd like to hear it. I do intend to add the option to remap your controls in the future, though. I think regardless that will fix the issue you were having.
Great game. Seems like it would be a very fun game to develop as well given how many little tools you can make to enhance sneaking and maneuverability. Loved the dropkick. Very GMI energy.
1. I noticed there was a lot of issues with grabbing onto ledges. Seemed like the player character would often try to grab onto geometry that clipped into the wall (I found myself hanging onto what seemed like nothing on the outside of buildings somewhat often). I also had major issues trying to get in through the sliding windows in one of the levels (the character would automatically try to step through the opening when I slid the window open, but unless I completely destroyed both windows panels they would step up onto the ledge and then fall back down multiple times before I somehow fanangled my way through).
2. I don't think the weapons have any pitch rotation when looking up or down (do they?). I didn't look into this extensively, but I did have a moment where enemies were coming up a steep incline at me and it would have been nice to have been able to aim the spear down at them. (I tried to attack them but was only thrusting straight in front of me; maybe I was doing something wrong so ignore this feedback if there is a way to aim up or down and I just missed it)
3. The low resolution and sharp unfiltered textures are nice, but I think you could improve the overall look of the game if more of the textures for the environment were a similar texel density. I remember at least one house that looked very odd because its roof had pixels maybe 2-4x the size of its walls. If you're using Blender there are add-ons you can get to ensure texel density is kept similar across objects (I use Tex Tools).
Besides what I mentioned above everything worked very well without issue. Game is fun and good. Keep up the great work!
Hello Etherwest!
I was excited to try out the combat now that it's in DD65. Last time I played Etherwest it was just the selling portion of the game. If I'm not mistaken you can now move things straight from storage to tables (a nice improvement from last I played).
I mostly played the combat repeatedly this demo since I wanted to get a good feel for it so I could provide some decent feedback. I quite enjoyed the mechanic of having to pick up the bullets after shooting. I'll list some stuff below that was either a bug or something I think could use improvement:
1. Bullets did not damage barrels in the dungeon (only '0's came out as damage numbers). The bullets completely flew over the top of the crate (hitbox too low? May be an issue for anything too flat to the ground if it's the bullet hitboxes going over it).
2. When I first fired my shotgun in the dungeon there was a brief lag spike. Maybe it's something to do with instantiating the bullets and you could load them ahead of time in the future?
3. Having my bullets stuck in enemies was a bit frustrating, but I don't know if this is a valid complaint. Uncertain of how well it works with the melee/spell portion of the game yet.
4. My melee weapon felt like its reach was a bit too short. Once I started going ham on stuff and stunlocking enemies things got a lot easier, but I almost wish the reach was longer and there was less of a delay between attacks. Uncertain if this is a valid critique though. The melee didn't feel great to me, but that might be more to do with the mechanics not meshing with how I like to play games instead of just not working well in general.
5. The dashing and sliding feels a bit cumbersome, especially in such close quarters. I can very easily hit walls and stun myself. That's probably part of the point, but I found myself wanting a quick dash/hop instead of something I had to hold. Combining that dash button with another to slide is something I think should be done away with; as far as I could tell the slide only gives you more rotational control (like drifting). I would want to see how the game might play if dashing was just one button and releasing it let you slide (and perhaps you could attack during this as well). That might feel better(?). Having two buttons for retreat/evasion mechanics felt too much for my tiny brain.
Keep up the good work. Curious to see how the combat progresses in Etherwest.
With the icon for this game I was expecting a Blender roguelike (with 1, 2, and 3 being for attacking vertices, edges, and faces). What I played was quite different than what I was expecting.
The general look of the game is kind of interesting, but I have no idea what the goal is (get to the center of the cube??). The VFX for the attacks are nice, although I'm not sure why I sometimes get ahegao faces on the cubes. Not exactly sure what attack 3 is doing (AOE DOT damage?).
There's no feedback for switching between attacks and starting or stopping gameplay so it's a bit hard to parse what's going on (the only way you know which attack you're on is paying attention to the VFX and way cubes are getting destroyed).
Curious to see where this goes. It's an odd one, but maybe it'll make more sense in the next DD it's submitted to.
I know you changed a lot from the last demo (with the state machine and animations) but it seems pretty similar to the last demo for me just more polished. I don't think I saw the enemies reacting to each others' attacks like in the last demo. Nice different footstep sounds for different floor types.
Here are some things I noticed while playing that may need some fixing up:
1. Same bug from before with controls menu not showing up correctly when first brought up but working second time (was using controller).
2. NPC's still break when trying to lead them off ledge (in library). They'll stop at the ledge and then never attack again afterwards (only blocking).
3. Noticed some odd occlusion culling happening on the first door at certain angles.
4. No water...
Still looking forward to the demo where we get to see the water and CRT filter you worked on.
Heheh. Thanks. Yeah, I need to figure out a way to nerf the stagger. I like the way it looks, but it's definitely overpowered right now.
And yeah these are like the only enemy that become a threat in number right now. I'll probably end up making an *elite* version that is actually somewhat scary on its own. I think a lot of enemy balance and tuning will come a few more demo days down the road. Right now I just want the player and enemies both to have more tools to interact with each other and the environment.
Played the new imsim level.
Noticed that if I put the mech in the cage and then get back in I have to go walk out before interacting with the cage again. Would be nice to just instantly be able to get out again.
Revolver model was cool. I think your out-of-cockpit mode expands the kinds of puzzles you can have in Awoken, but it still needs some work. Whenever I look down I don't see the MC's giant breasts.
I think for future updates you should focus on just refining the current features and feel of the mech and out-of-cockpit mode. This latest update seems like you might be scope-creeping. I've seen people looking forward to your game already before this so it's not like you need to give even more variety to the gameplay mechanics.
Ganbatte, Fed-san.
Pretty interesting entry compared to what I usually see. I know you were going for the board game feel and you've nailed it. I think the tutorial might need some work to tell the player more about the significance of certain card effects and how they go along with your strategies for getting through a dungeon (one example would be the bought cards going into discard and iirc there are cards that allow you to discard your deck so you can access them faster). That's up to you how much handholding you want to do, though, I guess. I was able to start getting the hang of the game pretty quickly; felt things were fairly intuitive.
The major gripe obviously is the programmer art. The game seems really solid so far so I think once you get some better art, UI, and *gas* in there (SFX, VFX, and movement for card effects) things will come together quite quickly.
がんばって！
Great looking game. Visuals, style, aesthetics are peak.
Controls and stuff are still a bit clunky and I'm not entirely sure of what I can do in this demo since I didn't see a tutorial and a lot of the things to interact with are icons or things to click on without any description of what that's going to do. I kind of just killed an alpaca, cow, and robot while trying to figure out how I might be able to collect some wood to build things. Regardless, it's still an early tech demo so I'm sure this stuff will all mega improve over time. GMI energy; looking forward to seeing future DD entries.
Also some bugs/things I noticed:
-I couldn't move my little guys if I accidentally selected any other objects along with them. Had to reselect them to make sure only they were in my selection square
-The little dudes miss a lot... I was going to complain that the environment can also block their shots, but I guess that's more-so because of them firing inaccurately.
Keep up the good work!
Laser sight and range is definitely something that will be adjusted next build.
How are you interacting with the Tamabuki menu currently? I don't quite understand since I use my left hand to WASD through the menus alongside ZX for confirm/cancel. I can definitely map mouse1 & 2 to confirm/cancel as well.
Thank you for playing again and for the kind comments :)
I am aware of all three of the bugs you mentioned, and yeah number 3 I left him at 1 HP when I was testing the game in the editor and just forgot to change it lol. (I also left a skeleton in the game that just walks slowly towards you and does nothing else; also for testing and forgot to remove)
As for the two computers running Linux and wine did you use the Linux download for the game? This is the first time I made a build for Linux for Demo Day. I think you weren't able to see the laser at all in DD63, right? So this is an overall improvement? At some point in the development cycle of the game I'll get a PC set up specifically for testing Linux builds, but as things are I do really value the people playing the game on Linux and letting me know what's wrong. I'll see if I can find anything I might be able to change so that the game works better with OpenGL 3.3 in the future.
I'm glad you liked the enemies. Their AI for both is still not set up correctly (hold over from me rushing DD63). When I finally get them working the way I want them to they'll be even more endearing! (Also if you hide away and watch the skeletons they'll eventually go back and pick up their broom to start sweeping again.)
Thank you for playing!
Yeah. Longer range and damage drop-off has been suggested. I think that's what I'll go for, but I need to think about how I'll balance that.
I kind of want to make the shooting far more linked to your pet so that if you shoot past '0' energy it'll eat into their hunger (risking a game over). That feels like it might be too punishing though.
Figuring out how to balance the game will certainly be a puzzle, but maybe it's not so bad if the game is kind of easy either.
Thank you for playing!
Nice diegetic start menu. Seems like you got a pretty early prototype going of a space-themed roguelike in the vein of Binding of Isaac. It's still quite rough, but I'm looking forward to your future progress on it and seeing what Void Crawlers evolves into.
Here are some bugs & things I noticed while playing:
-In the mode selection menu, it's not obvious you have to hover your cursor over the back button to put the game disk model down since it's occluded by the game disk model. Maybe make the game disk model be put down when your cursor isn't over it anymore instead?
-P/ESC should also close the pause menu but I had to click a button
-Space to dash is not listed in the tutorial
-dash kind of functions oddly where you always dash towards your cursor, but if you press the opposite direction it seems to shift the added velocity towards the direction sometimes?
-It's very easy to get stuck to terrain and walls while moving around the rooms. This can make navigating areas a bit frustrating.
-Freezing the character on entry to every room feels very bad. I'd rather you let me move around until the enemies spawn instead.
-You get a freeze even when entering old rooms you've cleared enemies out of. That feels mega bad.
-Enemies often get stuck on their spawner and just shoot out from it at you. This can make it sometimes difficult to realize whether you've cleared a room yet or not as some end up being occluded by the geometry above them in their spawner.
-The razer boss that I fought needs more telegraphing before he dashes around or at you. It seemed exceedingly random how he moved.
-I don't know if there's an end to the second dungeon, but I went through a ton of rooms without finding a boss. For the time being, since there's only one enemy type, I think the room count can be cut down.
-There is some funky stuff going on on the side of the screens running the game on my ultrawide monitor.
-There was some terrain I could shoot through in certain rooms.
(The two spaceship models were pretty cute. I'm more of a Ship_02 man myself.)
There's a lot to do before Void Crawlers gets to a better place, but I'm sure you can handle it. See you at DD65!!
Incredible style and soul. All the animations and enemy (and Shrimpy) models look stellar. Feels like I'm playing Armored Core but as a shrimp. Found the intense warnings for fusing your elements pretty funny. I only played singleplayer but it seems there's a mutliplayer mode, too, where you power your Shrimpy up while fighting your friends. Seems like it might be similar to Kirby Air Ride.
Here are a few bugs and other things I took note of:
-Lots of issues with the controller not quite working in menus (PS5 Dualsense controller). Also couldn't move the camera with the right analog stick (I assume this would be where camera is mapped to on controller) once in-game, but seemed to be able to do most everything else (I switched to kbm without testing out all the controller inputs on my PS5 DS once I realized I couldn't move the camera)
-Am I retarded or wouldn't ascending lower your pressure? I understand how it works gameplay-wise I'm just being a nerd.
-Feel like dash action should be able to be spammed more. I was taking a while just to get through my energy trying to use it as often as possible. Would be nice to spam it in more dangerous situations.
-Could shoot through walls at enemies sometimes if I was close enough (mainly tried this on the Kelp Shrine boss and the thing clogging up the Volcano)
-Often got stuck or clipped a little bit into walls and got stuck when I was moving around close to them
-Wish picked up weapons didn't have their icons swap as you cycled through them. This is big personal preference though. It's easier for me to distinguish what I'm using when I just have things laid out in a line being highlighted as I cycle through them.
-In the volcano boss area I noticed the orb to return to the hub world appeared before the boss did; not sure if this was intentional or not
I stopped at the point you needed to find a pearl to talk to that one shrimp. Looked around the world a bit but was pretty confused on where I would need to go to find this pearl.
Overall great work though. The game's visuals have a ton of flare and the gameplay seems solid. Definite GMI energy!
The recoil on the gun is to force the player to pace themselves, but I have an idea on how to to do this now but make it feel and look a lot better. Should be in next DD.
The enemy AI is still kind of jank right now. The AI WORKS, but the conditionals for how they act and the things they do is a holdover from rushing them out last DD and so they still act kind of funky. My apologies; gotta' fix that next DD so people can appreciate Bone Janitor to the fullest.
I was going to have the LCD screen be pushed towards you depending on if anything is occluding it, but I didn't think of putting it on an overlay. That's a good idea. I am going to consider it. Thank you.
The environment is very placeholdery right now. I started working on a pretty huge area early on that's meant to be the tutorial/starting zone, but since I don't have all the props and textures I want to fully realize it yet most of it is *blank*. To prevent the player from wandering around into the massive structure it is where nothing exists yet I put up a bunch of rubble. Where I had put rubble before in certain areas there are actually places in the structure and roof that are logically missing, but you don't really get to see that too well.
Thank you for playing!
Insane texture and lighting work. The environment looks phenomenal. All the controls were very smooth and everything worked without issue (save that it doesn't seem controller support is there yet). I will be honest I barely read any of the text that I picked up, but I'm sure there is an audience out there that will really enjoy that aspect as well.
Here are some bugs & issues I found on my playthrough:
-Tried controller (PS5 Dualsense controller) and nothing worked except left analog stick
-I can interact with containers from infinitely far away (taking stuff in & out) so long so I initially interacted with it. Interacting with another container while doing this while switch the container being interacted with but hide your cursor.
-It's super annoying that in order to cancel out of interacting with a container I have to press E **AND** have my cursor on the container highlighting it (or I can just press TAB twice but that sucks as well)
-Sometimes I'll open doors and they'll open towards me hitting me in the face ( :( ). I think they should always open away from your character. Also I got stuck between a pillar and door like twice because of this, having to close, reposition, and open it again to avoid its unstoppable approach.
-Enemies will not pathfind around doors. I opened one such that it stuck two enemies behind it and they just kept walking straight towards the door to get to me, locked behind its oaken form.
Very well done. Dark Grace is mega GMI energy. Keep up the good work, Corus!
Great first entry from ChthonicDev. Textures all look good and the environment is well-crafted and fits together quite nicely. Gamepad controls (Dualsense controller) worked fine without issue. Movement and camera movement was smooth. Animations are a bit clunky (save for the attack animations seemed fine), but that can add to the charm of indie games.
Some bugs and issues I ran into:
-Near the beginning of the game I did something that causes the footstep SFX to run like twice as often. Not sure what that was. Couldn't recreate.
-I'm sure you'll get to this, but your stairs have very jumpy movement for the player character. Should be smooth; maybe use a sloped collider?
-I do not like aiming the gun with left stick.
-In the library I was able to break the enemy pathfinding by having them follow me to the ledge and walking off it. They would not move at all after that.
-I wish the window for entering your next attack to get the combo was maybe like 100ms wider. Could just be a personal gripe, but I found myself needing to be more cognizant in adjusting when I pressed the attack button to get a second strike than other games I've played.
Ganbatte!
