itch.io

I sincerely hope that when the full game launches, it launches on here as well as Steam. Partly so I can actually buy it, and partly so there's a "pay $X minimum but you can add more than that" option for people who have the money to provide more support than just the price of the game.

Just for full disclosure: Haven't heard any claims of daith piercings coming with any risks, other than the high probability of not having any effect. I have preventative medication with very minor side effects (totally ignorable if I have them in the morning and drink lots of water) as well as painkillers which the preventatives mean I only need maybe once a month instead of my previous frequency being comparable to your pre-piercing results.

I've heard of claims that it's a placebo, but been told it probably isn't, and that in the cases where it works, there's good reason to believe it's making a real difference, not just a psychological effect. Glad you've found something that works for you, and I do think it's worth recommending/considering for others with migraines, even if I don't think it's a good choice for me personally :) so, again, thank you!

1. A 90% failure rate (and yes, I looked into it in the past and that's the number quoted by multiple professionals who can cite research on the topic) isn't a good enough chance to be worth getting a piercing I don't want in the hope that it might help.

2. Partly untrue, and partly irrelevant to the reasons why it wouldn't help most people with migraines, and yes I've tried it and it doesn't help me.

3. That's nice. When I was still testing things, I found less than 2% of my library was safe to launch without the client, and it's a demonstrable fact that there are more recent games which can't be run without the Steam client than ones which can. It's entirely possible for someone not affected by the issues I've had to deal with to not notice when it opens as a background app, while someone whose condition(s) get(s) triggered by the client will noticed because they end up in pain/needing medication/getting an ambulance called to take them to hospital shortly after opening the game.

I've done plenty of testing of lots of possibilities which haven't stopped Steam from being harmful, and plenty of investigating of many more which I didn't feel were reasonably-priced or unintrusive enough to be worth testing personally. But, again, I do appreciate that you're approaching this with the intent to be helpful. It's not helpful, unfortunately, but I can tell that you want to help, so thank you for that much at least.

1. Only works for about 10% of migraine suffers.

2. Not a good workaround *AND* only works for certain types of photosensitive trigger, and rarely works for the ones setting off migraines.

3. Objectively false, it works on about 80% (and dropping) of games on Steam, but more reliably with much older games than anything in the past 5 years, with games from the past decade being more like 80% chance they won't run without the client.

4. The issues don't only affect people with migraines.

Appreciate the attempt to help though :)

Hopefully the "disabled cheats in online" patch note will become relevant to the itch.io verson soon! Great update, still enjoying the game a lot!

Closest I have to an issue is that the "exit" button resets to the "press enter to play" screen and there's no way to close it without alt+F4

Also I'm still bad at the game, but now I can be bad at it even when my internet crashes! Thanks!

I'm playing on PC (Windows), so far playing the browser-based version.

Thank YOU for a fun game!

Mouse movement and attack on PC is atrocious. Animations are great, but controls need a lot of work for the non-mobile version. Seems like it has potential but... definitely not properly playable on PC.

I'd love to have a downloadable version! Cool game! (I suck at it but it's fun!)

*VERY* fun game! Would love a downloadable version too! I'd recommend having a "current facing" marker on the dash circle to show where your dash will be pointing at when you initiate it, and possibly a keybind for the dash ability. Mostly because binding it to mouse click works great on an actual mouse, but is hilariously awkward for a touchpad xD definitely better on gamepad but I had to try it lol.

I'm pretty sure I'm terrible at this. Best score so far is 2250 points. Good times though!

Still hoping this doesn't end up being exclusively on Steam. I get why it's important to put games there, in spite of things it's still the biggest storefront in PC gaming. But it's got growing numbers of problems for various people, including having been a known health risk for some users since late 2019. Well worth making sure the game doesn't end up locked behind that as the only option to play the full version.

Great fun so far though, keep up the awesome work!

Looking forward to the itch.io release! Makes sense why it's not happening at the same time, and Steam is the bigger audience, but it sucks that has to be the deciding factor, not "Valve has been knowingly abusive for more than 4 years and keeps getting worse".

Very cool trailer, looking forward to the game! Hope it doesn't take too long to make it to somewhere that isn't Steam (whether here or elsewhere... preferably here though).

Still hoping that when the full game is ready, it's NOT released exclusively on Steam, and is available here, or on other PC storefronts which haven't spent the past 4 years knowingly causing harm to some users.

Yay update! Shame the multiplayer isn't here yet, but I look forward to it when it shows up!

I do all of those things regularly. But I am also a gamer.

And surprisingly, given the question I'm asking, I DON'T use Steam. Because it's a literal health risk and I don't want to put myself in hospital with another migraine because of it.

Or did you not consider that asking for the game to be made available somewhere other than Steam was a part of my "not using it" process? Because yeah, asking devs to make sure their games are available elsewhere is a really useful way to still get to play games while not using Steam.

Kinda thought that would be obvious?

Ouch! xD

Congrats!

"My cpu begs to differ" seems like a common theme with this game. For such a low-spec game, it's a very high-spec game... lol

The fact that the game lets you push things to such extremes is part of the fun, even if it can get rough on even a moderately capable system (I'm lucky to have very recently updated my PC so haven't been finding many things that impact performance yet).

Sorry, wasn't my intent. I've discussed this a lot (it's been 4 years) so I sometimes forget what I have or haven't mentioned in a given conversation. Migraines and epilepsy are the most prominent issues, since both can result in hospitalisation in bad cases, but a few less severe problems like vertigo and several headache-related conditions as well. As far as I'm aware, the triggers appear to be photosensitive. Not "visual impairment" per se, but visual triggers, though some of the causes are less obvious on normal viewing of the app.

I personally get severe migraines, and have been in hospital for them a few times, including once when this issue first started, before I found out the Steam client was a potential problem in this regard. Steam isn't just "a" trigger for me, but the most consistent and fastest-acting trigger I've found. Having the Steam client installed is a serious enough risk for me not to be safe to do so, and Valve's conduct in response to being advised of the problem has at best made the issues more severe and harder to work around.

There have been at least half a dozen clearly-identified issues which started showing up in the Steam client after the "new library" update in 2019. Valve's response to complaints addressing the problems has included fixing exactly none of them, removing tools for skin creation which allowed some of them to be resolved or partly compensated for, disabled access to several existing safe workarounds without providing any alternatives, and worse.

I'm talking about exactly what I said I was talking about. Valve has known about serious health risks being caused by the Steam client for over 4 years now, and has actively made the problem worse since it began.

There's a good number of other reasons people are moving to avoid Steam so making sure a game which already has been made available elsewhere is maintained outside of that platform (which is far from dying but is slowly losing the functional monopoly it's used to having) makes sense.

Any plan to update this version? And preferably to make the full game available here too?

Valve has known that Steam is causing harm to some users (it's a potential trigger for several medical conditions) since 2019, and in spite of 4 years of knowledge that it's harmful, has repeatedly refused to take any steps to fix it, and behaved abusively toward affected users on numerous occasions.

At this point, even if they fix it (which I'm fairly sure they won't), it's too late to win some of us back. There are people with various other reasons to want to avoid supporting Valve as well. Making sure the game is available elsewhere is a good idea.

Apparently on the downloadable version...

...having 2 rocket launchers with triple helix split shot is enough for the framerate to start dipping once the enemies start getting tanky enough to survive a rocket.

Also lol splodes!

Only played the web version so far but this game is a lot of fun. Very much hoping to see the full version, and very much hoping you don't lock the full version behind Steam exclusivity (Valve has known their launcher app is a health risk for some users for literally 4 years now, and refusing to fix it isn't even the worst part of the story).

Unfortunately, neither Nintendo nor Sony make their storefronts available for PC users, so that's only slightly less unhelpful than Steam.

As someone for whom Steam is a hard "do not touch" due to Valve's abusive conduct and the fact that their launcher app has been a known health risk for 4 years...

...it doesn't have to be here, but please make sure it shows up somewhere that isn't Steam. The game looks cool, but if it's only available on Steam, it may as well not exist to me.

Incidentally, I have asked the same about Hardcore Mecha. Please make that available somewhere less abusive than Steam at some point too. Thanks.

I look forward to it!

I think you're underselling it by saying it's not about the story. Because while it's not at all accurate to the mythology it's drawing from, the story is fun too! Definitely the typical fighting game thing of the story just being a justification for the fights, but there's nothing wrong with that!

As someone who's done a lot of research over the years on Japanese mythology, this game's take on those stories is very... twisted. It's waaaay off-message from a lot of things in the traditional versions of the tales it's working from, so when it tells you to look up the real myths if you're curious, I can strongly recommend doing so.

I'd actually be inclined to say it's more of a diversion from tradition than God of War was with Greek mythology, and that's a pretty high bar to leap over.

Game's awesome though, and the insanity of its storytelling is part of why. It's obvious from many of the references they make that they're probably quite familiar with what they're getting "wrong" about the stories they're using as a loose inspiration for their own. And it's even more obvious that the game is about having fun - and it does that really well!

Can't find anyone else mentioning it so... I have a laptop with a 240Hz monitor and a surprising number of games actually run at that framerate on it. I won't be surprised if First Cut remains 60fps, but I'd be happy to see 120 or even higher as an option for those whose PCs can keep up.

Probably not, but it was more coherent than my opinion on the intended topic. I'm still bouncing from "that's genius" to "that's the dumbest idea I've heard" and hitting every step along the way in both directions...

I'd sign up for First Cut classes (I'll probably need them, I'm a bit rusty)!

This argument makes literally zero sense. The fact is that your claim is objectively false. I wishlisted the game on Epic because it looks interesting, then found the itch.io page when looking for more information. Arguing "but it's part of the game" doesn't negate that you're listing this as a feature, not an in-game story element. You're telling people that this is the first game with dark mode, and that isn't true. It is very definitely and without any ambiguity, a false statement you're using to market the game. And in most parts of the world, false advertising is illegal, so you should really consider stopping doing that just from the fact that you've admitted to knowing it's false, rather than waiting for the platform you're selling the game on to call you out on it.

I was referencing "dark mode" only in the context of it being optional, not the game just being dark mode without any light mode option for contrast. When using the term more broadly than it's usually used, though, yes, Pong beat you by about 50 years. Even with games that default to a lighter look and add a dark mode option though, you weren't the first. And even going unreasonably specific to the way you've done it, the order of release of minimalist artistic games which run a white or very light background as standard, and have a dark mode option to get rid of the glare, Dots did it in 2013, and you didn't do it until 2020. The only other game I know of which did this is Fights in Tight Spaces, which didn't add dark mode until 2021. The reason I found out about Dots is because when requesting a dark mode for FiTS, several players mentioned it as an example of a game with a similar aesthetic which implemented a dark mode option.

There really aren't many games within the bounds of your specific art style which have a dark mode. But you weren't the first even when being really specific to how your game's implementation works. Unless you want to claim your Steam update was before Dots did it in 2013 and you took over 7 years to get around to mentioning it here... but we both know that's not what happened.

Credit for being one of the VERY rare games to do it, but claiming "first" is pretty big, and you've got to make sure you're RIGHT when you're doing that. In this case, you aren't. It's not even reasonable to narrow down your definition of "dark mode" far enough for you to justify calling yourself the second (and even that would require assuming there aren't more games which beat you to it that just aren't as easy to find).

Just stumbled across mention of your game with this claim as a tagline. You... may need to fact-check anything like this before you claim it next time?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1pbhbd/dots_introduces_dark_theme_this...

That's from 7 years before you were "first" to do it. And even that's not the first game to do it, though it's the most near-identical example to your implementation that I know of. A lot of window-based games have dark modes, many of them courtesy of Windows itself having support for dark mode in several recent editions. EVE Online had custom UI colouring including several dark mode options well over a decade before you added it here. In the 1990s, Descent: Freespace was one of many space games which had custom UI colour and layout options, and that often includes an equivalent of a dark mode option. It was present in a few turn-based strategy games I played in the 90s as well.

"the current aces are still a bit cheaty with their loadout (in the player's favor)"

Difficulty mode named "DON'T CLICK THIS" which changes to "I WARNED YOU" if you click it, and sets their stats to match 1:1 with the player's mech loadout when?

...messy...