itch.io

> GLfor your next build 

Thanks. Maybe it'll be more palatable next time. There's also a clip of my playthrough of the demo in the comment thread.

And I'll say this out of goodwill and respect:

>And i am a beu/soul/stylish/nioh/big dick is back in town player.

I cringed.

The game is basically balanced for me right now. This will be the "master ninja" difficulty equivalent.

Thanks for playing and for the extensive feedback. 

Some things I agree with and some things I don't, but I wrote a few things down on the design doc and I'll respond here as well. 

imo though, as this stands (wong mode) dosent seem an "hard but fair experiance for lvl.40 wizards", but just badly designed. you dont have much content so you stretch by making your players die in three hit. I get it. imo that kind of thinking is not something you should have ever, but expecially while testing.

I wouldn't post something like this as a Steam demo. However; I will build a game that I have fun playing first, and scale it down properly after that. Until then it will be "Wong mode" and whatever concessions I can quickly cobble together for the "easy" mode. You are still welcome to criticize the game for what it is and I always appreciate it. I'll just have to figure out what feedback is actionable. And to be fair I'm at a point with content where the agenda for the next DD could be dedicated difficulty modes.

Tutorialization will likely remain bad for longer and I should probably just include a "How to Play" wall of text in the pause menu until the game is mostly built and the mechanics are locked in place.

Also I didn't "stretch" anything. The "Wong mode" is already toned down in many ways (including enemy damage) from what the game was just a week before this DD.

> in the last gated encounter of that level, second wave enemies spawn with a great deleay and you can die by "waiting". worst feel ever.

Yeah I agree. I'll stop health drain for those. The "easy" version has no passive health drain at all along with moves being cheaper.

>  if you "are dyng" and life paticles ae coming to you, they should save you, and not not-heal your dead body

I agree that it's annoying. I think I'll do a grey health system where if you run out of energy completely, you'll die in one hit until You build it all back. I could also buff and nerf some moves and add a cool shader while in that state. 

> walking is super slow for no reason, i really dont like it. since dash has not cd you wanna always dash. since you lose hp with time, walking is always a losing move.

I do feel like dashing is too strong and negates traditional footsies, but I also want to keep the walk speed slow and not add a cd to dash. I'll have to think about it.

> classic melee combat is assigned X Y for punches (Y strong); A B for kicks (B strong). you swapped contorls that are the same everywhere for no reason

Was not an arbitrary decision. I originally had that "standard" control scheme. I could setup the other one as a template at some point.

> overall i dont like that enemies kill you with three hit

I think I agree. At least I'll want to have more clearly weak enemies.

> i like that you can duck under the big puncher enemy, imo it should be introduced before the signpost enemy; not after

I had a better introductory enemy in the works, but it didn't make the cut. Would've made for easier enemy groups as well. And I try to keep the crouch relevant.

>(nice yamazaki reference)

Who?

Insanely polished game in every way. And rolling the dice is honestly much more engaging than it seems. I will go for a 6 digit score for sure. 

The only nitpick I really have, especially in a game this polished is that the last word on a line sometimes jumps to the next line while it's being typed.

Great to hear you got it running. Some day it will be more optimized. And Thank you for the bug report. 

It would be extremely impressive if you manage to figure the game out enough to beat the "normal" version. I said on the thread that beating it would be easter egg worthy. The "easy" version should be more realistically doable with some determination.

Very good. The mechanics feel complete. The levels have good pacing. Just built more of it. I also played with the crunchy visuals and I appreciate having that option.

The simple premise really made me play longer than I thought I would. I think the difficulty is a bit uneven though. Sometimes it was annoying to get through a relatively long easy section for a single attempt at a difficult jump. 

The artstyle is soulful and the music fits well.

My first fall was partly due to what I think was shader compilation stutter after killing the first enemy. Not a big deal really since it didn't happen again, but maybe something worth fixing if it isn't too difficult. 

That sprite looks great!

I think the difficulty was just right. At least after I realized I could punch up as well.

Thanks for playing and writing your thoughts down. 

The tutorial is really bad right now. I wasn't going to join this DD initially, but decided last minute to cobble something together. I straight up didn't have time to separate the tutorial input prompts properly. The reason you can't use stick to move is that it is really bad for command movement. It's a fighting game thing. You should be able to remap to stick, but I don't recommend it.

I thought I had prevented jumps in the home room. Apparently not. Also thanks for the heads up on the 240hz mode

> "the poor get poorer" situation but for bad gamers.

This is very much a poor get poorer game and will stay that way even if balance adjustments are made or checkpoints added. It is core to the design. I'm not against difficulty options and better tutorials, but eventually you will have to get your ass beat.

The art is great. The game ended sort of abruptly after a fight. I guessed I cleared all the mobs? I'm not really a fan of turn based games so I can't really say anything about the gameplay other than that it looked cool and unique. Also I didn't understand some of the 3 letter buttons before pressing them even though they are probably common in these games.

Fun little game and a nice thing to make for the community. Got it on the 3rd try. Boss was legitimately stressful since I wasn't sure how long I can spend cleaning the mobs while she's running around.

 Feels pretty complete for what it is so not much to say. If you want to scope creep. Make a Donkey Kong clone you have to beat before getting to the Mario Arcade clone.

Get the "easy" version first!!!

Thanks for playing!!!

The main issue I think is that the demo doesn't allow learning at all, You get all the mechanics frontloaded and then you get punished for trying to figure them out.  The only way to really facilitate non-masochistic newcomers is to have multiple difficulty modes and there will still be friction just from the core design being so unorthodox.

For a quick band aid, I uploaded an easier version that is lot less punishing in terms of energy usage and has soft checkpoints on every level in the form of dummies that drop free energy when hit.

Thanks for playing! Changing the tickrate in the settings to 60 can help with lag.

I also just put up a easy version that removes passive energy drain, reduces all energy drain when attacking and adds energy dropping dummies along all levels. I should probably add dedicated difficulty modes anyways. It's still likely pretty difficult if you're not used to the mechanics.

Shouldn't take too long. Stay tuned!

Thanks for playing! Should be a lot easier next time.

Thanks for trying it out and for sending the crash report.

Was generally a smooth experience. Visuals and sounds are nice. I think the difficulty is fine by itself, but I also feel like the visual design communicates an easier game. I really liked the multi enemy arena fights.

Feels like a finished game. Everything is nice and works and is pretty fun. Idk if the plan is to add more detail to the black and white transition screens, but they worked as is too.

Like 50% of the game's code is for the enemies no one got to lol. Things will be way less fucked up in every way next time.

Many games count inputs like 6323, 323 or 623 as dp, while here it has to be 6523. I can make the input more lenient and increase buffer times too. My plan has been to do adjustable buffer lengths from the start anyways because I like even shorter buffers than this demo has.

And as far as completely different inputs go, I can give double tap dash that functions like the qc one and a 1 button dash that drains energy or is on cooldown. same with 1 button dp.

Walkspeed will not change meaningfully. Input rebinding will happen sometime. And yes, you were supposed to shoot that box XD. 

Very well written dialog with charm and solid characterization. I liked all the jokes, but my favorite was the "This Sword is a curse" meme. The point and click style tavern section was better than the intro dream and I hope the final game has more of that. Made me very nostalgic for Monkey Island 1 and 2.

Didn't encounter any bugs. high refresh rate was nice. I'd like if the camera had some lerp and didn't react to jumps on flat ground, similar to how it works in Super Mario World.

Thanks for the info.

Thanks for playing and writing solid feedback. I'll remove platforming from the early levels and reduce it overall, since it isn't the point of the game. Just something I tried to tutorialize with for this demo (didn't work out). The slow/fast dichotomy and 4 buttons will stay, but I'll adjust some of the controls and add diagonal jumps or possibly even free jump movement. You can expect something very different next time.

Thanks for trying it out. I feel like there's something other than just PC specs going on with people, but we'll see next DD.

I agree with the identity take. Next demo is going to start with flat ground and enemies. 3 lives will stay, but the levels can get easier and the inputs will get more lenient. However, it's not going to become a game you can beat without great effort. It will likely remain pretty much incompatible with streamers.

The combat felt pretty fun. The parry window was really intuitive which I was surprised by considering the animation style. Some of the dialog could flow better, but more polished and expressive portraits could also sell it better. 

Also got this error in the second city screen after leaving the basement. (actually opened the IDE by reflex lol.)

ERROR in action number 1

of  Step Event0 for object oGame:

Unable to find instance for object index 129116

at gml_Object_oGame_Step_0

############################################################################################

gml_Object_oGame_Step_0 (line -1)

Thanks for the feedback, good to hear that you got the game working. I have an option to extend input buffers basically done, just need to add it to the menu or config file. The high jump might have some edge cases that should work, but the input also needs to start from standing rather than crouch, which might just be a bit unintuitive.

The game runs internally at 240 steps/second, which might be quite heavy. On the game's page, there's a little guide for locating a config file where you can change the speed to 60.

I would appreciate it greatly if you could try it out to see if it fixes the problem, because I can't replicate it myself at all. I might then change the default to 60.

I did a small update. See the added "CONFIG" section in the readme.

I also adjusted some things related to display sync and CPU utilization, which could help as well. It's not a guaranteed fix though.

Damn. That looks really bad. I have an idea of what might cause this though and it should be a simple fix if I'm right. I'll try to patch it today.

Thank you for trying the game out!