itch.io

Hey everyone!

I'm primarily a programmer looking for team. I have GameMaker experience, check the games I worked on on my itch.io page. I've dabbled in art, sound, and design too, so I'm happy to help out wherever needed. I'm not overly competetive, I just want to have fun.

Sensational sound and visual design. It has a great atmosphere. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on tho, but after that I managed to win. I'm curious if you plan on expanding this project. Keep up the good work!

Very cute! The basic concept is there and functional. Would love to see this expanded with more mechanics/levels/challenges. I think you should build on this foundation. The music is really funky, and the police running me over was hilarious!

Really fun vibes! The music and visuals work great together, and it has nice juice. I think it fits the theme well too. It's like a more relaxed Hotline Miami, haha!

Holy --! The opening sequence was slick as fuck! This is a very well-made, polished, fun game. Great concept, great execution!

Very fun art direction! The game concept is good, but the saboteur's movement was so noticeable it was very easy to find him. Or I'm just that good.

It took me a little while to figure out what was going on haha. Adding more player feedback would really help, like sound effects when guests get annoyed, visual indicators, things like that. That said, the core gameplay concept is good and the controls/camera feel nice.

It's a really fun concept, and it's very well put together! The whole thing is very tight, the visuals, the music, nice to have a tutorial too. Good job!

I like the graphics and the weird western vibe! The idea and execution are both solid. My only real critique is the camera felt a bit "sticky" when moving around. I think smoother, constant player-following would've made the experience even better. Overall though, this is a cool project. Nice work!

I'm glad it was helpful! :D

By the way, if you're interested (and maybe you already know about it), there's a Discord server called Weird Chicken Games. Almost purely tower defense developers. Small but active community, relatively speaking, considering it's made up of game devs and they spend most of their time working :) You can find some people there to try your game and they will be interested in your opinion on their projects

I'm not a Discord fan myself, but it's the platform where everybody ended up, so here we are

https://discord.gg/dY2ZV2yn

First impressions: I really like the menu screen, it shows off the graphics well, and I'm a big fan of early 2000s-style visuals. It's a Unity project, so I was pleasantly surprised that my PC didn't immediately start doing a loud vacuum cleaner impression. Performance was solid... until suddenly, mid-first-level, my PC decided to take flight. That's not a huge deal, I don't have a great rig, and I've worked with Unity so I know optimization is a pain. (I just wanted to say: I hate Unity ^^)

Gameplay: I like the premise and the story setup. The tutorial is well-done (not to brag, but I didn't really need it, haha). Moving into the game, I noticed the story goes pretty deep, on the second level there were two dialogue windows on screen at the same time. I'll be honest: this is a personal preference, but I don't really understand why so many tower defense devs want to tell stories. I don't think TD is the best genre for storytelling, but that's just me.

The first level was no problem. The second level made me retry. I thought I was doing okay then there was a spike mid-to-late game, or maybe I'm just dumb. Hard to tell with difficulty balancing, as we discussed! :D (but you doing a much better job at it than me)

What I loved:

• The hero mechanic and control is great. For me, it's important to have something active to do during waves in a TD, and this nails it. I even found myself wishing I could control more units. (like an rts... will get back to that)
• The game is already very polished no jank here.
• Great sound and music. I'm starting to appreciate this stuff more now that I'm doing it myself. Sound design is hard.
• The tutorial explains every little thing, makes it easy for newcomers to get started. Handholding done right.
• Upgrading towers (between levels I mean) is nice, sense of progression, always liked that in tds
• The random effects are fun. I don't know what this game mechanic is called, I think Vampire Survivors started it, you know "here's 3 random powerups choose one you like" now bunch of upcoming td games have this
• Difficulty is ramping up nicely

After playing, I checked out your YouTube channel and learned that this was originally an RTS project! I knew it! That makes sense, the game feels like a custom map mode made for an RTS.

Things I think could be improved (in MY opinion!):

The game needs more spectacle. Right now it feels a bit bleak

1. The ingame graphics feel... dull? I don't know what is the right word, or how to express it. The game feels like a serious, zoomed-out, hardcore RTS, which might not be ideal for a TD aimed at a wider audience. The title screen looks so great, gave me a warcraft/starcraft kind of feel and I expected that in game too.
2. Camera zoom. We're pretty zoomed out, and I'm not sure why. The maps are just a little bigger than one screen, so why not make them exactly one-screen-sized? (To be fair, I don't know how large you're planning to go with future maps.)
3. Enemy spacing. The enemies follow their path too closely. Spreading them out more would give a more menacing, chaotic effect.
4. Visual effects. The towers could make BIGGER booms. Go ham on the FX, explosions, impacts, particle effects. Really juice it up!

My suggestions:

• Remove crafting and inventory or just really simplify it. I think you've nailed the core mechanics, and you clearly have a knack for game design and balancing. I don't think you need this extra mechanic, a handful of upgrade modules will do. Right now this part feels a bit bloated.
• Make the UI more "slick" and intuitive—so even a mobile "gamer" could find their way around easily. It would be fine if it was an RTS, but then again, it depends what audience you are aiming for
• Again, the visuals. Make the towers chunkier, stand out more from the ground, and the effects more... MORE! :D
• Don't worry too much about the story beyond providing basic context. (Again, this is my personal preference.)

These are the changes I'd make if I wanted to sell it to a broader audience. But you know, I'm just one guy, and as far as my achievements go, my opinion ain't worth shit. :D This is obviously a passion project, so maybe you don't want to change any of these things because they're exactly how you envisioned them. I'd totally get that too.

( I tried to organize this into some sort of review, but I ended up going all over the place, sorry about that.)

So, to end it: This whole project is already massive and well made. I can't even imagine building something this big alone. Keep up the great work! I hope I see this game fully published someday!

I'm really fond the art style, messy but charming. I love RPG Maker games in general, and the premise and overall feel of this one really drew me in. The only thing that held me back was the screen going black every 2 seconds, after we leave the room. I absolutely hate that effect! :D Liked it overall, looking forward what y'all make next. Nice work!

One of the few games that really nailed the horror atmosphere! The art is pretty I especially love the title screen art, the color palette is really nice. As others have already mentioned the flashlight not following the mouse correctly, was a bit distracting, but otherwise great work!

Clean and fun, very easy to get into, well put together. Reminds me of those old flash games on the Cartoon Network site (2000's maybe? It was a different life...). One mistake death is a bit harsh though :D Great job!

Thank you for playing, and for the kind words! It really means a lot :)

Great character artwork and excellent sound design. The story builds well and has strong atmosphere. Ending on a cliffhanger... yeah deadlines are annoying, but now I want to see more!

My only critique: the game forces players to do things in a specific order. A bit more flexibility in how players can approach objectives would be nicer.

More depressing than scary, but the atmosphere comes through. With artsy games it's hard to give feedback. Solid execution, I think I have an idea what you were going for.
My only critique is the color palette—the mainly white tileset and white characters blend together and it's just not good to look at. A few shades of gray would've been welcome. Other than that it's great! It's the type of game smartass youtubers make video essays about.

Man... I wish you had more time to polish this.  The fact that you went 3D is in itself impressive, and you nailed the fun spooky Halloween atmosphere with solid sound and visuals. I'm really fond of the core concept. Placing towers also defines the path for the creep (trick-or-treaters in this case), I don't think I saw this before.

Not a fan of the recharge system tho :D Towers burning fuel at a fixed rate regardless of activity felt frustrating. it would work better if they only consumed candy when actually firing. That small change would make resource management much more engaging.

I'd love to see this expanded into a fully fledged game with bigger levels and more tower variety. Great foundation keep building on it!

Fun concept, but it needs more depth. Right now there are no consequences to my choices. I can send everyone to hell or heaven and nothing changes really. Adding feedback or outcomes based on the players decisions would make the judgement feel meaningful and give the game more replay value.

I like the idea, the artwork is charming, sounds are nice. I only wish there was more that I could do, like annoying the ritual doers, blocking their way or something. This is something you can build upon and it can be a really great ghost simulator!

There is an indicator! A yellow ring is filling up around the cursor :D maybe I should've increase it's alpha value more. To be honest I hate testing my own stuff because I know how things work and what to look for. Making UIs and tutorials are the worst... Anyway thanks a bunch for the feedback! ^^

Hinnye! This is a fun spooky game! It's very charming and has it's own personality. It stands out from the crowd in all the right ways. I think this one's got a strong shot at placing well.

Zug zug! Hey thanks for the feedback! yeah boss behaviour is completely random, no time for fine tuning haha. would you be kind to give some feedback on my solo project too? :D https://septimus1213.itch.io/fission

I wish people responded this fast in real life... Love the concept and the artwork. The text animation was a bit annoying, could use some timing adjustments to feel smoother. Overall a solid visual novel with good atmosphere.

hey I have GameMaker experience and used to work with unity. I'm also looking for a team to help out. so add me on discord if you want to team up: septimus1213

sent you a friend request on discord