Ohh okay, yeah I can totally add an effect before/while they drop mines.
You can take out rivals instantly if you run into others while moving much faster than them (CPU rivals can do the same to players), I could buff player resistance to instant takedowns from CPU rivals to make it feel like it's not as easy to get taken out if you're going slower than them.
Thank you so much for playing and for the feedback!!
I'll be switching the default FPS to 60 that'll be in the next update. I'll definitely check out the Steam Hardware survey!!
I'll be adding explanation text for race options and settings so things are more clear.
When you get taken out easily, is that when rivals physically run into you or when they use the purple item and shove you away? I can look into balancing/tuning for both if needed.
For the yellow item, the Mines, were there parts where you would go around a corner and you'd suddenly run into one and had no idea it was there? Or can you technically see them on screen but they blend into the background?
I didn't get it at first but when it clicked what I was supposed to be doing I was thrown WAY back to those old school flash games I played in the mid 2000's, especially those Cartoon Network games like that Clone-A-Doodle-Doo game with Dexter and Candy Machine Deluxe with the Ed boys, got me feeling like Anton Ego when he ate the ratatouille haha. Would love if there was just a bit more explanation, but still awesome work!
Yo, fellow Unreal dev!! Thanks so much for giving the game a go. Apologies for the lack of in-game instructions, I'm developing a "how to play" section to the game as we speak so it's easier to get things. For the camera angles, did the player chase far camera (enabled by hitting the C Key / Select button) help at all? Do you remember any specific moments or things that were hard to see? I can look into adjusting the chase far camera as needed. btw thank you for the kind compliments and thanks again for playing!
Hey Glim!! Ecstatic to hear you enjoyed the game so much!! Had a great time talking with ya while you were streaming it, your feedback's gonna be helpful making this game even more explosive and accessible. Also big thanks for you dropping those resources for color blindness information + how other games handle it!
This game is really cool and has massive potential! Big fan of the gameplay loop, games where you can switch colors and actively uses it as a mechanic are always really cool. Just a few notes:
Pressing 1 and 2 at or around the same time causes a very loud feedback loop of the sfx used for switching colors. it actually stops the background music!
On controllers, the horizontal and vertical axis's are flipped, so holding up goes to the right, holding right goes up, and vice versa. also, there's no deadzones set for the left stick on controllers so even with no inputs, you'll still move in a direction as if an input is down. I had to use only keyboard + mouse to play.
During the section where you go north and the screen moves, the jumps you have to do always feel a bit too wide and it's tough to avoid taking damage from not making the jump.
I'll echo the sentiment that I'd prefer not having the timed sections, this is best for a special level or challenge mode instead of usual gameplay since bullet hells are already pretty hectic. Especially for such an early level too.
At the restaurant, since the game is getting pretty switched up it's probably best to keep it really straightforward, with no way to mess up. I forgot what ingredient i needed to make the hearty broth everyone wanted and just got kinda confused cuz I didn't get a chance to read what the instructions said. Could have the player make 1 dish with no time limit first, then start to serve other people after they get a hang of it. it also could just be me being a dork so keep that in mind!
Shift + R to reset the level seems to only work once in a while or for very specific levels of the build.
oh also to add to what Hythrain said, best to buff the ammo gain when you get low on ammo I felt like I was constantly running out of ammo after just a bit of shooting, i don't mind the collecting of ammo it just seemed too often. I'd personally not include the ammo overcollection penalty, I think it just slows things down a bit and doesn't quite fit cohesively with the gameplay.
To help optimize Unreal, there's a few things you can do, try using FXAA or even MXAA (if you're using forward rendering, which makes sense with the amazing artstyle) for anti-aliasing, switch from direct-x 11 to 9, and disable v-sync to keep lag down. if an object does not need to use tick for anything you can set them to have Start with Tick Enabled as false (even if they don't use the Tick node they can still eat up CPU!). Unreal is hard to optimize since it unfortunately is pretty heavy but there are things us Unreal devs can do!
This game is already very impressive, hyped to see how it comes along!
Hythrain, buddy!!! Hey I never got to thank you for the incredible feedback on the last version of the game, seriously. It's changed the game's direction forever all for the better. I actually went to go watch the VOD the moment I read your message on Twitch. You're the first to appreciate my addition of only the most delectable "cake" as a feature LOL.
I actually just checked and wow yeah apparently the triple waterfalls are actually going the wrong way on the bottom side, nice catch! Apologies for any confusion about the controls, I plan to have a way to view the controls in-game soon.
I'm currently trying to figure out the theme for the items so they're less abstract and more intuitive. Random shapes are cool, but I know I need something more memorable/understandable-at-first-glance so that's my next mission. Oh btw, the classes are actually your speed classes! They range from slower (165mph top speed) up to the fastest class (220mph). I'm planning on renaming it Speed Class and I can also add some descriptor text for each option explaining what they do if needed too.
Music is something I've been aiming to add and I'm gonna try my best to get my hands on the coolest stuff for the project.
Thanks again for playing and for the feedback! ✌️
Thank you guys so much for playing!!! I took some notes from your great playthrough, apologies for not having the controls taught/shown in game, I'll definitely see if there's a good way to teach players at least the basics like accelerate and how to use items on their first time playing so players don't get confused (for example right trigger is actually accelerate, and A is boost when using a controller!) . It was insanely hilarious the AI decided to force itself up the track boundary each time you finished the forward version of the track, I was laughing SO hard at that xD I'll investigate that issue ASAP. Thanks for the BGM suggestion, I got my eyes on several artists I plan to ask permission to use their music and I'll also be looking at some packs too. I had so much fun watching you guys play, genuinely so happy to hear you guys liked it! My goal is to make it even better now, so thanks so much for checking my game out!!
Hey Poila!
After it's quiet release onto Steam Early Access in November of 2021, it was clear I was mishandling Brooke Vs World Doom; it was too ambitious and kept adding random things to it, the code had more spaghetti than Noodles and Company, it wasn't grabbing players, there was so much it needed and I just couldn't keep working with the seemingly corrupted files that made it continually harder to finish.
The Patreon was totally a desert, and I totally understood why. I actually forgot I even had that up haha. Brooke Vs. World Doom hasn't technically been canceled, just been placed on hiatus. It was becoming too complicated for me to make mostly on my own; I want to try to revisit the project later with a bigger team and a much better plan!
I am currently working on trying to see if I can make some smaller, bite sized projects along side a career in coding/tech/something (I couldn't make it as an indie dev), then work my way back up to finishing (or even just straight up remaking) Brooke. I actually have been developing lots of ideas for the world and it's story, far better than what was supposed to be in the now-playable version of the game but never made it. For me, it's just not quite been the right time to work on the game itself in a gameplay sense, figuring out career stuff has been pretty wacky these days, so any game dev project now is gonna be waaaay smaller. Nothing is set in stone, I'm just seeing where the river takes me!!
Thanks for streaming the game Hythrain!! Yeah Brooke never got a voice since the project never got that far, if I get the chance to do a reboot we'd look for voice actors and have story cutscenes and all the goodies it never got to have.
I haven't considered trying to have things revert back after you return from a checkpoint, I'll have to look into that! What were some of the secrets where you only had one chance with? I can look at them and try avoiding designing future secret spots the same way or add functionality to revert things after respawning at a checkpoint.
Thanks for checking it out!! I was totally inspired by the PS1 and early PS2 era for the aesthetics. I've had some folks in the past talk about crashes on lower end PC's back when I was working on this project, it's not well optimized and surprisingly hard to run, if I ever get the chance for try #2, optimization and clean coding is one of my focus points!
📢READ ME YO!! 📢
Hey ya'll, dev here! I'm thinking about revisiting this project with a tiny vertical slice prototype and I'd love to hear what you guys imagine a reboot brings back, removes, and adds in. Personally, I feel like this game has too much going on and I'd like to stay a lot more focused if I get the chance to try Brooke again.
No guarantee this wacky sidescrolling project is coming back full swing but I've already done a bit of prototyping and I've actually liked how it's gone so far, so we'll have to see!
Hey, thanks so much for trying out Crazy Kitchen! I already got a nerf ready to make the carts more fair so no worries there, they definitely were not tested enough so that's on me haha.
So it looks like you had an issue where switching to one household appliance didn't set the two unselected ones as passive so they weren't attacking, was this an issue throughout your whole playthrough or did this just happen only once? Do you remember if there was anything that happened before hand that may have caused it? I haven't heard of this problem before but it could be an easy fix if I can find a way to replicate the glitch.
Thanks again for playing!!
Very clever core mechanic!!
I think having O and P feels kinda awkward to use so I would recommend trying either offering left and right mouse clicks or using the arrow keys with Z and C, a trend I've seen with PC games like this that don't have mouse controls.
I think the bullet speed during the initial firing and the recall should be much faster and I think some interesting powerups and enemy types could help break up monotony too. I found myself finding it awkward to hold down P to recall the bullet with the homing and kept thinking it would feel a lot better if recalling was way faster and just direct to the ship, so you could dash behind some baddies, fire the bullet, dash around some others, quickly recall it through them, and so on.
Very cool concept, keep up the good work!
Hey Mist, sorry you had a rough time with the game! As I've mentioned to other reviewers those troublesome carts have a nerf for it's health and speed ready to go for the next update so they shouldn't be able to blow past defenses as easily.
There was an attempt to make fast moving enemies that were supposed to make it less viable to camp at the spawn point like the carts themselves and enemies like the yellow Fasts and the green Diamonds, but it's clear other enemies like the white Ghosts and the blue Jumpers even with their unique movements still get hit pretty badly. I did have an idea where the Ghosts could already start in their Sneak state where they move faster and are invulnerable and the Jumpers could have a starting jump after spawning that moves them further than their usual jumps so they can at least have an attempt to spring ahead defenses right next to the spawn areas.
One tactic I had in mind to defeat the carts and other fast enemies were the Knife Blocks set by the dishwasher, but I think I had some folks say the Knife Blocks just don't do enough damage and so I'm gonna try to buff them after seeing what exactly is causing them to feel like they don't work that well.
I can make it so that the cart's tutorial box doesn't move with the cart after it's spawned, that can be done in time for the next update!
The "l33t" speak is actually based off of early 2000's songs that replace words like "to" and "for" with number variants as a sort of flavoring, such as S.F.M.P.'s "Try 2 Luv. U" and Naoki's "Brilliant 2U". The game's UI is inspired by this era as well, often called "Y2K" style. If this kind of flavoring is clearly not favored by players, I'm open to revert it back to "normal english".
There's plenty of core issues with the game that I think I'm starting see more clearly with all of the reviews and playthroughs I've checked out, a lot of feedback has helped for sure and it'll pave the way to shake this game's issues off, so thanks again for your honest input it helps a lot!
Heyo! I really like the idea of allowing the scroll wheel to select an appliance! I'll also look into the rest of these suggestions and critiques. I think for the first level with the tutorials I can try extending the amount of time between the first few rounds to give the player a bit more breathing room to learn how things work. Thank you to Ryan and Nick for trying out the game!!
Yo hythrain! Oh how I waited for this review!!
First things first: Carts are getting nerfed, I totally didn't test them enough LOL Lots of other reviewers have been saying very similar critiques, I'll be doing the impossible and fix those four-wheeled son-of-a-guns.
I can look into making the Knife Blocks better, I definitely wanted them to be viable so I'm all for fixing them up. Do you think it's purely the fact they don't put out enough damage? Do you think they need something interesting like the chance of laying a single pile that's stronger than the rest (like a single pile of red knives acting as a critical hit?), or do you think it's something more mechanical like how long it takes for the knife piles to be put out, etc?
I can also look into rebalancing the HP increase speed as the rounds go on, if it seems like enemies get tougher just a bit too fast I can always tune it easily, no problemo.
I'm so happy to hear you were genuinely hyped to play this... like of all games to be excited for it was Crazy Kitchen, that's... crazy! What an honor, thanks for playing!!
Aye thanks so much for playing!! Something came up the day you went live so I didn't get the chance to come visit, but I did get to watch the entire playthrough. So happy to hear you had a good time!
I had fun trying to figure out fun ways to keep the maps feeling fresh and got inspired to add scenarios like the different game modes from Bloons TD 6 and the scenarios from strategy games like Roller Coaster Tycoon.
I do have a nerf on the carts on both their HP and their speed ready for the next update, but I also see that having multiple carts spawned in a row is pretty brutal so I'll be changing that so the two are plenty spaced off. If this is still too difficult I can always push the rounds with multiple carts to be later too. Things should feel like they gradually get harder so I'll continue to work on balancing stuff!
Endless mode does technically exist it's just not very obvious atm, if you beat a level and you play it again, it should change the target round to beat text into "record" during gameplay and you'll keep defending until the pantry is out of tasty snacks. I can look into making this more clear!
Thanks again for streaming and reviewing the game!!
Hey vmeezo! I watched your playthrough of my game, thanks a ton for streaming it, I took some notes to answer a few things mentioned in the stream:
At 1:14:48 the Diamond enemy wasn't regaining it's health for the next layer, which is a glitch, but that has already been fixed and will appear on the next version everyone can play.
At 1:18:00 you talk about how while controlling the Fridge it feels a bit weaker than if you just don't control it, and since the Fridge did get nerfed a few months ago, I can look into slightly buffing it again since I may have overnerfed it (it usually takes a few tries before the balance is perfect haha) The goal is to make sure each main Appliance feels equal and viable to use, just a bit more handy than others in certian situations, so I will look into this!
At 1:19:33 there's mention of the characters not having any animations, I got plans to get the baddies fully animated, so that will be added to the game eventually.
I'm planning on adding effects for things like when the Big Bois explode into 10 Basics at At 1:24:12, I image that it goes "boom" a few times while they're being spawned haha.
The Diamonds like at 1:24:55 do have 3 layers to them, so I have them start slower and get faster each layer, if they feel annoying to fight, I can try making the first 2 layers even slower so it feels a bit more balanced. Maybe I could do something where after breaking the 1st/2nd layer, they pause for a moment before speeding back up again, giving a unique feel to how they traverse the track versus if they were just reskinned Basics (pink guys) that just have more health. I always like the idea of giving each enemy type unique traits, but never with the intention to annoy the player.
I mentioned to Paladin Ecko this already but I have plans to nerf the Cart enemies since they seem to usually get way further than most enemies ever get, even if they're meant to be harder, I think I need to slow them down LOL
Thanks for giving the game a shot, even if you're not the biggest fan of tower defense games, that means a lot to me!
Thanks for giving the game a shot! I also noticed that "active" tower defense games aren't too common so I decided to cross that with a character switching game. I can look into seeing what mechanics need a bit more explanation, I'll be looking at others' gameplay footage and see what mechanics players get confused with the most. I haven't heard of Citywars so I gave that a look, seems interesting! Reminds me of games like Dungeon Defenders haha. For the level before the economy stage, I can look into making it a bit easier, like I mentioned before I'll study some other player's playthrough of it to see specifically what's making it so much harder than the last levels, whether it be the track length/design, the general difficulty, etc. Thanks for playing!!
Hey thanks for checking it out! I watched your playthrough from your stream, awesome stuff man, glad to hear you enjoyed it! Was super honored to hear you liked how the game feels unique, I really wanted to make it feel fresh, and yet also kind of familiar, like an old flash or PS2 game you can always rely on, so thanks for that!
I took some notes on your playthrough:
i saw during your gameplay at 24:23 that you didn't recognize the powerups as actual items, I'll be soon giving them visuals so it's clear they're items haha. I was debating about making them something like sodas or sauces. I'll also give them a cool 'shine' effect for extra clarity.
I caught some issues that I thought I had fixed like the extra debug "title" appearing on the results screen and it saying "Endless Results" even though it's your your first time playing that level (Both should be easy fixes!)
at 26:10 and 29:40 you talk about how you'd like the buttons to be consistent when switching between appliances, then realize they actually are the same there's just a bit of a cooldown before you can switch. I can try adding a visual that makes this more obvious to avoid confusion i.e. dark tint on the switch icons when switching isn't available, etc.
At 29:03 the cart actually isn't supposed to spawn stolen food bags until it reaches the pantry and turns around, a glitch that is actually already fixed I just didn't get the chance to push it onto the version everyone can play.
At 34:42 and 36:47 to clarify, each Appliance can build a mini-tower (the Oven builds those red turrets, the Fridge builds the grey Mini Fridge, the Dishwasher builds the Knife Set). I'm wondering if I should make it so the player can built any mini-tower with any Appliance since I thought about adding a 4th or 5th mini-tower (had some critiques that 3 minis just isn't enough, and I totally can see that). I'm still in that phase of "Soooo what should we do now?" so I think I'll try to come up with a big plan before diving in haha.
Some things I'd like to try adding include fully animated enemies and appliances, a special attack/ability for mini-towers when upgraded to Level 5, nerfing the cart a bit, a button to toggle game speed like Bloons TD6, and of course general balancing, lemme know if any Appliance/Mini-Tower felt too weak/strong, this is an equal opportunity Kitchen LOL
Nice work slaying those demon Jigglypuffs, thanks for playing!!
Nice little game!! I found a crazy glitch though, if you jump and then immediately talk to an NPC you'll go flying upward! Also, the restart button doesn't work. Also, I second LJF's thoughts about the tutorial it feels like it throws too much all at once, I'd give the player a bit more breathing by putting in more time between teaching new mechanics.
Thanks for streaming my game!! Got a lot of great notes here! I can add an outline effect on the currently selected tower that shows at all times so even if you go behind a wall or other towers you'll still see the tower your controlling. Already got some work done to help the dishwasher's towers be more powerful. I have it tuned so the upgraded versions move the knife piles much faster, I remember another streamer mentioned they just didn't feel like they were being put onto the track fast enough.
I had the idea before to try adding some enemies that are weak/strong against different elements (Fridge is ice, Oven is fire, and Dishwasher is maybe Sharp or Metal?) So I think I'm gonna finally give a go! Do you think it's better if for example an enemy is totally resistant to everything except one element or is it better for it to be just weak against one element but takes a normal amount of damage to everything else? I wasn't sure what was the best way to handle this haha. New enemies besides elemental ones are being designed and tested as we speak too! I will also be adding in a custom cursor so players can see what they're aiming at better!
Solid fondation, but I think the game is just a bit too generic, stylistically and in gameplay. Sprite work for things like the blocks you jump on are just a bit too "hey that looks like Mario Bros" for my liking, and I wish there was something that made this stand out more. Flex those creative muscles, I think you can still make this work!
I wish the difficulty in the main levels starts just a bit higher than the guide levels feel cuz this game has tons of potential, but it's just a bit too hard to get into the main levels, since they feel like that crushingly-difficult old school kinda feel, which works for some but I think most people would rather the game slowly build up to that level of difficulty. One thing I'd like to see is the level design given some room to breathe; most levels feel really tight and claustrophobic atm.
Having to press spacebar/ W or S to make yourself heavier versus the traditional jump is such a small change but it gives this game such a massive difference in feel compared to other games. Balance out the difficulty curve, you've got something here!
Oh also, the music didn't really seem to fit well, the game has this 2000's Flash/PC Game aesthetic and I think something like House or Trance would pair with the visuals much better!
