itch.io

I played the game for almost a half hour and wrote down some of my thoughts while I was playing.

-There's a slightly confusing grammatical error in the tutorial: "With a Frig select click on the Output Tube to send it to the next room." should maybe be "With a Frig selected, click on the Output Tube to send it to the next room." It confused me for a sec, and I thought I had to do some other kind of input that wasn't specified.

-I think there should be an option to skip straight to the next level instead of wait the 10 seconds after finishing a level.

-A hotkey for each machine and for the tubes so you only ever have to click on the frigs once you've got a grasp of the recipes and get a rhythm going. It would be useful for runs where you want to push through the orders as fast as possible (something I was trying to do)

-When I was playing my first couple levels, I was thinking that if I only clicked on one of the machines to pull a frig out, it would stay in position on the machine but still outside of it if I moved to another room. When I realized it didn't, I felt like it would be a cool addition to add to the game to allow the player to hold a frig in front of a machine in addition to the three free spaces they're intended to be held, with the caveat being that if you hold a frig in front of a machine then that machine won't be usable until you can move it. I think a feature like that would be cool for an endless mode run where the times gradually get shorter and shorter and the player has to juggle more and more frigs and recipes at any one given time.

-I think it would be cool if one of the business frigs on the right side of the screen would say a little pun or something whenever fulfil an order correctly, or they get mad and say something snarky when you send a frig down the wrong tube.

-In my opinion, considering the fact that you can only ever have one frig on the first and third window, they should always be selected by default. I like the core game loop, but I think adding in some of those moment to moment conveniences like that would overall help the game a lot.

-I really like the music and sound effects, I think it all fits well together with the game's overall style.

-The frigs are pretty cute, and you've opened my eyes to seriously considering the elemental power of leg. 

Overall, I think this game is clever and very well done and has good potential!

I think this game is really cool, but it's held back by some UI design choices that are going to make it difficult for some people to play it long enough to let the nuances of the battle system shine through properly. I did really enjoy the gameplay, but I ultimately wasn't able to play it for very long because looking at the menu against the backdrop of the game for a while was straining my eyes.

Here are some of the things I took note of while I was playing:

-The first shop I entered didn't let me buy anything. It just gave me the option to exit, it was a bit confusing.

-I really think the colors of the UI elements don't really mesh well with the art of the game, at least in the battles I've played. I think a dark background with a lighter outline would work, maybe using a set of colors that match the battle background, or something neutral white/black/gray. I'm playing on PC, and I ultimately had to stop playing because the huge buttons with bright colors just made it too difficult to look at the screen for long enough for me to reach the final battle.

-I think the card descriptions should disappear when the player isn't highlighting over the card, or the description box should be semi transparent. It's a big part of the game window and it's drawing my focus away from the art, which is nice pixel art. The description box also overlaps one of the enemy character's hearts in battles against multiple enemies.

-I don't think the game title logo needs to be in the center of the screen in every battle, it's a bit distracting during the battle. Maybe with removing the game logo from the battle screen, the card description box could be taller and slightly thinner, allowing for more of the cards to show their full descriptions across screen sizes.

-I like the card battle system and I'd be really interested to see this game with more card variety to allow for more strategic or thematic playthroughs. I did however ultimately default to using the "4 damage to all" and the "+10 to defense" on pretty much every turn. It felt like those cards were pretty common, and that combination seems a bit overpowered compared to most other things I saw while I was playing.

-I think adding some big animation when the player does an attack would be really cool and go a long way. Maybe even different animations based on the kind of attack/buff that was just played.

Overall, I enjoyed my time playing it and I'd be really interested in playing it again if the UI issue could be resolved!

I played the game for a bit, I didn't find my lost dog but I did get to see a bunch of the different environments in the game world and I think it's really cool!

-I like the intro, definitely hit that GameBoy game startup feel and I enjoyed that.

-The first door that says "Closed." lets you walk past it into the wall after the dialogue before you find the key.

-The spikes and the snake don't make it very apparent that they'll hurt you. I actually didn't even notice the spikes the first time around. I think the spikes could be bigger and a bit more sharp looking, I thought they were just another part of the ground as I was walking. And maybe the snake could chase you or make a little hiss sound effect if it gets too close, just some sort of indication that you don't want to touch these things.

-I think it would be fun if more of the initial little puzzle/quests you went on were for people like the little boy or friendly animals, and maybe they could join you and follow you around while you continue looking for your dog. Maybe even give you access to a special perk, ability, or tool after you help them when they're following you.

-I forgot about some of the things I collected as I was collecting them, so it would be nice if there was an inventory or something to keep track of the items you got from puzzles and what they're for instead of having to just remember it all.

-I like how the quests take you all around the game world to all the different little environments. I think the environments are cool and you did a good job building the game world!

-I like the music, the village soundtrack especially is relaxing.

I like the game overall, I'll have to give it another try and see if I can actually finish it when I've got the time.

I played and enjoyed the one level that your game has to offer quite a bit, it's pretty well polished!

-I really like the art style! The characters are goofy and I like the glowing and crt effects. I think it all works together really well and the overall presentation is super clean. I just wish that poof that the enemies explode into was bigger, especially for the larger enemies.

-I like the rhythmic pacing to the level, it felt in sync with the music even in the points where I would die and get reset slightly off. The game and the music always felt in sync and I like that a lot!

-The movement did feel a little too floaty for me, but it was easy enough to get used to. I think making some slight adjustments to the speed the character jumps and falls would help a lot. In one of my runs, I was trying to hit every enemy but I was finding that I would fall too slowly to hit some of the more tightly packed enemies. If it were my decision, I would probably make the character jump and fall somewhere between 10%-15% ish faster, but that's just me.

-I did have trouble at the end of the level with it not showing my statistics. Everything was always 0. I was playing using the web version of the game, so I didn't try to see if it's the same way in the downloadable version.

Overall, I like where this is going so far and I'd be interested to see this game be more of what it already is.

Glad you liked it! I did go with a pretty big screen size, yeah...

Using the downloadable version of the game you can resize the game window, if you wanted to give it another go.

This is cool! I liked the way the wall jump felt. The visuals and music were both cool too! Nice job!

Yay, I beat it! Awesome artwork, the leveling system was fun to play with and there was a nice variety of enemies. You guys did great!

Glad you liked it!

Sorry to hear about your performance issues, I'm definitely going to be optimizing it so it runs better in the post-jam edition. I'm not sure if you tried pressing "P" and changing the particle settings to low. That and using the downloadable client and making the window size smaller are currently the only options for improving performance at the moment.

Ah, I'm not sure what your issue could be. The game does still have to load some assets once you hit new game so maybe that could have been causing a delay. I'll keep an eye out to see if anyone else has that same issue to see if I can potentially replicate and fix it...

Did you try the downloadable version? The browser version may have been taking too long for your browser to load.

I just finished a project with a team for Metroidvania Month 8. We made a game called Neon Madness, it's a twin stick shooter/metroidvania/puzzle game. If anyone wants to check it out and give me some feedback on it, that would be awesome! I'm going to try to give it at least one update in the near future to fix bugs and maybe add some new stuff too.

https://some-pixel-guy.itch.io/neon-madness

https://some-pixel-guy.itch.io/neon-madness

I just finished making this for a game jam. Had a bunch of fun making it and I got to work with some cool people too. I spent about a month working on it so it's still pretty rough around the edges.

The game is a twin stick shooter/metroidvania/puzzle game about finding power ups and weapons to help you complete puzzles. Check it out if that interests you!

I like the pixel art. It's a nice start and if you keep updating it, I'll definitely come back and check in on it to see how it goes.

While I was playing, I went into the cave looking place and went all the way to the bottom of the level and then found that I couldn't jump back out from the area. My jump was just too short to jump on the platform that I assumed I was supposed to jump back on.

Cool concept, I like that you can pick things up with the ghost hand!

I was trying to explore around a bit and at some point, I took one of those spring things and jumped on top of the big mountain thing and started running, before I knew it I was falling out of the world forever. I would maybe add boundaries that the player can't leave so something like that can't happen in the future.

Cool game, I liked throwing books at people. Something I thought was a bit odd, every now and then when I would jump, I would get an extra crazy high jump. I tried to figure out how to repeatedly do it but it seemed to just happen at random?

Hey,

The title says it all, I'm looking to put together a team for a game jam. The jam begins May 15th and ends on June 15th.

I'm primarily a programmer but I'm also very comfortable with design & I do a bit of pixel art as well. I'm looking for anyone who would be willing to help out with art, sound/music, or design. If you're interested, you can find more information about the jam itself here: https://itch.io/jam/metroidvania-month-8

The idea I'm working with right now is to make a 2D twin stick shooter and create a metroidvania style adventure around it. Of course, this jam is still a ways away so I'm open to possibly doing something different between now and then if that's the way planning goes.

If you'd like to help me out, feel free to shoot me a message here or on Discord. My Discord tag is
Some Pixel Guy#9548

It's all in the title. If you like to do art, level design, or story writing, I'm looking for you to help me out! I'm a programmer working with a team for the Collect-a-Friend Game Jam (https://itch.io/jam/the-collect-a-friend-game-jam) in a couple days. I'd like to find someone before or within a couple days of the jam starting so we can get going asap!

The game is going to be in a pixel art style and the theme is recruitment! I'm already working with one graphics person and two sound designers. If you're interested in joining the team, just let me know!

Also, if you don't want to do any of that but you want to help us out by playtesting the game, let me know about that as well! :D

Thanks for pointing that out! I'm putting this in with the rest of the fixes that will come out once the voting is over!

The save should be working fine, it just doesn't give any notification that anything has actually happened at the moment. I can include that in the new version, but if you click save then come back and load game, it should work just fine

Oh man... I knew there was something I was forgetting. Whoops... what an embarrassing mistake lol.

I just patched it, as well as a few other bugs I saw pop up, but I won't be able to upload any changes until the voting is over. Sorry about that...

Played through it, I really liked it! I think the idea of squeezing and stretching your character to complete various challenges is pretty novel and it made me smile while I played it lol

Hey! Sorry it took me so long to get back to this. I'm always busy doing this, that, or the other thing it seems... but anyways, thanks so much for taking the time to  give me some incredibly detailed feedback! I'm going to get to each of the points you brought up in the order you brought them up in. So here goes!

-Thanks for catching that one... truth be told, the implementation of those buttons was a suuuuper rush job and I just wanted it to work because I realized AFTER releasing an update (silly me...) that those buttons didn't actually do anything, so I kinda just did the scripting equivalent of vomiting all over my screen to make it work in as little time as possible. I've patched it up and it's going to be rolled out with the next update I'm putting out. (this Friday, May, 10th if anyone's wondering)

-I know... everybody else who gave me detailed feedback screamed at me about that too. I fixed it. Everything's WASD in the currently in this version, again... the next update. Also in regards to the camera, I've added a feature to the missions which will allow the player to use the free camera to look a certain distance away from themselves in order to scope out an area, identify a point of interest that they might want to go towards, or make a plan as to how they're going to approach a platforming challenge. There are probably many other potential uses for the feature that I haven't listed, but those little tidbits alone sounded cool enough for me to want to add it. I like adding things that will allow me to "let loose" a little bit more and go as crazy as I want with the project's vision while still remaining in a scope that can be completed on a reasonable timescale and budget.

-You have identified my Achilles heel... sound. I actually have very little experience working with sound in the engine I'm using to create this project and it happens to do some really funny things when you try to adjust sound levels in the engine... so I'm figuring that I'm just going to have to make a couple different versions of my sounds that play at different volume levels to alleviate the issue. It's probably going to be a pain in the rear, but it won't actually be a ton of work... just another thing to add to the endless list of things to do.

-I really appreciate that you made this particular comment about the fading projectiles because I wasn't sure myself if people would be confused about the way they fade or not. Nobody else has mentioned anything about it to me, so the fact that you have just lets me know that it's probably something that other people have noticed and maybe even something that has given people a negative view of the game... I'll probably do something like make them destroy at 30% or 40% instead of the 5% they do now... it is pretty bad now that I'm really thinking about it. I'll have to play around with it and have other people play around with it too to really get an idea of how I should approach that issue. 

-In terms of game length... honestly, if you can knock out the whole story of the game in less than 12 hours but find yourself having so much fun playing the game that you continue to play for the extra stuff... that's the sort of "length" I'm trying to go for with this game. I aim to give this game as much replayability as possible in a non random and non "this game is going to take forever to come out" kind of way. The approach I'm looking at right now is sort of taking some elements from Warframe in the sense that you will have access to a variety of characters with a rather limited set of abilities, but a number of other unique traits that make the particular choice of character you make all the more important for what you're attempting to do, some elements from Spelunkey in terms of the way it generates "random" maps from predetermined chunks... which Warframe also does but Spelunkey does it in a 2D environment and in a way that makes somewhat more sense for me to look towards, obviously elements from Sonic Adventure 1 & 2's Chao Garden which I feel like I shouldn't need to explain if only for the purposes of this response not being the length of an actual book........ and the last big point of inspiration, and really the biggest one is Pokemon Mystery Dungeon which reimagined the existing "mystery dungeon" format in a way that I don't think any other game... even my game could come close to, but again... my post-mortem and analysis of those games could be another book all in itself. From PMD, I mostly just want to recreate the feel of having a "team" that you're working with and despite the game being very singleplayer focused... the player not feeling like they're essentially alone in the world they're exploring (which is how I personally feel in a lot of games... but again... another book)

I feel like I've slightly deviated from my point, so I'll close this one with... I know I have issues with replayability... It's the thing that is on my mind 24/7, when I feel like I have a proper solution to it... I'll implement, test, and deploy it immediately, and... umm... hopefully not a) go insane. b) give up. or c) run into a brick wall in development that will cause the game to just not be feasible to release.

Again, thanks for the feedback... thanks for ending on a positive... really helps when actively typing a response to a message. If you want to talk to me about verticality in level design, or my approach to things, or generally want to know more about the concept for the game... because you mentioned everything Chao Garden-like attracting your attention. I feel like you would adore the idea I have for the full concept of the game. I definitely intend to finish the game, even if it has to be something I end up just having to do in my off time and releasing as a scaled down version of what I originally wanted to create for free, but hey... that's the biz... so it's whatever either way.

I'd strongly encourage you to join my discord server because I feel like there's a much better back and forth we could have that could help us both improve in our quest to become better game designers... plus I have cake! There's a link to it in my game's start menu if you're interested. I really would like to keep the group full of people who are genuinely interested in the project and are willing to give it feedback when they've got the time to, however infrequently. Thanks again for the feedback, like I said earlier... really appreciate it!

Nice! I quite enjoyed it. Great soundtrack, what is it?

Hi, I'd be very interested in helping you out making a card game! I'm a programmer. Currently working on my own project at the moment but I've been wanting to do something different on the side for a while now. I'm not like... a real artist, but I feel like I can get by with the pixel art...

I work with Construct 3 for 2D projects mainly because of the speed I can get things working with it. If you wanted to do something with a more "professional" engine, I've done some stuff with Unity waaaaay back in the high school days, but not since. It probably wouldn't take long for me to pick up some other piece of software either, I'm fairly flexible... though that may take more time than you want to spend on this project. 

Tried to look up the discord tag you posted, but couldn't find it. If you're interested in talking more details about the project, let me know! I'm definitely interested to know what you have in mind for this card game.
My discord tag is: Some Pixel Guy#9548

Thanks so much for the feedback! I always appreciate when someone takes the time to check out my game and let me know what they think! 

I'll try to go in order addressing the points you made:

-The sound was honestly just added as a rush job to give the game a bit better of a feel. I totally forgot to update the starting text to reflect that. Good catch, I actually already put out a little patch to address something you mentioned later in your message before I really thought about this point, so I'll definitely get on this and some of the other stuff you mentioned over the course of tonight and tomorrow. 

-Yes you are supposed to be able to double jump from any point, no matter what... as long as you haven't already jumped or performed an action that recharges your double jump while midair. I'm probably giving away a little nugget that someone would rather discover on their own but there are several instances in these levels where it would be advantageous to save your double jump for some creative movement while you're in the air. Though what specifically you can do with that is up to you. I wanted the system to be very freeform and forgiving in how you go about your movements.

-I know... you can't tell exactly what skills you have and what mouse button they're bound to while in a mission. It's something on my endless to-do list... and it's pretty close to the top so expect that to change shortly as well.

-The falling leaves effect does have an odd behavior, and it's not really necessary for anything so I just removed it. Honestly, I totally forgot it was even going on having playtested my game so much... I don't even see them anymore lol...

-This one is another thing I've definitely got to work on and is near the top of my priorities list as well. I realize that despite the rather simple appearance, getting into and understanding exactly what my game really is, I feel is probably going to be rather confusing and off putting in these early stages of the development process. There are already some pretty complicated systems that I built into this game and they don't immediately show themselves as something that are available to you and that you can do, for instance you can change your skills, you can chain certain skills together for certain effects, some characters have vastly different stats and uses, I could go on but I think the point's been made. Generally working on my game's accessibility is probably the #1 thing I've got to focus on for the moment.

-THIS POINT!!! You sir... have done me more of a favor by pointing out this bug than you even know. I thought I had quashed all of the major bugs that destroy the game feel before I released this demo. I'm very glad you caught this one for me so early on. It would have been rather embarrassing to have it persist when there's such an easy fix. This is actually that fix that  I mentioned that I made to the game earlier, I just patched up this bug real quick. It shouldn't be happening anymore.

-The meat grinder level is quite difficult, yes... that's why it's called the meat grinder. It is possible to get through the end of that map without taking any damage but it is by no means easy. That map I feel perfectly shows off the thing I love most about how everything in the game is set up, but it also perfectly exemplifies how insanely steep the learning curve for game difficulty will be if I'm not careful with how I set up the early game content in the future. Figuring out how to teach people all of these different game mechanics through gameplay without it feeling like a super long and handhold-ey tutorial will definitely be a learning experience for me. If you've got any suggestions for how I could go about tackling parts of this problem, I'm all ears!

-There actually is an enemy counter in the pause menu, but that goes back into the point that I already made. It's not apparent enough in that specific mission type. I'll add an enemy counter to the top of the screen in the combat missions so that people don't feel like you said, the mission feeling endless.

There's definitely quite a bit of work that I've got to do to polish up my game more, and the feedback really does help a lot. I'm working with a pretty big concept so it's pretty difficult for me to get my head outside of that space and to look at it from an outside perspective... but I guess that's what other people are for, so thanks again!

You're more than welcome! Now I'm rather curious to know what tools do you use to make this game?

I'd also echo the consideration that you should take a look at those levels. If you change a game mechanic, then I think you're definitely going to have to change the levels, and I personally don't think that being reluctant to change your level design is a good idea at all.  In my opinion, you should definitely reconsider your reluctance to change your mechanics and level design. In the process of changing things, you might even find new and more fun ways to use the mechanics you already have or even come out with a whole new concept based off of the changes you made. The possibilities are endless and I'm not a fan of locking myself into having one way to do something. Maybe you don't even need to change the jump at all, maybe you could just make the jumps in the first couple levels less precise and let the player acclimate themselves to how that specific mechanic works before you start throwing pixel perfect jumps at them. Maybe the jump should be half a tile longer or shorter than it is in order to give players a bit more leeway with their jumps in general. I dunno... at this point, I'm just throwing stuff out there to see what sticks.

Level design is my absolute favorite aspect of making games though, so if you want to talk to me about it, then I'd be more than happy to! In a lot of ways, your game has similar movement mechanics to the project I'm currently working on. I make and get rid of levels in my project more often than I change any code at this point... but that's beside the point. Are all of your plans for the levels to be fairly short maps? If so, how many levels are you looking at making for your full game? Do you have plans for boss encounters or anything like that?

Hello people of Itch!

It's essentially all in the title. I have a long winded explanation of what my project is and more general information about it on my game's page:https://some-pixel-guy.itch.io/game-currently-untitled

The game currently does not have a title but it does have 8 levels that you can play in any order and 5 different characters you can play as at the moment. (I do have more available, just not in this demo build) The game works by first selecting a team of up to 3 monsters to bring with you into a mission and then using whatever combination of monsters and their unique traits and abilities to finish the mission in various different ways. The mission will reward you differently for completing it in different ways. For example if you  speed through a mission, you will receive a high speed reward. If you defeat a large amount of enemies in a mission, you'll receive a high attack reward but not necessarily as high a speed reward if you spent a lot of time in the mission. The basic objective of the missions is to complete them and collect orbs that you can then use to make your characters stronger so you can then go back into the missions and maybe finish them in different ways than you did before or even access areas of the mission you couldn't previously for some reason or another. I've already written more of a long winded description than I wanted to, so here's some videos and hopefully those will help get you interested! ^.^

Basic Platforming Mission

Basic Combat Mission

Any feedback I  can get would be extremely helpful for me, especially if you happen to play the game and find any bugs or you have a suggestion about how an ability should work, how a character should move, how an enemy should behave... etc.

Oh.. also, if you've got any random questions about my project, do feel free to ask away and I'll answer any questions that anyone has as well!

Seems like a really interesting concept. Will there be randomly generated floors in the dungeons or are the dungeon floors set? Also, how is the crafting going to work? Is it going to be like Item A + item B = Item C through some crafting menu or will there be something different?  Will there also be puzzles in the dungeon floors? I'm really curious to see what you eventually do with it!

I think it's cool! You should definitely keep working on it, especially if you feel like it's helping you improve your skills as a developer. I like the way the levels flowed (I played to mission 5), they didn't seem too crazy difficult or too crazy easy. I would really suggest working on the hitboxes for things because the character will often get stuck on boxes and walls and sometimes I feel like I hit things when I didn't. The bullets should also probably be a bit bigger, maybe even add a splash of a bright or noticeable color as well. It's quite difficult to see and attempt to avoid them when they're so small and hard to see. Overall I like where you're going with it and would like to see you make improvements to it. I'd be curious to see what a more flushed out version of this project looks like!

I'm a big fan of your art style. I'm also going to bring up the jumping as it seems everyone else did as well. It feels like the character has a bunch of balloons tied around him when he jumps, especially with the long jumps. Here's a short list of other things I noticed while I was playing:
(played through twice, died on level 3 to the bats both times) 

-Perhaps increasing the speed the character falls to be 1.5ish times faster than it is now, I think it would feel a bit more natural. -The death mechanic is a bit too harsh for my tastes, I feel like if I have a pool of 3 health, I shouldn't die and get reset to the start of the map once I get hit. I should just lose some health and then get reset when I die. (which may have been your intention, but it kinda bugged me a bit while I was playing)

-The bats are waaaaay too broken. The fact that they can start chasing you before you even see them really sets you up for failure, especially when they're coming at you from multiple directions and you only have the ability to really dodge one of them. Perhaps slowing them down or not letting them notice the player until they're illuminated by the light could go quite a long way in making the level feel a bit less unbalanced.

And here are a couple little suggestions I thought of while playing:

-It would be cool if there were hearts or something that you could find in somewhat difficult to reach areas that would restore or even add an extra heart to your health.

-The shield item that you get in level 2 would be cool as a permanent upgrade for your character. Perhaps it could just bump an enemy off it and make them walk in the opposite direction and then have a cooldown before you could use it again. I dunno... just a suggestion. I think it would be cool if you could do something like that and then bump an enemy off your shield to make it walk over a switch or some other similar puzzle.

All in all, I'm interested in seeing what you have planned for this project. I'll definitely keep my eye on it!

Long winded title... this is a very early demo of a project I've been working on, off and on for most of this year. Game doesn't even have a title yet. I'm looking for playtesters to test new content for the game. If you're interested, join my discord group. The invite link to my discord group is below the game window on the main page of my website: www.somepixelguy.com 

Here's a couple videos of the game in action:

And here's a link to the game: https://some-pixel-guy.itch.io/game-currently-untitled