itch.io

to preface, I have not shipped anything, but I have watched a fair amount of good games from demoday launch with way too high price points and  flop as a result

for me, personally,  10 would be an instabuy because I know I like roguelites and turn based games, 15 would be a "let me play the demo first" and of course I already have and like it, so I would buy it still 

20 is the kind of break point

25 would be a "wait for sale" 

I know some devs are scared of their game having a cheap price and consumers assume that the game is poor quality because it's cheap, so it's something to consider but my opinion is that a good game will receive good praise and if it's cheap, people won't care. terraria is one of the most played games of all time and it has never been more expensive than 10 bucks

https://www.ign.com/articles/peak-developer-explains-successful-game-pricing-eig... good article that explains consumer price points

so you kind of have the whole "6.99 is still 5 dollars, 3.99 is 5 dollars" scenario in which you might be able to get it at a price point of 16.99 which is, to a lot of people,"15 dollars" or if you wanted to go the 10 range, go instead to 12.99 because that's still a "10 dollar game"

you also might also want to talk to publishers if you haven't already. the revenue cut sucks but they might help you with some stuff like marketing, legal and they would probably be able to better ascertain the value of the game in the current market 

but yeah, I do think there is almost enough here that I could see a launch this year for sure, but it depends on stuff like your revenue expectations, personal goals, how long you want to work on the game for, how big you want it to be, etc there's so much to consider when you launch a game that's probably why I haven't launched one yet lol

Just stopping by again this DD to say your game is STILL sick. The new HUD indicators that show where things get thrown and how much hp things deal are massive as far as QoL is concerned and I really like that you can start with different elements now. I made a video but it was over an hour because of how long I was playing so I deleted it. 

Only bug I found was that I died to the robot boss but somehow the game didn't end. I just restarted and it allowed me to restart the fight. Was kinda like cheating. 

Don't spend too much more time. Hit early access soon you're right there. You could go into EA right now and I don't think people would mind at all. Just don't overprice the game!! PLEASE so many devs have been doing that lately OK you got this GL!!! 

I recorded a video but it just felt really whiny and not very constructive so i'll refrain from posting it unless you want it. I'll try to type it out a bit more constructively and less critical.

I finished the tutorial levels and stopped playing. 

I think the game has a particular charm and the mechanics themselves might be very satisfying when put to good use. 

Blorb jump is interesting to a fault but the means of access are very clunky. I don't think it should be on down and that it should be on a different button so that you can better access momentum and movement. Going from left/right into a jump is very awkward because of this. Also, the timing window is nice QoL,  but implemented poorly. If you miss the window, your character will just sit there for a long time, punishing you when you already get punished by missing the jump. It feels like a double down. Also not sure if it's a glitch but when you are in those "punish frames" your character stays completely static, sliding off of moving platforms and plummeting to your death. Probably a bug, but that's 3 punishments wrapped into one thing. Awful.

The roll being on down is not bad, because you just have to tap it and it feels good. Removing the charge jump on down will also give it tons more room. There's some inertia quirks but it's a solid idea. 

Most critically is the level design. It's the hardest thing to do when making games like this, but essentially, your levels leave little room for error just within the tutorial section alone. As the developer, you're going to be the one playing your game the most so keep that in mind to new players. An easy jump for you, someone that has tons of experience with the controls and the levels could seem insanely difficult to an average consumer. It's a bad case of "I played my game too much and its tuned to my difficulty level". Tutorial 4 and tutorial 5 would've been impossible if I didn't really have patience. If you want to make a rage platformer, go ahead, but this game doesn't strike me as the type. If you are not going to make a rage platformer, keep things simpler and not as challenging, you don't want your players to get frustrated and quit and refund, you want them to have a good time. 

Other than that I think it's great start for a starting project with some cool ideas and i'm excited to see where they go.

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did some story, some solo, I still found myself sucking at the game

the cutscenes and stuff are really coming along nicely, especially the ui it's so satisfying to use

great job, it's so fun to see this game evolve over time

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it's too early to say much about it though; I guess the only thing is that I just felt like stuff is wayyyy to far apart, I basically had to abuse crouch sliding to get anywhere otherwise I wouldn't of been able to really do anything

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All things said your game is really special. It has the potential to be a very appealing dark atmospheric game and take the direction more toward horror if you want, more toward adventure, politics, etc. It has a very solid foundation.

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tl;dw there is just too much going on and it all feels disconnected

enemy bum rushed me before i could even finish reading the controls

on screen prompts for ui/interactions maybe

the tomogatchi stuff feels too esoteric, like i need a third eye to understand it, i had no idea how to upgrade the pet or what it even did

couldn't heal but i liked her jacket showing hp that's actually cool

i know its early indev but everything just felt too strung out

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tl;dw combat is cbt shop is peak

imho: combat should be simple in a game like this but there's way too much going on; enemies seem to instantly hit you when in range, there's no counterplay or windup, you have bullet management, instantly ganged by like 4 dudes right at the bat, needs so much heavy refinement on combat before doing weird stuff like adding a parkour mode

I LOVE THE HAT dude the shopkeeping is so insanely good. lots of qol already in the game like quick stacking, feels natural, bargaining feels great, lots of agency with the city/time system,  decor/furniture system is mad impressive

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tl;dw cool game even though its AI 

fights feel kinda hard, roguelite progression feels nonexistent, should be slowly unlocking stuff even for failing

framerate-synced scripting logic: my cpu was not happy about uncapped frames, after i set it to 60 it chilled out

very promising

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tl;dw i want gun i want gun i want gun

shield parry needs recovery frames so player can get punished for whiffing 

more hit feedback, feels kinda weak

i hate crt shader

y-invert for camera pls

i want gun

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tl;dw idk i don't really like idlers, its a solid concept though; spears broke after upgrading them I think

oh also maybe show full tree prior to upgrading it so that people can plan ahead 

idea: instead of "rounds" just make the cube keep regenerating every (n) seconds and have a sidebar upgrade panel 

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tl;dw too much combat especially gankfights, want more adventure, more interaction maybe puzzles

atmosphere is peak, i like bonking 

add qol for inventory management if ur gonna keep inventory like skyrim style

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tl;dw

cute, fun. I enjoy. wanty more. idk how to get bone on top. y-invert camera angle plz. maybe make levels more dynamic like if u activate a switch it fills water in the canal and unlocks more of the area. ok thanks gl next 

There's going to be an art pass that actually changes the navigation path, machines, UI elements, etc and gives them lots of magical character. It will make the game feel a lot more enchanting. I think a lot of people are just turned off of even trying the demo because of how ugly things look right now, so I appreciate you taking time to test it regardless. 

Thanks for playing.

The multiple orders at once is something that's a pretty popular request. I am thinking about letting you defer your orders to a team member or magical autonomous construct or something that can automatically make orders, but limited to one at a time, which could upgrade with more investment. This kind of takes away from the minigame experience though. It's a hard call for me, but I can see how people want to be the "perfect" waiter. 

Guide descriptions are mostly correct except for their images which are all placeholders I just kind of haphazardly put stuff together this DD, I ran out of time. 

try to beat my score noobs

controller support: cool

no y-invert: not cool

not much to talk about; as a 3d action gamedev also I know how bs it is to prototype stuff without animations and models, etc, but I was impressed with the boss mace guy's windup stuff

Neat game

The graphics are nice but my computer absolutely did not like running it to start with, probably something to do with realtime shader compilation or something. It calmed down after a while. 

The controls feel intuitive enough, the concept of interlude attacks is really fun and I like that it rewards you for doing your "rotation" properly. That being said, i'm not sure it's for everyone and I feel like it will add another layer of frustration on an already frustrating genre, but it does feel good once you get the hang of it.

This is the paragraph where I rant about the dash. It's my personal opinion, but I can't stand on-demand infinite dashes in action indie games. Dashes like that severely limit your design space when designing combat encounters. Everything just becomes "dash out of the thing" and it turns development into a nightmare. You can't telegraph something for too long because the player has this funny button that they can use to get out of it, so you make the telegraphs shorter, but then combat becomes way too frenetic. If you leave the dash the way it is currently then this is honestly the biggest hurdle you will face in the development of your game. 

When killing blacksmith I was holding down M1 to do the 'finisher' and it kept resetting until I let go, but that was the only major bug I found, everything else went fine.

I had fun. It's really cool and I want to see a lot more of it. There's lots of paths you could take like just being a boss rush mode or maybe having exploration-connected sections without enemies a la SotC just for fun. Great entry. 

im not a big stardew person but i'm giving this a shot

the plants for colors is cute as hell

its a bit hard to tell pickable plants from not pickable plants

theres a sign here i would like to be able to actually inspect it and get info

not a fan of inventory opening every time i pick up a plant

the water sfx hurts my ears there's like a high pitched ringing i am muting the game ow but the soundtrack was nice 

oh there's sfx options thank god

oh they don't work for ambient sounds ok muting game again sry 

damn these gates to the village are soooo tiny wtf 

im at a transition and there's a scene change or load or whatever and its really janky be careful with these, the ones that lead into narrow halls are fine but this one is a giant open path and its weird

im about 10/15 minutes in and im starting to notice just how fast i move like damn this guy can zoom

ok now i know why there's a giant field and its pretty aimless, i sometimes find a patch of sand or a stretch of stone and expect it to lead somewhere but it just doesnt, it keeps going, really big idk if im digging it 

my bag is full now i have to figure out how to go back

ok after walking back for 3minutes i threw some stuff in a cauldron and got some potions, cool 

finished a quest for the rat poison lady and that's about all im gonna give it, sorry i imagine the digging and farming and stuff is good too but its not a game for my tastes, despite having a decent level of quality

i haven't played stardrew valley but i imagine this is how it would feel

pretty impressed that its all made in godot too, cool stuff just work on the scale and level design a bit imo

Very dangerously addicting game.

Great concept, lots to work with. I really appreciated the little bomb puzzle in that one level. The dopamine hits when balls start chaining together over and over is very strong. 

Item equip system is a little weird but can easily be ironed out. Only bug I found was that my knight somehow shot backwards one time outside of the safety zone? and he stayed there until the next turn, which was weird. 

This is a sleeper hit for sure. Not following through on this one would be a travesty. Very fun game I hope I get to play more of it in the future. 

Cute. Reminds me of something you'd find on a flash site in the 90s. Soul. Very comfy. 

No bugs to report

Didn't really use the deer at all? Just kind of...existed.  I was mildly entertained until the boss....Yeah that dude was a pain in the ass. Good thing im a gamer. It was worth it for the aggy easter egg at the end though that was sovl overload. 

Played it today

No bugs or anything. Game's a bit of a wash. It's definitely a concept but you need more interactivity. I am imagining a CPU enemy player who is also shooting balls at you and if they hit your back wall then you take damage, but every wall of his you destroy you damage him. It's just not enough to get bonuses for hitting balls with the paddle, there needs to be more friction.

This game is weird in a good way.

I personally think that the personal dialogue with everything is a bit much but that's my opinion. 

Not sure if I really like the "brain room" or whatever, it's a bit zesty. I think the game having a serious aesthetic/vibe would be better but as it stands you're a bit too in the "quirky indie RPG" niche. 

The cyphers are cool if you know how they work. One way to help people with it is to allow the cypher columns to be rearranged on the UI so that the player can organize them without having to do it mentally or in my case, take a print screen and copy-paste them in the right order.

Speaking of, the second cypher clue word was missing, is that intentional? I got it by simply reorganizing them myself as there's only a couple of words it could have been. I am assuming it was either a bug and didn't show up or there's some clue in the level that I completely missed. 

The combat is very interesting. I think there's a lot you can do with it. Maybe even bribe enemies to leave. 

Overall interesting game that i'd be happy to play again.

I think my favorite part is the filter. It makes things in the distance seem dream-like and surreal. That's a very powerful thing.

I don't think the desert? level is working or it's rendered weird. The preview image is like a red desert but it comes out completely black, see pics below.

I think some basic interactions would go a long way in your game. Don't need many, they don't even have to be purposeful. It could be something as simple as clicking on a box and watching it change color. Just something that keeps the player looking for stuff to mess with. 

Ok we might have something here. 

Physics is fun. Breaking stuff is fun. Therefore, a game about breaking stuff with physics is fun. 

Controls feel pretty tight. Not sure about air velocity. I think having a bit of verticality would go a very long way in your game. I am imagining hold a balloon or something to make the robot lighter so you can cross gaps. There's lots of potential there for levels.

As for the actual property damage mechanic I have no idea what was "worth" more or less. I think the helper bots were worth a ton and it was fun to mess with them. 

I got destroyed when I aggroed the giant block robot that dude hurts lol.

The only bug I ran in to was when I first started the game and I was messing with stuff, I went over to the knife rack and picked one up and the game went into a bullet-time mode? I didn't really understand how to get out of it even after letting go of the knife it was still in bullet-time slowmo until I paused and unpaused and it got rid of it. 

Cool sandbox. I am sure you can find a way to make it work as a full product. 

Fun idea. Always wondered what a magicka roguelite would be like.

Not sure if I like having spells unlock with each level. I think maybe having them all available at the beginning would be better honestly. 

I feel like I just ended up spamming double light spell. The projectiles have basically no falloff and don't collide with terrain properly so they fly across the map and kill stuff way off screen. Maybe want to add a falloff distance or something or lower it. 

Stage selection needs a bit of work. At first I thought green stages meant "passive" advancement and purple were "combat" advancement but my last level was home -> purple arena "passive" advance -> shop -> shop and that was the end of the game lol. Didn't even get to use the last element I unlocked!! 

Speaking of shops, I had way more money that I needed to buy everything in every shop. Probably not intended but currency should be something that the player should make choices on. Gimmiko, another AGDG game, has a really nice currency and shop system as a roguelite . Might wanna check that out

I had a lot of fun though. The aesthetic is kinda cool, just needs more content and a bit of tuning. 

Very solid VS clone. Insanely cute art. 

Other people already said enemy variety I agree too.

Maybe other ways to get dopamine too, like finding abilities randomly in a treasure chest or something. Like a mimic. 

Not much to say, solid game, good luck with your release

first off, draw distance is laughably bad, please change this or make it an option or something; currently it looks like the scene is just one house in a giant empty scene until you start moving and then stuff starts getting rendered 

rendering, mainly lighting, also does not seem right; environmental light is very VERY dark 

movement felt really slow and weird and interacting with items and picking them up and grabbing them also feels cumbersome but I think the FOV isn't doing any favors in this department

I think the interactions with the TV might be a cool idea, I like the texture and videos swapping idea too although I didn't try it myself; it would be cool for streamer communities to make packs of tapes and have their streamer play and get to see the videos as the customers bring them in

I will say it seems your scope is ambitious 

the way you have to plotted is having a giant open ended scene with NPC AI, streets, basically an entire town

but I think a more realistic approach would be to have your little house as a scene, then have a "drive to work" button  at the front door or something where the main gameplay loop takes place in a different scene

and then maybe if you really want you can add a scene that lets you explore town or whatever for tapes/customers/putting flyers up or something

Glad I checked out this demoday because this game is really sick.

The aesthetics are brilliant. The demons definitely stick out but I kind of like that because it gives them that otherworldly feeling. Music is really fitting too, major props. I know a lot of people are big fans of the psx aesthetic, myself included and it does work here.  Portraits aren't that good but they are definitely placeholder art so I am sure you're aware of that. 

I did not use the tank controls. I don't know why anyone would use tank controls. That being said, camera relative movement is nice but the weird turning that happens when you are using stick feels really bad. I know this game has combat so it's kind of relevant but it just kinda of feels weird to me.  Fixed camera angles are a fun thing to work with but I wouldn't do anything more than 90 degrees (across transitions that is), even with axis correction it feels really weird. 

Combat feels not particularly interesting and I think it's mostly because of mob AI. The best mob in the game I feel is the seahorse creature because dodging it's line attack gives you a window of opportunity to really nail it, but also the seahorse's melee attack is really fast and I could never get out of the way in time. 

Outside of combat, everything does feel really slow. The cutscenes don't let you advance with a button, you can only skip, which I think is really irritating to me because I am sitting there for several seconds doing nothing after having already read the dialog every time a new dialog pops up in a cutscene. If the cutscenes aren't going to be voiced I feel like it's only fair that you do not hold the player to your dialog speed. I don't want to skip it either, i'm interested as hell in what is actually happening but the dialog......goes....like..........this........... 

Anyway yeah this game kicks ass. I hope you're able to really build on it because the foundation is rock solid and it would be a shame to rush things and waste it all. I am seeing December 2024 but that's hopefully placeholder? Either that or you've done a lot more than what is shown. +1 wishlist 

music was charming puzzles weren't too difficult but not sleepwalker tier 

can't say much else, didn't play very far

maybe allow people to mine as long as they hold the button down in the mining minigame?

honestly, cute little game with a bright future

An exceptionally promising metroidvania.

Total play time around 1hr10m, no bugs to report. 

Massive skill issue detected: I may not be the target difficulty for this? I wouldn't say it was hard but I did have issues with just this small demo. I would count it mostly on me, but I didn't really expect to die much for just a basic demo. I died 3 times: Once when I was starting out and just kept running into more and more enemies without really having a good grasp on how to deal with them; two times on the final boss (more on that later). Losing progress each time because I didn't get to a save point sucks. It's a design that I have to respect. The only thing I could think of is adding more but then it feels goofy. I would chalk it up to skill issue. 

Movement feels good for the most part. There are some things like wall kicks that felt kind of awkward. I think the go-to these days is to have your character slide down a wall if you want to incorporate wall jumping, giving the player more forgiveness.

One thing I will say is this game will benefit greatly from sound effects. I think all my complaints can just be summed up as "this doesn't have sound yet so it felt weird." I feel that sound is pretty integral in a game like this, especially if you want to have stuff off screen. 

Level design felt good but can be improved. There were some platforms that might have been at a weird angle but most of it was ok. Once you get the hang of movement the level design makes more sense. I will say overall, the game felt hard to me in the first 5/10 minutes and I would say tweaking enemy spawns and room layouts accordingly would probably help if that was the issue, but again, I may not be the target difficulty here. Another thing is that I don't know if save rooms have visual tells or not, but I ended up going to the final boss instead of the save area the first time and had to redo ~15m of gameplay from a death. If I were to see a long, narrow hall or some foreboding thing, I might have been more hesitant to turn back and explore somewhere else for a save point. 

Enemies: I don't like the flying guys who rapidly zoom to you when you hit them, feels weird. Maybe they're too fast? The charge monsters felt brutal at the beginning when I was first learning it but I got better and also grenades are badass against those guys.

Bosses: Something that applies to both of them is that they have a bit too much health IMO. The speeding up mechanic is ok, but having some kind of visual to indicate the next "stage" would be nice, like sparks flying off the robot drone or the tentacle metroid thing changing color. The Frenzy mechanic also seems to kick in 1/3rds? Which seems way off scale. Maybe second phase at 50% and the last phase 80% or something, but trying to fight a boss in it's last frenzy phase should be a brief experience, but not overwhelming. A small shot of adrenaline is all you need to make something memorable and not frustrating. 

The first boss was fine, but again, I was surprised at how much health this dude had. Seemed like an insane amount of time for just a basic beginner boss.  A very fair boss otherwise. 

Second boss: Going back to the whole sound thing is that this dude would have been a lot better with them. A sound for when it's going to spawn little guys(DPS phase) A sound for when it's going to use it's divebomb, etc. Near the end it just felt kind of like I was playing a fighting game and all I could do is mash because I could never read my opponent.  There were visual tells, but the thing is: the speed-up or frenzy mechanic or w/e it's called in combination with the no-sounds means later phases the boss is flying across the screen, out of sight, and then getting ready to do another thing that I can't hear or react to. I was basically thinking of Eye of Cthulu from Terraria when fighting this thing and I realized how much I rely on sound cues for that boss. Mechanics aside: Very fun fight and nice design.

Overall very promising. It feels like a complete demo that i'd play on a GBA display in a K-mart back in 2001. I really like the art direction and aesthetic and I hope to see more from you soon.