itch.io

If your interested, you might get some better results finding blind / low-vision playtesters and some useful feedback for your accessibility modes over by the audiogames.net forums.

Based off your trailer though, blind accessibility may be a bit of a challenge. Blind users typically don't use a mouse, in part because they can't tell where the mouse is on the screen without cues, so conventional FPS views are generally disorienting to them without something to ground them. Usually there may be some keyboard controls to snap the view to fixed compass points/angles, orient by fixed compass points, or to play with a fixed Y axis like in classic Doom, among other tricks. Keyboard inputs / audio cues for interacting with objects / inventory could also be a good idea, and audio cues for little things like bumping into objects / walls, 3D stereo positioning, etc. Along with TTS support or speech for any written dialog on screen.

Well, I think any suggestion really depends on the type of game you want to make, if any. Other than it being an isometric perspective, what sort of mechanics or inspiration comes to mind? Any particular settings, or games perhaps?

On a side note, i've noticed your game download only has a *.py file, which won't actually work because you didn't include any of your programs assets with it, among other things. Typically when distributing python programs you'll need to use a compiler like Pyinstaller, Py2exe, or cxfreeze to built it into a *.exe for distribution.

There's some potential here, but I found myself getting a bit annoyed with the concept in the later level's. Getting from point A to point B involves a fair bit of RNG to begin with given spawned items to bounce off of, adding in mortars/shock drones only adds to that, resulting in more arbitrary frustration than amusement. That and the mortars/shock drones seemed a bit out of theme.

The angle i'd suggest would be to lean more into the ridiculous, instead of mortar strikes, why not leap into the pool during the middle of an active hurricane/tornado? That way you could add in theme specific items like wooden planks, cows, or all sorts of things flying around. Or you could even have a scenario of the player jumping off a spire into a pool of lava in hell, or during an alien invasion, city on fire, zombie apocalypse, an atomic blast, into a bottomless void, or *insert ridiculous scenario here*, each with their own unique challenges.

You could also try implementing wind currents to catch to stay in the air, as there are many times when getting between buildings hinges on RNG from a lack of items to bounce off of (watch out for giant planes). Or perhaps kites to grab to provide the player with slow/drift to help wait out the RNG for more favorable items to jump off of?

There are a lot of games out there that people want to make, and your competing with them for developers attention. Many pick up programing and art skills to pursue their own projects, so you'll either have to have a good pitch/design, skills to bring to the table, or money. So, if your amenable perhaps we can cover a few technical details.

• What, exactly, is this new idea of yours? How does it compare to other games?

• Do you have a Design Document covering the games mechanics?

• Is the setting fantasy, sci-fi, or something more exotic?

• You mention VR quality graphics, is it a VR game? Or do you just mean high quality graphics?

• If not VR, then what kind of game is it? First Person? Third Person?

• Is it 2D or 3D? Abstract or Photo-realistic?

• Is it a puzzle game? Adventure? Rogue-like?

• Do you have an idea for any particular engine to use? Some of your previous posts suggest Unreal Engine 5.

• Is it multiplayer? If so, how many players? Local or network based?

• What platforms do you intend to distribute it on?

Remember, YOU are the greatest champion of your project. If you want it to be made a reality, you can't expect other people to do everything for you, especially with nothing to go on.

Ahh, well Suno AI is as  good a source as any, that should (hopefully) be fine.

As for mechanics,  you could also consider powerups like a one time use bullet shield, or perhaps a recall powerup to warp to a preset or random location for quick get aways, or a time slow powerup to temporarily slow the bullets down, etc.

As for art, I can appreciate the sentiment. I tend to make all my own artwork as well, and working on a project is great motivation for improvement. But again, I wouldn't say your artwork is bad, just basic. Either way, i'm sure you'll do fine. ;)

Underlying gameplay code seems good, basic mechanics. What sort of shop/roguelike elements did you plan to implement? Menu subsystems need some work, there's no quit option for example, or a way to quit while in the middle of a game back to the main menu short of pressing alt+F4, and again to quit the game. Generally you want control scheme's to be available and inform the players of such, even if its just in the readme.

Graphics are also decent if basic. If your interested, you could try checking out the Hard Vacuum tileset, which is an open source set from a defunct RTS.

As for music, care to elaborate on the source and licensing of the music? I ask because charging money (even donations) with licensing or such involved can get a bit tricky.

Also, if you have any questions code wise, feel free to ask. I have a lot of experience working with python.

A 'Bloody' good experience, heh. A few thoughts:

-I found the secret way to survive the Surge Event without calling the elevator, among the other secrets/endings was good fun.

-I was disappointed that I could not disrespect the Clot Grinder.

-It would be great if the game could be expanded upon with more level's/gameplay. 

The premise is that you have 53,000 Kcr of debt, earn 9,800 kcr/h at what seems like 1 hour (or half an hour) per shift. So you'd need approximately 5 and a half hours to pay your debt. Given that there are at least 3 other rigs, it leaves an interesting opportunity to expand on the game for players to work shifts on those other rigs, and/or locations to ultimately pay off their debt.

Either way, good work!

Boop. Nice to see the demo getting fleshed out, the addition of customizable key inputs is also nice. Did another play through and have a few thoughts:

1) Bug: Buying and using the Healing Touch scroll doesn't give you the Healing Touch spell, unlike every other scroll,

2) This may or may not be an issue, but if you skip visiting the potion vendor and head straight to the arena, you miss out on the free potions when you first meet him.

3) Just curious, but can the final Boss slime be hurt with anything other than magic? My physical attacks didn't seem to do anything, but then I didn't have a high grade sword.

4) Parrying is an interesting mechanic, but I'm not sure if its implemented well. Let me explain, when you equip a shield, how you block depends on your overall defense rating. However, its difficult to tell what objects a shield can, or cannot block based on your defense rating in general. Can it block blue slime spit? Or yellow slime spit? How about fire? Or lightning? Or attacks from wizards? What kinds of physical attacks? What I'm saying is, a defense rating doesn't tell me which attacks it can, or cannot safely block. This means that parrying becomes a gamble, and often times it would be better to evade or attack than risk a defense that may or may not work, at least until you get to higher tiers of armor anyway.

It might be better to rework parrying, and the shields themselves to definitively block certain attacks that your facing than to obscure them by relying on your base defense. Base defense and armor is for damage reduction overall from all attacks from all directions, but parrying could be considered a "hard" defense from attacks your facing, or at least certain kinds, and numbers of attacks. For example the base buckler may be able to defend against slime spit, but nothing else, the 2nd tier shield may block things like physical attacks (like skeletons), spit, and maybe some kinds of magic and overall a greater number of projectiles, with the highest tier blocking magic attacks like lightning and all manner of attacks with a high number of projectiles. Or perhaps shields should only be for blocking projectiles/spells to give a leg up for melee fighter's who don't rely on ranged attacks, as opposed to evasion so they can close the distance or stay in attack range. Things to think about at least.

Ah yes, I did figure out the panning feature. What I meant was should the icons of each planet, shop, random event, battle, etc. be visible on the whole map for each planet?  Or should it only show what each planet holds adjacent to your position, such as the 1-2 planet choices in front of you at the moment to add a bit of mystery to your decisions down the line? Just an idle thought.

Minor typo on the shop keeper, "to" instead of "ot", otherwise so far so good. Curious though, is the shop a straight drop of an item? Or should be carry a trade off of swapping a particular item or having X energy available to "spend" as it were? Another thing to consider, while its interesting to see whats up ahead on the galactic map for planning, should that extend to the entire map, or just the adjacent 1-2 nodes ahead of you?

Boop. Interesting adjustments to the overworld, did a few runs and the energy drain's working nice, same with shield chips and basic shield. Encountered a few other bugs though:

-If you have >10 shields, and you activate your basic shield, it resets the shields back down to 10 (intended or not?).

-Shield chips have no effect on Shield Drones, despite them apparently being compatible.

-If you go to the options menu (nice btw), and hit quit, it doesn't actually quit. If you press play again, it takes you right back where you left off and doesn't reset the game state.

-If you go to the options menu and press continue, the mouse click carries through as an action in the play area (IE: clicking continue and it simultaneously mines a rock under your mouse position as a result).

I confess, i'm starting to have a hard time deciding which parts to take and which to leave behind, selections getting pretty good. It looks like the shield chips don't seem to be working though, the ones that give +1 to adjacent items. Also, really wanna try the energy drain and, uh, fusion drill? Sadly, only places i've seen them drop so far is from the last boss. T_T

edit: Actually, I just got hold of the energy drain weapon, seems to need some tweaking. Shooting it before the enemies first fire doesn't seem to have an effect, and shooting it when enemies are charging in some cases doesn't stop them firing as if they hadn't lost energy.

Boop, just tried the latest build, lots of fun stuff here. :D

Greatly increased map, bit finer balance, and the new mining maps too. An interesting choice of weapon drawbacks with the lava/ice cannons, makes the ice/lava clear items more synergistic. Did find an issue though, if you have greater than 4 weapons equipped, you can only use 4 as the side menu can't scroll up/down. Might be useful to either have a way to choose and equip which items are in the sidebar, or find a way to fit them in and/or scroll it.

Hmm.. In my own subjective opinion, your Engines page seems cluttered, has multiple redundant elements, and has clashing contrasts. To name a few:

-You link to your tutorial series four times. Once is enough, and you can embed the playlist in the screenshots section at the top starting with the trailer.
-You have multiple screenshots embedded in your description text section, and in the screenshot section. Try to keep screenshots/videos in the screenshot section only (the exception may be your free starters pack promotion on discord). The talking avatar images may be fine in moderation.
-Too many screenshots. Curate which ones best represent the capabilities of your engine, you don't need multiples that show essentially the same thing. Less is more. You may also not need the soundtrack or Starter's Pack 1 in the screenshots section if they aren't actually part of the bundle.
-The contrast with the animated images on either side of the page are bright enough to interfere with the more subdued darker color's of the central page. Consider applying a mask and dimming the brightness of those by 50% to draw more focus to the central page.
-I'm not sure you need a disclaimers section. Is there any particular risk for data loss that's greater than any other tool? If itch.io doesn't offer refund's, you may not need to repeat that, people can just check itch's payment policies.
-You can have the licensing section title be the same as the other white titles aligned to the left. Also, instead of embedding all the tileset buy links included in the bundle, just add the bottom text: "The assets above are included with your purchase of MonMae, and when purchased individually from the links, include licenses that allow use in any engine.", into the license section.
-Don't link to, or mention G2A. Its notoriously associated with key scalping, and your cross promoting a different platform. Leave it to your customers to find their own purchasing solutions for GameMaker.
-Your current dependency on GameMaker isn't clearly included in your promotional materials, as seems to be mentioned by others in your comments. You may want to mention that earlier in/throughout your description/title image to clear up any confusion.

Feel free to take any of this with a pinch/pound of salt.

Your link doesn't work, had to go through your profile. When it comes to development a good rule of thumb is to focus on the core gameplay loop first, before thinking about adding additional content. So as long as you have a basic setup of characters thus far, that means adding things like tunnels/dungeon's, more playable characters, more level's, difficulties, or a story mode, etc. would be premature.

Focus on things like the skill tree, level system, money system, character select screen (if you already have enough characters) so you can add to it later, commanding allies, 3rd/first person view, etc. In other words, focus on fleshing out what you CAN DO before adding more things TO DO. Assuming story mode has a story, that should probably come last once all your gameplay elements, characters, and maps are implemented.

So far, seems like a few syntax errors:

          count += 1:

and

   play = True:

You don't need the colon's on the end of such lines.

Alter the mining area... That actually seems like a really neat idea, there are all kinds of effects you could use. I have the urge to say "and they could plant mines!", but given the play style that could get confusing, heh. Well, unless maybe the mines had a red beacon on them and forced the player to drill 4 tiles around them first to disarm them or take damage or something. Oh, or to disarm them before they explode and damage the player.

Battery overflow damage seems like an ok idea,but would probably only come into play with the power amplifiers that double energy gained. If weapons like the larger cannon need 2 energy and the battery can output only one, or you have uneven total power then that can also make things interesting. Not being able to see your inventory on screen is also an interesting issue, I imagine it like setting up a circuit board before each match and then playing with the results. In backpack hero though, you can choose to move items around in your inventory at the cost of your turn, or each inventory action could be seen as a tick/mining block for the enemies. So, you could potentially swap out the mining area for the inventory temporarily if the player chooses to in a given round to make adjustments if they want. But the general play would encourage setup beforehand.

The items effects are an interesting aspect which encourages the need for management, there are all kinds of interactions CR-8 has between their items, use of empty space or full space, rows of items, alignment, various reactors even, etc. Makes for quasi circuit design, heh.

Ah, forgot to mention, if you die on a slow tile and you reload, your character stays slowed.

Just gave your new update a spin, see a bit of the inventory expansion bit. Drill feels... a little strong. Also encountered a bug with it, when clearing a board and there's only one rock left, if you drill click on it, you won't have any other rocks to drill through, and thus get permanently stuck. If you decide to keep it, maybe make it so you can double tap the same rock to drill through it,

Also, to expand on the CR-8 reference with its various battery/splitter/amplifier components. For example, you have two weapons currently,one needs 1 power, the other two. But lets say your battery can output only 1 power at a time, then you'd need two batteries connected to your bigger gun to get it to work, or an amplifier which can double the power output of a battery. But what if you supply too  much power to a 1 power weapon or system? Then it could damage your ship with an overload when used, heh.

Well, it's fairly clear this is a labor of love. The art style seems a bit rough, but is rather expressive with a number of animations. There's also fair bit of complexity here, along with enemies and interactions, the UI and control scheme seem's a bit cumbersome though and could use some refinement. Out of curiosity, is the game more or less "complete" in term's of levels? How many level's are there?

Few observations:

-Your control scheme needs work. Its X to talk to people, Z to advance text, A to run, D to attack, M for inventory, Enter for shop menu prompts, Z for casting spells, 1 for quick items, etc.

It would be much more efficient to have A be for both running and starting conversations, and A again for speeding up text while talking, this is referred to as "context sensitive controls", where a single button can do multiple things in different situations.

Store and inventory menu's should also follow the same paradigm, where you use A for selecting options, and either select an exit prompt or have something like D be to cancel out.

Alternatively, you could make it so by holding a button and pressing another can act as menu prompts. For example holding S and then pressing left/right for using quick items or casting spells, respectively, or up for the inventory, etc.

-T'would be nice to be able to reorganize your inventory.

-Stores should probably list how much gold you have while you shop (for reference).

-Wasn't sure how to save, until I eventually bumped into your save gem. Might be good to give the players a prompt to let them know.

As for Bugs, you can knock enemies through the electric field (such as the dark clerics), which could be an issue if you can't reach them. Also, pressing escape in the magic shop when buying things crashes out:

############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Key Press Event for <Escape> Key
for object oLevel1Stores:
Variable oLevel1MagicShopDialogue.sabrinadialoguecounter(100178, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Object_oLevel1Stores_KeyPress_27
############################################################################################
gml_Object_oLevel1Stores_KeyPress_27 (line -1)

Hm, well --onedir appears to work. If you can pack all the dependencies into a single directory, then you can pack that into a zip file for distribution as well, then update the files in the zip as needed when updating.

Np, seems like a fun little prototype. Be interesting to see what its like if you ever decide to flesh it out, seems like a lot of little details could be put in, like a more CR-8 style inventory for ship systems, hull/power/shields/weapons/etc.

Beat the boss on battery mode, heh. Personal bias aside, I'm liking the feel of the battery, also nice how the charge carries over between battles. Well, that and spamming a bunch of shots at guys all at once. ;)

Hm, now that you mention it I hadn't realized you could leave the energy on the board and select between weapons before picking it up. I think the battery approach might prove a bit more intuitive though, but we'll have to see. Something else to consider if you like, instead of clicking the weapon to draw power from the battery, consider setting it up like an action queue system. What I mean by this is, you can select/toggle multiple weapons "on" at a time, and then press the battery button to send the energy to all of them at once. This way you can use multiple weapons simultaneously in a given action.

Yeah, a number of the early/mid level's are, how shall I put this, color blind unfriendly. Maybe that's part of the challenge, but it can lead to some brute forcing at times. The ones with different shapes are pretty interesting though, maybe consider mixing/matching colors with shapes/pattern variations in each of the level's, flesh out certain theme's like autumn leaves, or underwater critters/shells, etc.

Interesting, seems kinda like a reverse minesweeper, seeing as you want to click on the proverbial mines. Gameplay seems fine, part of me has an itch for traditional uniform minesweeper square grids, but the asteroid mix works. Hm, actually thinking about it there's no point in collecting multiples of the same weapon because you can only funnel energy into one weapon at a time. Maybe consider a central reactor/battery to put the collected energy, and then have a power management system for where to funnel it so players can fire multiple weapons or use multiple items like shields/healing, maybe being distributed per finished puzzle/round/tick or some such. So if you need to on a given battle divert more collected energy to, say, shields if needed. Healing/repairing also seems kinda on the low side, the heal device only seems to need 1 energy despite saying it needs 2, and it only heals for 1. Maybe consider upping the cost/benefit and balancing it a bit.

Have you considered searching for "beat saber" on Github? There are a number of clones available there, such as Open Saber VR.

Not sure that its available on android or iOS devices. Digging a bit it seems there's versions for major platforms like windows, mac, and linux, and even a plugin for touchscreens, but that only seems to support windows variants like Surface, Surface Book, Surface Go.  Apparently in the pipeline for future versions, but thats down the pipeline. There does seem to be a bit of a community hack floating around, but you can also find some alternatives to Aseprite for android here.

MS-Paint and Microsft Gif animator are others, along with Graphics Gale. If you happen to be visually impaired though your options are rather limited, there's DrawBack, SVGDraw01, BlindPaint, or something a bit more all around like TactileView or my own BrushTone.

That may depend on the particular tool you used to compile your executable. If you happened to use Pyinstaller, you can use the --onefile prefix when compiling on the command line.

Key customization isn't off the table, but I had decided awhile ago to rebuild a new tool with numerous improvements, better GUI, and fixes, so its more a question of how much time to spend on overhauling this tool as opposed to the new one. But adding to that i've unfortunately been embroiled in other matters so the project has been moving at a glacial pace. What I can look into doing though is adding the options into the F# key menu's, so as to bypass the shortcuts if their otherwise unavailable.

As for virus detection, i've heard that Python files have been getting flagged lately for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately there's not a lot I can do about that short of re-writing it in a new language or recommending an exception. Usually for platforms like windows 10 the in-built windows defender should be sufficient, but I leave that to others discretion.

Possibly. Dealing with malware/detection can be an ever fluid thing, but there is a suggested solution available here. In essence, it involves uninstalling Pyinstaller and manually compiling its bootloader. There are a number of steps involved, but if it works it may allow you to compile your programs as needed. 

Nice concept, simple good art style. Two problems however.
First, there's no way to quit to main menu. Second, getting the up arrow does nothing, and blocks progress.

If your referring to the #GAMEAUDIOGDC links, I just tested them out in firefox and they seem to work. It lands on a loading page, and includes working download links from 2015 to 2020.

Oh ho! Back for the v1.1 update! ;)

Extra cinematics are a nice addition. Did another bug test shakedown:

-World 1-12: Underground standing right in front of the pipe grate on the right side of the map, if you try to move right into the open space, it pushes you back as though there were floor spikes.

-Can't get high score star graphic on the mission complete screen after already getting high score.

-Got the optional true ending. After the credits and after talking about having gotten all the crystals, a cinematic thanked me for collecting all the crystals, followed by the frame calling you PARTNER. After this however, the player states "not everyone can be an artist", and the cinematic about the crystal job offer replays, then spawns me in world 3-8.

Few other previous bugs present:

-High Score still seems to be counting steps anomalously. For example in world 1-6, repeating the same steps/path gets 37, 38, 33, then finally 32.

-In world 2-9 you can still drill down through the left most pits when filled, and the hard tile just above them.

-World 2-11 self destructing still warps you to the left side of the map.

-World 3-9 ore counter sign is still ticked.

You know, trying to move to the fourth planet shows a minus sign and blocks your progress, but no such sign appears on the left most planet. Hmmmmm... Bonus levels? :D

Overall great progress, keep it up!

Beat the game a few hours after my last post. Pretty good quality rom, good graphics, music. Gameplay mechanics, puzzles, and difficulty scaling are solid. Good job! Decided to do another more thorough playthrough/bug test since I ran into a few more in later levels:

-World 1-3

Ending the level your bot moves off to the left instead of up/out the exit.

-World 1-8

3 horizontal solid tiles on the surface level just above the exit arrow can be drilled down through when they shouldn't be.

-World 2-1

When refueling from the depot from below and completing the level, when you play the level again and try to refuel from above, the depot moves you down instead of pushing you back up, getting you stuck and potentially forcing a destruct/restart. This one seems to be hit/miss on replication.

-World 2-3

On the surface, along the horizontal row of solid tiles just below the fuel depot/exit, the last two tiles to the right can be drilled down through. Both get you stuck on rocks below, the right most you can drill back up, but the one to the left of it gets you stuck, forcing a destruct/restart.

-World 2-9

The 5 electro-plating tiles starting from the power shed on the surface can be drilled through getting players stuck on a rock below. The hard tile on the surface just above the two pits on the left can be drilled through getting players stuck on a rock below. The pits on the left when filled can be drilled through, getting players stuck on the floor below. The 3 hard tiles on the surface at the bottom, above the mineral deposit can be drilled through. In most instances the player can however drill back up from the below to safety, if they have the fuel.

-World 2-11

Self destructing on the surface warps you to the left side of the map.

-World 2-12

Collecting the crystal doesn't show up on the level map.

-World 3-1

Walking into the power shed the players character is the mech instead of the pilot sprite.

-World 3-3

On the lower level on the space just above the pit on the far left, you can drill up into a rock formation and get stuck until you drill down.

-World 3-12

Multiple solid tiles around the surface volcano in the upper left can be drilled up/down through, putting the player out of bounds/ getting stuck.

=>Recursive Level Select Bug<=

After entering/level selecting 8 times, when leaving a level with level select and entering another level, open the main menu, it will warp you to the level you left. If you self destruct, you'll be moved to that world/level and come out from it on the level map. If you instead go to level select directly you'll come out the recently selected map on the world/level map. This seems to remain persistent across all worlds/levels when it occurs, with the map you selected potentially having more minerals than the bugged map you get warped to, the ore requirements persist, and the player, movable blocks and obsticals are displaced or added and don't work right, so you'll have to self destruct/leave the level and restart. In instances I couldn't play world 1-12 as it would spawn in world 1-11, same with 2-4 spawning 2-3, and after re-routing the power in 2-4 and going out the building, it would warp to 2-3, breaking the game. Rebooting it fixes the issue.

-One instance in world 2-12 also had the mech suit disappear when exiting it until you self destruct. Could be related to level select bug.

P.S. Managed to get PAR on most levels, and high scores on others. Can't tell whether its always achievable, but is good fun. ;)

Bug in world 2 level 10. I drilled down to the lower level and tried to self destruct to restore fuel, but instead of restarting, it would fade back in with me still on the lower level and the fuel was the same. Had to go to level selection to restart.

Apologies for the late reply, I didn't seem to get a notification of your post. The download itself seems to work properly on another Windows 10 machine i've tested. Could you try downloading it with a different browser?

For the program itself, have you tried running it in compatibility mode?