itch.io

thank you for playing! i didn't know ranger x, my main inspiration is the old arcade game baraduke(alien sector). ty i'll try it asap

Can you actually defeat the first boss? 

Of course you can! when you destroy the boss' options, he stops and shows his weakpoint in the center of the templar cross. For some players it's a really hard bossfight, so I plan to rework it a little; but beyond all of that, maybe my choice of a red weak point on a big red cross wasn't very smart. So ty again for let me notice

PS: if for some reason you wanna try my demo again, on the first screen you have a warp room to diffent levels of the game. (you can "get back to base" anytime from the pause menu)

i like it a lot, but it's very rough.

random thoughts:

- i like the juice that makes you feel like you are inside a mecha, like the broken glass at low hp, the cockpit etc

- spend more time on the feel of the cockpit, on walk, jump land etc 

- i like anime style for chara design, mecha+enemy design dosent gel very well to them thou.

- scrolling for weapons for two arms is very cluncky. if this is a speedy arcade experience ala quake this system is not well suited for high octane combat

- i like that you can shoot down enemy's missiles, you should expand on that

- if you aim straight down at your feet the game fuck itself up

 I dunno your aim with this game, but GL

Tons of good, tons of bad.

Simple, but very polished. overall great job for a first submission.

i don't wanna sit down a write a megapost on why your shump is bad from a design standpoint, because shmups are super niche, and in my opinion you shouldn't cater to that crowd in general

my question is, who is this game for? if this game is for shmup fans, this game is very VERY bad for multiple reasons.

if this game is a casual experience, or even just a test project to hone your skills, it's very good

if you are not catering to shmups fans, lose the ship as your player design and think something else (for ex, I've chosen knight). Some people did anime girls, cute animals... anything you want is better than a spaceship. Sadly spaceship are boring for the costumer if it's not a shmup fan. I dunno the lore of your game, but since this is a "warmind" an andorid/robot/robomaid waifu of anykind can be a thousand times better for your general appeal.

the main cannon that you aim with your mouse has a reason to exist only if piercing. i will talk more about the gun aiming, it's the only bad design i'll explain:

1 - mouse aiming let's you stand still in a safe spot and shoot down everthing. this can lead to very boring gameplay. This is vary bad, you need to keep the player moving around

2 - if you wanna dev a shmup with a gun that you aim, you should design challenges that use that mechanic. I need to have a reason to have a gun i can manually aim and dosen't just shoot forward. I'm talking about wave design, and enemies/bullets

3 - with this setup a controller is very hard to do well(again who is your player? does he play with a keyboard?). if you wanna go for a twinstick experience, player's aim will be very poor, so your man shoot should be a lot bigger to be useful in combat.

4 - a classic design flaw is to not "give a reason to not push a button". shotgun has a very long cd, so you click it when you need it, its hitbox is very strict, you can go pointblank and oneshot a boss, or go long range for a crowd control. it's a good design. (of course almost all old shmups had a fire button that you held down or rapidfire like raiden. that stuff it's just nostalgia)

random thoughts:

- i like the power setup a lot.

- shotgun is ver very powerful, and fun to use.

- folder and subfolder of your game should have a version, so we can recognize them (dd you used in the main folder is also fine)

- change the color for weapons/subsystems when they are in range of a socket. in general check path of exile/diablo/other arpg to have an idea on how to do your juice

- i like the art (care about ai accusations)

- ui for your slow can/should be a circle around your ship, see crimzon clover for a visual input

Good Job and GL!

Thank you so much for playing again, and jesus what a fan art!

The little suit-up transformation sequence was cute, hope you animate it properly sometime (or get someone to do it for you.) 

I would love a sailor moon sequence for the transformation, my problems are mostly budget 

I'm not sure I like the weapon subsystem as it is: I accidentally picked up a subweapon I didn't want halfway through the plant level  and was stuck with it until the end. 

yep, that was a trap

I would make it so you can cycle through the subweapons, with the ammo you pick up going to the active subweapon. 

You probably wont like this answer, but my design is for a castlevania sub system and not mega man. My idea is for some levels to be harder/easier if you have the right weapon for the job. I think it's a more fun/challenging design in the long run, ofc it's up to me to make good levels

The vertical drift as you move horizontally is a bit annoying, made me hit a projectile or two. It's not a necessarily bad addition but I don't like it very much.

Sadly almost nobody likes it, but don't worry I have a no-grav powerup for that.

The crushers are a little buggy, sometimes I get crushed when I should have lived and survive when I should've died. I also got pushed into a wall by a crusher at one point.

If you remember the level/section (even a shitty ms paint of the bad crusher setup) i'll go bug huntin 

I don't really get the setting of the game yet, why does RoboTemplar need to kill some blobby plant dudes again?  Feels a little underwhelming, I was expecting aliens, monsters, or other robots who were threatening Earth or something.

At one point i'll add the story/dialogue system ofc, In short: robo is a rookie sent on a alien planet, and his protector license is 0, so that's why he is sen't to deal with a slime problem. So the story progression is him climbing ranks and dealing with bigger problems.

Challenge rooms were cool, I took an embarrassing amount of time to complete the first crusher one.

Still eager to see how the game shapes up. Anyway, here's some quick art.

 Thanks again!

Thank you for playing dude, i'm glad you recognized the song

i'll tunedown that boss even more for next time.

I now noticed your first post:

Main thing to try is the new combat gameplay. In particular I want to know what people think about the movement and the process of having to pick up ammo after shooting it. 

dungeon movement is fine; 

dunno about sprinting in a line, it's something you can judge only with a level (mobs/traps/walls)

same for ammo pick up, we need an enemy to test it on: the bullet will pierce enemies? how many hit you need to kill an enemy, how fast/big is this enemy; what happens if you lose a bullet (or forget to pick it up) etc etc 

Last time I played your game was still all 2d, great job so far.

I like a lot how you can tetris forniture, and maybe a tutorial could be on "an item must be reachable to be purchaseable" and so on.

I also like a lot your cleaning system

I lolled when I heard actual recette speaking, and there are already nice little things like puttin on your hat and animating your 2d portrait. Even if I love all of this, my suggestion is to keep your game as humble as possible, so voice acting (if not done by you and your friends) maybe should be avoided, as any other money trap.

Dungeon mode is still under construction, so nothing to say here. My overall tip it's: better build something simple and solid than something overscoped that blows up in your face.

I don't remember nothing about your story beyond the fact that you have a brother+sister, rememeber that the ticking clock to make more money and pay your load was a vital point of recette.

GL

I rememeber your progress from dunno how many months ago, I'm glad you sticked with this game.

Gameplay is great so far, but your design is lacking. My suggestion is to experiment with level design and see what you like to make, and what ppl like more to play. Spark 3 can be of inspiration (ofc you already know it); but also more sandboxy experiences ala mario 64/odyssey with missions. I could also suggest  a pure corridor A-B where the only objective is to reach the end flag.

PS: since this game seems a pg-8 you should avoid your Main to "flip off" in the cover. Rebellion per se dosen't need to be vulgar (see jet set radio).

Well shit you have a solid game. You just need an year (or just hire someone) to do a super juicy SFX/GFX+UI like balatro and you got this.

random thoughts:

> I like a lot that greed can lead to disaster

>I love sci-fi but be warned that fantasy almost always sells more

>Dunno what you have in mind for everything around this gameplay, but it seems fit for both a mission style game like puzzle quest and a story focused experience like paper please.

I have no words for your fanart (I'll make it my avatar asap). Thank you so much,

I'm eager to play some real levels of this game in the future.

I am adjusting it because some people died a lot vs shieldboss. There are already more levels to play, but I'm still rebuilding them for 400x240. Next demo will have a lot of more stuff

Thanks again!

Your game is progressing nicely.

Maybe masteries still need a better explaination, because in a stream we got pretty confused about them.

My only issue with your new demo is the summoner that spawns too randomly, and sometime you need to search for him for too much time. An arrow that points at him or making him spawn very close to you could resolve this.

I can't judge much about bombgirl  because  is still unfinished. I would like to kick upwards, make bombs explode when kicked to an enemy etc etc

Different builds already works with bombgirl, so gj on our system, it's pretty solid.  

ED:  in the stream there was a discussion about your chara design, the witch is meant to seem like a psiko or she is just smiling? For what I remember from fiends it seems your normal style, but who knows

 I like the new ui stuff a lot: crafting cooking etc

 I like a lot the new system "choose a bonus when you sleep"

 I'm not sure about the implementation of it. Your new system of "craft consumable once then you can equip them as many as you want" is not well explained (brimstone streamer had a problem with this and I had to tip him). Nioh has a similar system with magic/ninmpo(you prepare them than you recharge them when you rest at bonfires). You can refer to that for some more insight

 I understand the idea to have a first zone like the great plateau, but with your stamina degeneration system makes it very very punishing. Since if you explore badly you can descover the crafting items for meat for last. And if you don't have meat your pacing is very reduced (again see rimstone stream)

 I am sorry to say that this rebuild of your tutorial/first zone seem a step froward and one back, because it's pacing it's entirely random on where the player will explore. Maybe at last meat craft should be part of the super corridor start of the tutorial zone.

ty for commenting

-Orange companion is neat, but for what purpose does he serve?

it's rare, but sometimes when you get hit he will eat the bullet and be smug about saving you.

 One stone was set off by the player not timed, that could also be differentiated somehow. 

that trap was a hidden on purpose, some players see something fishy about that room

thanks again dude

templarVania 

Another anon call it jetpack knight once

thank you for commenting dude

Yes, shieldboss dosen't dmg you on touch on purpose (because it's a crusher boss and crushers that tease it's moveset dont do that)

Also walking is slow on purpose to let you feel that flying is better.  Of course I need to design better levels to reflect that.

I was one of the devs in yesterday's stream, since you stated that you wanna drop this project I've reflected more on your game to give a better feedback.

Since I'm esl I prefer ruminating on my toughts and then writing them out. 

tldr, for what I'm about to write: Should you drop this project? If this is meant to be a commercial product, yes.

Imo you spread yourself too thin, but the real problem is that this game has not a strong gameplay idea. So, why it's a game to begin with?

Even with your post on the mining project, you dont start with the gameplay. Your "Concept" section it's story. For you it seems that gameplay is secondary to the story you wanna tell; that's a problem because you are not a director of a studio. You need to to actually code that shit.

There is no problem/shame to build a vn with some minigames in the middle. It can be simple, but it must always be solid.

Scope is killing you, you should design by subtraction. If you know the core of your idea, cut the fat from it and polish that core.

The good advice for your first game it's something you can finish in six months. This is a godlike advice because in the beginning you get better really fast, but also so you don't get chained by your old bad ideas. 

Final note, how dare I to tell someone else to drop a project? If I can persuade him to do it (I have CH1 in my real life build), it means that this project was doomed to begin with. 

 I wonder what the golden coins will be used for.

story spoiler, but not really. You start as a common bot, and when you pick up the golden coin you become a templar. So the first level is your test to become a knight

I only found one issue where strafing was toggled on and I had to strafe to move normally. I had no unlocks and I have no idea how it happened but dying and respawning solved the issue.

noted. the strafing bug seems to be caused by spamming spacebar and shift. the easy solution is to kill a bind, and that will happen when i'll implement rebind

Also, slime/plum enemies being able to hurt you with their dying animation is a little unintuitive although they do attack by exploding so maybe I'm just dumb. Why are the knights Templar at war with the plums anyway? 

Another anon noted this, and designwise might be bad to have enemies with death explosions that bypass walls at lv2 (kek). Story spoiler again, but basically they are parasytes, since you are a rookie you deal with low lv stuff (in the beginning)

Also, I don't know what's the deal with the cat or what function it provides. I imagine it's intended for communication since it's wearing a headset but it would be cool if it did something in-game too. 

Thanks for noting my pixelshit. I'm working on his combat usefulness

I tried the power-ups and I have mixed feelings about them. Removing recoil or gravity also remove some of the uniqueness from the movement. That's also the kind of thing that feels like "stuff that was removed from your original kit so it could be an unlock" territory. Increasing HP is a little boring, but ok because it's so useful.

I have no knock and no grav beacuse some players asked for it, I totally  agree with you, I almost consider them accessibility options.

The bomba related ones are the best because they provide a small reward from timing the screen clear properly and maybe taking a little bit more risk in exchange for a reward. 

Thanks for playing and givin a feedback on powerups, man

Everything is rough, but great attempt so far.

As a fan of tenchu and shinobido(rememeber to play it), I'm hyped.

Random stuf I noted:

- you need to remake the starting room because the camera shit itself too much in tight spaces

- camera is fine in the open (fine not great), but indoors its a real problem that imo needs to be a priorty

- like very much that you have equips on your chara

- I like that you can hide in tall grass

- night time or fog weather should be a priority

- ninja nails are very fun but can be used to stunlock enemies in hurt anim with nail+dropkicks etc

Tenchu is a complex game to remake, so big GL. See you next demo.

Every dev knows his game best, but I'll pressure you this time since you are in an hard spot:

The early game encounters are there to teach you how to use the moods and cards. It is a game that requires attentiveness to make combat easier but blowing through the enemies is quite possible. This is probably not something everyone will like

I went in full tutorial, exploring every room and picking up every chest (minus one protected by the red female ghost). combat is gets more difficult room by room. At grandma house I have bone ghost in north that does a double atk every turn and kills me in 3 turns; or south with fish ppl that have a waterfall atk that hits for nerarly half health. bone ghost can be escaped, fish ppl cannot. In these encounters I need 6-7 atks to win if I don't get a lucky crit. In the mist of this, I have not a recharge station. Items are limited and once they are gone they are done. So or your autoequip dosen't work as intended (Iclicked it after every pick up) or something else is wrong. Maybe the difference of power between some moods you choose from is fucked. I've not played fear & hunger, but I'm not new at jrpgs. 

Clearing it without any grinding at all is not easy but it is completely doable if you take the time to prepare for encounters. Autosave in every area does make trial and error less punishing. This is a matter of taste and not right or wrong. 

If you think your balance is fine, then your tutorials in my case have failed. I suggest you to see every streamer that has played your game, and check if everything is as it should be. Maybe my experience was just an unlucky one.

Sorry for the delay, I usually review in reverse popularity order:

- please name your demo in files, folders and exe

- I don't play a lot of vn, but pressing esc to accept your name seems very strange, add an "accept/finish" button, since ideally you wanna make your game enjoyable with mouse only

- clicking npc feet to select them is not good, but I understand it's a tile problem. 

- liked the videos a lot

- very good to have not enough swagger to do a special in your first atk

- tutorial laptophead is fine, but in combat it talks too much

- 6-7 turns to kill the second mob of the game is not fun

- I like a lot 'optimize' equip

- open chest sprite is not open enough

- it's funny when you are confused the rifle gfx turns against you

- bug: if you are on the little island where you talk with little girl about fishes, you can walk on water and bypass the ladder 

Game is really depressing, so gj. great atmophere, sounds, gfx, everything.

imo your game is prone to too much softlock: 

You are not very powerful, but you can't run away from most combat

some enemies can twoshot you

some enemies get stuck in travel points (little island with ladder point) so you are fucked

resources are super limited, and there is no indication of low lv mobs; so you can't farm

I have confused messages of what I should do as a player, should I farm or avoid enemies? This is a bad middle ground. Or you make a silent hill experience where you can avoid most combat because everything is very dangerous, and you fight only when you must; or you make a classic jrpg.

A simple solution to solve this first location with grandma at the center would be to place a restore point at grandma house, but ofc it would ruin the atmophere

Oi it's nice to see you again and ofc thanks for replaying

Destroyed the last of the first boss's adds while it was doing the ram attack and it didn't disable the boss's collision, so I couldn't hit the weak spot.

thanks, it happens rarely but it's still a bad bug

The sword is too spammable. You never have to dodge anything while you have it.

yep that's a hard situation. My basic solution (yet to be implemented) is to limit energy storage like curse of the moon, and have powerups to upgrade it. 

No idea how you're meant to get past the tall crusher moving horizontally in the crusher challenge.

Some streamers did pass it.

I'm not liking this dumb-looking thing that's following me around everywhere. It can be distracting when there's a lot going on, too.

fair. 

Why do you take damage from being near the second boss when it splits? What's supposed to be hurting me?

in the specific: when big cherry splits, it spawns two little cherry and an explosion that damage you in you are in range, also cherry themselves hurt on contact, so you should never go near him in the first place

The placement on those first three enemies in the poke challenge is really cheap. You're given no time to react, so you're guaranteed to die immediately on the first try, and if you wait even a second, they'll have blocked the path. It's pure trial and error.

Fair assestment. it's a gotcha moment, but has a design underlay: you die the first time. And that's ok (I'm also removing lives entirely soon)

For the second try you might think "I'm attacked from below, but I can't atk below, so what?" that's when you should think to bomb and descover that the poke curse makes you die in one hit, but you can still use bomba. Now, not everyone got it. Some just try and retry to dodge those enemies, or lure them out and bypass them. its not my best design but imo is good enough till I'll think something better.

What was different for the hard mode boss? I didn't notice anything except it having a lot more health.

Boss already starts in phase 2 (he can crush)

his movements scale faster

his Options are only the "hard" selection of the total pool he can spawn

Boss options on death spawn a suicide bullet

boss weak phase last 1s less, and that's why he seems to have more health

Btw you have any opinion on the powerups? my tutorial about them was very bad, so you might have missed them entirely.

Thanks again for your review.

 It's just too prominent in the first level where you barely even get to shoot enemies at first (which is more satisfying than squeezing between). 

That said shield boss should have more attack telegraphing because the bullet hell segment has too much stuff happening and it's hard to react to fast pink projectiles when you are tangled in avoiding other projectiles. Same could be said for all other enemies if you are planning to make it bullet hell heavy.

noted

I like the crushers because of the neat pathing you designed in the challenge. I got a weird bug where I somehow squeezed past horizontal one by clipping into the floor and then popping back out. That reminds me why I'm not using box2d and the likes.

Designing crushers was pure hell. I totally understand now why most deal dmg on hit or outright kill you.

I like that you left the recoil in but I'm still not sure about the gradual falling down without strafing key as I don't understand what purpose it serves.

for some reason I like the gravity aspect very much, so much that's with knockback on shoot it's the main reason this game exist at all. I could say many things abut it, but I just like it on a visceral level. This said, if you check the powerups I added no grav and no knockback for anyone who wants a more classic shmup approach.

Subweapons need better icons to be recognizable at a glance. Axe feels disappointing when it only hits once.

I could try to add a mini weapon icon instead of letters, but I'll probably wont. Letters + colors setup has always worked in  contra and metal slug etc, why here should be a problem. I don't wanna defend myself, but imo it's purely memory adjustment, and that's fair. Remembering letters it's harder than having a weapon icon for pickup.

I need more story levels as the one segment I kinda liked isn't there anymore.

I havent cut it, I removed it for now because once I understood what the story was, that space setting was the last level (lmao).  But i'll probabily add some part of it in the tutorial area, since a setting of all grey walls is not sexy at all.

Thanks for the feedback man.

Could you elaborate on the resolution thing?

In my case by default your game starts fullscreen 720p, and I can click only when I alt+enter out of fullscreen. My new setup is pretty standard, w10 nvidia 3060

I'm getting mixed feedback here, because platforming isn't exactly the focus but means of moving around and killing enemies efficiently.

Sure, you should focus on that fun side of the experience

Platforming might be simplified even more, but instead I can add more bonus side paths to actually test the skills in nonobligatory way, similar to the practice stage but smaller.

Try it and see how players react. For ex almost nobody liked the spinning firaballs from mario in my new demo. In My case I was slowing the pace to an almost complete halt.

Hopefully in context and after a few redraws it will make more sense.

sure. GL for next DD.

- please if your game has low res don't put it in auto full screen

- in full screen mouse highlight and select didn't work, only keys with response were W, S to move in the menu and Esc to quit. Also Pad works with up, down but I can't select anything and R1 quits the game.

- if I use alt+enter in the main menu the game shit itself, but after a while it works. Mouse highlight and select work again, but pad wont.

- upgrades screen is cool, like all your menus

- plese let me see what a pow does without equipping it; also W and S in upgrade menu are broken

- you upgrade for now are not very good, beyond bullet form. They don't speak fun, or powerful to me

- your save works for coins/misison rank, but dosen't for screen settings(or is yet to be implemented?)

- in the wall jump tutorial the bouncing vertical platforms that help you come out the pit seem part of the background

- gun money is cool

- hover tutorial has too much setback if you fail. Also the whole challenge is badly implemented: when you arrive to the big gap with a tornado of flying enemies below and above you it's not well telegraphed what you need to do(I didn't record my play, but i'm not sure you see the other side of the gap)

- I like ledges as an "immortal" platform solution

- more on overall movement gameplay: your movement seems a stepdown from before. The magic bullet now is wall jump on the same wall ad infinitum and hover in the meantime, bypassing platforming alltogether . Right now it's boring. Mostly because your level design is in a midway between the original "tide of casings" meme and what Brassrobo can do right now. With infinite hover and infinite kick wall jump your levels must be redone to be engaging. 

- new skin for worm boss is pretty nonsensical, I say this just because it didn't seem placeholder. He shoots missiles and little insects? I could understand if it was a robotic snake, but from what I understand your lore is brass robos vs biolocial lifeforms

- snake fight seemed too long for what it offers mechanicwise

- 3d shader is super great and your game is always a joy to see in motion 

When you say transversal movement is bad you mean going up or down?

It's not fun because it's empty. It's not fun because there is no choice to do, nothing to collect or dodge(monsters mostly mind their business and deal almost no dmg) or button to press when you go from A to B. Your game right now is the equivalent of an empty mario level.

Some people said the movement is slow but it is the same speed as the horizontal movement, I think the parallax background may give the feeling that the player is moving too slow. 

It's also the big amount of nothing of your level design. If you wanna make a first level a tutorial area is fine, but there is no reason to make it this big beyond wasting player time

Did the dash break collisions or do you mean its too fast when compared to regular movement?

it's too fast and works for too much. Go see any dash from any game. Even racers have more restraint. 

I think you mean to disable the alarm entirely.

yep

My suggestion is to see a longplay (but better if you pick up an emulator and you play them) of Ecco the dolphin games. Also think of the mood of your game should give, it's joyful? It's terror of the abyss?

Super barebones, but it works.

Art is very cute.

I heven't much to say beyond simple stuff

- dont make quit the game when you press esc

- even if it's just for testing purpuses, add a X2, X4 speed

Yours will be a long journey. GL and remember to post progress in the threads

Thank you for playing.

y, hitbox is in favor of the player. I forgot to say it in my comment on your game, but you need to think if you want your game to be more like a classic shmup (hitbox is your whole sharkship), or danmaku (hibox is only the sphere cockpit).

lil guy is story related. Maybe i'll make him atk once in a while to help you during missions.

great art and style, very nice pixel art all around. Sadly I didn't enjoy your game at all.

random stuff I noted:

- if you hold left click on a mission to select, the *button selected* audio will trigger every frame

- equip section needs to divide weapons from gadgets. Also tell me if a skill is passive (like solar panel, I know it seems redundant)

- hull critical/low battery sound are super annoying, imo make them optional (ofc add audio options asap, your music is blasting)

Why I didn't like yor game:

- movement is not very fun, traversal is not very fun (dash is fun but it seems bugged since it can push you through the whole level).

- What killed my enjoynment is the wait. 3-4 hits to kill an enemy, and your shot has a 2-3s cd. Melee is better, sure, but it also has a long cd. So most of your play is wait to shoot. I can understand the philosophy of submarine combat, but here there is no tension; and it's not tactical. It's a pretty happy game where you kill car sized squid/crabs. How can you make it boring?

I like the concept, so far the execution is very rough but you already have some very fun levels (my fav is the one with the two red skyscrapers).

Tutorial needs to be remade from scratch. World UI for a game where you run fast and need to build momentum is... really dunno. Maybe it can be done, but your execution is just plain bad. I had to stop to read every new msg because  they disappear in a second. I totally agree with Tech-25 comment.

My tip is to see every tutorials for speedy games(ofc don't forget mirror's edge) and reflect on that.

Open world level was pretty bad.(Worst part was the respawn on a jumper. ) Exploring it is not fun, probably because the level itself is huge and you can't really plan a route to a new objective. If you played mirrors edge, classic TR or TH you can plan out how to reach a new platform because everything is under your eyes; your game so far is too expansive for that. You basically just run toward a tape icon and hope there is a road somewhere.

I really like the atmosphere, it reminds me of n64/psx era. the "wow!" for some reason is super nostalgic to me.

Keep posting progress and GL.

thank you so much, glad you enjoyed it.

Some parts of the sewer-levels feels a bit unnecessarily crowded with the amount of enemies.

design question, have you thought to use granades subw down the drains in the long corridor? don't worry most don't notice them, so I'm still dealing with tutotialization. for ex, at the beginning of the sewers did you use a granade to kill flower turrets?

I did quite often accidentally trigger the Bomba ability. I am not sure what a perfect button-setup would look like but that might be something you would want to take into consideration.

I plan to add a control rebind so anyone can place their fav buttons

Tutorial-boss is a bit hard as first real encounter, movement and everything is good, I would just lessen the amount of stages for the last part where it is stuck in the center. 

can you expand on that? what did you like of the last stage of the battle better than when shieldboss follows you?

thanks again

Your playthough is great, badass performance, and ty for the doc.

-Jetsword subweapon gets a shield that works better than the bomb and it's never even mentioned anywhere

This is a choice. level design makes you understand more about subweapons (granades can be used in sewer drains etc)

-You keep subweapons when clearing tutorial which can trivialize challenges or later levels if you got the jetsword, not sure if it's intended

No it's not intended, but so far very few players blasted through the game without dying. In theory I should reset your sub at the end of a level, challenges should be done without one at all.

-Why is walking speed so low compared to hovering inches above ground?

I'm telling you via design that you sbould not walk but fly

-Why does the axe subweapon disappear once it finishes the arc and doesn't go further down?

in some levels could be gamebreaking, so it has a range like your main weapon

-Where is the metroidvania part of the game? It's all linear missions for now

you are the first  that asks about that. I added megaman in the synopsis to avoid confusion, but castlevania as a word means a level based experience with boss at the end. Metroid was the exploration side of the term metroidvania. 

-It's hard to make out whether the templar has a huge schnoz on his face with 2 darkened eyes, or whether it is one cyclopian eye/visor. I know the splash art means that it's the latter, but in-game it seems a whole lot different
-Adding a cape or something of the sort would make hovering and flying look even better. Think something like Noita, I suppose

my art is bad. I'll think about the cape

-Why is this weird orange fella constantly hovering around me and pogging?

story related. it's your partner during missions.

-Rather stock-standard menus, but I don't understand what's so hard about adding "quit game" or "quit to desktop" to the pause menu in general? Why assign "P" button for it?

the entire UI needs to be revised, it's pretty barebones, I put a little work only in the new powerups menu

Very fun movement, but so far there is more shmup then metroidvania.

ty

Played 2 more runs.

Full thunder dosen't work but I think it's fine (you could add a homing thunder skill that makes thunder spawn on enemies)

Full Ice is even stronger than fire, and when you start killing slimes you snowball a ton.

In the end there is balance problem once you descover ice is the strongest. I dunno what your philosophy is about this, but a potential solution would be enemies with elem res so you can't just spam your strongest magic for 10min 

other things I noticed:

- when you lvlup you fire(a fireball), so or you add a little cooldown when you pause to atks, or make lvlup buttons on release, not on push

- if you rightlick while in lvlup screen witch will do atk animation(it's very cute but still a bug)

- make pillars transparent when you go behind them. More on that, you should probably do this too for enemies/E.bullets.

- maybe make a list of all your Pows in the pause menu, or on the sides of the screen

By the way, did you try the ice spikes or thunders?

Both. I liked thunder gfx very very much is utility is great. Ice pierce is also good, gfx is a little tone down and usability was just fine (I didnt spec for it thou,. I can try another run where I spec  mostly ice/thunder and see where it goes. Your system is built for that, or fire should always be your main weapon?

Gj overall. Didn't see a bug in my play. random thoughts:

- maybe +X ammo should be on your ui screen, not world ui

- some barrel/eggs spawn in walls

- exit is VERY VERY VERY badly tought out. You need to see it from afar, you instead seem to hide it.

- projectiles with eyes seem enemies themselves

- eye weapon is very cool

- low gravity is very cool (take advantage of it by using enemies that shoot more bullets, like yellow king)

- a shame I didnt drop any weapon after the first 2 levels. had to quit because I was out of ammo

- add a button to drop weapons to solve above issue; or make punch a fixed weapon

- more on that, 2 weapons limit seems very low from this kind of game

Fav enemies are the statue with crystals

I like your idea very much (monetize a tech demo for your actual game)

Bear game is... okay. I Know you don't care very much (since you have your real game), but here it goes:

Controlling bear is not very fun; the animations are cool, for five minutes. Let's sadly add that levels are not fun to traverse, just think of crazy taxi. You will need a lot of work to make this good.

- great soul in the menus overall 

- in menus, add a cooldown when you move to the next selection, or active the action on button release, not press

- in pause menu you can move only with the d-pad and not with L-analog (Xbox pad)

- I'm a pad player, but jesus your keyboard default buttons have horrible placing (I know you can rebind them, but come on)

- dodge and dropkick together are redundant. Since dropkick is cooler (and has more sense to be done in movement), remove the dodge action and make dropkick do double duty to kill humans and brake crates, imo it's cleaner design

- air flip could be used to jump obstacles and add more turbo juice

ED: I download your new version and had no cam issues.

It's nice to see you back.

Overall I'm surprised by the polish and step up of your art since fiend's. Enemies are cute, distinct by their silouette. Maybe they should have more colours than green so you can distinguish them more, but I dunno if you wanna add color variation for powered up versions.

Even if on paper I don't like 3d particles mixed with drawn style the impact of your game is very nice. It's cool so see pretty lights and enemies explode (my philosopy with templar).

- At first glance I didnt undertand that mastery was a skill tree. adjust it so you can understand it right away; also darken the powers you can't select even more

- only one bad point, but I can understand the design if its a wanted interaction: with witch, if you cast a double/triple firball at point break the enemy hit will take out all projectiles instead of one (if it can be killed with one hit ofc) 

Take my comments from here on with a grain of salt because I didn't play vs or its clones:

- maybe crystals should disappear after X time, so you need to choose between danger to gain power or safety

- maybe have a low chance to make enemies drop a big crystal

- maybe hp refill on lvl up 

- maybe add the big common ball enemies earlier. 

- add to that, for your enemy curve, maybe have a 5min timer, not 10? so the evolution will be even faster

 Good job dud.