itch.io

It should open each time you die, I probably messed up with the trigger for that.

Good review, made me chuckle a couple times.

Yea there isn't a menu or any QoL features for that matter since I just rushed through the thing to get some content done for it. For the time being it will stay as it is, I've been toying with the idea of expanding it, which if I ever do will be a couple years down the line, but I've tested how much of a pain would be to add multiplayer which seems surprisingly easy for this type of game. 

Besides from that, I have in mind a few things for loot, weapons and upgrade/costumization weapon systems. Classes with spellcasters and shit could be cool too and make a Dark and Darker pve style game, I think that'd be swell.

Yea, it's very easy to get into. The bad thing about unreal is that by default is ready to render a game with good graphics and it's going to have subpar performance even with a simplistic artstyle. But eh, someday you'll learn to optimise it.

Any engine is a good engine.

Sorry about that, it's a stupid unreal engine thing.

Excuse me princess, it's not my fault that a VR thing comes enabled by default.

👍👍👍

I miss this game

Fixed it I think?

Remember that if you can't run DX12:

-By default the game runs in DX12 which requires using an updated Windows 10 as your OS, however if you can't run it you can just create a shortcut and add -d3d11 at the end of the "target" text, the game works exactly the same.

👍👍

There is a gamebreaking bug that I can't reproduce, the game might, for some reason, not let you interact with stuff.

Too low! Fast games benefit from a higher FOV imo

Didn't play for long but here are my thoughts

• The game feels kinda stiff to play, the camera doesn't sway, doesn't react to landing and jumps, the hand remain stiff in the same position always. I get that the character is agile but it feels totally unconstrained from what having a physical body would mean for the camera pov
• A lil tutorial introduction before the guy tells you to go collect stuff would go a long way, I get that this is a vertical slice but players rarely complain about a little introductory segment before going all out on a proper level
• Having low air control seems like a bad idea for a game where you can fall so easily. I would either be more permissive or add a system like a double jump or grapple that lets you redirect your movement if you fuck up, I know some of the powers let you move better but if that's all the options the player will have, that's what they'll use and probably ignore the others
• Fov slider please???

That's pretty much it, you guys seem to have what it takes to make a decent game with a swell aesthetic but the design is not quite there yet I think.

Few things

• The camera has some nice feel to convey movement and landing but the hands don't which makes it feel quite stiff
• The tilt while punching is a bit too much by default
• The dash feels very stiff, it locks your movement and the default binding on the right click is really unintuitive, in my opinion it should push you towards a direction rather than moving you to a location, in the end, I didn't use it much so I don't know if the game even needs it since you move really fast by default
• Died in a puddle of water at the start, lol
• Not being able to punish enemies on the ground is lame af, making the player wait is rarely a good idea
• Not sure what I'm collecting, I know I have what I think it's an experience meter and a gold amount, but I wanna know with a little pop up or something how much did I gain at once or over the last short period of time like in a soulsborne game

What I have the most problem is with the skill system. Might be a personal thing but being able to kick with a transient binding just doesn't work for me, as a player you expect a button to do a thing consistently. Like, maybe you could rework it so the system is passive somehow, imagine that by default you can kick, shield bash and throw javelins at will but for example kick and bash are dependent on an stamina system and javelins are dependent on an ammo system, and while in gameplay random pickups appear that give you free stamina for a while, or ammo, or speed, or power.

This roulette system is just bad in my opinion, I can't recall exactly but I kind of remember a previous build the game paused to tell you that by the will of the gods or something you were granted a skill, and that's good, you should lean the gameplay and setting into being about greek mythology but really the "will of the gods" has to be represented somehow else, and a more active system that drops what the roulette would give you in the level would be far more fun to play.

I think a game with this structure that is kind of like Hades where you gain favors from different gods can be really good. And the different gods could drop different pickups or give you different base skills/weapons, but please, don't change my base skills each time I use them, I really hate it.

Great round of feedback, thanks for taking the time! Few things I'd like to respond to:

The whole "picking up" weapons thing is going to get an overhaul at some point, with things like

• Loadout slots to store 2 (one for each hand) or 1 that goes on both hands
• UI or some sort of indication of durability
• Every weapon will have charging attacks but will still be throwable
• A button to swap which hand it's using or a way to equip it in the opposite hand by holding the interact button or something

The design of the castle is indeed pretty whack, I rushed it, I've just uploaded a revision that at least makes one room make more sense but it doesn't quite fix it.

Now as for the Bubble Gun while I think it's a good starting point and something that will be relevant through the whole game I do have plans to make a few magic weapons that might not be as memorable but will be decent counterparts and complements to it.

It's fixed now

Very good feedback, I agree with the magic stuff, there will be lots more!

nicee

• It's totally annoying indeed, I want to overhaul the whole picking up weapons thing so you can keep one or two around in your weapon slots until they break and each should have charged attacks, I still want to have the option to throw them though so I'll have to figure out how, thinking of making it so you can hold attack and then use the drop button to throw it
• The game is already pretty unbalanced so that would totally suck ass, one thing that happens sometimes is that it's inconsistent how far they get pushed back so that needs work still
• Yea that was bad already but after doing some CPU optimization it works even worse because physics used to update more frequently, gotta fix that sometime soon.

thanks for playan!

Gee that's a long comment, thank you so much for taking the time, a round of feedback like this is something I can only dream of having, let's go through it.

• 👍
• Indeed, making UI is a chore and I've slacked there
• 👍
• Yea that feature is just not done and I forgot I even put the button there on the first place, sorry
• It adds a little delay when you move around so it takes a little while to pause, I don't think it's quite "smoothing" and it's something I need to rework, oh well
• 👍
• I want to be more clear about weapon durability so you can plan your attacks, I just never got down to do it, not sure yet if I'll have a little UI with an icon of the weapon that changes color as it degrades, or somehow express it in the weapon visuals themselves
• The whole "picking up" weapons logic needs quite a lot of work indeed 😩
• 👍, I'm not quite happy with the handling of physics as of yet, they get stuck really easily if they collide with something but, well, needs work
• 👍 If you crouch + jump while in a ladder you do drop down, I'm thinking on adding little control tips depending on player context so I can tell them stuff like being able to sprint while in ladders, sprint while swimming, dropping down, remind them which is the interact key when they can interact with stuff (a LOT of people by instinct click on stuff instead of E)
• 👍, the prison level should go for a while longer before entering the game proper but at the moment I wanted to make like the first proper level of the game so I left it unfinished
• The thing with performance at the moment is that the graphics part of the game should be running fine, I haven't optimized certain things so I'm not saying there isn't work to be done there but the game is mostly bottlenecked by the CPU because of physics and AI. I did some last minute optimization so the AI is ticking slower if far away and their physics aren't activated but chances are that in that part the enemies nearby are activating and using up more resources than in other parts of the map because there is a fair bit of them.
• Once again I've been slacking off, the sunlight is dynamic as well as the fire sources in the levels, by lowering the lighting quality shadows from the sun as basically deactivated because I found out a way of using really cheap really sharp shadows with this thing called Distance Fields, the problem is that that's the only quality option that exists is basically on/off but I think I can get more options going on
• 👍
• 🤔
• Yea some apples should be dropping
• Ah yes they should attach to the camera or something
• 👍👍

I'm still figuring out how to design the levels and I kind of rushed to get this one ready for demoday so the objective is absolutely not clear, but well, still figuring out.

If you want to play the whole thing though, you just have to go upstairs and next to the bell and the dormitory there is a lever that opens the gate that leads to the outer patio, but you might want to wait to the next iteration once the level is more proper.

Once again thanks for the comment, insightful stuff!

Are you trying to play it by adding it to steam as a non steam game? A friend of mine tried to run it through proton and failed but then through steam it worked, dunno why but

Thanks a lot for the video! It helps a lot. I feel like the tutorial level gave you less freedom of the imsim variety than you were expecting perhaps, but it's something that will receive polish once other important areas of the game are finished. On the other hand it has to be somewhat restricted to teach the player important stuff but better if it isn't rigid, right.

Sorry for the bug! No idea what causes it (yet), but at least is the only one that popped up.
But hey glad you didn't get stuck, except for the infamous first tower puzzle, which I'll change. And glad you enjoyed the thing, it seemed like a good time. 

Thanks for playing! Yeah I'm addressing most issues you had, the one that weirds me out is the smoothing one because by now I've gotten the comment twice and really most times people are even surprised to see a smoothing setting since it's so subtle they don't notice it. I wonder if it's a problem that has to do with mouse DPI values or screen resolutions I usually don't use... idk, weird thing

Mickey mowse

I loved it! Shame it's only a level, I want to play a handful of them.

The camera was a bit weird but once I picked up a controller it started to make more sense, the animations have great timing and the game flows really well, reminds me a lot of survival horror games but with a cute and arcade-y twist.

I bet you have your plans for the game but I'd personally try to draw more inspiration from survival horror games and add stuff like limited use items or enemies that can grab you, it can make traversing a room really tricky and tactical. Would be cool also if you had like a budget per stage and had a possible arsenal of gadgets or weapons like in Thief that let you stun enemies or hit them hard in limited ways.

Great potential, keep working on it please!

Thanks for playing! Glad to hear you had a good time.

Yea I'm planning a rework on how to handle the whole weapons-that-you-pick-up thing so you can make strong attacks by holding the input and throwing them by holding attack + pressing swap maybe? On paper that has terrible gamefeel but maybe it's worth it.

And thanks for the bug report, pretty happy that's like the only one you found that was worth mentioning

Thanks for playing! I have to admit that tutorialised button prompts are a last minute addition and ideally I wouldn't put them at all, but I think as developers we stand little to gain from a confused player, specially at the start indeed.

Other than that, I only hope the level flows well and things are introduced at a decent pace.

- No one has complained very strongly about this but aight, I didn't put much effort in the implementation

- PP becomes disabled if you lower the setting enough in the graphics menu, not sure if you mean to disable something specific though, it has a lot of things

- aight

- yea

- Not a bad idea actually

- Are you playing on low resolution? I've seen a few people play and they don't have this issues but then I tried it on a Steam Deck and it does cut off, gotta fix it either way

- I thought this would be a problem though but so far no one has got stuck there, I think they solve it by just shooting bubbles to see what happens though, which is fine by me in this instance

- I want combat encounters to be about improvising, part of this is using crappy weapons that are disposable, on top of this there will be hazards in the environment and you'll have certain magic elemental weapons like the bubble gun that are permanent additions to your arsenal

- Fine by me, AI isn't quite level-ready yet but it's not the end of the world if the occasional enemy commits seppuku

Thinking

Thanks for the comment dood, I don't mean to make it very fast paced or at least I'd like to have a slower start than it appears to be but yeah, still trying to find to make it click.

Man that's a lot of progress since last demoday. I'll admit I haven't played much of it, got frustrated getting killed from a mile away but the game already has a solid vibe. It's very ugly and disgusting but you made it work by having environments that sometimes feel like some trippy experimental walking sim shit. I said in your server that it has a Lain and Texhnolyze feel and I think it's really cool, it feels lonely, grungy and almost nonsensical, it's kind of scary and comfortable at the same time.

Sorry for not giving it an honest try, it's too jank for my taste and this AI is very rude but I'm starting to see many things that I like, good shit.

It's basic but there is stuff going on, you managed to do some amount of worldbuilding with just a few texts that were nice to read. The concept of swapping your stats on the fly seems interesting but until you have more stuff going on it's gonna be just meh.

Besides that, it does feel pretty jank. Are you doing your own character controller? When using UE4 I'd advice against it unless you know what you are doing. The first person character works fine for me, I would recommend putting an invisible material on the default arms, delete the weapon and put your own, see how it feels to just run around and have the weapon move with the animations of the invisible arms. I'm not saying that you should invest in first person juice right away but it does go a long way towards making you feel comfortable in your own game and can lead to enjoy it more as you make it, at least I think so.

Anyway I don't mean to shill but check out my demoday entry if you want to see some fleshed out first person UE4 stuff that started from the FP template. I think it feels good just to move around, jump and sprint.

Also yes, making an imsim at any level it's overscoping but if this is the one kind of game that you'd like to do I say you got a more solid chance of finishing it than a simpler game :)

Please read game page to know what this is about.

So, in a way I feel mad respect for this, I feel it for games that are system heavy and try to be like other imsim games, been there myself trying for a while.

But at the same time, this just seems a wrong foundation to make a game on, lemme explain.

First of all, the game starts in third person when clearly is meant to be played in first person, the third person doesn't add anything of value to it so you are better off focusing on one of the two and polishing that one good instead of having two bad ones.

Second, I see you falling in a lot of mistakes that I also fell into at the start of my game (which barely qualifies as a prototype and fails at basic stuff), I see you trying to make a simulation out of everything: aiming has delay and feels physics based, you see through a weird canon thing in the scope, enemies probably have detailed behaviours that most people will fail to see and I don't think that's the good thing about imsims. You probably play it and feel proud of what you've done, which is nice, but for other people to play it you have to find the sweetspot between simulation and game so it retains whats interesting about the sim part of it while being comfortable to play.

Also you seem to be, you know, amateur at this, game is janky, things are not well told to the played, you are probably not an ace at coding and are learning stuff as you go, which can be fine if that's your purpose but if you really want to make a good game for people to enjoy I think you should consider if you are using the right tools. I don't care about enginewars, use source for all I care, but from experience I'll tell you that UE4 is way easier for dumbfucks like you and me, specially if the game is heavily systems driven, it's really easy to make a blueprint talk to another, there are great AI tuts out there and adding juice without making it obnoxious is really easy too and you don't need a CS degree.

My advice is, play more games, see what they get right that you don't, and get good at devving, you'll eventually make good game I think.

Played for a while, it's pretty cool here is whats what:

-Dunno if framerate is uncapped or the game is heavy, be very careful with dynamic lights, I bet that a lot of times you can just use stationary or just ones that don't cast shadows, very careful with their radius and overlap between them too! 

-Your door is fucked fam, seems like you are using a timeline "play from start/reverse from end", playing and reversing like normal maybe works just fine 

-A button to change shoulder side while aiming pretty please, could be Mouse3? Kinda have the faint memory a game did that and it was fine 

-On the topic of third person control, it looks like you want to make a game with a jolly and cute main character moving around graciously and whatnot, I've been seeing the progress in the game for a while, seems like that's what you want to do and that's cool but I don't really see why the game is third person. 

Like, for the most part it feels to me that is for its detriment, for examples:

·Character very prominent on screen when aiming with gun and grapple, kinda annoying

·Environment has a lot of tight spaces, lots of camera collisions, kinda annoying

·Quite some verticality going on, bet the game would have lots of it, you look up, camera collides on floor, character very prominent on screen, kinda annoying

And maybe it's me, I'm heavily biased towards first person games because that's what I like to play and it's a point of view I feel very comfortable in but if you are making a third person games you want to work a lot on that camera, maybe add a trigger on start of tunnel sections so the camera is way closer, very on the shoulder on tight corridors, maybe do that too when aiming. Fade characters/meshes with a dithered mask if they are in the way of the camera so you don't have it colliding with stuff, etc, there are lots of tricks I bet you can learn to make the player more comfortable with this point of view.

The character itself looks swell, she moves quite graciously and it's rare to see indie games with decent animations, even if she has few right now they look good and feels very weighty with all the physics things, good stuff.

Same with the environment, they look boxy and kinda barren at the moment but the assets have some artstyle going on already. Wood looks fantastic. And there is already a vibe and atmosphere going on which is super nice.

Overall, there is stuff going on, cool shit.

Please read game page to know what this is about.

Hey, thanks for playing, this was a jam game and I'm not really gonna touch it but if I ever do more there will be fov and sensibility options as well as camera smoothing in case someone is fond of that.

As for the skulls I woke up the next day after submitting thinking that it would be way more fair if the skulls stopped near you and started exploding rather than just insta killing you in one hit, would have been way more fair but, oh well, it was too late.

Hope at least you had a comfy time flying around the maps, I'm really proud of how it looks.

Hey thanks for playing, I didn't really change the controls from that playthrough, I'm guessing it was PHI's one but I did add some more tutorial hints and changed a couple of things in levels to make things a small bit more clear. 

Which is something I did before sending it to the jam page and haven't touched the project since then as I want it to stay as it was for jam reasons.

Anyway I'm glad you had fun with it, seemed to me at first that not a lot of people get used to the movement and end up not having fun at all but comments like this reassure me that I'm not 100% insane, so thanks a lot for that.