First time playing it and only did the tutorial for now. Might try more (SFW ver) later. Can't complain about much since the tutorial did a good job of explaining things, though there are a LOT of controls to remember. The crouch jump wasn't obvious at first. I thought I had to time the "up" crouch and jump at the same time like in Half Life, but figured it out eventually. Good demo
Yomic
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My run was short lived, but here is what I ran into when I played:
- numpad isn't very intuitive even if you intend on using shift for orientation. I'd reccomend dir keys or WASD
- The movement was too fast. I would have expected to move one square at a time, but I was going about 3-4 at a time on average, even when I tapped the key lightly. Made it hard to go through doors or corridors or line up with stairs.
- When I went up one set of stairs, the room I entered was completely enclosed around my position so I couldn't move in any direction including back down stairs
Understandable! Aria, one of the characters has certain views about the history of the Church as well. Consider going down her route once it's out if you want to see how I resolve that issue. Otherwise, feel free to petition me for questions or accusations against the Church and I'll do my best to answer them honestly!
I'm glad you're intrigued! Just a clarification though, Eva is a succubus and not a demon in the true (or original succubus lore) sense. Demons theologically cannot be reformed so these monster people had to come from somewhere else... Guess you'll have to discover that in the full version when it's done :)
>too soon to be focusing
fair, I'll have to consider padding out interactions in the full version
>minimize religion
I feel that would defeat the purpose of the VN. Saying little things like "I'll pray for you" is both ineffective and still annoying to people who don't want anything to do with religion. This could all be balanced with more slice of life moments however.
>MC Mary Sue
Yeah, I'm trying to find a good balance for him. It want him to at least be balanced and open to enough things that he can related to any of the girls, but if having a bare minimum work out in the morning and only doing morning prayers still feels to much to some people, I'm not sure what level will satisfy people beside just making him literally an empty slob who does nothing ever. Popular with the ladies is a trope for sure, but a demo doesn't have a lot of time to build up relationship. Aria's route at least has her emotionally distant until the MC actually shows interest in her stuff. Clover couldn't care less about the MC unless he shows interest in games. Eva seems to have a bit of a crush by default. Sera is just friendly to everyone. And Wren is just going based on an interesting story she heard.
>Music lover Aria should differentiate between genres
She was being asked what genres she plays and lists them as four different genres. I'm not sure what you're getting at
>at every Opportunity the Author just goes "This Flower is very Beautiful. Like the Face of God, which changed my Life by the Way. If you open your Heart to them, you too could see the Light." And then continues on a page long Love letter instead of talking about the Flower in Question.
I feel that this is very disingenuous. The only time that Christianity is outright praised is in the religious literature class or inside of the books that are literally quoting Christian authors. Outside of that, it's just the MC trying to be a good Christian. You'll have to quote me anything more specific that comes across this blatantly sickeningly sweet and flowery
>the amount of it is overbearing
Even so, I'll still keep it in mind and lump it into consideration with what everyone else says. If enough people feel that it's too in your face and not enough people feel it's just right or too little, then I'll make accommodations for it to be less in your face, or at least space them out a lot more with more slice of life character interactions, but I already removed some "perfect Christian MC moments" that I'm thinking of reserving for another character anyways. The MC already feels like a lukewarm Christian to me who doesn't do a lot, but he IS self-conscious about that not that he's at a Catholic school. That's how I'm intending it to come off as anyways. It might also be because so much of our life is secular that having a thought a day about religion can seem like a lot when even in the past 150 years every thought might have been guided by religion.
>apologizing for criticism
Don't worry about it. I wouldn't be in AGDG if I couldn't handle criticism so criticize away!
Pretty neat little perspective for an action game
Basically every attack could use some variation or juice or sound effects, even placeholders
The shield could be limited a bit with a timer for how long it could be up, otherwise obviously it would be overpowered
The stun gun seemed to have too long of a cooldown imo for what it does
Changing the roll to Shift instead of ctrl would be easier to reach until you get customizable keyboard controls
I fell off the map in the obstacle course room. Having it put the player back into the arena if it falls below a certain y level should be standard even for demos
Once you start polishing, it could have some potential depending on where you take it since it is just a little tech demo.
Using the teleporter while in the spirit world teleported me into a wall or something so I had to exit the demo again
Having the teleporter as an item also can lead to the player accidentally using it instead of another intended item like a grenade, which sure, it's the player's fault, but it shouldn't really be an option especially if there's only one slot for secondary weapons and a teleport item can just take you out of action AND the middle of a dungeon
First off I'll clarify that the AI backgrounds are temporary and it's stated so in the opening. I'm paying an actual artist for BG assets, it just takes time to produce it. I just wanted a build for demo day for criticism on the text mostly.
>describing the girls in detail
I mean, it's a visual novel. The MC usually describes the things he sees giving insight on how the MC is thinking. Antennae talk is for a reason related to her backstory which is going to be in the full version.
>Advertisement of Christianity
About 65% of the people reading this so far haven't been Christian and they didn't have a problem with the level of Christianity in a Christian visual novel. Could you be more specific about the things you didn't like? I won't stop shilling Christianity in it, but if you think it's proselytizing or something, that could be a different problem.
>name saves
This is just the renpy system
>background inconsistencies
all temporary placeholders
>no breakfast
It's part of the story that the MC is lazy. Going down the tomboy dragon girl's route will lead to a self-improvement route
>harpy on the basketball team
No, she's a cheerleader. They play basketball in gym class, but she never flies
>class has more Christian advertising
It's literally a Catholic school. These are the kinds of things they teach and I got the books from an official Catholic school's book list
>Gabriel is good at things
He's a self insert like most MCs and he's average at basically everything. Literally jack of all trades, master of none. Self inserts aren't particularly deep characters usually.
>Gym in America and mixed
Yeah, lots of times gym in America is lazy except sometimes when the gym teacher feels like making everyone do track or dodge ball or something. Combined girls and boys is rare, sure, but this is a vn. It also has monster girls in it.
>Book choices are religious
It was an assignment, no my fault if you didn't pay attention to that part. If you follow Eva's route in the library instead of Clovers she'll offer some non-religious books too
>Mc has various interests
Yeah, you're not lying when YOU as the player want to focus on one to talk about. The MC has a history of trying a lot of things but not having a favorite. In VNs, you decide what the MC cares about most during the route you're playing in order to go down the routes of the girls you like.
>MC is perfect buy you have a problem if he has a bad diet
Yeah, even if it's minor, nothing about him is perfect, just average
>MC lies, this is not okay
I thought you had a problem with perfect MCs? I'm confused now. YOU assumed he was a perfect Christian after all
>Rock, Punk, Emo and Goth is evil
Again, your assumption. I like darker music too. She'll literally a goth vampire girl
>Advertising Christianity in the dorms
Not my fault you're ignoring the assigned homework, but it's also your choice to skip the Christianity in a Christian VN
>Eva is shy
Unfortunately, that's just the only sprite I have. She will be written to be more of a bratty tsundere, and the dere part is shy.
>Aria doesn't like dances
Goths usually don't like school functions. Could you imagine a school hosting a goth band? Neither can she
>Christian shilling
Yeah, again though that's going to be a thing because it's one of the only pro-Christian VNs around. The only problem I'd have with it is if it's actively proselytizing rather than evangelizing. If it's browbeating "atheist bad, Christian good" that could be a problem, but if it's saying "Christianity is a good alternative to the nihilism that everyone else is pedaling right now" then it's not a problem to me. I do have most of the girls in various religious states: Protestant, "spiritual but not religious or even Christian", atheist, devout Catholic, and pagan. Of course Christianity wins out in the end because that is what this is, just like 95% of anime/vns are just "might is right" or "my beliefs as the hero are right over the bad guy's beliefs because power of friendship" or something empty like that.
If anything here I've said is misrepresenting what you meant, please clarify. I want to take any good advice I see and have already implemented some advice to make it better, including being more inclusive to other viewpoints, so long as it doesn't completely contradict the main point of the VN. Thanks for taking the time to read and review!
- Impressed by the simplicity of cutscenes working so well
- A skip/speed read button would be nice for 2nd playthroughs or even first for people who would rather play the action parts
- If someone is mashing forward, give a decent amount of time before the same button will make a choice for them or don't let it be selected by default until the player hovers over a choice or pressed up/down to highlight one
- Combat was really bare bones and not interesting. You would have to try really hard to lose
- Enemy AI was bare bones dumb, but at least the pathfinding was okay
Overall could do well if the combat becomes more fun and the game doesn't rely TOO heavily on parody for jokes. I also hope choosing to go down a pure route won't screw the player over by not giving more than was "lost" or at least offer different options/benefits down the road even if it ends up being a fully coomer game rather than light ecchi.
> Movement isn't nearly precise
Technically not my words as I was quoting someone else. The movement was fluid, but it was hard to dodge things for me. Could be a skill issue, or my other suggestion with the dodge boosters could help me.
>difficulty didn't seem to reset
I don't know 100%, but I survived a LOT long the first time I played that the subsequent ones. I could've gotten lucky the first time, but honestly I thought I was running into the enemies without damage the first time too so I don't know exactly why it was harder the 2nd+ play-throughs. Sorry if that is more frustrating than helpful. Non-concrete answers suck
I'll reflect what Qwott said mostly:
-Movement isn't nearly precise enough and the camera is too close to avoid the kinds of things the game throws at you.
Additionally to this, I wonder if having back boosters could help add some complexity and allow the player some more freedom of movement
-the character floatings upwards on a balloon forever after you die forcing you to quit to the menu
Yeah, this was pretty annoying. You should be able to get right back into the main game loop with even just a single keyboard button so your hands don't have to leave the keyboard. A few seconds delay would keep people from accidentally starting a new session on accident as well.
Overall, pretty fun, though it was frustrating to keep on restarts have I had gotten so far since the difficulty didn't seem to reset
Thanks for the feedback!
>sprites are small
Yeah, I can do a lot with that. The full sized sprites could even fit a 4k game at this point so I have a lot of wiggle room for that. I'll experiment with waist up sprites. As it is currently, if I want to increase the full body sprite size I'd risk cutting off the priest's head at this point.
>log feature
I don't have a button for "history" right now, but I could add it. Ren'Py games have that feature by default by rolling up the mouse button. Alternatively, I have the "Back" button for going back one textbox at a time.
>sfx
Agreed!
>lull in day two + screen time with each girl
Understandable. I was worried about it dragging out too long BECAUSE I wanted to allow more time with each girl in a group or one-on-one setting. I feel Clover got a bad deal because in the common non-choice routes she doesn't get a lot of screen time whereas if you choose any route with her (during lunch or in gym) she basically dominates the discussion.
>Typo
Thanks for the feedback. Can't believe I didn't catch that on multiple read-throughs...
>About
Agreed, still working on the less important side menus. Will update ASAP.
Thanks again for the feedback!
>smoothing the hitboxes
Going back into the game, it might have to do with the player's hitbox vs the walls. This pic should illustrate what I mean. You should be able to do what the character on the right does here:
>awkward item controls
It was probably just a case of too many buttons for me to want to bother to reach for 1 or 2 mid fight or while I'm in danger. More a personal quirk than a flaw.
>end of demo
Yes, I guess I meant end of the tutorial. I must have misread. At that point it was more open and I ran out of time to keep going. Don't know if there's a continue function, but it might be nice to have that in case a player drops the game and wants to come back later.
I feel the melee system could be made more fun if the player has just a bit more range than the enemies, but once I got the sword, that was mostly solved.
When I first got to the poison enemy, it was hard to tell where it was because it kept backing into the trees. For situations like this, consider dimming the foregrounds that are directly in front of the player and affected enemy, with almost no exceptions even for ambushes.
I think you should have the "Switch between items" sign near where you can swap them out in the first place.
I appreciated the stab system once I learned it. The game is surprisingly complex.
I think you should work on smoothing out the wall hitboxes to not just being an even 32x32
Consider speeding up the player's speed OR zoom in your camera a bit so it seems like everything is going "faster" because as it is it "feels" slow.
Playing with a KB/M setup it was awkward to even want to use the items besides the healing juice because they don't give enough benefit to justify me remembering to use them. If poison was worse or the stamina potion recovered much more it could be worth it.
It was amusing to see all the enemies die to drowning, but I'm not sure that was intended?
The more systems that were added onto the game the more fun it was and I think that you have just the right number of active combat systems to not be too complex. It surprised me that I finished it because it was hard at some points but I did get to where the sign said end of demo. I explored a bit more (made it to the smithy place before giving up). Overall, good demo. I think it has great potential once polished up a bit.
Hey all! I just released another game. This one's in the platformer genre, styled after the blue bomber himself! I hope you enjoy!
Alphaman is an action platformer with classic, run, jump, dash, and shoot combat about an android taking down some bots gone bad. The a group of hackers known as the Red Bombers have unleashed a virus infecting every day robots. Even more dangerous are the bots who were formerly modified by their previous owners to enter into android fighting tournaments. It's up to Alpha to stop the bad bots and take down the Red Bombers!
The bug is noted, I know how to fix that one.
The slight pause on the sword charge shot is based on Zero from X3, which grounds you when you use it for a short period. It's a small drawback for the powerful attack you get for being in melee range that can be deadly if you use it at the wrong time.
The controls are made to feel like X all the way, but the dash probably does deserve a smaller hitbox. Dash jumping is also a thing too so Down + A might not work well.
Thanks for the in depth critique and compliments!
Thanks for the reports!
- I'll play with the archer projectile a bit
- At the moment, you're right. The energy mechanic is mostly a convenience as it's currently implemented. I might have to do something different with it
- Walljumps are currently better in the development build. If you are merely next to a wall by 1px, you will be able to jump against it even if you aren't pushing towards this. MMX had the mechanic this way so I emulated that. It's still not 1 to 1 with X because X has an animation delay and Alphaman currently does not so I'll get some more opinions after this tweak.
- I'll check out the holy water stuff, thanks
- I believe I have fixed the delta issue in the dev build, I'll get some others to test it and test it without vsync.
Hey, thanks for the playthrough and review.
I'm getting music done for the game right now and audio rework is coming up next.
The input buffer for walljumps sounds like something I'll have to do. I recently had people tell me that the wall jump didn't make you go out enough so I increased the time the player doesn't have control from 0.15s to 0.20s.
I also noticed during the maidbot and chefbot fights that they didn't jump nearly as high as they do on my computer. Mind if I get your computer specs? And were you using OBS or another recorder? I'm wondering if delta calculation had anything to do with it.
It's more of a feeling that the dash should be longer. Playing games like Nier: Automata have spoiled me as a player into feeling that longer dashes aren't a burden on gameplay, but only enhance the experience by allowing a better dodge mechanic and easier time travelling longer distances. Liken it to games that allow players to dash; which game feels better: The game that has a short stamina bar, or the game that has either a longer stamina bar or does away with it altogether? In the end, that question will be different for each game, but I feel that at least for this game a longer dash (at least by double) would feel better
Pretty enjoyable typing action game, just enough juice to feel powerful. Excellent pixel art
- After I lost against the first boss, the chains from the spectre no longer appeared when I fought them.
- I feel it would be nice if you could just hit 'enter' if you mess up a word to restart typing with a clear slate unless it's the intention for having to backspace be a punishment for mis-spelling.
I wasn't able to play it except once out of 6 tries to open it. It would "open" and run in the task manager, but it there would be no window. The one time it did open, I couldn't click on any cards (I could hover over them just fine). Computer specs in case it's relevant: Windows 8.1, Nvidia 960M, i7-4720HQ
This is a pretty good start to what can be a lot more fun. I feel once you have a real character model it'll be easier to get a feel for it, but make things a bit snappier for a better feel. I also feel the dash should be longer, maybe even by double. The most satisfying move for me is the charged sword-dash attack. Keep up the good work!
I had been looking forward to playing this for a while and I wasn't disappointed. I finished it in 15:56 time. Very few quips: The boards on the door were sometimes hard to hit. Maybe instead of giving them small hitboxes, just give them one big one that's about the size of the door or at least the area that all the boards together occupy.
Amazing atmosphere. Can't wait to see what you do with it in the future!
Finished the game by idling around lunchtime. About the only gameplay thing I would change would be to find a way to let it run in the background if you are tabbed away. Works fine when you change windows though. Perhaps vary the attacks for some aesthetic appeal (magic, bow, etc). Fun little time-waster
Thanks for the feedback! Most of the issues mentioned are planned to be fixed or are fixed like the background issue and the loud sound effects. 23:30 (where you were launched across the screen) was hilarious and not by design.
I definitely need to tighten up the dash, control is very import to me. I think I just need to force the player to stay in a dashing state for a few milliseconds instead of relying purely on buttonUp events. I also don't think you can change the sensitivity setting for a trigger button on a controller, it's just a button down event.
I wanted to give the player free special attacks in place of charge attacks, but you made a good point in that the player won't be able to expect what's coming next. I think to compensate that, I'll change the sword charge attack a bit more. I'll keep the short projectile, but lose the grounding. I'll need to change the animation as well. The idea of the projectile part of the charged shot being "weak" is that normal lemonshots do 1 damage, charged projectile does 2, and the sword itself does 8 (but only 2 to bosses).
Enemy placements have changed as well. Anywhere you see a "player energy/weapon energy" location next to each other, that's where an upgrade will be.






