Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
Tags

Juice Galaxy (formerly Juice World)

Floppy ragdoll rpg sandbox with physics-based combat · By fishlicka

My thoughts on this Juicy game

A topic by Bogo the Binter created Jan 02, 2022 Views: 285 Replies: 8
Viewing posts 1 to 7
(1 edit)

I made an account specifically to talk about this game, and first off I want to say I've had a lot of fun. Just messing around with it is just really entertaining and kept my attention for unhealthy amounts of time. The surrealism, the goofiness, the fact that it's weirdly easy to control, all just hits that feel that makes me want to keep playing. My experience however won't be universal so I'll go over things in particular I want to comment on. I may make additional posts for suggestions if needed, or just comment on this topic if I can. I say all of this with the knowledge that the game is going to be improved and updated regardless.

  • [Game Mechanics]: You mentioned adding another stat for Grimoires, along the lines of "Will" or something like that. If a different sort of equip layout also happens, I feel the option to equip two weapons or two grimoires would be fun, letting a player fully focus on one or the other. In its current state a Grimoire and weapon is required to get the most active buffs.
  • [Bug]: Sometimes when swapping out an equipped item with one in your inventory without there being space to pocket the first item, it will become bugged when dropped and prevent the player from picking it up again. I experienced this bug while trying to get juice out of some weapons, and ended up losing my best item because of it.
  • [Gameplay]: In my opinion the best boss in the game, in terms of challenge, is the Dream Eater. It covers a lot of things that make other bosses a lot easier to cheese. It can fly, decently fast too, and its arms give it a very dangerous range. You can't engage in melee combat, since it'll outpace you and get you caught in its arms more effectively than you can damage it. That means you'll need to focus on ranged attacks and avoidance, which is a little harder against a flying enemy. Dream Eater has the right features to be a simple but challenging fight depending on what point in the game you fight it. Even my "Endgame" build well beyond the Clog managed to die a few times. The closest thing would have to be the "Plunger Tornado" attack. It's a bigger hazard than the other plunger attacks by a large amount, but is still manageable.  The opposite effect is The Wawsp Queen. While she's my favorite due to the hat, her Stinger Launcher attacks are just too oppressive for such a wide open arena. I don't know if she can fly, I couldn't tell whenever I fought her, but if she had a less extreme firing speed on her Stingers (Since you're also dealing with an army of Wawsps at the same time), and could fly/hover, it'd be a bit more engaging. Currently the boss consists of hiding behind the castle walls and then peeking over to take cheap shots at the Queen while she's bashing the wall repeatedly.
  • [Bug]: You can just snipe Dream Eater out of the air with ranged attacks and it won't aggro, letting you kill the boss without ever fighting it.
  • [Gameplay]: A good portion of my messing around was spent flying around the wilds to see how long I could live using dumb strategies. Things I noted were at high enough levels certain enemies can't effectively attack you, or be drunk when killed, and in those scales item drops are nearly impossible to see or simply get launched when spawned. And then there're the Cuddlebugs. They were the only actual threat in the wilderness, with a normal high level spawn being an all out war of panic and spam due to their fast speeds, high base stats, and ability to actually attack you despite their massive sizes. An attack that one shots most enemies will be tanked 50 times over by the same level Cuddlebug. In the wilderness generic enemies being easily avoidable spaghetti with the occasional intense mini boss battle thrown in. I don't know if this is due to the Cuddlebugs scaling too much. or simply the other enemies becoming so hindered by their own size you couldn't tell they were a threat to begin with. Not even the frolgs could bounce at high enough levels.
  • [Game Mechanics and Gameplay]: The Good Juice item is probably one of the worst items to see drop. Any bonuses it has don't matter, and the juice it grants doesn't seem to scale with its item level or even size. You'll literally get more juice from shrinking it than drinking it.

Just saw the terrain update dropped and watched the Devlog. I'll have to play more again! Hopefully that inventory/item dropping bug was completely fixed.

Small issue I'd forgotten to note, the Stinger Missile Launcher shoots if you click in the menus, such as the inventory, fountain, and pause menu in general.

Small dialogue problem. When getting the quest to find a Juicesmith from the old man, he directs you past the "pollywog looking thing" but Hoahen is past the ripped fog giant now.

Developer

Thank you for the detailed reports! I didn't know about half of these so I appreciate the help.

No problem! I'll keep adding more onto this as I go along. I just finished going over stuff  to start listing, but a larger concern I have now is that it seems almost impossible to find a barn in the wilderness now. I kept flying around further and further but only ever found 1 after almost an hour of high speed flight, and it was only nearer the starting zone.

I'm not sure how helpful my new posts will be since I tried to cover a lot at once and may not have provided the best information. Aside from bugs, I hope there's something worthwhile I covered.

(1 edit)

Stuff to note after playing again after the Terrain update

  • [Gameplay/Bug]: The car is definitely a lot better to control, though now spawns outside the Graveyard regardless of if you got it from Signy at the Pollywog fog giant. If you choose to never get it from Signy it will continue to spawn there even if you die and spawn at a different fountain.
  • [Game Mechanics]: Too much of a weapon's level seems to go into its scale. This isn't too much of a problem during normal play, but makes high levels drops or console spawns nearly unusable.
  • [Bug]: The Pet Rock Grimoire's knockback scales way too high with its level, making it unable to effectively damage enemies and instead launch enemies at a high speed. This makes them detrimental in most cases since they'll be pushing around the things you want to hit. High enough level Pet Rocks just make it look like the enemy gets deleted due to the high knockback.
  • [Bug]: The Gator's model collapses in on itself at higher levels, as it becomes too heavy to walk or snap its jaws, much like other enemies who become less effective at high levels.
  • [Gameplay]: Due to the character's physics, weapons can get wrapped around their head, which makes ranged weapons impossible to aim until getting unstuck. It's also impossible to aim a ranged weapon while flying. Grimoires work perfectly fine in all cases, which is good.
  • [Game Mechanics]: Doing a Wawsp cosplay run (Queen's head, Stinger Launcher, and Pet Rocks for wawsps) has highlighted just how unwieldy the Stinger Missile Launcher is. The projectiles only lock on within a certain range, and only when fired, but you have no way of knowing what it wants to lock onto. If the issue with aiming were fixed, some sort of lock on visual would be helpful, along with letting the projectiles lock onto a new target if they don't have one.
(4 edits)

Stuff part 3

  • [Bug?]: Pet Rocks will aggro ontp friendly NPCs, like Ingot or Mr. Fox. They don't become hostile and the rocks just keep mobbing them until death.
  • [Bug]: Pet Rocks will aggro onto rocks and trees instead of enemies.
  • [Bug]: If the Wawsp Queen is stuck to a Gravity Sphere, she will not drop a head even if you start to drink her.
  • [Bug]: The Super Ripped Guy's bat didn't spawn in.
  • [Bug]: Swirly D. Spawned off of his toilet during the initial camera pan. He snapped into place when it moved to focus on him, but he was just kinda standing in front of the toilet until then.
  • [Bug]: You cannot destroy crates with ranged weapons.
  • [Cosmetic issue]: The Skull Helm clips through the player too much, making it so you can never see the colored eyesockets. Probably needs to be resized or repositioned when worn.
  • [Dialogue]: In the opening tutorial, Ingot will count any weapon you happen to pick up as the morning star and instantly skip to his second dialogue. There should probably be some alternate dialogue for picking up the morningstar before talking to him, and just bringing a random weapon.
  • [Gameplay]: The Kinesis Grimoire stays that it can crush things, but doesn't actually deal any damage to the enemies it picks up. The same goes for the Kinesis Wand (which doesn't drain Energy when used). If you could damage enemies by slamming them into other enemies, walls, or objects, it'd probably be fine.
  • [Gameplay]: The knockback on explosive attacks such as the Wawsp Missiles, Fireball, or Sun seem a bit drastic, especially against larger enemies who are already too floaty to retaliate. It leads to a lot of cases where you're trying to chase after the enemy you've launched too far back. If the enemy can't fly, it has no way to resist.
  • [Gameplay]: The sight of a level 9000 Pet Rock Grimoire in action is hilarious, even if you can't actually kill anything with your rock army. I also love that when you have enough Pet Rocks, they will start to stack on top of each other in order to launch into flying or high up enemies, zombie style. Just felt it was fun to mention.
  • [Game Mechanics]: On my first playthrough I had no idea what the Hydrangelas were for, and repeatedly attempted to feed the one found in the Ripped Fog Giant's eye, only to give up and kill it when I returned to find it didn't retain any of the juice I fed it. There should be some sort of introduction to them, since I had to look it up. You could probably use the Old Guy, since he's a farmer(?).
  • [Question]: NPCs like Hoagen, Ingot, Sgt. Suckerpunch, Stroll Demons, Cuddlebugs, and Gators (kinda) are able to walk just fine. Will other enemies be updated so they can walk?