I think there are some good ideas like shooting an explosive barrel or even sliding. The punch has a short range though, and it would have been nice to be able to crouch to avoid some of the bullets.

Oh, and it would be cool to have some checkpoints because starting from the begining each time is a bit annoying. 

Anyway, the story was interesting. :) 

Mmm…

Welp, I played it as much as I could. I did all of the extra missions (murder section, intel section, and robbing section). I also got to story mission 2, but could not progress past the first boss part. I tried three times, but nothing except a soft lock happened when I killed them all. Thus, I will only be rating this game on the sections I played.

Now… I want you to bear in mind that this is a much better game that most people could ever dream of creating, and that any criticism I give is not to dismay that fact. You did well.

Okay. Let’s start with what I liked because everyone likes to hear praise.

Weirdly, I actually liked the art style. You don’t need to be a master class painter to project an image to the player, and you prove it. The simplistic design mirrors the dreadful nature of the organization, as well as brings the player’s focus to the front and center. You know what the player needs to do, and you make the player understand immediately as well. That’s good.

I also liked the marketing you did in the discord. You made me genuinely excited to play this before the submission period ended. That’s very good!

This game also mimicked a more classical NES style, which is much appreciated. Everything from the floaty jump to the difficult but consistent/slow mechains are all mimicked perfectly. I felt that was fun.

Obviously, the variety you gave in the player’s gameplay was also good. You won’t see many game jam games here with side quests!

Now…let’s get into my criticisms. Again, one of these is not to discourage you, but to help raise you up.

First off, the GUI was clipping into the background. This made it hard to see how many lives or bullets you had left in some rooms. A black outline, or decreasing the alpha of backgrounds would have helped this.

Secondly, the enemies were a bit jank with the hitboxes. For example, you can literally just walk into the single-shotting enemy, and then the enemy just teleports on top of you. Other enemy’s hitboxes are just as jank. You can’t jump when directly in front of the punch enemy. You can get hit when standing on a regular punch enemy (far away from their actual punch). You can shoot your gun through enemies. And you can get hit from behind an enemy too. All of this can be fixed with a few hitbox adjustments.

Thirdly, killing enemies is a tedious and annoying process. Sorry to say that so frankly, but it is. There is no joy in it. …which would work fantastic as a gameplay mechanic. After all, the MC doesn’t want to kill people. Discouraging the player to kill like this, although is a waste of a mechanic, would fit the MC’s personality well!

…but then there are sections where you literally have to kill to progress.

You will not believe how long I struggled in the first tutorial mission. I tried to get past, without killing anyone, for soooooo long. All because of that little “I don’t want to kill” the MC had at the beginning. I even glitched past those two punching enemies, near the first explosive barrel, after much trial and error. …only to get greeted with, what I assume is a train top segment where I could not jump over a single enemy. …right in front of the hardest enemy (the muli-shooter), preventing any chance at had at glitching past… AND THEN I found a big boss that I had to kill in order to progress at all!!!

My day was ruined and my disappointment was immeasurable.

Jokes aside, I felt more joy finding ways to avoid enemies than “move forward, punch, move back, wait, repeat until enemy dead”, you know? That’s kind of why the murder missions are both my least and most favorite. I was ecstatic every time you placed the ceiling high enough that I could jump over each enemy, but also annoyed every time the ceiling was too close. In the Murder missions, in fact, there were times when the ceiling was just high enough to jump over a regular punch enemy, but not enough to jump over the Hulk enemy. …which was confusing and sad.

Speaking of which, I found an enemy embedded in the ground in the first murder mission. A multi-shooter enemy. I also jumped over the first gap in that mission (the one you have to jump down), thinking I was on the right path, but only to realize I was going the wrong way due to a lack of direction.

Also, the muli-shooter enemy is OP. I don’t think that’s the type of enemy that should go in a tutorial mission, but meh. That’s up to opinion.

Now, continuing on with the combat system, I don’t like the bullet system much. I get the idea of limiting bullets. Things would probably be too easy if you had infinite ammo. …however, I do feel the gun to be underpowered too.

My idea of the gun was always “oh cool. I guess this can save time.” instead of “better save and use wisely.” If it could kill Hulk enemies in one shot, then I would definitely value it more, but as it is now…? It’s just best to get rid of annoying enemies that can’t be dodged and you don’t want to waste time on. Might as well use up the whole clip at the start of each mission and just punch everything else.

…with the sole exception of those muli-shooter enemies. Those, I like to kill immediately because they are so overpowered.

Speaking of which, those explosive barrels did not seem as effectively used as they could have been. Honestly, it felt like more work to use them to kill enemies than it was…to just kill the enemies manually. This is because the barrel also hurt me, the player, if too close.

I’m all too familiar with the concept of making things consistent, but sometimes it is better to give the player favoritism. Making the player immune to the explosive barrel would have given me more incentive to play creatively around the barrels. However, as they are now, they are more of an obstacle. Perhaps that was what you were going for? But, the way you represented them in the tutorial mission didn’t make it seem that way, so I don’t know. Shrugs.

Moving on from combat, let’s now talk about the other three side missions you put for the player. I actually liked the idea of these a lot! Although short and few, they gave a player variety in their gameplay. It wasn’t just “move, punch, repeat” anymore.

There are still some problems though.

You already know about my love/hate relationship with the murder missions. They were fun while trying to find a way not to kill the enemies, but tedious when being forced to kill enemies. This can be fixed in a lot of ways, but I honestly think this game is fine when put in the context of the rest of the game. I like it for a reason after all.

The second mission I tried was intel. Again, I loved this one as well. I didn’t have to kill anything, I just needed to get from point A to point B without being caught.

The problem was that I had no clue where the danger sections were and what the goal was to begin with. It took me a while to figure out that the mountain-thingy, in the first intel mission, was the goal. I would have also liked it if you drew a line to represent the enemy’s line of sight. I feel that would have helped players strategize.

Finally, there was the robbing mission. …this is the one I had the most quarrel with.

The problem here is that you put some money in obscure, far-off places. Keep in mind that these are not bonuses to reward the player for exploration. These are things you HAVE to collect. Being forced to walk several seconds to get one money, then walk those seconds back, is not the most entertaining gameplay. No offense meant.

Finally, there is the dialog. Again, I was soft-locked out of the main story, so I can’t really talk much about that. Instead, I’ll be focusing on what I received from the side mission you gave.

The first thing I noticed was the excessive amount of times you played dialog without the character’s voice. I get this one personally. When I was making battles with the Unitale engine a long time ago, there was just so much I wanted to emphasize in my created dialog. Thus, I blocked the voice out, or did a bunch of fan effects, hoping everything would HOP each time I did!

…it, in fact, did not pop. While in development, I realized “Hey…these are kind of bland.” Removing the voice should be used to emphasize very important stuff, but it can also grow mundane if used too much. I understand that everything is important, but you just need to deprioritize some things to give more impact, you know? Everyone in that organization is a Debby Downer, so it’s not really important to emphasize the fact that everyone is suffering every time they complain about it.

Also, I don’t really think the story makes sense. Let me be real with you. If the MURDER organization leader is upset with the boss, that boss should really be afraid. If the intel leader is upset with the boss, let’s just say they have connections.

Maybe it is explained later in the story I was softlocked out of, but yeah… I guess I’ll just attribute it all to game logic and be done with it.

OH! Also, just checking my notes again, I almost forgot to mention dialog skippings. Sometimes, the text speed was too slow for me, but I still wanted to read the story you had. Unfortunately, when I clicked the mouse, the next set of dialog played instead of the whole of the current dialog being displayed. This is a small thing, but a useful thing to add for a player’s enjoyment.

Anyway, I think that’s everything I had in my notes. Once again, I’m just one person, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I’m not all-knowing in the ways of games, obviously. In the end, you do you. And YOU made a game that most other people can’t even dream of making realistically.

For that, I tip my hat off. Very well done. I can’t wait to see where your future in game dev takes you.

Thank you for sharing.

really good and fun game but when I played I found a few bugs like

 
half of the enemies just became invincible and I couldn't go through tight corridors on murder wing II when you start spamming gun you get unlimited ammo but shooting enemy in it's invincibility frame makes him stay in that state