I read "Hotline Miami" and your game caught my eye. This was a really neat game, I'm not sure if I've seen a turn-based twin-stick shooter before, which worked better than I expected. I also really enjoyed the death animations, both for the player and the enemies.
Based on your page's description, you seem to be very aware of what isn't working, and I've noted you've marked the game as incomplete, so I hope you don't take my feedback as being nitpicky since it largely boils down to polish:
- When running out of ammo it wasn't always clear what happened. Maybe a different sound effect for when the weapon fires its last, or a 'click' when the player attempts to shoot on empty might help
- The player's weapon orbits around, but it gives the appearance that the weapon is being held upside down when the player is facing left (I've tried handling this in Unity myself and it was an enormous pain)
- The player's facing updates when the player moves with the keyboard, however I think it would look more smooth if it updated as the player aimed with the mouse
Overall, I think this is a really solid entry. I also recognize that most of my feedback probably applies to the scripts you've marked as having carried over from your previous game. I'm looking forward to seeing more!
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Collecting Experience with RL Mechanics's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Roguelikeness | #148 | 2.309 | 4.000 |
Overall | #156 | 1.732 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Successful or Incomplete?
Did development of the game take place during the 7DRL Challenge week?
Is your game a roguelike or a roguelite?
Comments
Thanks for your detailed feedback! This is really helpful and exactly what I need!
I am glad you found the twin-stick mechanic to work better than expected, as I wasn't really sure if this mix of discrete and continuous movement/space/time would work out. In early playtests I even had autoprogression of turns (next turn triggers e.g. each 0.5 seconds), in order to increase the pressure on the player, because I feel like Hotline Miami et al. thrive a lot on the skillfull and precise execution of plans under given pressure. But this felt more like a twin-stick shooter with really crappy movement, than a roguelike, plus you can't come up with a plan to perform better next time, because well... next time there will be another level.
So yeah, really nice to hear this is working!
I am currently working on a more polished after-jam version and will try to address all the points you mentioned, plus some nicer level-generation and further polish. My brother even made some nice beats to go with the game. Maybe you can give that version a try, once its released ;)
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