The game is really nice and it feels more fast pacing also the music and game play kinda reminds in the castlevania symphony of the night, you did a lot of work when just to get this game right I do have to admit that I have to git gut in this game of yours but fun to play it. also question, this a full game right?
This little bit is the progress I had for Demo Day 16. Eventually, more stuff will be added and the game will be in a complete state. I hope to make it a fully fleshed out game in the end!
I do apologize for such a linear level, lol. When I have map screens working, I will definitely work on the first official area for next demo day. I'm going to write out my responses while watching the video here:
saw two bugs that are very annoying (Layna pushing wall in wrong direction, projectile stacking when spamming frame perfect). Will fix.
I do have it set to a gradual increase when turning directions, but I agree, it should be more instantaneous when in full run. More snap.
I plan on adding an action when pressing dash in air while not moving. Not sure what it will be yet though.
bug in animation when dying during attack animation. Will fix.
there will be more options to beat the boss, as you'll have more weapons to use (such as a projectile that acts like an axe throw in Castlevania). That should help out with the difficulty a little more as well as when leveling up is added. I haven't gotten around to the final design and progression for them yet. Roll is very useful and I saw that you weren't using it to dodge his attacks, so I'll have to keep that in mind on how to let the player know that rolling is really good in the game's official tutorial section.
you were attacking in the air with three rapid strikes. Wasn't even aware three was possible. Impressive!
I think one of the great things I saw from your video is the amount of time it generally takes for the player to understand the boss's attack pattern, spacing, and overall feel. I am sinister sometimes, so I was amused when the boss caught you in its slam when transitioning to phase 2. I will add though a slight little rise to the boss before he slams down which will help telegraph the attack more.
Thank you for playing the demo, your feedback, and also the video!
I had fun playing this. The potential it possesses to be a great Metroidvania is great and it will be exciting to see the project progress from here when you get to start working on an actual 'castle' (or equivalent) map.
The animation is clean and cute which both go a long way to making it fun to play and kept me engaged enough to give it multiple run throughs.
Combat felt good but I must admit in it's current form the shooting felt very unsatisfying. This will most likely change when/if it gets upgrades later.
The only thing I saw was that sometimes when killing the stacked turret enemies the top ones wouldn't fall down after clearing out a bottom one. This was rectified by killing the next one up which seemed to correct the logic and they would fall accordingly. Really good stuff here!
I suck at platformers, so prepare to wince. The purples and enemies in general looked good, except the cloaked-type character, I think their saturation was too similar to the background so it didn't look good. But maybe thats part of the cloak effect. I got confused after being revived at a savepoint and went the wrong direction for a bit. The glowstick throwing enemy has a nice arc. Players death animation is pretty brutal. I didn't realize you can shoot upwards (due to my suckiness). For the boss fight, it felt like sometimes the boss wasn't being hit even though it seemed like it should be. Also having to jump up on the boxes was tough for me because I kept wanting to double jump as soon as I could, instead of holding the button down for the full initial jump. Again I'm a pleb at these, so I never got the hang of it. Also the boss elements moved outside of the areas I was allowed to move through, so it felt like I was constantly getting gimped by the level geometry. But overall, nice, Im sure a veteran platformer player would enjoy it. I realized it didn't detect my controller because it wasn't plugged in, which probably would have made a difference, the z/x/c really sucked to try and use. Around 8:25 there is some kind of bug where I can't jump and shoot, however the ammo counter still goes down.
I think I had Vsync turned off for this build, so that may be why it was not displaying the flash correctly. Just know that as long as it is making that hit sound, you are doing damage.
First off, really great controls. I played around in the start pool area for a good while just playing with the controllers before heading out any further, which is a pretty good sign. I honestly haven't that much to say about the game, it played really nicely and it pretty fun (especially the boss).
I guess that the only complain I have was that the way leading up to the boss was a bit long and that the large waves of enemies really didn't compel me to stay around and fight them. Like they were pretty easy to fight against, but near the end I just did my best to skip them. Maybe if they were to occasionally drop health/stamina/energy it would feel more rewarding to slay them.
Thank you for playing and the feedback! I hope to eventually make bigger enemies that take up a lot of space or are highly aggressive, as right now these are just the few beginning ones.
Nice work. I really like this. The character is well animated and feels good to control. Run speed, acceleration, jump height, etc... all feel good and polished. That "starting run" animation adds a lot of character, even though it's short. I like how you have that without having a delay to the movement. The "float time" in the air is cool, I think it makes your jump mechanics stand out a bit. Kind of a short Peach float, before you start falling. The dash feels good, the shape of the motion is useful and interesting. Back-dash when you're not holding a button is a good idea. Great work on the camera, it feels smooth and natural. I think you're on track to have a very nice platformer.
A few crits/suggestions though. When you release jump, you can divide the y velocity by something between 2 and 4. This will make it smoothly stop, instead of setting the y velocity to 0 and making it instantly stop. Infinite range on the gun reduces the strategy of most encounters. Just stay as far away as possible and shoot. Shorter range would force players to get in closer to enemies, risking more. This would also set you up for a nice upgrade later.
The stamina bars are really hard to make work. In my game, I had a system like that for quite a while. Every attack/roll would use up some stamina. But no matter what I tried, it never really added anything to the game. It just seemed to the players to randomly make things stop working. Even once they figured it out, it never felt natural or fun in any way. And the same problem is in your game. There is nothing fun about not being able to shoot or dodge. It's just frustrating. All you can do, as far as I can tell, is sit around and wait for it to recharge. If you watch people play, that is usually a hard stop for them. If you can find a way to make this work, good on you. I couldn't and I'm glad to have taken it out of my game. In it's place is a positive system, where you're rewarded with more powerful attacks if you can build up energy. Instead of a negative system, where you're punished for doing the main things you're supposed to be doing (attacking and dodging).
If you're like me at all, you were looking at Dark Souls to see how its stamina system worked. The stamina in that game was really the backbone of the entire experience. But what I found was that the slower timing of confrontations, and the way they used space was why it worked at all. It forced you to pace yourself, and balance your attacks and defenses. Then, you could run away/run around if you used too much stamina, and that act itself was fun. In 3D space, you have to watch the aggressor, and try to avoid them while you're vulnerable. That's all much much harder in a 2D side view game.
I agree, figuring out how to make stamina work is a pain. My reasoning behind its implementation though is that it help make rolling be less OP, as it has invincibility frames. It also helps prevent me from making more difficult enemies and bosses. Stamina management is easier for the player than quick reflexes. I am thinking of reworking some of its elements though, as currently it will also disable backdashing, which while it does promote that sense of sudden danger, it is a bit frustrating and almost offensive. I do like the idea of the projectiles being a much shorter range and will implement that.
I love how every animation flows smoothly! The basic attack feels a little too long and the energy recharges fast enough for me to spam how many projectiles I want. I noticed when shooting, the girl will hold the square shooty thingy with her hands, but when jumping it will float around, causing shots to be less accurate. I don't know if that's a bug or a feature. Good job! Keep it up!
Currently that is a feature, but if playtesting sessions dictate a problem in the future, then I will have to make some animations for it. I will need to look at how fast the recharge is though, so thank you for pointing that out. The basic attack's hitlength is long on purpose, as it is the last weapon in the game. If you are able to beat the game fast enough, you'll also see how terrible the first starting weapon is.
Thank you for the feedback and for playing the demo!
I anticipated playing this while seeing your webms in the threads. I am very interested in any game similar to my favorite CV games! This is a very very fun and exciting demo. I had a very very hard time with the boss, but I'd say it's just because I am bad, to be honest. But at the same time I very much dislike having roll on the shift key, granted I haven't played a platformer with a dodge roll in either a very very long time or ever at all. I got more and more used to it, and the boss probably took me 8-10 tries.
I didn't understand why I couldn't jump at certain times, and it was because I was running and shooting, and while still holding down arrow keys, was trying to jump. The jumps never worked until after I let go of the arrow keys and tried again. It looked like my little helper buddy was stuck on my gun, was that intentional, to show shes charging it or something?
Great boss design! his moves were choreographed to where even when I went in the first time, I felt like I saw what was coming. At the same time, the strategy I used to win was just hide in the lower corner of the walls to auto dodge the smash attacks. Though, after I won, I came back to this page and saw you increased the shot frequency (I was playing an old version... shit!). That will probably stifle my cheesy strategy.
Very sweet game, I don't see much wrong with it other than my previous statement and lack of controller config.
Keep up the great work and this can be a huge success, one of my faves so far for sure!
Thank you for playing as well as the feedback! I'm very glad you enjoyed it!
The jumping in relation with the running while firing has been fixed, so you were playing an outdated build unfortunately. The rolling being set to SHIFT has been giving mixed feedback from players, but this will automatically be fixed once I have keybinding.
Wanted to play this for a while and wasn't dissapointed at all. You got the metroidvania feel perfectly. Graphics are cute, and animations look nice and smooth. Some observations:
Sometimes the ranged attack gets bugged and doesn't shoot at all, but a couple of seconds after all the shots appear together like they had lag.
After a Game Over screen level's music never plays again.
Boss needs some kind of health bar to see how much you have damaged it.
Enjoyed it a lot and can't wait for the next demo. Good job!
Love it, i already gave you feedback in discord but looking forward to following this. A control rebind is the only thing i really wish was in there :)
It's pretty well made, kinda wish you could attack upward though, pretty much agree with what khryse has to say for the most part. I'd suggest making the attack prompt to be more obvious, I didn't notice it the first time through and figured it out on my own a couple screens after I was supposed to. Maybe I'm just dumb.
The boss has way too much HP, especially one that you can beat by camping in one spot for the first two phases. It took me a good dozen tries, but it got boring near the end once I figured out you can shoot the projectiles, and his slamming attack has a couple openings that are never touched. It's a good boss, just a bit lengthy for what it was.
Also, I really really wish there were joypad controls.
Like is an understatement of what I think about Castlevania. :) I'm sorry there were no Joypad controls. I'll add them for the next demo day though. Thank you for the feedback!
I always enjoy seeing your progress and your demo is really well done and polished so much that you should probably move onto making levels if you're not already.
You can't have your first slide obstacle that is just the size of your slide, getting stuck is no fun.
The boss slam attack was feeling downright broken with how fast and unwiduppy it is, but the design was cool and the boss fight was fun, once i got over the frustration.
The final form was sort of bad, because you can only attack in front of you (i see another comment mentioning ranged attacks, i don't know they existed!), but if there's a ranged attack, i guess he's okay. I ended standing in palce and punching him while soaking up the damage.
The lightwhip seems a tad bit too OP, it's fast, straight and deadly to almost everything.
Overall i really liked it, except fro the antialiased text in the main menu (also really bright menu, jeez)
The slide width has been adjusted to one block length now as suggested.
You can also cancel your whips into a roll or backdash. It is a tech skill that is not conveyed in these kind of games, but if the boss is being an annoyance in this way, I'll see if I can add some knockback to the boss to prevent players from needing to soak damage.
It is op yes, as it is the last weapon in the game :) , but if players beat the demo fast enough, they'll be able to play it again with the weakest weapon in the game. I hope people will like the quick easter egg made for demo day if they do beat it fast enough!
The text! Yeah, I have no idea why there is antialiasing on it, as Fusion just tries to make it "prettier" for you when it really isn't. A lot of the text is definitely temporary though and I'm looking into workarounds that prevent that from happening.
Boss fight was pretty fun. Had some issues with the ranged attack (I expected it to work in the air also?) and double jump acted a bit oddly sometimes. I recorded a full playthrough if that helps you any https://my.mixtape.moe/htmrvx.webm .
Thank you for the feedback! People have reported some major issues with the projectile attack, I had to quickly update the game to disable it. I'm working on an update to fix that as fast as I can and have it work on the boss as well as in the air. I'm glad you enjoyed the current progress!
Neat game, controls feel good. Couldn't figure out how to drop down platforms until the thread told me.
Maybe put in some more checkpoints, when I died at the fourth (I think) spike floor I got sent all the way back to the start of the grey area, felt like quite a lot to do again.
Also, after dying the music disappeared and didn't come back.
Thank you for trying out the build and your feedback! The music should of played after you enter the room again from that one corridor, but if it didn't play, I'll have to look through and figure out where it's not starting.
Comments
The game is really nice and it feels more fast pacing also the music and game play kinda reminds in the castlevania symphony of the night, you did a lot of work when just to get this game right I do have to admit that I have to git gut in this game of yours but fun to play it. also question, this a full game right?
This little bit is the progress I had for Demo Day 16. Eventually, more stuff will be added and the game will be in a complete state.
I hope to make it a fully fleshed out game in the end!
Then I wish you luck on your progress of this game you created
Fun, cute, feels solid, good turn around animations, I wish I could explore something instead of the linear level. Pretty good overall!
I do apologize for such a linear level, lol. When I have map screens working, I will definitely work on the first official area for next demo day. I'm going to write out my responses while watching the video here:
I think one of the great things I saw from your video is the amount of time it generally takes for the player to understand the boss's attack pattern, spacing, and overall feel. I am sinister sometimes, so I was amused when the boss caught you in its slam when transitioning to phase 2. I will add though a slight little rise to the boss before he slams down which will help telegraph the attack more.
Thank you for playing the demo, your feedback, and also the video!
I had fun playing this. The potential it possesses to be a great Metroidvania is great and it will be exciting to see the project progress from here when you get to start working on an actual 'castle' (or equivalent) map.
The animation is clean and cute which both go a long way to making it fun to play and kept me engaged enough to give it multiple run throughs.
Combat felt good but I must admit in it's current form the shooting felt very unsatisfying. This will most likely change when/if it gets upgrades later.
The only thing I saw was that sometimes when killing the stacked turret enemies the top ones wouldn't fall down after clearing out a bottom one. This was rectified by killing the next one up which seemed to correct the logic and they would fall accordingly. Really good stuff here!
Don't worry, I do plan on having plenty of projectile upgrades in the long run. Thank you for playing the demo!
I suck at platformers, so prepare to wince. The purples and enemies in general looked good, except the cloaked-type character, I think their saturation was too similar to the background so it didn't look good. But maybe thats part of the cloak effect. I got confused after being revived at a savepoint and went the wrong direction for a bit. The glowstick throwing enemy has a nice arc. Players death animation is pretty brutal. I didn't realize you can shoot upwards (due to my suckiness). For the boss fight, it felt like sometimes the boss wasn't being hit even though it seemed like it should be. Also having to jump up on the boxes was tough for me because I kept wanting to double jump as soon as I could, instead of holding the button down for the full initial jump. Again I'm a pleb at these, so I never got the hang of it. Also the boss elements moved outside of the areas I was allowed to move through, so it felt like I was constantly getting gimped by the level geometry. But overall, nice, Im sure a veteran platformer player would enjoy it. I realized it didn't detect my controller because it wasn't plugged in, which probably would have made a difference, the z/x/c really sucked to try and use. Around 8:25 there is some kind of bug where I can't jump and shoot, however the ammo counter still goes down.
I think I had Vsync turned off for this build, so that may be why it was not displaying the flash correctly. Just know that as long as it is making that hit sound, you are doing damage.
Thank you for playing the demo and the feedback!
First off, really great controls. I played around in the start pool area for a good while just playing with the controllers before heading out any further, which is a pretty good sign. I honestly haven't that much to say about the game, it played really nicely and it pretty fun (especially the boss).
I guess that the only complain I have was that the way leading up to the boss was a bit long and that the large waves of enemies really didn't compel me to stay around and fight them. Like they were pretty easy to fight against, but near the end I just did my best to skip them. Maybe if they were to occasionally drop health/stamina/energy it would feel more rewarding to slay them.
The boss was great, tough as nails but great.
Thank you for playing and the feedback! I hope to eventually make bigger enemies that take up a lot of space or are highly aggressive, as right now these are just the few beginning ones.
Nice work. I really like this. The character is well animated and feels good to control. Run speed, acceleration, jump height, etc... all feel good and polished. That "starting run" animation adds a lot of character, even though it's short. I like how you have that without having a delay to the movement. The "float time" in the air is cool, I think it makes your jump mechanics stand out a bit. Kind of a short Peach float, before you start falling. The dash feels good, the shape of the motion is useful and interesting. Back-dash when you're not holding a button is a good idea. Great work on the camera, it feels smooth and natural. I think you're on track to have a very nice platformer.
A few crits/suggestions though. When you release jump, you can divide the y velocity by something between 2 and 4. This will make it smoothly stop, instead of setting the y velocity to 0 and making it instantly stop. Infinite range on the gun reduces the strategy of most encounters. Just stay as far away as possible and shoot. Shorter range would force players to get in closer to enemies, risking more. This would also set you up for a nice upgrade later.
The stamina bars are really hard to make work. In my game, I had a system like that for quite a while. Every attack/roll would use up some stamina. But no matter what I tried, it never really added anything to the game. It just seemed to the players to randomly make things stop working. Even once they figured it out, it never felt natural or fun in any way. And the same problem is in your game. There is nothing fun about not being able to shoot or dodge. It's just frustrating. All you can do, as far as I can tell, is sit around and wait for it to recharge. If you watch people play, that is usually a hard stop for them. If you can find a way to make this work, good on you. I couldn't and I'm glad to have taken it out of my game. In it's place is a positive system, where you're rewarded with more powerful attacks if you can build up energy. Instead of a negative system, where you're punished for doing the main things you're supposed to be doing (attacking and dodging).
If you're like me at all, you were looking at Dark Souls to see how its stamina system worked. The stamina in that game was really the backbone of the entire experience. But what I found was that the slower timing of confrontations, and the way they used space was why it worked at all. It forced you to pace yourself, and balance your attacks and defenses. Then, you could run away/run around if you used too much stamina, and that act itself was fun. In 3D space, you have to watch the aggressor, and try to avoid them while you're vulnerable. That's all much much harder in a 2D side view game.
Thank you for playing the game and the feedback!
I agree, figuring out how to make stamina work is a pain. My reasoning behind its implementation though is that it help make rolling be less OP, as it has invincibility frames. It also helps prevent me from making more difficult enemies and bosses. Stamina management is easier for the player than quick reflexes. I am thinking of reworking some of its elements though, as currently it will also disable backdashing, which while it does promote that sense of sudden danger, it is a bit frustrating and almost offensive. I do like the idea of the projectiles being a much shorter range and will implement that.
Great game! Feels good and polished!
I love how every animation flows smoothly! The basic attack feels a little too long and the energy recharges fast enough for me to spam how many projectiles I want. I noticed when shooting, the girl will hold the square shooty thingy with her hands, but when jumping it will float around, causing shots to be less accurate. I don't know if that's a bug or a feature. Good job! Keep it up!
Currently that is a feature, but if playtesting sessions dictate a problem in the future, then I will have to make some animations for it. I will need to look at how fast the recharge is though, so thank you for pointing that out. The basic attack's hitlength is long on purpose, as it is the last weapon in the game. If you are able to beat the game fast enough, you'll also see how terrible the first starting weapon is.
Thank you for the feedback and for playing the demo!
I didn't understand why I couldn't jump at certain times, and it was because I was running and shooting, and while still holding down arrow keys, was trying to jump. The jumps never worked until after I let go of the arrow keys and tried again. It looked like my little helper buddy was stuck on my gun, was that intentional, to show shes charging it or something?
Great boss design! his moves were choreographed to where even when I went in the first time, I felt like I saw what was coming. At the same time, the strategy I used to win was just hide in the lower corner of the walls to auto dodge the smash attacks. Though, after I won, I came back to this page and saw you increased the shot frequency (I was playing an old version... shit!). That will probably stifle my cheesy strategy.
Very sweet game, I don't see much wrong with it other than my previous statement and lack of controller config.
Keep up the great work and this can be a huge success, one of my faves so far for sure!
Thank you for playing as well as the feedback! I'm very glad you enjoyed it!
The jumping in relation with the running while firing has been fixed, so you were playing an outdated build unfortunately. The rolling being set to SHIFT has been giving mixed feedback from players, but this will automatically be fixed once I have keybinding.
You got the metroidvania feel perfectly. Graphics are cute, and animations look nice and smooth.
Some observations:
Enjoyed it a lot and can't wait for the next demo. Good job!
Thank you for the feedback and observations! Those two bugs have been the most persistent since demo launch, but I'll make sure to iron them out.
No problem, I'm glad I can help.
And again, great demo!
Love it, i already gave you feedback in discord but looking forward to following this. A control rebind is the only thing i really wish was in there :)
Hey guys! I've added the fixes to the most recent build and updated the download:
Thank you guys for your feedback and suggestions!
YOU LIKE CASTLEVANIA, DON'T YOU?
It's pretty well made, kinda wish you could attack upward though, pretty much agree with what khryse has to say for the most part. I'd suggest making the attack prompt to be more obvious, I didn't notice it the first time through and figured it out on my own a couple screens after I was supposed to. Maybe I'm just dumb.
The boss has way too much HP, especially one that you can beat by camping in one spot for the first two phases. It took me a good dozen tries, but it got boring near the end once I figured out you can shoot the projectiles, and his slamming attack has a couple openings that are never touched. It's a good boss, just a bit lengthy for what it was.
Also, I really really wish there were joypad controls.
Like is an understatement of what I think about Castlevania. :)
I'm sorry there were no Joypad controls. I'll add them for the next demo day though.
Thank you for the feedback!
I always enjoy seeing your progress and your demo is really well done and polished so much that you should probably move onto making levels if you're not already.
You can't have your first slide obstacle that is just the size of your slide, getting stuck is no fun.
The boss slam attack was feeling downright broken with how fast and unwiduppy it is, but the design was cool and the boss fight was fun, once i got over the frustration.
The final form was sort of bad, because you can only attack in front of you (i see another comment mentioning ranged attacks, i don't know they existed!), but if there's a ranged attack, i guess he's okay. I ended standing in palce and punching him while soaking up the damage.
The lightwhip seems a tad bit too OP, it's fast, straight and deadly to almost everything.
Overall i really liked it, except fro the antialiased text in the main menu (also really bright menu, jeez)
"It is op yes, as it is the last weapon in the game :)"
Ah okay, then it makes it better. I thought it would be the first and only weapon, but if there's a progression, it's way better.
Great job on fixing stuff, you're the best.
Boss fight was pretty fun. Had some issues with the ranged attack (I expected it to work in the air also?) and double jump acted a bit oddly sometimes. I recorded a full playthrough if that helps you any https://my.mixtape.moe/htmrvx.webm .
Thank you for the feedback! People have reported some major issues with the projectile attack, I had to quickly update the game to disable it. I'm working on an update to fix that as fast as I can and have it work on the boss as well as in the air. I'm glad you enjoyed the current progress!
Neat game, controls feel good. Couldn't figure out how to drop down platforms until the thread told me.
Maybe put in some more checkpoints, when I died at the fourth (I think) spike floor I got sent all the way back to the start of the grey area, felt like quite a lot to do again.
Also, after dying the music disappeared and didn't come back.
Good luck and keep up the good work!
Thank you for trying out the build and your feedback! The music should of played after you enter the room again from that one corridor, but if it didn't play, I'll have to look through and figure out where it's not starting.