Really cool dungeon game, just some minor things like the most obvious one being the animations beeing too stiiff and slow and barely looking like they are supposed to represent, and the teelegraphing of the enemies not giving much info about when they are going to attack or the range on their attacks or the range on your spells or what they do, otherwise it's a pretty epic game
Looks like a huge game and it has his charm, I like the atmosphere but i could not advance after the first boss because on my laptop the game has slowdowns on the second tier of dungeons.
I have the feeling that the melee attack would work better if you divide the attack in 2 phases, hold button to charge and release to swing i feel it was too much slow for bigger weapon to actual attack, also i think that the hot key bar need to be revisited, if i put a weapon in a slot after selecting should stay on that slot.
Enemies are too goofy, I have the feeling that this game will not work if there is such contrast between the ambience and the screaming goats for example.
also it would be nicer if you have more telegraphic attack, the lighting strike seems to random and sometime hits the enemies, i feel that in this kind of game you want to master and manipulate the situations.
Also everything is gray and i feel that need more balance, i get that you want to give a claustofrobic tone but the HUD for example could benefit for more vibrant color.
Thanks for the review! I'll overhaul the menu and shortcut code before release, and I'm in talks to commision some improvements to the monster sprites to address the goofiness issue. I'll probably take the chance to improve on the interface and make it less amateurish-looking too.
So before criticizing I'd like to say that I never played Kings Field or Shadow Tower, so I don't really have any element of comparaison.
- The art mostly fits the aesthetic, though some of the enemies are a little too cartoony-looking compared to the realistic inspired environments
- The environment is a little too samey, I get that it's hard to make entirely different looking environments with procgen but some texture swaps or landmark props would help getting around
- Combat is slow and not very interesting or fun. I get the point of the game is to make you feel helpless and weak, but with how slow the weapons swing it feels more like I'm a grandpa that shouldn't be here, and that's my biggest issue with your game. There's also a fundamental misunderstanding in how you animate attacks. Everything is linear (use easings instead) and the swings take a long time. I get that you're "not an artist" but this can be fixed in code. The general structure of an animation can be broken into 3 phases : an anticipation phase (= raising your sword), the action phase (= the actual swinging part) that is almost always faster than any other, and a recovery phase (= getting your balance back). So where you want to modulate based on stats is mostly on the anticipation and recovery phases. Think of it this way : a weak person will take more time to lift a weight than a stronger person (=anticipation phase), but in both case the weight will fall at the same speed if they drop it (=action phase). Again, I get that the aim is to get close to old dungeon crawlers, but it doesn't have to feel like I'm swinging my weapon 10 feet underwater.
- I will say that it was a lot more enjoyable playing with a bow as it did not suffer from those animation related issues. With less frustration over the melee combat, the game's mood takes a bigger place and becomes a nicer experience
- I wasn't a big fan of how quickly equipment breaks though the system is a good idea
- weapon swings can clip through enemies and hit the wall somehow, leaving you in a stagger state
- I really liked not being able to go as fast when strafing, it helps feeling as if you're moving an actual character and not a magic floating camera. Having to turn your back on an enemy to run away is fairly immersive. If you wanted to play more into that idea, you could add a keybinding to look around (within limits) while maintaining the orientation of the player.
Overall my biggest issue is with the combat itself and how the animations play against the fluidity of the experience. Not so much the slow speed or pacing, but rather how it makes it unclear whether you're gonna hit or not, or what the enemies are doing.
Comments
2slow for me tastes so aint got much to say, i really aint a fan of the movement-run system you got
got a nice amount of options in the menu tho i appreciate that
btw i noticed there is a stutter every time you kill/break something
The stutter is when a new texture is loaded in, it's a Gamemaker thing.
Get an SSD son.
i have one and im using it
Well, I bet it's not one of the GOOD ones like the new Playstation™ 5's
(I'll look into ways to solve those stutters)
Thanks for the in-depth review, it was really insightful!
I'll make changes in the next patch coming soon.
(BTW, the key to that door was next to the rock in the spear trap)
Really cool dungeon game, just some minor things like the most obvious one being the animations beeing too stiiff and slow and barely looking like they are supposed to represent, and the teelegraphing of the enemies not giving much info about when they are going to attack or the range on their attacks or the range on your spells or what they do, otherwise it's a pretty epic game
Thanks! The first person animations will be adjusted in the next patch, and the enemy animations will Soon™ follow.
Looks like a huge game and it has his charm, I like the atmosphere but i could not advance after the first boss because on my laptop the game has slowdowns on the second tier of dungeons.
I have the feeling that the melee attack would work better if you divide the attack in 2 phases, hold button to charge and release to swing i feel it was too much slow for bigger weapon to actual attack, also i think that the hot key bar need to be revisited, if i put a weapon in a slot after selecting should stay on that slot.
Enemies are too goofy, I have the feeling that this game will not work if there is such contrast between the ambience and the screaming goats for example.
also it would be nicer if you have more telegraphic attack, the lighting strike seems to random and sometime hits the enemies, i feel that in this kind of game you want to master and manipulate the situations.
Also everything is gray and i feel that need more balance, i get that you want to give a claustofrobic tone but the HUD for example could benefit for more vibrant color.
Thanks for the review! I'll overhaul the menu and shortcut code before release, and I'm in talks to commision some improvements to the monster sprites to address the goofiness issue. I'll probably take the chance to improve on the interface and make it less amateurish-looking too.
So before criticizing I'd like to say that I never played Kings Field or Shadow Tower, so I don't really have any element of comparaison.
- The art mostly fits the aesthetic, though some of the enemies are a little too cartoony-looking compared to the realistic inspired environments
- The environment is a little too samey, I get that it's hard to make entirely different looking environments with procgen but some texture swaps or landmark props would help getting around
- Combat is slow and not very interesting or fun. I get the point of the game is to make you feel helpless and weak, but with how slow the weapons swing it feels more like I'm a grandpa that shouldn't be here, and that's my biggest issue with your game.
There's also a fundamental misunderstanding in how you animate attacks. Everything is linear (use easings instead) and the swings take a long time. I get that you're "not an artist" but this can be fixed in code.
The general structure of an animation can be broken into 3 phases : an anticipation phase (= raising your sword), the action phase (= the actual swinging part) that is almost always faster than any other, and a recovery phase (= getting your balance back).
So where you want to modulate based on stats is mostly on the anticipation and recovery phases. Think of it this way : a weak person will take more time to lift a weight than a stronger person (=anticipation phase), but in both case the weight will fall at the same speed if they drop it (=action phase).
Again, I get that the aim is to get close to old dungeon crawlers, but it doesn't have to feel like I'm swinging my weapon 10 feet underwater.
- I will say that it was a lot more enjoyable playing with a bow as it did not suffer from those animation related issues. With less frustration over the melee combat, the game's mood takes a bigger place and becomes a nicer experience
- I wasn't a big fan of how quickly equipment breaks though the system is a good idea
- weapon swings can clip through enemies and hit the wall somehow, leaving you in a stagger state
- I really liked not being able to go as fast when strafing, it helps feeling as if you're moving an actual character and not a magic floating camera. Having to turn your back on an enemy to run away is fairly immersive.
If you wanted to play more into that idea, you could add a keybinding to look around (within limits) while maintaining the orientation of the player.
Overall my biggest issue is with the combat itself and how the animations play against the fluidity of the experience. Not so much the slow speed or pacing, but rather how it makes it unclear whether you're gonna hit or not, or what the enemies are doing.
Thanks for the review! I'll respond to your points in order:
Thanks again for being in-depth!