It can be difficult to discern the player from the boss at times. Giving the boss something to differentiate it from the player would help.
Give the laser some sort of audio feedback for when it hits, it can be difficult to tell if you hit with it if the boss is off-screen or you're busy dodging bullets.
Being able to see more of the arena and/or keep tabs on where the boss is would help.
Melee does good damage, but I'm not really certain of how the system works or why there's three buttons.
Overall I really enjoyed this, good music and solid gameplay. Nice work, hope to see more of this in the future.
Player and boss sprites need to be different, and in my opinion melee attacks need to be made into a deeper system - most of the time it was useless except for when the boss is armorless so you can stunlock it in a corner.
Other than that, I feel like movement could be a bit more fluid, but it seems you're on the right track
Yea most people don't seem to get the melee system so I should probably rethink it to make it more intuitive or teach it in some tutorial. I had Street fighter as an inspiration for combos / hitstun. There the hitstun is pretty small for each attack, just high enough so that you can combo if you have the correct timing and use a quick enough attack to fit that hitstun window.
Music and visuals were great! Melee seemed to be not worth trying, I have no idea what the shift-dash did except make pretty visuals, and I wish I could zoom out the camera more (or at least have some indicator to where the boss is when they're off screen, even if it's not perfect information) but I had fun :)
You're right about the zoom, I was thinking about zooming out the camera if the boss is far away but never got the time to code it. Thanks for playing!
Well made prototype for a possible future project.
It has definitely nice visuals (love the animations) and dynamic fast-paced combat. Really pleasant battle and interesting AI behaviour. Main character also have cool abilities. Great potential for a hack-n-slash project, especially if you'll add much more variety in player's possibilities.
What it should to have for now is a conceptual (and more stylish) UI. You should add more icons on UI with hotkeys for them so player always would understand what key stands for and what abilities he possess.
Thanks for the kind words! I've never really done pixel art or any drawing before so I'm really happy that people don't think it looks like complete shit :) I agree that more UI would help a lot for the player to understand his options.
Hey I almost did it, got it down to 200 health at 4/5. Pretty challenging. I liked the mechanics. The melee seemed pretty useless to me in this fight but could be useful against other types of enemies, maybe an enemy that can't be damaged by bullets? I played with the keyboard and found it to be easier than the DS4, which actually works with the game since I have DS4windows and it's basically an xbox controller. Fun stuff, would be nice to have a full game out of this.
Haha yea the last phase is even hard for me, the jump in difficulty might be a tad too much. There seems to be a pattern among players (comments here some friends play testing it) to not use melee so I'll definitely have to think how I can encourage it's use. A lot of the mechanics (doing combos etc) revolve around it's use so it's definitely not intended. I think just having more clear openings, where the boss is idle, could make it feel more safe to use. Thanks for playing!
This is fun, it was challenging for me too (I only got up to 4/5). The first few deaths I was confused who was who because you use the same sprites for the player and boss. I ended up just kiting and used the robot guy to shoot her down, I never used the melee attack. Should the projectiles despawn instead of traveling the entire room? The room is pretty big.
Thanks for the feedback man! I was thinking that the game might be too hard aswell, it's really hard to judge yourself when you've been playing it for so long (also not sure if you played with gamepad or not, I find it a lot easier with gamepad but it could just be my muscle memory). And yea you're right I should change the color for the boss at least. I'm too much of an artlet to do a new design for the boss though :D I find it really hard to balance the player projectiles. I initially had them cost mana but that makes it so that you can't use mana for anything else so I'm not sure I liked that solution.
I used a controller, I didn't try it with a keyboard. I don't play these types of games so my suggestion could be shit, but a thought that sprung to mind was to have the robot's ammo limited and replenish based on a timer (but honestly that wouldn't change my strategy, it'd just make me kite for longer). Best of luck with whatever you come up with, I'd love to see a full game around this in the future! Some game progression would get me better acquainted with the other abilities and make me more likely to rely on them instead of just the one.
Comments
That was real good, very fun. Some feedback:
Overall I really enjoyed this, good music and solid gameplay. Nice work, hope to see more of this in the future.
Player and boss sprites need to be different, and in my opinion melee attacks need to be made into a deeper system - most of the time it was useless except for when the boss is armorless so you can stunlock it in a corner.
Other than that, I feel like movement could be a bit more fluid, but it seems you're on the right track
Yea most people don't seem to get the melee system so I should probably rethink it to make it more intuitive or teach it in some tutorial. I had Street fighter as an inspiration for combos / hitstun. There the hitstun is pretty small for each attack, just high enough so that you can combo if you have the correct timing and use a quick enough attack to fit that hitstun window.
Music and visuals were great! Melee seemed to be not worth trying, I have no idea what the shift-dash did except make pretty visuals, and I wish I could zoom out the camera more (or at least have some indicator to where the boss is when they're off screen, even if it's not perfect information) but I had fun :)
You're right about the zoom, I was thinking about zooming out the camera if the boss is far away but never got the time to code it. Thanks for playing!
Well made prototype for a possible future project.
It has definitely nice visuals (love the animations) and dynamic fast-paced combat.
Really pleasant battle and interesting AI behaviour. Main character also have cool abilities.
Great potential for a hack-n-slash project, especially if you'll add much more variety in player's possibilities.
What it should to have for now is a conceptual (and more stylish) UI.
You should add more icons on UI with hotkeys for them so player always would understand
what key stands for and what abilities he possess.
Thanks for the kind words! I've never really done pixel art or any drawing before so I'm really happy that people don't think it looks like complete shit :) I agree that more UI would help a lot for the player to understand his options.
Hmm I don't have too much to say about this one.
-You can fire while it's paused at the start to be cheap.
-Melee attacks don't destroy enemy bullets
Keep up the progress!
Hey I almost did it, got it down to 200 health at 4/5. Pretty challenging. I liked the mechanics. The melee seemed pretty useless to me in this fight but could be useful against other types of enemies, maybe an enemy that can't be damaged by bullets? I played with the keyboard and found it to be easier than the DS4, which actually works with the game since I have DS4windows and it's basically an xbox controller. Fun stuff, would be nice to have a full game out of this.
Haha yea the last phase is even hard for me, the jump in difficulty might be a tad too much. There seems to be a pattern among players (comments here some friends play testing it) to not use melee so I'll definitely have to think how I can encourage it's use. A lot of the mechanics (doing combos etc) revolve around it's use so it's definitely not intended. I think just having more clear openings, where the boss is idle, could make it feel more safe to use. Thanks for playing!
This is fun, it was challenging for me too (I only got up to 4/5). The first few deaths I was confused who was who because you use the same sprites for the player and boss. I ended up just kiting and used the robot guy to shoot her down, I never used the melee attack. Should the projectiles despawn instead of traveling the entire room? The room is pretty big.
Good job, it was a fun boss!
Thanks for the feedback man! I was thinking that the game might be too hard aswell, it's really hard to judge yourself when you've been playing it for so long (also not sure if you played with gamepad or not, I find it a lot easier with gamepad but it could just be my muscle memory). And yea you're right I should change the color for the boss at least. I'm too much of an artlet to do a new design for the boss though :D I find it really hard to balance the player projectiles. I initially had them cost mana but that makes it so that you can't use mana for anything else so I'm not sure I liked that solution.
I used a controller, I didn't try it with a keyboard. I don't play these types of games so my suggestion could be shit, but a thought that sprung to mind was to have the robot's ammo limited and replenish based on a timer (but honestly that wouldn't change my strategy, it'd just make me kite for longer).
Best of luck with whatever you come up with, I'd love to see a full game around this in the future! Some game progression would get me better acquainted with the other abilities and make me more likely to rely on them instead of just the one.