Hey Blue9Fairy. I just like this minute uploaded an updated version that's a bit easier, with an expanded ammo count. Might be worth a try. Also, examine enemies in the prewave phase and look at the second white box next to their move names. The black lines show which row their attack targets. This will make it easier to see which angle is safest to attack them from.
Also, for ammo, you can manually reload by pressing R, so you're not stuck automatically reloading while being attacked. Hope it helps.
I'm unclear on why would you use cover. I feel like the demo's difficulty didn't leave you with no choice but to dodge. Also, do you not reset the health between rounds because that's how the actual game will be? Aren't you worried about soft-locking the player? Because once you get hit a bit, it's better to just die than proceed to the next round with barely any health.
Reloading makes you unable to stop aiming. I don't think is necesarily a bad decision, like, it's something else you have to keep in mind. But like, in round 3, dodging the witch, plus dodgin the projectiles of the dunces, plus making sure to step back when the dunces got too close, pesonally left me with no more mental power to keep track of ammo, so I generally got smoked. I got to round 4 with 6 health.
An idea would be to reload from neutral. I think that would have made it easier for me, I'd just try to not exceed the bullet limit by feeling it out, go back to moving mode to dodge and reloaded when it was most convenient. I don't know. There're lots of things you could try with the reload system.
I never played the megaman games, and to honest I'm not entirely sold on the battle system itself. But the art does draw my attention.
Hi Fishking, congrats on making it to round 4. In testing, cover would always protect 100% from front view attacks, and around 85% from off angle attacks, but it felt almost to OP so while balancing the game for DD, a clutch decision was made to take reduced damage even from head on attacks. Based on feedback, I'm thinking of having cover give 100% protection at first, and then gradually giving less protection as the cover object is worn down. This might give more incentive to repair the cover object over time.
For the between round sections, you're meant to use the pool points(shown in the upper right corner) to recover health and repair cover objects. Right now I think it's set at 80 per round, it's an arbitrary number and needs more testing to see how it should be set. So battles are meant to become a war of attrition, to see if you can complete them using limited healing resources. For the next demo, I'll give an option to restart battles from round 1 to avoid soft locking.
With reloading I forgot to include instructions that you can reload manually from moving or aiming by pressing R, sorry about that. Will definitely give increased ammo capacity for the average gun. Also, I'll make sure that you can reload behind cover, with the cover bonus, because.. that just makes sense.
Alright, one review as promised coming right up! So for starters, I really like the aesthetic you have going. The art is well done, the ui is cool, and im digging the music!
At first I found having different modes for move and shoot kind of weird, especially in a fast paced game, but I started to enjoy the flow of it over time.
So balance. Games rather difficult to be honest. Now games that need fast reflex were never my strong point to be fair. But I only managed to get to round 3 once, and it was probably luck. (I restarted the game a few times to try and do better in early rounds and have more health later.) I think the largest issue I'm having is I have trouble telling where its safe to stand. Maybe consider having some indicator on the ground for where the enemies coming attack will hit?
While enemies seem to telegraph attack, it seems like fairly short warning, granted like I said, I don't exactly have great reflexes.
Im also curious on how cover vs trying to doge is supposed to balance out. In my head it always felt like I should trying to dodge, since cover still results in taking some damage.
Not being able to move when reloading definitely is giving a bit of a unresponsive feel at moments. Assuming you want to keep not being able to move while reloading. More ammo as you mentioned in the other comment would help mitigate it I think. But, once you get a proper animation for it, I think that might be enough to not make it feel off assuming its a visible enough animation.
Going back and playing a bit more, I think im starting to do a bit better! Im making it to round 3 with some health now lol.
Oh, quick note, the WASD movement in the isometric map at the beginning still being standard up/down/left/right, instead lining up with the isometric angle felt odd to me.
I think you have something cool here so better keep at it!
Thanks for the fun demo and good luck with the game!
Hey wolgi, thank you for the feedback! I'm glad you like the aesthetic. I'm hoping that as I add more content each DD, you'll get more of a feel for the atmosphere I'm going for. Yeah, the game is quite difficult no doubt, it's partly because I'll be adding in special moves for the main character so you'll be able to choose a moveset to counter enemies; should make it easier. But it's really good to know how people are faring. As far as knowing where to stand, it's all about examining enemy moves by looking at the second box next to the move name. The black lines show which row the attack targets, so you can get a feel for the safest angles to attack from. However, you're right, it would do well to have more telegraphing of attacks. I think I'll do that through animations instead of ui to mitigate the risk of homogenizing the feel of attacks across enemy types.
You're right, I didn't give enough protection with cover. During testing, I always had it where taking shots from head on under cover made you receive zero damage, while you'd only receive a little from off angle attacks. From the feedback I'm getting, I think I'll make the cover system work so that initially it gives 100% protection, but gradually gives less as its "health" is worn down. Definitely will have to revisit reloading, will at least give a ui cue in the meantime until its sorted out.
I'm glad you were able to get a feel to get to 3, I know it's pretty fast and vicious right now.
And for the isometric movement it's good to hear that. Wasn't sure how people prefer movement in isometric.
Thanks again for the feedback, hope you can make next demo day, I'm definitely planning to have more actual content next time around.
So I tried my best to give this a go, but the absence of keybinds or controls made it impossible. I was able to navigate to the first room and get in combat. I was able to target a dunce and bring up my available actions with space. It looks like I could choose "Number Two Strike" or "Number Two Sketchup" but I couldn't figure out how to select either. I tried space, enter, left/right click with no success. I tried pressing escape to navigate to another enemy, but the game closed instead.
Hey, first off the guy who posted my game in the current agdg thread wasn't me lol, but still thanks for the comment, I'll check your game out tonight. If you're willing to give it another shot, check out the game page for a description of game mechanics/controls, and you can check keyboard controls by pressing tab at any point during battle. Sounds like you were in the prebattle phase, and when you clicked on the enemy(use j to select and k to deselect) you were looking at info on their moves. To start the battle, you need to deselect any selections, then press and hold N until the bar fills. The battles are real time and very fast. The only info I still need to add to the game page is the line of scrimmage: You'll see how the enemies' side has different colored tiles. If an enemy is on the border of their tiles and yours, they can transform your column of tiles into moveable tiles for themselves(it happens automatically after a set time), decreasing the amount of space you have to move. You can do the same to push back enemy tiles. It only works though if the adjacent oppositions tiles are unoccupied. Hope this helps, let me know if there's anything that's not making sense.
Not entirely surprised, the joys of an anonymous board. I hadn't looked at your game page, but I can see you laid out a lot of instructions there. I'll try it again tonight with all of these controls in mind and give it another shot!
So I tried again, with instructions in mind. I was able to actually get into combat this time, but man I guess I just suck at this game. It wasn't immediately obvious when I should be in move or shoot mode, the player character changed colors which I assumed was some kind of indicator but I couldn't figure it out. When I did change modes, it didn't seem very responsive and I felt like I wasted time. As a result, I probably stayed in shoot mode too long causing me to die. I think this could be fun with some additional polish and more fleshed out visual clues.
Hey, I think it seemed unresponsive because of the reload animation. When she flashes blue, she's reloading. The ammo counter is in the bottom right corner. Probably should give her more than 8 bullets per clip, forgot to change that last night. I also forgot to write instructions for manual reloading which can be done by pressing R. Also, she's yellow in shooting mode, and flashes red while shooting. Hopefully giving more ammo will fix the feeling of being unresponsive. As far as general switching between shooting and moving, I'll see what I can do to make it more readable before adding in the real character and animations. Thanks for playing man!
Comments
looks n sounds cool but DAMn this shit is hard, got completely filtered by the second level
Hey Blue9Fairy. I just like this minute uploaded an updated version that's a bit easier, with an expanded ammo count. Might be worth a try. Also, examine enemies in the prewave phase and look at the second white box next to their move names. The black lines show which row their attack targets. This will make it easier to see which angle is safest to attack them from.
Also, for ammo, you can manually reload by pressing R, so you're not stuck automatically reloading while being attacked. Hope it helps.
I got to round 4.
I'm unclear on why would you use cover. I feel like the demo's difficulty didn't leave you with no choice but to dodge. Also, do you not reset the health between rounds because that's how the actual game will be? Aren't you worried about soft-locking the player? Because once you get hit a bit, it's better to just die than proceed to the next round with barely any health.
Reloading makes you unable to stop aiming. I don't think is necesarily a bad decision, like, it's something else you have to keep in mind. But like, in round 3, dodging the witch, plus dodgin the projectiles of the dunces, plus making sure to step back when the dunces got too close, pesonally left me with no more mental power to keep track of ammo, so I generally got smoked. I got to round 4 with 6 health.
An idea would be to reload from neutral. I think that would have made it easier for me, I'd just try to not exceed the bullet limit by feeling it out, go back to moving mode to dodge and reloaded when it was most convenient. I don't know. There're lots of things you could try with the reload system.
I never played the megaman games, and to honest I'm not entirely sold on the battle system itself. But the art does draw my attention.
Hi Fishking, congrats on making it to round 4. In testing, cover would always protect 100% from front view attacks, and around 85% from off angle attacks, but it felt almost to OP so while balancing the game for DD, a clutch decision was made to take reduced damage even from head on attacks. Based on feedback, I'm thinking of having cover give 100% protection at first, and then gradually giving less protection as the cover object is worn down. This might give more incentive to repair the cover object over time.
For the between round sections, you're meant to use the pool points(shown in the upper right corner) to recover health and repair cover objects. Right now I think it's set at 80 per round, it's an arbitrary number and needs more testing to see how it should be set. So battles are meant to become a war of attrition, to see if you can complete them using limited healing resources. For the next demo, I'll give an option to restart battles from round 1 to avoid soft locking.
With reloading I forgot to include instructions that you can reload manually from moving or aiming by pressing R, sorry about that. Will definitely give increased ammo capacity for the average gun. Also, I'll make sure that you can reload behind cover, with the cover bonus, because.. that just makes sense.
Thanks for the feedback, it was very helpful!
Alright, one review as promised coming right up! So for starters, I really like the aesthetic you have going. The art is well done, the ui is cool, and im digging the music!
At first I found having different modes for move and shoot kind of weird, especially in a fast paced game, but I started to enjoy the flow of it over time.
So balance. Games rather difficult to be honest. Now games that need fast reflex were never my strong point to be fair. But I only managed to get to round 3 once, and it was probably luck. (I restarted the game a few times to try and do better in early rounds and have more health later.) I think the largest issue I'm having is I have trouble telling where its safe to stand. Maybe consider having some indicator on the ground for where the enemies coming attack will hit?
While enemies seem to telegraph attack, it seems like fairly short warning, granted like I said, I don't exactly have great reflexes.
Im also curious on how cover vs trying to doge is supposed to balance out. In my head it always felt like I should trying to dodge, since cover still results in taking some damage.
Not being able to move when reloading definitely is giving a bit of a unresponsive feel at moments. Assuming you want to keep not being able to move while reloading. More ammo as you mentioned in the other comment would help mitigate it I think. But, once you get a proper animation for it, I think that might be enough to not make it feel off assuming its a visible enough animation.
Going back and playing a bit more, I think im starting to do a bit better! Im making it to round 3 with some health now lol.
Oh, quick note, the WASD movement in the isometric map at the beginning still being standard up/down/left/right, instead lining up with the isometric angle felt odd to me.
I think you have something cool here so better keep at it!
Thanks for the fun demo and good luck with the game!
Hey wolgi, thank you for the feedback! I'm glad you like the aesthetic. I'm hoping that as I add more content each DD, you'll get more of a feel for the atmosphere I'm going for. Yeah, the game is quite difficult no doubt, it's partly because I'll be adding in special moves for the main character so you'll be able to choose a moveset to counter enemies; should make it easier. But it's really good to know how people are faring. As far as knowing where to stand, it's all about examining enemy moves by looking at the second box next to the move name. The black lines show which row the attack targets, so you can get a feel for the safest angles to attack from. However, you're right, it would do well to have more telegraphing of attacks. I think I'll do that through animations instead of ui to mitigate the risk of homogenizing the feel of attacks across enemy types.
You're right, I didn't give enough protection with cover. During testing, I always had it where taking shots from head on under cover made you receive zero damage, while you'd only receive a little from off angle attacks. From the feedback I'm getting, I think I'll make the cover system work so that initially it gives 100% protection, but gradually gives less as its "health" is worn down. Definitely will have to revisit reloading, will at least give a ui cue in the meantime until its sorted out.
I'm glad you were able to get a feel to get to 3, I know it's pretty fast and vicious right now.
And for the isometric movement it's good to hear that. Wasn't sure how people prefer movement in isometric.
Thanks again for the feedback, hope you can make next demo day, I'm definitely planning to have more actual content next time around.
So I tried my best to give this a go, but the absence of keybinds or controls made it impossible. I was able to navigate to the first room and get in combat. I was able to target a dunce and bring up my available actions with space. It looks like I could choose "Number Two Strike" or "Number Two Sketchup" but I couldn't figure out how to select either. I tried space, enter, left/right click with no success. I tried pressing escape to navigate to another enemy, but the game closed instead.
Hey, first off the guy who posted my game in the current agdg thread wasn't me lol, but still thanks for the comment, I'll check your game out tonight. If you're willing to give it another shot, check out the game page for a description of game mechanics/controls, and you can check keyboard controls by pressing tab at any point during battle. Sounds like you were in the prebattle phase, and when you clicked on the enemy(use j to select and k to deselect) you were looking at info on their moves. To start the battle, you need to deselect any selections, then press and hold N until the bar fills. The battles are real time and very fast. The only info I still need to add to the game page is the line of scrimmage: You'll see how the enemies' side has different colored tiles. If an enemy is on the border of their tiles and yours, they can transform your column of tiles into moveable tiles for themselves(it happens automatically after a set time), decreasing the amount of space you have to move. You can do the same to push back enemy tiles. It only works though if the adjacent oppositions tiles are unoccupied. Hope this helps, let me know if there's anything that's not making sense.
Not entirely surprised, the joys of an anonymous board. I hadn't looked at your game page, but I can see you laid out a lot of instructions there. I'll try it again tonight with all of these controls in mind and give it another shot!
So I tried again, with instructions in mind. I was able to actually get into combat this time, but man I guess I just suck at this game. It wasn't immediately obvious when I should be in move or shoot mode, the player character changed colors which I assumed was some kind of indicator but I couldn't figure it out. When I did change modes, it didn't seem very responsive and I felt like I wasted time. As a result, I probably stayed in shoot mode too long causing me to die. I think this could be fun with some additional polish and more fleshed out visual clues.
Hey, I think it seemed unresponsive because of the reload animation. When she flashes blue, she's reloading. The ammo counter is in the bottom right corner. Probably should give her more than 8 bullets per clip, forgot to change that last night. I also forgot to write instructions for manual reloading which can be done by pressing R. Also, she's yellow in shooting mode, and flashes red while shooting. Hopefully giving more ammo will fix the feeling of being unresponsive. As far as general switching between shooting and moving, I'll see what I can do to make it more readable before adding in the real character and animations. Thanks for playing man!