Love the art style! Description said the enemies were placeholders but they honestly look great. Presentation is real real cute, love how the lil' bombs bounce behind you. Animations (especially the bomb throwing are also great). Nice job on the shaders too.
Feels pretty dang awkward to play. I'd be curious if this concept would work better with a non-isometric camera. Slow down feature feels pretty strange too.
Hey Woldy, I just played your game. I remember your booba progress posts, so I wanted to try out your game to see what you are working on.
I think the grid is too much out of the ground, or it just doesn't work well with the current camera. I found myself counting tiles, or throwing multiple tile, than just throwing bombs where i see the enemy is standing, because the tile visual seemed like it was shifted in place. Beside the gird visual, I would much rather aim with a mouse instead.
Taking down enemies was much easier before they start moving, I don't know if you are going for a stealth game.
I really disliked the time slowdown field.
Player character, and bombs are really cute. The overall game looks adorable, but it just feels clunky. I look forward to seeing your improvements in the next Demo Day.
Thanks for the feedback. It's a half-stealth gameI had in mind, except I only implemented the clunky out-of-combat / methodical opening strike attack. I also jacked up the AI's vision and aggression sensitivity for the prototype higher than what I was usually testing with since I haven't implemented animations yet to convey the more nuanced behaviour. (shock at seeing player, stance changes based of alertness, drawing their weapon, turning their heads in search etc)
I also don't expect the type of fast-moving rush-down enemies to remain in the game.
I've got to strike a better balance with clarity of the aiming grid, perhaps highlight enemies and the blast area, make the through-walls effect less noticable.
Styles cute and works. You can add some placeholder sounds and it will feel a lot better.
You know about the camera, I think zelda / bomberman / ff tactics is your best ref for that. But the change in angle now hides the last guy. I don't think that was intentional.
With the bombs like I was in the habit of thinking the bomb square would follow my mouse position instead of the character facing. I get you are using just the mouse buttons so if you went controller that wouldn't be a problem.
When throwing the bombs with the time pause? When the bomb is mid air. If I throw another the first is cooking so it sets off in time to blow me up. If you can throw multiple I'd pause the cooking on any mid air bombs. It seems like a weird time freeze moment.
I'd also change the character animation to a little jog maybe dust particles for changing direction quickly. Movement a little feels clunky atm but I guess it is in part because you just had to quickly change the camera angle with the update.
Thanks for checking it out! The fuses not respecting the time-slow stuff is definitely not intentional.
Recently I attached a time-keeper to all my entitites basically that allows for localised time slowdown or speedup. Not every script is properly respecting the time-keepers at the moment, there are a few I created that base themselves off timestamps rather than an elapsed perception of time that I need to convert.
Yeah I hadn't noticed that extra wall suddenly appearing in my level until I tested it out on the WebGL version. I can see my editor right now and it isn't present so I'm not quite sure what the heck was going on there; potentially line-endings on the plain-text level file being interpreted into tile-height characters that are interpreted by the builder! Fancy that.
Seems like it has good potential for a charming puzzle-ish game. The art-style is already cute. Seeing what you wrote earlier it looks like you're already aware of the camera issues so I won't bother. You might want to consider switching aiming to RMB & throwing bombs to LMB, it seems like a weird reversal compared to most games nowadays--but if you got your reasons I'll leave it to you. I'd like to be able to turn to face different directions while aiming, instead of having to walk to a position THEN turn THEN aim, the process just seems kinda awkward. Also this might just be a WebGL thing but I tried making the game window larger but it stayed the same size after clicking the expand button.
Also turning feels unresponsive (I use the word stiff in my playthrough because I'm a nugget-head). The turn animations is pretty long, and you can't aim during it.
I tried blowing up the exploding boxes--can't wait to see how they'll interact along with the slowed-down zone.
That is an absolutely above and beyond bit of feedback, thanks very much. Your dedication to beat that level despite the tight camera with that clunky-ass bomb throw is excruciating! I was working in 16:9+ so I kind of rushed the export down to 4:3 for the browser without thinking about how that wrecks the view.
I might consider how I might allow the character to pivot direction while aiming to make it less awkward; tip of the jank iceberg.
Noice, i like the art style, gameplay reminds me of bomberman with an interesting twist. Btw, does this game not supposed to have diagonal movements? i kept trying to push s & d together to move diagonally which would make the character stuck in place, kinda makes it feel a bit clunky. I figured it's probably because of the tile based movement thing, tho even so, i think moving diagonally would still work nicely in a game like this.
I've updated the game to use Mouse buttons instead of Ctrl which naturally was causing problems with the browser.
Obviously a lot of work still to go, but I've noticed egregiously that the camera isn't cooperating as well as intended, the new placeholder enemies I created for Demo Day are not recognized as objects of interest so there is no camera panning to keep them in frame.
The range on the bomb throw isn't tuned very well for the size of the level, camera and encounters I put together!
Having CTRL be the main way to aim bombs is annoying when it's a web based game. Browser shortcuts interrupts gameplay. I couldn't get that far when Firefox kept trying to save html pages and asking where I would like them to go. Then I got sticky keys in game with the character movement after restarting, could be the game reacting to the browser. The models and animations look really good.
Comments
Love the art style! Description said the enemies were placeholders but they honestly look great. Presentation is real real cute, love how the lil' bombs bounce behind you. Animations (especially the bomb throwing are also great). Nice job on the shaders too.
Feels pretty dang awkward to play. I'd be curious if this concept would work better with a non-isometric camera. Slow down feature feels pretty strange too.
Hey Woldy, I just played your game. I remember your booba progress posts, so I wanted to try out your game to see what you are working on.
I think the grid is too much out of the ground, or it just doesn't work well with the current camera. I found myself counting tiles, or throwing multiple tile, than just throwing bombs where i see the enemy is standing, because the tile visual seemed like it was shifted in place. Beside the gird visual, I would much rather aim with a mouse instead.
Taking down enemies was much easier before they start moving, I don't know if you are going for a stealth game.
I really disliked the time slowdown field.
Player character, and bombs are really cute. The overall game looks adorable, but it just feels clunky. I look forward to seeing your improvements in the next Demo Day.
Thanks for the feedback. It's a half-stealth game I had in mind, except I only implemented the clunky out-of-combat / methodical opening strike attack. I also jacked up the AI's vision and aggression sensitivity for the prototype higher than what I was usually testing with since I haven't implemented animations yet to convey the more nuanced behaviour. (shock at seeing player, stance changes based of alertness, drawing their weapon, turning their heads in search etc)
I also don't expect the type of fast-moving rush-down enemies to remain in the game.
I've got to strike a better balance with clarity of the aiming grid, perhaps highlight enemies and the blast area, make the through-walls effect less noticable.
It sounds like a good plan. I hope to see your submission in the next DD when the gameplay is closer to your vision.
Styles cute and works. You can add some placeholder sounds and it will feel a lot better.
You know about the camera, I think zelda / bomberman / ff tactics is your best ref for that. But the change in angle now hides the last guy. I don't think that was intentional.
With the bombs like I was in the habit of thinking the bomb square would follow my mouse position instead of the character facing. I get you are using just the mouse buttons so if you went controller that wouldn't be a problem.
When throwing the bombs with the time pause? When the bomb is mid air. If I throw another the first is cooking so it sets off in time to blow me up. If you can throw multiple I'd pause the cooking on any mid air bombs. It seems like a weird time freeze moment.
I'd also change the character animation to a little jog maybe dust particles for changing direction quickly. Movement a little feels clunky atm but I guess it is in part because you just had to quickly change the camera angle with the update.
Thanks for checking it out! The fuses not respecting the time-slow stuff is definitely not intentional.
Recently I attached a time-keeper to all my entitites basically that allows for localised time slowdown or speedup. Not every script is properly respecting the time-keepers at the moment, there are a few I created that base themselves off timestamps rather than an elapsed perception of time that I need to convert.
Yeah I hadn't noticed that extra wall suddenly appearing in my level until I tested it out on the WebGL version. I can see my editor right now and it isn't present so I'm not quite sure what the heck was going on there; potentially line-endings on the plain-text level file being interpreted into tile-height characters that are interpreted by the builder! Fancy that.
Based on Demo Day feedback have uploaded a version with a few really quick fixes:
Seems like it has good potential for a charming puzzle-ish game. The art-style is already cute. Seeing what you wrote earlier it looks like you're already aware of the camera issues so I won't bother. You might want to consider switching aiming to RMB & throwing bombs to LMB, it seems like a weird reversal compared to most games nowadays--but if you got your reasons I'll leave it to you. I'd like to be able to turn to face different directions while aiming, instead of having to walk to a position THEN turn THEN aim, the process just seems kinda awkward. Also this might just be a WebGL thing but I tried making the game window larger but it stayed the same size after clicking the expand button.
Also turning feels unresponsive (I use the word stiff in my playthrough because I'm a nugget-head). The turn animations is pretty long, and you can't aim during it.
I tried blowing up the exploding boxes--can't wait to see how they'll interact along with the slowed-down zone.
Here's my playthrough, I hope it helps!
That is an absolutely above and beyond bit of feedback, thanks very much. Your dedication to beat that level despite the tight camera with that clunky-ass bomb throw is excruciating! I was working in 16:9+ so I kind of rushed the export down to 4:3 for the browser without thinking about how that wrecks the view.
I might consider how I might allow the character to pivot direction while aiming to make it less awkward; tip of the jank iceberg.
Noice, i like the art style, gameplay reminds me of bomberman with an interesting twist. Btw, does this game not supposed to have diagonal movements? i kept trying to push s & d together to move diagonally which would make the character stuck in place, kinda makes it feel a bit clunky. I figured it's probably because of the tile based movement thing, tho even so, i think moving diagonally would still work nicely in a game like this.
No diagonals, made with cardinal directions in mind only to keep the scope of work down. Thanks for your feedback!
Nice game and quite challenging. I wanted to be able to rotate the camera and zoom in and out.
Yes! Improved camera controls on the to-do list for sure. I'm trying a few different camera angles at once to see what best suits the gameplay.
cool idea and I like the camera perspective but when I tried to use control to throw bombs it would take me out of the game.
Having CTRL be the main way to aim bombs is annoying when it's a web based game. Browser shortcuts interrupts gameplay. I couldn't get that far when Firefox kept trying to save html pages and asking where I would like them to go. Then I got sticky keys in game with the character movement after restarting, could be the game reacting to the browser. The models and animations look really good.
Ah yeah good point. I'll re-upload with a different button.