Thanks for playing my game! I tried playing Shipwreck, but I found it to be too hard. I was constantly running out of stamina and getting my ass kicked by enemies, so couldn't progress far enough and gave up.
I think this game needs a tutorial, but other than that it seems like it's far along on the right track. I like the visuals and I like the sound effects. I just wish I was better at the game.
I'll give the same criticism as I gave to Catlike Magic, as they're similar enough. The visuals are pretty nice, I'll give you that, but the gameplay is slow, enemies have too much hp, most of the time you feel like you're just waiting for enemies to die. I'm not a fan of inertia in dodging games too.
Besides that, its very fun to experiment with gun modifications. I just wish the player default shot had a bit more impact and speed, in the beginning the player is faster than the shots.
i liek the screen that shows enemies on the next level but id also want to be able to just skip it
splitters are way too tanky, all that does is slow down the game considerably since they are only an actual threat when they die
visuals beeen getting pretty sleek, altho id still love an option to tone down the background, its a bit too distracting for me
but what was really disorienting for me were those drunk shots, i got completely lost with them. they were however extremely fun and id take having fun over staying alive any day
also its kinda hard to use rmb to move slower, can u add a binding to a keyboard key?
Reached all the way to round 37 when this happened
I like the indicators that show which enemy will spawn. Also the new buttons to order and upgrade modifiers in the inventory. I don't think I will ever use the "exchange all" one though. The screen that shows which enemies the level will have was useful at first, but it got a bit annoying later. it was hard to notice when a new enemy was introduced since you don't read the table wave after wave, just once every time AFTER a new enemy is introduced. I think it needs some re-organizing and maybe a new menu. Also having to scroll to see all enemies and the list pushing the "continue to level" button to the bottom might not be ideal.
Sorry to say, but I disabled the bloom effect as soon as I learned it could be disabled. I personally don't like it, it makes me feel like I don't have my glasses on.
There was something weird going on with the "Pi" modifier. At one point, having "Pi" increased damage from 20 to 24. "Pii" changed it to 21 and "Piii" dropped it to 14. The way some modifiers change when they are upgraded feels random or inconvenient at times. For some of them you don't even want to upgrade them at certain point, for example Daa is ok but Daaa drops firing rate off a cliff.
At one point by experimenting, I managed to have negative armor penetration. It made mine layers almost impossible to kill.
Finally, I don't like the ship with orbiting shields. It is fine when there is only one, but with two at the same time they becomes a headache. Fire/move incorrectly and both regenerates all the shields without hurting them even a little. I managed to beat three at the same time but it took me a long time. Then I had the situation of the screenshot. I spent 10 minutes and my patience ran out after hitting them 3 or 4 times. I understand this is designed to be tackled with a specific setup but having something outright unkillable if you have the wrong modifiers doesn't feel good.
Also I tried other modifier for once this time! I had "Expp" for a long while though I ended up needing armor penetration so I had to drop it. I need to learn how to pair it with other modifiers effectively.
Hey, thanks for the feedback, sorry for not replying faster!
I improved the enemy preview screen, so that enemy description are collapsible, and are expanded only for new enemies in next level, that always appear on top.
It's ok that you don't like bloom, that's why I gave the players an option to disable it.
Pi was bugged, I fixed it now, but it's still nerfed compared to how it used to be. I'm doubting my decision to make modifier effects dependent on their order, on one hand it's supposed to make players experiment more, but on the other hand, it's easy to exploit, e.g.: put Fi after Da and it will completely negate the firerate reduction, cause Fi always gives you +5 to firerate regardless of how low it was before.
Negative armor penetration works as it's supposed to, it decreases your chance to deal damage to armored enemies, but it never makes it 0, cause otherwise you'd be stuck.
Yeah, I also think it was a problem, so I change how the spinners work, now they won't regenerate shields until they take some damage, and even then there's a delay.
I'm doubting my decision to make modifier effects dependent on their order, on one hand it's supposed to make players experiment more, but on the other hand, it's easy to exploit
In my opinion the order of the modifiers being important has always been that it is something difficult to wrap your head around while playing. I remember you mentioning the main appeal for it was for cluster modifier when the bullet exploded. As a suggestion for something I believe could be intuitive, you could make a modifier that when the bullet is destroyed, it shots bullets from another weapon the player has equipped. That way you can have a way for the modifier order to matter (first the modifiers of weapon 1 all at once, then the modifiers of weapon 2 all at once), while controlling how powerful it and making it easy to understand. It also gives the player another reason to have more than one weapon with important modifiers.
Graphics and sound effects are nice. Messing around with gun modifiers was fun, although as other have pointed out, the UI could use a little work.
I'm not sure if this is intended to be a browser game, or if it just happens to run in a browser, but when I tried to use the scroll wheel to switch guns, the page scrolled downwards. If I went into fullscreen, it only took up about a quarter of my monitor (my resolution is 3840x2160). Also, when I tried to drag a modifier into space, my browser interpreted that as me trying to click and drag a link. It opened a page with just "null" in the URL bar.
I tested it in Firefox before(Windows 10, yeah), and I could swear that it worked properly, but now the using the mouse wheel in Firefox(and Chrome, too) also scrolls the page. I fixed it for now.
As for dragging the modifiers, I could not reproduce it, for me it works correctly in both Firefox and Chrome.
The weapon UI is really rough, but once I had it figured out it was actually pretty fun to experiment with the modifiers. Sometimes it can be hard to differentiate your own bullets from the enemies especially with the burn modifier on. Practice screen and openly showing the enemy stats were nice QoL features.
Comments
Hey. I played your game as part of a Demo Day stream. If you didn't catch the stream live, here's a link to the video:
You can see my other demo day 46 streams as well on my channel.
Thanks for playing my game! I tried playing Shipwreck, but I found it to be too hard. I was constantly running out of stamina and getting my ass kicked by enemies, so couldn't progress far enough and gave up.
I think this game needs a tutorial, but other than that it seems like it's far along on the right track. I like the visuals and I like the sound effects. I just wish I was better at the game.
I'll give the same criticism as I gave to Catlike Magic, as they're similar enough.
The visuals are pretty nice, I'll give you that, but the gameplay is slow, enemies have too much hp, most of the time you feel like you're just waiting for enemies to die. I'm not a fan of inertia in dodging games too.
Besides that, its very fun to experiment with gun modifications. I just wish the player default shot had a bit more impact and speed, in the beginning the player is faster than the shots.
I accidentally closed out of the game like 20 minutes in but I would have kept going. Great job!!
i liek the screen that shows enemies on the next level but id also want to be able to just skip it
splitters are way too tanky, all that does is slow down the game considerably since they are only an actual threat when they die
visuals beeen getting pretty sleek, altho id still love an option to tone down the background, its a bit too distracting for me
but what was really disorienting for me were those drunk shots, i got completely lost with them. they were however extremely fun and id take having fun over staying alive any day
also its kinda hard to use rmb to move slower, can u add a binding to a keyboard key?
overall very fun game
Reached all the way to round 37 when this happened
I like the indicators that show which enemy will spawn. Also the new buttons to order and upgrade modifiers in the inventory. I don't think I will ever use the "exchange all" one though. The screen that shows which enemies the level will have was useful at first, but it got a bit annoying later. it was hard to notice when a new enemy was introduced since you don't read the table wave after wave, just once every time AFTER a new enemy is introduced. I think it needs some re-organizing and maybe a new menu. Also having to scroll to see all enemies and the list pushing the "continue to level" button to the bottom might not be ideal.
Sorry to say, but I disabled the bloom effect as soon as I learned it could be disabled. I personally don't like it, it makes me feel like I don't have my glasses on.
There was something weird going on with the "Pi" modifier. At one point, having "Pi" increased damage from 20 to 24. "Pii" changed it to 21 and "Piii" dropped it to 14. The way some modifiers change when they are upgraded feels random or inconvenient at times. For some of them you don't even want to upgrade them at certain point, for example Daa is ok but Daaa drops firing rate off a cliff.
At one point by experimenting, I managed to have negative armor penetration. It made mine layers almost impossible to kill.
Finally, I don't like the ship with orbiting shields. It is fine when there is only one, but with two at the same time they becomes a headache. Fire/move incorrectly and both regenerates all the shields without hurting them even a little. I managed to beat three at the same time but it took me a long time. Then I had the situation of the screenshot. I spent 10 minutes and my patience ran out after hitting them 3 or 4 times. I understand this is designed to be tackled with a specific setup but having something outright unkillable if you have the wrong modifiers doesn't feel good.
Also I tried other modifier for once this time! I had "Expp" for a long while though I ended up needing armor penetration so I had to drop it. I need to learn how to pair it with other modifiers effectively.
Hey, thanks for the feedback, sorry for not replying faster!
I improved the enemy preview screen, so that enemy description are collapsible, and are expanded only for new enemies in next level, that always appear on top.
It's ok that you don't like bloom, that's why I gave the players an option to disable it.
Pi was bugged, I fixed it now, but it's still nerfed compared to how it used to be. I'm doubting my decision to make modifier effects dependent on their order, on one hand it's supposed to make players experiment more, but on the other hand, it's easy to exploit, e.g.: put Fi after Da and it will completely negate the firerate reduction, cause Fi always gives you +5 to firerate regardless of how low it was before.
Negative armor penetration works as it's supposed to, it decreases your chance to deal damage to armored enemies, but it never makes it 0, cause otherwise you'd be stuck.
Yeah, I also think it was a problem, so I change how the spinners work, now they won't regenerate shields until they take some damage, and even then there's a delay.
Co and Da work well with Exp.
Hey I'm glad the feedback was useful!
In my opinion the order of the modifiers being important has always been that it is something difficult to wrap your head around while playing. I remember you mentioning the main appeal for it was for cluster modifier when the bullet exploded. As a suggestion for something I believe could be intuitive, you could make a modifier that when the bullet is destroyed, it shots bullets from another weapon the player has equipped. That way you can have a way for the modifier order to matter (first the modifiers of weapon 1 all at once, then the modifiers of weapon 2 all at once), while controlling how powerful it and making it easy to understand. It also gives the player another reason to have more than one weapon with important modifiers.
nice seems mostly the same as the last time I played it still fun
It was my first time playing your game, but I watched it played on stream so I knew what to do.
Right away I want to say bullet hells are not my thing, but modifying guns is really cool.
On my first playthrough I got to level 15
you can see my mods in the screenshot.
I do not know why the game is not centered.
I must say, if it wasn't for the stream I would find the ui more confusing, but it's not that many buttons, so I am sure I would figure it out.
I expected to play shorter, but I survived longer than I expected, and I had fun.
Graphics and sound effects are nice. Messing around with gun modifiers was fun, although as other have pointed out, the UI could use a little work.
I'm not sure if this is intended to be a browser game, or if it just happens to run in a browser, but when I tried to use the scroll wheel to switch guns, the page scrolled downwards. If I went into fullscreen, it only took up about a quarter of my monitor (my resolution is 3840x2160). Also, when I tried to drag a modifier into space, my browser interpreted that as me trying to click and drag a link. It opened a page with just "null" in the URL bar.
Which browser do you use?
Firefox. I'm on Windows 10, if that matters.
I tested it in Firefox before(Windows 10, yeah), and I could swear that it worked properly, but now the using the mouse wheel in Firefox(and Chrome, too) also scrolls the page. I fixed it for now.
As for dragging the modifiers, I could not reproduce it, for me it works correctly in both Firefox and Chrome.
This looks great! I think it could really use proper (procgen) levels.
The weapon UI is really rough, but once I had it figured out it was actually pretty fun to experiment with the modifiers. Sometimes it can be hard to differentiate your own bullets from the enemies especially with the burn modifier on. Practice screen and openly showing the enemy stats were nice QoL features.