Seems to work fine on Manjaro with Proton. My controller even worked which was coo.
The art is very flat, I'm hoping it's just early placeholders because it really didn't draw me in and the day-night cycle graphic looks way higher detail. The survival guide is hilarious, really enjoyed that. I also like the music, nice to have something fun playing in the background wihle you explore a tropical island.
The mechanics work very solidly, didn't have any bugs or anything involving the combat.
Can't hold controller button to scroll through options faster in the keybinding menus.
Scrollbars are also nasty, you have to keep the cursor on them and the scrollwheel doesn't work
Should also probably hide the cursor once keyboard or gamepad input is detected in the menu
I hit the options to rebind the shoulder buttons (I use a dualshock and I don't like xbox-style trigger inputs) and it just went to a black screen, I had to Alt+F4 because your game doesn't respond to external kill signals. Not sure if you're engine-devving or not but if you are, make sure you field WM_CLOSE, WM_QUIT, and WM_DESTROY in the message loop.
Feedback on the door opening is either non-existent or drowned out by the music, couldn't hear it at all.
I always have very little patience for timing-based combat, it makes me quickly give up on souls-likes no matter how much I like exploring. I got bored after dying a couple of times in the very first part of the tutorial with the river you have to keep crossing. So I skipped it the next time and explored around the island a little bit. Didn't find any of the armor pieces or the boss. Don't take that as a bad thing though, this is a lot of content to already have for a demo and this isn't my preferred genre.
The art is very flat, I'm hoping it's just early placeholders because it really didn't draw me in and the day-night cycle graphic looks way higher detail. The survival guide is hilarious, really enjoyed that. I also like the music, nice to have something fun playing in the background wihle you explore a tropical island. Yeah, just about all the art so far is temporary. Been more focused on mechanics first.
Can't hold controller button to scroll through options faster in the keybinding menus. Yeah I should fix that...
Scrollbars are also nasty, you have to keep the cursor on them and the scrollwheel doesn't work I'll look into fixing that too, but I'm 90% sure the scrollwheels are supposed to work. That might be an issue with your set up.
I hit the options to rebind the shoulder buttons (I use a dualshock and I don't like xbox-style trigger inputs) and it just went to a black screen, I had to Alt+F4 because your game doesn't respond to external kill signals. Not sure if you're engine-devving or not but if you are, make sure you field WM_CLOSE, WM_QUIT, and WM_DESTROY in the message loop. I use Game Maker Studio 2. If you were in the game world when you did that, then it might have been a bug due to a message pop up. Sorry, the crossed out options there aren't implemented yet. As for why kill signals weren't working, I'm unsure of that.
Feedback on the door opening is either non-existent or drowned out by the music, couldn't hear it at all. Non-existent. It'll be fixed in the future.
I always have very little patience for timing-based combat, it makes me quickly give up on souls-likes no matter how much I like exploring. I got bored after dying a couple of times in the very first part of the tutorial with the river you have to keep crossing. So I skipped it the next time and explored around the island a little bit. Didn't find any of the armor pieces or the boss. Don't take that as a bad thing though, this is a lot of content to already have for a demo and this isn't my preferred genre. Thank you for taking the time to try it regardless. Next demo day I'm hoping to have difficulty options enabled for those who want to push through the content easier.
So I found all the armor pieces and got to the two tentacle hammer dudes on that GIF. Combat is good, once you add more weapons you'll have a bunch of different playstyles. Pipes puzzle in the mountain smithy was also a pretty good , requires some thinking but it's not annoying. The Illustrated guide book was cute.
I did most of the hard encounters by strafing and shooting with the crossbow, though. Even with the reload time, you should probably also limit the ammo. It allows you to basically avoid having to learn the enemy patterns so you shouldn't be able to rely on it.
Overall the systems are already solid, now it's time to build up that content!
Holy shit lmao. I'm 3 minutes into this and the reminder for Bearcycle dev got you to turn down the game audio for the recording, making it so I can actually hear you over the game. A miracle.
Okay, just finished watching it. You did fantastic! Definitely one of my favorite players to watch so far, simply because you took the time to observe your enemies and surroundings, and started figuring out strategies to deal with them, such as approaching the double spike guys with your shield up. I know that right now a lot of them seem to boil down to back up and shoot with the crossbow, but even with that I was happy you were able to start incorporating dodges into your arsenal, and the foes still gave you a hard time. Even though you didn't beat the boss, you got through just about everything there was to do. Also, you came very close to finding the gauntlets. If you go back and watch at 1:23:40, you'll see that you were hyper focused on the axe guys, and didn't even notice they had been standing on the gauntlets. As for the greaves, those are pretty well hidden, and although you got close to them, you never entered into the zone they're in.
The main thing I learned from watching you is I need to make it so items on the ground sparkle so they're more obvious. Thanks for playing!
Yeah, I am not used to recording, and it's hard for me to judge audio levels with alt tabbng to OBS. The reminder sure helped.
I had fun playing. I sure felt like a coward, and not awesome thou. I am happy to hear I am one of your favourite players/testers. It was a new experience to me in general, and I had a good time. I hope you are going to make more improvements to the UI. Also tutorials are hard...
Gamepad works natively, which I usually don't expect but its really nice. Shipwreck is nice, Title music is very comfy. Is this Enginedevved? Looks like it based on the non-existent folder structure. If it is, are you using any libraries for Controller reading? Mind sharing?
Says press any Button, but doesn't work with any Button. Main Menu has no Button preselected, which feels a bit odd. I'm assuming Graphics are mostly placeholders, not only in the Title, but also in the Game aswell. They work, but for something final they feel a bit empty and Paint-like.
Options>Gameplay>AllPlayers is empty. Title Music gets better over Time.
Control rebinding doesn't allow to hold to move quickly between Options. TItle Music has a bit of a bad fade when it finishes, would prefer a better loop of the later part instead. But I'm spending more Time then necessary in here, not necessarily to check out Controls, I also just want to listen to that Song.
I like the Intro, its nice, and fits the low Resolution well. Nice swaying Palms, altho their Sprites need a bit of Work, Palms are thinner on the Trunks and with longer Leaves I think. Beach could be less til-y, but I understand the limitations/look of Tilebased Graphics here, so maybe just animated Waves? Grass to Sand Transition does nothing Gameplay-wise I think, so you could smooth that out. UI isn't very good. As in Looks, Designwise its fine, conveys everything I need simply and clearly, but it just feels extremely placeholder. Don't like the Music as much as I liked the Title one, not nearly as much. Also its background Music, it should really loop, and not fade in/out when it repeats itself like that.
The Door interaction is great! Its such a simple 3/4 Frame animation, but it works out very well. With the whole Game in that Artstyle or something similar it'd be alright, but the bland Detail-less Grasstiles everywhere, the fully square and equally detailless CLiffs and the odd Palms take away from it.
You're missing Sounds for the Door, and a lot of other Things as of now. The grab Soundeffect sounds odd. Should've introduced Lock-on before the first Combat, but its fine, your Controls are very intuitive anyway.
Combat feels good, even without a Weapon. Lockon is smooth, the circular marker works, hits feel satisfying, the death explosion is great.
Tents as Respawn Points work for a Shipwreck Game I think. I don't know why a Tent is constructed there in the first Place, maybe some Hermit-lore or something could work there, and its missing a cooking fire to make Healing Potions or something on, but thats very optional I think at this Point.
The Tent itself needs a bit of work Graphicswise, the Fabric looks a bit too even, especially at the Top, but not bad as of now. Character could step a bit faster I think, it feels a bit slower then what the actual movement Speed is. Maybe the Interaction Circle for the Tent would make more Sense at the Entry, not in the Middle, but that would have to be tested, just a thought. The Timepassing is alright, its a bit fast on the Animation, so I couldn't see the Sun/Moon tho, but it didn't feel like they looked bad.
The Treefade is nice to have, but a bit too big in its Radius I think. It fades out half of the Screen when I'm behind a few Trees, instead of only whats rather near me.
I love the litte Guys fighting, it really feels great, with the big Eyes when being grabbed, and everything. I wish it would make a little more Sense tho, and you could differentiate between Characters easier, as opposed to just all being the same white Dummy. Maybe little Pirate Bandanas or native Warmasks or something to make more Sense?
Died, didn't pay attention to the Health. My Fault, its clearly visible and has nice Audio Feedback, but I think with a better HUD this wouldn't happen so easily. Something more then just putting them all as colored Lines on the Top.
Nice Drinking Animation if you can even call it that. The Resolution and direction of the Artstyle, even tho most Assets are unfinished and/or Placeholders I hope, really lends itself well to these simple Transforms on Objects.
Would be nice if I could press Dodge to stroke in the Water, for a bigger swimspeed, currently it feels more like floating. Also maybe some Waves around the Player?
I kept trying to use D-Pad for Items instead of FacebuttonLeft, maybe thats just what I'm used to.
Your Palm collisions reach into the raging River. I can't grab the Spiky Guy from the Front due to spiky Gloves? Nice Surprise. EquipScreen is there. Its not taht good I think, but its there, and it works for now. I wish Menues would support Stick aswell instead of just D-Pad, having to swap between the two all the Time is a tiny bit annoying.
Back should be Bag, no? I pressed it thinking I'd go out of the Menu, but I got into the Inventory. Also nothing for me to do in there.
Trees blocking hits is a mixed Bag. I appreciate it being there, it adds to the Realism, and it doesn't feel all too bad, but it doesn't really feel good either. It can get annoying getting Stuck constantly, especially if the Enemy spawns next to a Tree and you can'T sneak up on them unless you're swapping away from the Sword for a more poke-y option like your Fists for that. Also should only block on the Swing, not on pulling back I think. If I'm standing next to a try and starting an attack, it should consider that and pull back accordingly so I don't hit it, maybe only hit it if I'm swinging into the Tree direction basically, not parallel to it? I don't know.
Grabbing with a Sword is a pretty brutal Impalement, didn't expect that. The Background Music gets a bit annoying at this Point. I keep reading it as K.O.-Salve, not Ko-Salve. If you're going with a Shipwrecked theme, wouldn't a Sabre be better then a Knights Sword? Stunlock in Combat seems a bit long, so if you get hit with the first Hit, the follow-ups of the Combo will most likely hit aswell. Can't seem to dodge out of that either, unless I ran out of Stamina, and didn't pay enough attention to that?
And now, after a bunch of Trees and Stuff you teach me about the Alternate Attacks for Stabs? I wish that'd been sooner. Disregard what I said above then. Wish Enemies could get parried by Walls aswell tho, the Spiky Guy especially with his wide Swings.
Enemies can get Stuck on Corners if you're also close, trying to navigate into you but just jittering on the Corner.
The Cave Tiles is what I'D expect the final Graphics for this too look like probably. It has a nice Amount of Details to look more interesting then the Outside Stuff, but not so much as to look too cluttering. But it could use some variations and doodads. Some Cracks on the Walls/Floor, maybe Stone carved Masks in the Walls aswell, or some alternate Tiles to place around important EntryWays/Along middlepaths between Doors? Also doesn't make Sense for a Cave, but for some kind of old overgrown Mayan Temple on the Island I could see this work. If it had more Greenery and broken down Stuff then. Maybe a few small Ferns growing in a Corner somewhere, swaying when the Player walks through them?
Whats with the Guy running away from me on the Tiny Island and drowning? Did I mess something up? Thought he looked sad with his little Moustache, got him to respawn with the Tent, but then he threw Poison. Guess not a sad stuck Person after all.
Its a nice Tutorial-y Area tho, teaching you about Projectile Enemies, Poision, drowning, and all that. Drowning them is also really fun, just like the Combat.
I can't equip the Crossbow Primarily aswell? What a Shame. And I can't grab anymore when I have the Crossbow, and don't have a light Attack with it. Sure, I can switch back to the Fist for the grabbing anyhow, but I still wish the Left Shoulder was bound to something on Crossbow. Even if its just a pushback with the Handle or something like that.
The Gate with the Lever is a bit too light compared to the Walls and Background I think. It stands out too much and seems to be missing some Shading.
Dodging over the Water seems hard. It has quite a bit of Wind-up Time to it I think. You don't retain Momentum when dashing into the Water, so you have to think about immediately pressing up, or you will drift off and have to run back around again. Or at least when Sprinting and then dashing it seems. Probably due to the falling to the FLoor thing doing its Stuff in Water.
The Hitbox for the Player doesn't seem to change when in the Water, altho the Sprite gets lowered quite a bit. So theres an Area at the Top of the Water where you can't swim at. Overall the Player Hitbox should be half in Y I think, so you can overlap the Cliffs and Stuff with your Upper Body.
Its nice that you can skip part of the River if you know what you're doing.
The Sound when throwing Enemies off Cliffs and everything is also great. But they seem to just climb back up if you die.
The Bossfight was pretty easy, but properly intense. Nice Music, nice Abilities, its nice that everything kind of Works, but I found myself to still be swapping between Shield/Crossbow/Fist as needed to poke, block or grab him. I kind of wish the Swapping was bound differently tho, I have to stop movement in order to swap the Item around. I don't know how with your current Setup tho. You can't really bind Attacks to FaceButtons, as you have 4 Attacks, dodge and UseItem in Combat.
Finished the Tutorial, time for the Game. It says Consumeables restocked, but it doesn'T seem to do so, I still have to do it manually at the Chest. Music doesn'T fit very well, I want the TitleMusic back.
PoisonSpitter Projectiles End after maybe a third of a Screen, so you can just stand safely out of range with your Crossbow.
Was curious wether Waterfalls push me down, got answered by an Enemy messing up, nice.
I'm also not fighting 5 Spinners at the same Time, screw you, I'm just gonna thief the Gauntlets.
Found an MP3 Player? Alright, maybe I can listen to more of the TitleTheme with that. No, only some weird Guitar. Oh well, its better then the Background Music, altho it fits even less obviously.
Nice that you have variable Waterdepth with your small Rivers.
You have a big issue with falling Enemies. If you exit the Screen right as the fall, they store the falling Position as their Respawn. So if you re-enter, they are just stuck in a permanently falling loop, constantly retriggering the Wiouh Sound while doing so. Very annoying.
Found the Greaves by accident, your Stuff is nicely placed. The Map Layout itself is also pretty alright, it just gets dampened by the blank Graphics a bit at this Point. And maybe could use a bit more Detail. Not much, just a few Rocks or Ferns here and there, maybe not so straight Cliffs every once in a while. But you have to obviously be careful with those, fighting in tight corridors doesn'T work as well for this as in those semi-open Areas you have at the moment.
The 5 Spinners can get stuck on each other with their Pathfinding, and jitter around. The Dash over the Ravine works well and un-explanatory, thanks to the Riverdash being explained. And it being kind of obvious.
Equipment Menu Cursor for where you're hovered is a bit hard to Read.
I'm also going to take the MP3 Player into the Dungeon with me, in case I'm missing something. I can't swim in Lava, what a stupid assumption of mine. You keep the Key upon dying, and its faster then running back through the Maze Part.
You have a lot of Stuff, like Wetness against the Burn, but I can't set my Arrows on Fire by shooting through the Braziers? I did not expect to learn about Map and Menu at the End of the Dungeon, but the Island Map isn't all that Useful anyway, Inventory kind of feels unnecessary, and the rest is more or less nonfunctional at the moment anyway.
The 2 Claw Dashing Enemies are kind of a Joke in Terms of difficulty, the take longer to wind up then you take to regenerate a bit of Stamina and swing, so you can just stunlock them completely.
I keep pressing DPad Down in the Dungeon to use Items instead of UseItem, it feels so much more natural in the Hectic of the Combat. And apparently the Communists can grab me through the Shield. Fine, I'll not use that then.
Having a Pipes map is nice. Not knowing where the Lever for the broken one is isn't. Enemies following you into the next Room also isn't I think. Took a bit, found the Lever. Apparently I had one more Key then I thought, its obscured by the FPS Counter.
The small winding Pathway Areas are trivialized by the fact that you can just dash over all the corners/bends and shorten the Paths to maybe a quarter of the Length.
If you have variable Waterdepths already, shouldn'T the Puddle to make you wet in the Dungeon be enough if its only waist deep? So you don'T slow down as much when having to swim through it?
Neat shortcut at the Watergun, didn'T expect that.
That Boss has a lot of Health. A Lot. Messed up with the Itemswitching again and again, that really needs to be more fluid I think, but I have no Idea how to. Or rather, I keep switching Weapons, but then trying to use an Item instead of the Weapon in Question. Something is unintuitive there.
I also can't use the Watergun when I'm on Fire? Or maybe I just pressed Left Shoulder instead of Left Trigger. See the part above, something is off there. It only happens when I'm stuck in Combat and have to do it intuitively without thinking, so your default Controls might be off somewhat. Or just allow the Watergun/Crossbow to shoot with both shoulder and trigger?
You can stunlock the Boss into repeating his ultimate Move, until the Watergun randomly decided to not work anymore. Seems you only get 4 Shots before the Boss becomes just completely immune to the Watergun or something like that. Guess I'll remove that Item from the Bar aswell, leaving only the regular Crossbow.
Its nice that the Bossfight works with the Environment so well. Its not nice that its just a ring around the Border, something more dynamic could maybe be better. And I can't drown the Boss, or use most of the Items in there, they just kind of feel useless in that Fight. Other then that it was a Fun Fight. And a Fun Demo overall. Graphics should be prettied up I think, some Sounds are missing, but were they aren't they fit well. Music doesn't fit so well most of the Time, the Bossmusic was alright, and I really liked the Title Theme, but the Rest not so much.
I should be able to swim off Maps and/or move over to other Areas everywhere where there isn't a blockage by Rocks or Trees or something, even if its just empty Ocean and I drown or get eaten by Sharks. The Design is a bit over the Place, between a Shipwrecked Tropical Island, medieval equipment, modern Watergun and MP3-Player and the Enemies. Best for them would probably be natives with weird Shadowweapons and funky masks or something. At least thats how I pictured them in my Head. With thriving Shadowtentacles to grab me, voodoo/tiki Masks Plant clothing and all that.
And your Trees have some issues. Could sway a little less I think, need to be thinner Trunks, and fade out seemingly in screenwide Rows rather then a circle around the Player.
Still, very Enjoyable Demo, played roughly 3 Hours.
Hey, glad you had a good time. Sorry for taking a bit to reply to your post. I won't reply to every section, but I will say that the anon who said the game is GMS2 in the thread was correct. I'm also happy that the majority of your complaints are about things that are in test phases, (tree graphics, visuals of player/armor/weapons/enemies) music (as it's all royalty free and I know nothing about music editing yet), and more. There are also things that I feel will make more sense once related systems are implemented, such as being unable to change gear outside of the box. My next main goal is going to be implementing the options menu while in the game proper, as well as adding difficulty options.
First off, the music and theme are really nice - exploring a tropical island is always a good time. The survival guide is really funny and a nice touch- it shows me that you got a lot of creativity and good ideas. I enjoyed exploring the island, but sadly didn't make it so far - only got to the entrance of the first ruins.
The main thing that kept me from playing more is the combat - I feel like combat is too sluggish and lacks good UI/UX feedback. The combat mechanic makes it so that its very much whoever gets in the first attack will do a bunch of damage or even outright win, as the first attack stuns the other person and then makes it very hard to break out of the stun without taking numerous hits. Maybe I'm just not understanding something.. but after 5 attempts I hung up the towel, I just couldn't seem to get the hang of combat and it was beginning to frustrate me.
One of the other issues is the graphics - some aspects of the graphics are very hard to get past, namely the fact that the player and enemies are all the same sprite. It would be really nice to see some variation here. Also, the environment is a bit too simple in my opinion. It would really help adding some more foliage, ground variation and props.
For the most part I think your complaints can just be attributed to the game being early in development, and a lot of things being place holders and test assets. All of it will be fixed in the future.
First thing I want to note is that the music and presentation are really, really nice. It took me more than a few seconds to realize you could use the mouse to look around, and I also took a few seconds to notice the control button indicators on the signs. I'm old and my brain is pickled.
The combat is satisfying, the controls make sense, the enemies that I've encountered are all fun to fight. Really good stuff all around.
- I loved the grab attack that combo with your right hand weapon. And the combat in general.
- Loved survival elements like the depleting stamina over time
- loved water/lava environment interaction of the lava dungeon
- loved that enemies can poison each other and drown
- loved the pipe map
Questionable:
Shipwreck is a title that tells me nothing of the game. Moreover: beside the tutorial, the location is not even much islandy (like mountains and lava dungeon); same thing for enemies. But since right now there is almost no art, it's fine.
The Boss of the lava smithy has a big charging attack that covers the whole screen. You can avoid it all together (also the little fireballs) by goin' into water, but you never explained this interaction(for what I saw), so maybe put it somewhere into the dungeon. The boss maybe has too much health. Boss' big charging projectile has an animation, the flame mitra atk needs it too. So you have time to switch from crossbow to shield or fleeing into water; right now the only viable action is dodging.
The lever you find in the dungeon and the leverless mechanism to reroute water needs a better sprite to understand wtf they are ( I got it right away for some reason, but dunno why).
Crossbow is overpowered and encourage a lame playstyle. (Big problem ihmo).
Enemies can stunlock you to death way too easily.
Dunno if its a bug, but when I pickup a new equip I would like to use it right away and not wait till I reach a loadout chest.
Bugs:
- choosing options crashed the whole game, but you know that
- Audio bugged out. I finished the tutorial yesterday before going to sleep, but I didn't want do redo it, so I leaved the game running . In the morning the audio was out. It's a super rare case, but the more you know
Shipwreck is a title that tells me nothing of the game. Moreover: beside the tutorial, the location is not even much islandy (like mountains and lava dungeon); same thing for enemies. But since right now there is almost no art, it's fine. It's a working title. Hopefully I'll come up with something better. In the end it will be heavily based off of the Hawaiian islands.
The Boss of the lava smithy has a big charging attack that covers the whole screen. You can avoid it all together (also the little fireballs) by goin' into water, but you never explained this interaction(for what I saw), so maybe put it somewhere into the dungeon. The boss maybe has too much health. Boss' big charging projectile has an animation, the flame mitra atk needs it too. So you have time to switch from crossbow to shield or fleeing into water; right now the only viable action is dodging. Based on what I'm reading, I'm fine with leaving the boss a bit mysterious, and with some tricky timing.
The lever you find in the dungeon and the leverless mechanism to reroute water needs a better sprite to understand wtf they are ( I got it right away for some reason, but dunno why). 100% true.
Crossbow is overpowered and encourage a lame playstyle. (Big problem ihmo). I might make it have a limited amount of ammo in the future.
Enemies can stunlock you to death way too easily. Was there any enemy in particular you had the most trouble with?
Dunno if its a bug, but when I pickup a new equip I would like to use it right away and not wait till I reach a loadout chest. Not a bug, this is working as intended. I'm hoping it'll feel better in the future once I get a weapon crafting system in there.
choosing options crashed the whole game, but you know that Was this in the "pause" menu? I wouldn't expect choosing options to crash the game, it should just show a little message pop up with a number.
Audio bugged out. I finished the tutorial yesterday before going to sleep, but I didn't want do redo it, so I leaved the game running . In the morning the audio was out. It's a super rare case, but the more you know Huh, interesting. I'll have to try that myself.
Very rare that I get anyone saying they got as far as you did. I'm very grateful you managed to get all the way through it. I know it can be very difficult at times.
Based on what I'm reading, I'm fine with leaving the boss a bit mysterious, and with some tricky timing.
Good for me, but maybe travel half dungeon to fight him again is a bit much.
Was there any enemy in particular you had the most trouble with?
Wolverine/claws enemies. The problem spikes with multiple to fight at once. if you get hit by one and the other is near enough to hit you, it's over. But again, it's your fault to be hit when you have run+dodge and can dodge away after a sword atk.
Not a bug, this is working as intended. I'm hoping it'll feel better in the future once I get a weapon crafting system in there.
While I understand the design reason, it feels pretty underwhelming to pick up a new item and get deny to try it. Yep, picking up a blueprint that you craft at camp will solve the issue.
Was this in the "pause" menu? I wouldn't expect choosing options to crash the game, it should just show a little message pop up with a number
Yep, I got 4.
Very rare that I get anyone saying they got as far as you did. I'm very grateful you managed to get all the way through it. I know it can be very difficult at times.
I am making a new top-level comment, since the game is a lot of fun and I did not run it in a proper environment before. The game is very good and very large!
I am playing it at proper speed. I retract my previous comment on fast travel, the player character walks fairly quickly. (EDIT: Later on, I am wondering whether I should re-retract my comment, since I did resort to dashing to travel more quickly - but the design of the game makes it not that important, since not all progress in levels (buttons, etc.) is lost when respawning, making fast-travel less of a problem).
I like that enemies can end up poisoning themselves.
I saw you added a cooldown indicator in the most recent update, nice :) .
In the indoors room with 4 poison-shooters, the crossbow caused one of them to fall down, but then it got stuck falling down repeatedly, eventually dying. I would guess that is a bug if the intention is that enemies also reappear at the last known location with 10 health lost, though enemies and the player character may have different desired handling.
There is maybe a 1 second delay when pressing and holding '1' or '2' to get the radial menu, which can be significant in combat. Though, is it because '1' and '2' can also be tapped quickly to tap through items? If so, the current approach may be good.
I am not certain, but I think some enemies that I did not defeat despawned after I died. Is that intentional? Or are enemies spawning randomly upon the player character dying and respawning?
Wait, is it on purpose that while in the menu accessed with 'Esc', the game is not paused, and you can die? Is that for multiplayer? For singleplayer, that seems a bit annoying.
Restocking upon entering a camp may not work fully always.
I only found 3 armor items before finding the map in the lava indoor area. I never found an outdoors map. I did find an MP3 player at some point.
I sometimes messed up dodging, which caused lava deaths. You must press and release space quickly, correct?
At one point, I used multiple healing "potions" in a row, but I did not get healed further apart from the first one. I was on fire at the time, though even after the fire status effect had ended, chugging another healing "potion" did not help. I was at about 60% health.
In the room with a lever that is "defended" by a rotating trap with fireballs, I multiple times tried to pull the lever, but failed, and ended up burning to death. I do not know whether I was too far away from the lever to pull it. Wait, is it only possible to change the direction while water is flowing through the pipe? Would it make sense to add a "declined"/"rejected" sound when attempting to change the direction of a pipe using a lever that has no water, such that the player knows that the player did interact correctly, but that the action is not available?
I got very far, but I ended up with a GameMaker GML error, seen below, where I could not ignore it, and only "abort". And since the game does not save anything after shutting down, I lost all progress, and I did not get to the boss, even though I only needed to reroute the final pipes to the boss room. I imagine that you have saving on your TODO-list, but with such a large and good game, I think you should prioritize getting a save system up and running, such that the game can be continued after closing it down (for instance due to a crash or the player quitting and wanting to play later).
Error message pop-up:
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object obj_off_crossbow:
DoSub :1: undefined value
at gml_Object_obj_off_crossbow_Step_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_obj_off_crossbow_Step_0 (line -1)
I had acquired the water gun, and was busy attempting to switch to the shield by quickly tapping '1' multiple times.
I'm glad you had the opportunity to play the game at its correct speed.
I saw you added a cooldown indicator in the most recent update, nice :) . Thanks.
In the indoors room with 4 poison-shooters, the crossbow caused one of them to fall down, but then it got stuck falling down repeatedly, eventually dying. I would guess that is a bug if the intention is that enemies also reappear at the last known location with 10 health lost, though enemies and the player character may have different desired handling. I thought I'd fixed that, but I guess not.
I am not certain, but I think some enemies that I did not defeat despawned after I died. Is that intentional? Or are enemies spawning randomly upon the player character dying and respawning? Once you get past the tutorial, enemy spawns are random, up until you get into the Mountain Smithy, so that changes every day.
Wait, is it on purpose that while in the menu accessed with 'Esc', the game is not paused, and you can die? Is that for multiplayer? For singleplayer, that seems a bit annoying. Yeah, getting an actual pause menu implemented just hasn't happened yet. I'll be implementing it in the future for sure.
Things still aren't perfect with my enemy spawning. For some reason it's just remained buggy even though I've attempted multiple fixes, and then testing the fixes is tricky because things are randomized.
Restocking upon entering a camp may not work fully always. I'll look into it.
At one point, I used multiple healing "potions" in a row, but I did not get healed further apart from the first one. I was on fire at the time, though even after the fire status effect had ended, chugging another healing "potion" did not help. I was at about 60% health. The game has an injury system where your HP cap is reduced a little bit by damage sources, and fire damage is particularly injurious. I tried to explain this a bit in the survival guide, but it's still not very obvious. I'll make it a bit more obvious on the health bar.
In the room with a lever that is "defended" by a rotating trap with fireballs, I multiple times tried to pull the lever, but failed, and ended up burning to death. I do not know whether I was too far away from the lever to pull it. Wait, is it only possible to change the direction while water is flowing through the pipe? Would it make sense to add a "declined"/"rejected" sound when attempting to change the direction of a pipe using a lever that has no water, such that the player knows that the player did interact correctly, but that the action is not available? You're correct that the levers don't work if water isn't flowing beneath them. I'll add a sound effect like you suggested.
I got very far, but I ended up with a GameMaker GML error, seen below, where I could not ignore it, and only "abort". And since the game does not save anything after shutting down, I lost all progress, and I did not get to the boss, even though I only needed to reroute the final pipes to the boss room. I imagine that you have saving on your TODO-list, but with such a large and good game, I think you should prioritize getting a save system up and running, such that the game can be continued after closing it down (for instance due to a crash or the player quitting and wanting to play later). Yeah there's still bugs I haven't worked out. I'll attempt to reproduce the one you found and fix it. I'll also make sure saving is added to my list.
I gave it a go this morning for the first time. I don't usually play games like this so I think its safe to say my feedback might be less than useful. Either way, here goes:
-Can't access options menu in game? It's crossed out, and the output message I get when trying is "4" -The perspective makes the trees between the player and the camera very annoying. There's one enemy after getting the sword that's hidden in the trees and hard to target if you know he's there. I saw in the thread that you are working on the tree-transparency thing, and I think that will be a welcomed addition -First time messing with the chest and it's hard to tell what's equipped - i think the only difference is that equipped items have a white outline? I got used to it a bit later but the first time messing with it, I was confused especially due to the layout. Everything is to the left, so I figured if I "take" something, it'll show up on the right or something. Again I figured it out while playing, but it still might be a good idea to better highlight what you have equipped and how many items are available for you to take. I saw the bag limit, but that doesn't tell me how many I have in the chest to take (or maybe i'm blind?) -Wolverine is the first tough enemy, especially with the close quarters. Took me a few tries -The purple poison gauntlet is very annoying to deal with as a melee character. Drowning them and waiting behind trees (they don't reposition enough to get me if I camp behind a tree) to heal is the most efficient strategy, since I died twice and I really didn't want to do the swim over there again. I think this part of the stage would benefit from a) more cover or b) more tools at the players disposal (maybe give them the crossbow when they finish swimming over?) since dashing/walking towards the poison boys can easily get you hit, which while not deadly is more frustrating than anything -The crossbow is cool. I like it more than the sword/shield -The music and setting is kind of mismatched for me. I'm in a hallway with two wolverine looking guys after getting out of some castle-type building, and the music (and I guess setting?) doesn't really make sense. Same with the game type, I guess. Individually all the pieces are good - but together they make a picture I don't quite get. This might be on my end more than anything else, I guess. Perhaps thinks make more sense later on -The wolverine hallway is where I get filtered. I can deal with one, but the second guy splits my head from my neck without much effort.
Overall the game is cool, but some things are still a mystery, like: the passage of time seems important (you even have a separate screen telling you how many hours have passed for certain actions) but as far as I can tell there's no further meaning to this. Are my hours spent on the island tracked?
Either way, from a game design perspective you know what you're doing. The challenges make sense and you tend to introduce a new mechanic before giving us an easy then a hard challenge, which I like a lot in games.
-Yeah it's not implemented yet. It's high on the to do list. -It's implemented in the current hot fix. -I admit, it's not the most intuitive thing, but it seems like you mostly figured it out, which I'm grateful for. A lot of the design there is because of the limited screen space, including the two different menus. As for the how many items are available to take, the answer is actually infinite, and the convention of consumables being a finite thing is something I have yet to figure out how to help people unlearn. -Glad you got past it. -Yeah I might remove that section, or shorten it dramatically since its purpose is to teach the player how to deal with getting poisoned, and not necessarily for the player to actually go through and kill everything. -Glad you liked it. -Yeah, this has been one of those sticking points I'm unsure what to make of. It might just be one of those things you don't get, but at least for me I love the cozy island vibes contrasted with an action game. -I may need to make the tutorial easier, but I'm still thinking on it.
I'm glad you largely seem to have enjoyed it. The day night cycle will be more important later down the line, but for now it doesn't mean much.
Hey, I had the error in another game. Seems like the problem is that I'm on Windows N (a weird euro edition that cuts out a lot of cruft). That includes windows media player stuff. Here is the instructions for fixing it, in case it comes up with other players in the future:
I feel the melee system could be made more fun if the player has just a bit more range than the enemies, but once I got the sword, that was mostly solved.
When I first got to the poison enemy, it was hard to tell where it was because it kept backing into the trees. For situations like this, consider dimming the foregrounds that are directly in front of the player and affected enemy, with almost no exceptions even for ambushes.
I think you should have the "Switch between items" sign near where you can swap them out in the first place.
I appreciated the stab system once I learned it. The game is surprisingly complex.
I think you should work on smoothing out the wall hitboxes to not just being an even 32x32
Consider speeding up the player's speed OR zoom in your camera a bit so it seems like everything is going "faster" because as it is it "feels" slow.
Playing with a KB/M setup it was awkward to even want to use the items besides the healing juice because they don't give enough benefit to justify me remembering to use them. If poison was worse or the stamina potion recovered much more it could be worth it.
It was amusing to see all the enemies die to drowning, but I'm not sure that was intended?
The more systems that were added onto the game the more fun it was and I think that you have just the right number of active combat systems to not be too complex. It surprised me that I finished it because it was hard at some points but I did get to where the sign said end of demo. I explored a bit more (made it to the smithy place before giving up). Overall, good demo. I think it has great potential once polished up a bit.
There will be other weapons in the final game too, so there will also be more options in general.
Yeah, I'm planning on adding something like that. I don't know if I'd want to stop the enemy from ambushing the player due to it, but I understand where you're coming from.
Not a bad idea. My only worry is overloading the player, which is why I save that tutorial for later on.
Glad you enjoyed the differences between attacks in the game.
Would you be able to elaborate on what you mean by smoothing out the wall hitboxes?
I'll consider it. Thanks for the input.
Hmmm, maybe I'll make poison worse. Or at least make the poison enemies deal more poison. Can you elaborate on what about the controls specifically felt awkward?
It was partially intended. Obviously if the AI was better they'd be smart enough to not do that, but for now they are not smart enough.
I'm glad you got all the way to the smithy. I'm unsure about anything saying it was the end of the demo. Do you mean the end of the tutorial?
>smoothing the hitboxes Going back into the game, it might have to do with the player's hitbox vs the walls. This pic should illustrate what I mean. You should be able to do what the character on the right does here:
>awkward item controls It was probably just a case of too many buttons for me to want to bother to reach for 1 or 2 mid fight or while I'm in danger. More a personal quirk than a flaw. >end of demo Yes, I guess I meant end of the tutorial. I must have misread. At that point it was more open and I ran out of time to keep going. Don't know if there's a continue function, but it might be nice to have that in case a player drops the game and wants to come back later.
I really liked the game, though I have a special setup (running the game in a virtual machine, no viruses or bitcoin miners for me), which the game runs slowly on.
Most of the following are nits.
Music has cracking noises, but that may be my setup.
Menu UI is not pretty, but works, and can be fixed later.
Which engine do you use?
When I was bleeding at the beginning of the game, I thought I was bleeding to death, and that I had to do something before dying. So I was relieved that I did not die off, but that it was just a status effect.
Why am I murdering all these poor people? Some of them I attack first.
I am a little bit confused by the chest and equipment UI.
What is the purpose of the day-night time cycle?
Could it make sense to have a prompt come up when an interactable object is nearby? Though, that may be noisy, and it may be better as it currently is.
I can see that the sword swing is blocked by trees, but I am confused about what the collision shapes of the trees are. Is it pixel-perfect for the tree shape? I find that a bit unintuitive.
I dislike that enemies can be effectively invisible when behind trees. The lock-on helps, though. Have you considered mitigating this somehow, like maybe using a shader to show an outline when an enemy is behind a tree? Or, if enemies are meant to be able to hide, only do it for enemies that the player has "seen"/"discovered"?
I cannot open the chest with "E" if I am standing diagonally from it.
I can discover hidden enemies by clicking "X" repeatedly with the cursor over trees.
I think my character executed an attack once going on land which I "queued" several seconds before when I was in the water.
Why did my character's maximum stamina bar go down? Damage or poison? Though it is restored when sleeping or respawning. Or does it goes down upon stamina usage? Would that discourage travelling quickly outside of combat?
I had a much easier time scaring the shooting enemies into the water and having them drown than killing them, on the long horizontal beach.
While the test crossbow is obvious, is there any way to survive the first castle room if you do not pick it up and equip it? Though this may be good, to ensure that the player does know how to pick up and equip items. I just wonder if it may be a source of frustration. I did pick it up and equip it on the first time, though, just speculation on my part.
I did not know you could access the menu and inventory by clicking "Esc".
It would be really nice once you implement Options while playing, at least being able to turn down or shut off music.
For some weapons, like the crossbow, a "cooldown" indication might be nice. Maybe on top of the icon.
Would it make sense to describe consuming a ration as restoring not "stamina", but "current maximum stamina"?
There is a long distance between the checkpoints in the "river castle", though my setup is also lagging. I did not complete the game, but did get a fairly long distance into the "river castle". I experimented a bit too much with stamina, blocking with the shield and a "claws enemy", and ended up dying.
That's probably your set up. I'm not sure what you'd be referring to otherwise.
Yep, hopefully I'll have it looking pretty down the line.
Game Maker Studio 2.
Yeah, bleed isn't too dangerous of a status effect. You wake up shipwrecked, which is why it happens.
They're just test enemies honestly.
Believe it or not, it used to be a lot worse. Can you elaborate on what exactly confused you about it?
The day night cycle will eventually correspond to more difficult enemies appearing at night.
That's a good idea. I could easily have a little icon appear when something interactable is in sight.
The trees hit boxes are just squares for now. That's something that might be improved in the future.
I'm planning on having trees vanish when a dangerous creature is hidden beyond them in the future. It's on the to do list.
Hmmm, if it's awkward feeling, I can fix that.
How much did that happen? Were there ever enemies who seemed stuck in the trees?
A queued attack through water? I'll look into that. It's very possible.
Your stamina cap goes down over time with stamina usage. If I recall correctly, you lose 10% of your stamina cap based on how much stamina you use at a given time, so if you spend 100% stamina you'll be left with a 10% reduction. It could discourage traveling quickly, but you can plan accordingly and bring more rations.
That's kind of intentional. Personally I like the idea of some enemies having weaknesses to water, and they are one of them.
Technically it's possible to get through that room without the crossbow, but there's no way for you to know it, because it uses the completely unexplained magic system. The intent was to force the player to both use the crossbow, and probably use kukui juice (antidote) to survive.
Yeah, it's a little unnecessary to know, so I don't actually teach it until the player gets to the Mountain Smithy and acquires the map.
100% correct about that. It's on the to do list.
That's not a bad idea at all. I'll do that.
Yeah, that's accurate. Usually I use the terms Stamina, Stamina Cap, and Stamina Max. Stamina Cap is what gets reduced over time. The reason I didn't describe it as such in the tutorial was just because it seemed to me like it would be a little more confusing than just saying stamina.
By river castle, do you mean the area where you're trying to get up river past the enemies? That area is part of a lengthy one that forces the player to use what they've learned. I hope you get the chance to try again.
I am a little bit confused by the chest and equipment UI.
Believe it or not, it used to be a lot worse. Can you elaborate on what exactly confused you about it?
I think it was mainly the part where when you press 'E' at a chest, you get into one UI window. And then, after that, when you press (I think) 'Esc', you do not exit that UI window, but you enter another UI window, after which you can press 'Esc' again to exit.
I do not know what a better alternative would be. From what I know of GameMaker, one of its weaknesses is likely UI elements. But I have no knowledge of GMS and what features it offers.
I dislike that enemies can be effectively invisible when behind trees. The lock-on helps, though. Have you considered mitigating this somehow, like maybe using a shader to show an outline when an enemy is behind a tree? Or, if enemies are meant to be able to hide, only do it for enemies that the player has "seen"/"discovered"?
I'm planning on having trees vanish when a dangerous creature is hidden beyond them in the future. It's on the to do list.
I wonder whether that would work if you want enemies to be hidden, but I imagine you have thought about those parts since it is on your TODO-list.
I cannot open the chest with "E" if I am standing diagonally from it.
Hmmm, if it's awkward feeling, I can fix that.
I think it's not necessary if a pop-up is added when you can interact with an object using 'E', but if you do not add that or a different method, then I think it would be more ergonomic for players.
I can discover hidden enemies by clicking "X" repeatedly with the cursor over trees.
How much did that happen? Were there ever enemies who seemed stuck in the trees?
I can only recall of one instance, I think it is when you are introduced the first time to shooting enemies. Like, a shooting enemy is standing in one place, and then another enemy attacks from behind when you get too close to the shooting enemy. I do not think that enemy was stuck, more hiding. In general, the enemies seemed like they had really good pathfinding.
While the test crossbow is obvious, is there any way to survive the first castle room if you do not pick it up and equip it? Though this may be good, to ensure that the player does know how to pick up and equip items. I just wonder if it may be a source of frustration. I did pick it up and equip it on the first time, though, just speculation on my part.
Technically it's possible to get through that room without the crossbow, but there's no way for you to know it, because it uses the completely unexplained magic system. The intent was to force the player to both use the crossbow, and probably use kukui juice (antidote) to survive.
I think you could use some playtesting on that. While I would guess that just about no one would forget the crossbow, some may forget to equip it or choose not to, and I would hope that the player would die quickly, such that the player does not have to endure a slow and impossible-to-win-or-escape fight to the death. However, I really like the aspect of ensuring that the player knows how to equip and use items, since it is a core mechanic.
In general, I had fun. I do think my (over-)cautious approach of running the game in a virtual machine and thus the game being rather slower than normal hindered my fun. I think I might have had great fun playing the game if running the game outside of a virtual machine.
Just finished your tutorial. Will play more afterwards but i want to give you my first impressions before i forget them:
In the cave with the abyss just before the halberdier boss, the enemies seem to not always die from falling down. The cute sound plays and you can see them falling off, but suddenly they are back on the ground, attacking.
The trees sometimes dont move, like they are frozen until they suddenly decide to move with the wind again. That seems a little bugged, because i would expect them to move just a little bit to show there is currently no wind instead of being totally still.
If i understand it correctly, you are free to fill up on consumables as you like (as in the chest has an unlimited supply). May i suggest automatic restocking of your inventory on opening a chest? As done in dark souls with flasks, this would be a nice quality of life feature.
In the beginning i had some problems punching the first claw dude to death, which i liked. But after the tutorial the first halberd wielding guy next to the river was a bit useless. I could just shoot him repeatedly as he had trouble crossing the river.
Ignore any of those nitpicks if they are intended and/or are the basis for intended features later on. Having said all that, i adore the style and have lots of fun with it. It is indeed very soulful and one can feel the love you put into making this. It feels like a Cheerful Souls: Prepare to Vacate in the Carribean kinda game.
For now, all creatures use the same code when falling down a hole, which involves them taking 10% of damage to their HP while returning to the last safe position. I'll likely end up changing that and make it something based on difficulty options later down the line.
Hmmm, if it looks odd, then I can definitely fix that. When they don't move, it is because the wind is at zero, but I can set the lowest possible wind amount to some very low number.
Something similar to that does happen. Your items get restocked when resetting the day, and when returning to camp. There's even a message that pops up on screen.
Yeah, I need to improve the enemy AI further. It's on the to-do list.
Comments
Seems to work fine on Manjaro with Proton. My controller even worked which was coo.
The art is very flat, I'm hoping it's just early placeholders because it really didn't draw me in and the day-night cycle graphic looks way higher detail. The survival guide is hilarious, really enjoyed that. I also like the music, nice to have something fun playing in the background wihle you explore a tropical island.
The mechanics work very solidly, didn't have any bugs or anything involving the combat.
Can't hold controller button to scroll through options faster in the keybinding menus.
Scrollbars are also nasty, you have to keep the cursor on them and the scrollwheel doesn't work
Should also probably hide the cursor once keyboard or gamepad input is detected in the menu
I hit the options to rebind the shoulder buttons (I use a dualshock and I don't like xbox-style trigger inputs) and it just went to a black screen, I had to Alt+F4 because your game doesn't respond to external kill signals. Not sure if you're engine-devving or not but if you are, make sure you field WM_CLOSE, WM_QUIT, and WM_DESTROY in the message loop.
Feedback on the door opening is either non-existent or drowned out by the music, couldn't hear it at all.
I always have very little patience for timing-based combat, it makes me quickly give up on souls-likes no matter how much I like exploring. I got bored after dying a couple of times in the very first part of the tutorial with the river you have to keep crossing. So I skipped it the next time and explored around the island a little bit. Didn't find any of the armor pieces or the boss. Don't take that as a bad thing though, this is a lot of content to already have for a demo and this isn't my preferred genre.
Hey, thanks for playing.
The art is very flat, I'm hoping it's just early placeholders because it really didn't draw me in and the day-night cycle graphic looks way higher detail. The survival guide is hilarious, really enjoyed that. I also like the music, nice to have something fun playing in the background wihle you explore a tropical island.
Yeah, just about all the art so far is temporary. Been more focused on mechanics first.
Can't hold controller button to scroll through options faster in the keybinding menus.
Yeah I should fix that...
Scrollbars are also nasty, you have to keep the cursor on them and the scrollwheel doesn't work
I'll look into fixing that too, but I'm 90% sure the scrollwheels are supposed to work. That might be an issue with your set up.
I hit the options to rebind the shoulder buttons (I use a dualshock and I don't like xbox-style trigger inputs) and it just went to a black screen, I had to Alt+F4 because your game doesn't respond to external kill signals. Not sure if you're engine-devving or not but if you are, make sure you field WM_CLOSE, WM_QUIT, and WM_DESTROY in the message loop.
I use Game Maker Studio 2. If you were in the game world when you did that, then it might have been a bug due to a message pop up. Sorry, the crossed out options there aren't implemented yet. As for why kill signals weren't working, I'm unsure of that.
Feedback on the door opening is either non-existent or drowned out by the music, couldn't hear it at all.
Non-existent. It'll be fixed in the future.
I always have very little patience for timing-based combat, it makes me quickly give up on souls-likes no matter how much I like exploring. I got bored after dying a couple of times in the very first part of the tutorial with the river you have to keep crossing. So I skipped it the next time and explored around the island a little bit. Didn't find any of the armor pieces or the boss. Don't take that as a bad thing though, this is a lot of content to already have for a demo and this isn't my preferred genre.
Thank you for taking the time to try it regardless. Next demo day I'm hoping to have difficulty options enabled for those who want to push through the content easier.
So I found all the armor pieces and got to the two tentacle hammer dudes on that GIF. Combat is good, once you add more weapons you'll have a bunch of different playstyles. Pipes puzzle in the mountain smithy was also a pretty good , requires some thinking but it's not annoying. The Illustrated guide book was cute.
I did most of the hard encounters by strafing and shooting with the crossbow, though. Even with the reload time, you should probably also limit the ammo. It allows you to basically avoid having to learn the enemy patterns so you shouldn't be able to rely on it.
Overall the systems are already solid, now it's time to build up that content!
Hey, glad you have a good time! I'll probably be adding ammo to the crossbow, yeah. Thanks for playing!
Here's a video of me playing with commentary:
https://mega.nz/file/mNE1DT5R#8hgPcrH76ceFy2Pz2vHX8IPvjMwuQw00-PgHgcVcB1s
I hope you're going to get something out of it.
Holy shit lmao. I'm 3 minutes into this and the reminder for Bearcycle dev got you to turn down the game audio for the recording, making it so I can actually hear you over the game. A miracle.
Okay, just finished watching it. You did fantastic! Definitely one of my favorite players to watch so far, simply because you took the time to observe your enemies and surroundings, and started figuring out strategies to deal with them, such as approaching the double spike guys with your shield up. I know that right now a lot of them seem to boil down to back up and shoot with the crossbow, but even with that I was happy you were able to start incorporating dodges into your arsenal, and the foes still gave you a hard time. Even though you didn't beat the boss, you got through just about everything there was to do. Also, you came very close to finding the gauntlets. If you go back and watch at 1:23:40, you'll see that you were hyper focused on the axe guys, and didn't even notice they had been standing on the gauntlets. As for the greaves, those are pretty well hidden, and although you got close to them, you never entered into the zone they're in.
The main thing I learned from watching you is I need to make it so items on the ground sparkle so they're more obvious. Thanks for playing!
Yeah, I am not used to recording, and it's hard for me to judge audio levels with alt tabbng to OBS. The reminder sure helped.
I had fun playing. I sure felt like a coward, and not awesome thou. I am happy to hear I am one of your favourite players/testers. It was a new experience to me in general, and I had a good time. I hope you are going to make more improvements to the UI. Also tutorials are hard...
See you on next stream
Gamepad works natively, which I usually don't expect but its really nice. Shipwreck is nice, Title music is very comfy. Is this Enginedevved? Looks like it based on the non-existent folder structure. If it is, are you using any libraries for Controller reading? Mind sharing?
Says press any Button, but doesn't work with any Button. Main Menu has no Button preselected, which feels a bit odd. I'm assuming Graphics are mostly placeholders, not only in the Title, but also in the Game aswell. They work, but for something final they feel a bit empty and Paint-like.
Options>Gameplay>AllPlayers is empty. Title Music gets better over Time.
Control rebinding doesn't allow to hold to move quickly between Options. TItle Music has a bit of a bad fade when it finishes, would prefer a better loop of the later part instead. But I'm spending more Time then necessary in here, not necessarily to check out Controls, I also just want to listen to that Song.
I like the Intro, its nice, and fits the low Resolution well. Nice swaying Palms, altho their Sprites need a bit of Work, Palms are thinner on the Trunks and with longer Leaves I think. Beach could be less til-y, but I understand the limitations/look of Tilebased Graphics here, so maybe just animated Waves? Grass to Sand Transition does nothing Gameplay-wise I think, so you could smooth that out. UI isn't very good. As in Looks, Designwise its fine, conveys everything I need simply and clearly, but it just feels extremely placeholder. Don't like the Music as much as I liked the Title one, not nearly as much. Also its background Music, it should really loop, and not fade in/out when it repeats itself like that.
The Door interaction is great! Its such a simple 3/4 Frame animation, but it works out very well. With the whole Game in that Artstyle or something similar it'd be alright, but the bland Detail-less Grasstiles everywhere, the fully square and equally detailless CLiffs and the odd Palms take away from it.
You're missing Sounds for the Door, and a lot of other Things as of now. The grab Soundeffect sounds odd. Should've introduced Lock-on before the first Combat, but its fine, your Controls are very intuitive anyway.
Combat feels good, even without a Weapon. Lockon is smooth, the circular marker works, hits feel satisfying, the death explosion is great.
Tents as Respawn Points work for a Shipwreck Game I think. I don't know why a Tent is constructed there in the first Place, maybe some Hermit-lore or something could work there, and its missing a cooking fire to make Healing Potions or something on, but thats very optional I think at this Point.
The Tent itself needs a bit of work Graphicswise, the Fabric looks a bit too even, especially at the Top, but not bad as of now. Character could step a bit faster I think, it feels a bit slower then what the actual movement Speed is. Maybe the Interaction Circle for the Tent would make more Sense at the Entry, not in the Middle, but that would have to be tested, just a thought. The Timepassing is alright, its a bit fast on the Animation, so I couldn't see the Sun/Moon tho, but it didn't feel like they looked bad.
The Treefade is nice to have, but a bit too big in its Radius I think. It fades out half of the Screen when I'm behind a few Trees, instead of only whats rather near me.
I love the litte Guys fighting, it really feels great, with the big Eyes when being grabbed, and everything. I wish it would make a little more Sense tho, and you could differentiate between Characters easier, as opposed to just all being the same white Dummy. Maybe little Pirate Bandanas or native Warmasks or something to make more Sense?
Died, didn't pay attention to the Health. My Fault, its clearly visible and has nice Audio Feedback, but I think with a better HUD this wouldn't happen so easily. Something more then just putting them all as colored Lines on the Top.
Nice Drinking Animation if you can even call it that. The Resolution and direction of the Artstyle, even tho most Assets are unfinished and/or Placeholders I hope, really lends itself well to these simple Transforms on Objects.
Would be nice if I could press Dodge to stroke in the Water, for a bigger swimspeed, currently it feels more like floating. Also maybe some Waves around the Player?
I kept trying to use D-Pad for Items instead of FacebuttonLeft, maybe thats just what I'm used to.
Your Palm collisions reach into the raging River. I can't grab the Spiky Guy from the Front due to spiky Gloves? Nice Surprise. EquipScreen is there. Its not taht good I think, but its there, and it works for now. I wish Menues would support Stick aswell instead of just D-Pad, having to swap between the two all the Time is a tiny bit annoying.
Back should be Bag, no? I pressed it thinking I'd go out of the Menu, but I got into the Inventory. Also nothing for me to do in there.
Trees blocking hits is a mixed Bag. I appreciate it being there, it adds to the Realism, and it doesn't feel all too bad, but it doesn't really feel good either. It can get annoying getting Stuck constantly, especially if the Enemy spawns next to a Tree and you can'T sneak up on them unless you're swapping away from the Sword for a more poke-y option like your Fists for that. Also should only block on the Swing, not on pulling back I think. If I'm standing next to a try and starting an attack, it should consider that and pull back accordingly so I don't hit it, maybe only hit it if I'm swinging into the Tree direction basically, not parallel to it? I don't know.
Grabbing with a Sword is a pretty brutal Impalement, didn't expect that. The Background Music gets a bit annoying at this Point. I keep reading it as K.O.-Salve, not Ko-Salve. If you're going with a Shipwrecked theme, wouldn't a Sabre be better then a Knights Sword? Stunlock in Combat seems a bit long, so if you get hit with the first Hit, the follow-ups of the Combo will most likely hit aswell. Can't seem to dodge out of that either, unless I ran out of Stamina, and didn't pay enough attention to that?
And now, after a bunch of Trees and Stuff you teach me about the Alternate Attacks for Stabs? I wish that'd been sooner. Disregard what I said above then. Wish Enemies could get parried by Walls aswell tho, the Spiky Guy especially with his wide Swings.
Enemies can get Stuck on Corners if you're also close, trying to navigate into you but just jittering on the Corner.
The Cave Tiles is what I'D expect the final Graphics for this too look like probably. It has a nice Amount of Details to look more interesting then the Outside Stuff, but not so much as to look too cluttering. But it could use some variations and doodads. Some Cracks on the Walls/Floor, maybe Stone carved Masks in the Walls aswell, or some alternate Tiles to place around important EntryWays/Along middlepaths between Doors? Also doesn't make Sense for a Cave, but for some kind of old overgrown Mayan Temple on the Island I could see this work. If it had more Greenery and broken down Stuff then. Maybe a few small Ferns growing in a Corner somewhere, swaying when the Player walks through them?
Whats with the Guy running away from me on the Tiny Island and drowning? Did I mess something up? Thought he looked sad with his little Moustache, got him to respawn with the Tent, but then he threw Poison. Guess not a sad stuck Person after all.
Its a nice Tutorial-y Area tho, teaching you about Projectile Enemies, Poision, drowning, and all that. Drowning them is also really fun, just like the Combat.
I can't equip the Crossbow Primarily aswell? What a Shame. And I can't grab anymore when I have the Crossbow, and don't have a light Attack with it. Sure, I can switch back to the Fist for the grabbing anyhow, but I still wish the Left Shoulder was bound to something on Crossbow. Even if its just a pushback with the Handle or something like that.
The Gate with the Lever is a bit too light compared to the Walls and Background I think. It stands out too much and seems to be missing some Shading.
Dodging over the Water seems hard. It has quite a bit of Wind-up Time to it I think. You don't retain Momentum when dashing into the Water, so you have to think about immediately pressing up, or you will drift off and have to run back around again. Or at least when Sprinting and then dashing it seems. Probably due to the falling to the FLoor thing doing its Stuff in Water.
The Hitbox for the Player doesn't seem to change when in the Water, altho the Sprite gets lowered quite a bit. So theres an Area at the Top of the Water where you can't swim at. Overall the Player Hitbox should be half in Y I think, so you can overlap the Cliffs and Stuff with your Upper Body.
Its nice that you can skip part of the River if you know what you're doing.
The Sound when throwing Enemies off Cliffs and everything is also great. But they seem to just climb back up if you die.
The Bossfight was pretty easy, but properly intense. Nice Music, nice Abilities, its nice that everything kind of Works, but I found myself to still be swapping between Shield/Crossbow/Fist as needed to poke, block or grab him. I kind of wish the Swapping was bound differently tho, I have to stop movement in order to swap the Item around. I don't know how with your current Setup tho. You can't really bind Attacks to FaceButtons, as you have 4 Attacks, dodge and UseItem in Combat.
Finished the Tutorial, time for the Game. It says Consumeables restocked, but it doesn'T seem to do so, I still have to do it manually at the Chest. Music doesn'T fit very well, I want the TitleMusic back.
PoisonSpitter Projectiles End after maybe a third of a Screen, so you can just stand safely out of range with your Crossbow.
Was curious wether Waterfalls push me down, got answered by an Enemy messing up, nice.
I'm also not fighting 5 Spinners at the same Time, screw you, I'm just gonna thief the Gauntlets.
Found an MP3 Player? Alright, maybe I can listen to more of the TitleTheme with that. No, only some weird Guitar. Oh well, its better then the Background Music, altho it fits even less obviously.
Nice that you have variable Waterdepth with your small Rivers.
You have a big issue with falling Enemies. If you exit the Screen right as the fall, they store the falling Position as their Respawn. So if you re-enter, they are just stuck in a permanently falling loop, constantly retriggering the Wiouh Sound while doing so. Very annoying.
Found the Greaves by accident, your Stuff is nicely placed. The Map Layout itself is also pretty alright, it just gets dampened by the blank Graphics a bit at this Point. And maybe could use a bit more Detail. Not much, just a few Rocks or Ferns here and there, maybe not so straight Cliffs every once in a while. But you have to obviously be careful with those, fighting in tight corridors doesn'T work as well for this as in those semi-open Areas you have at the moment.
The 5 Spinners can get stuck on each other with their Pathfinding, and jitter around. The Dash over the Ravine works well and un-explanatory, thanks to the Riverdash being explained. And it being kind of obvious.
Equipment Menu Cursor for where you're hovered is a bit hard to Read.
I'm also going to take the MP3 Player into the Dungeon with me, in case I'm missing something. I can't swim in Lava, what a stupid assumption of mine. You keep the Key upon dying, and its faster then running back through the Maze Part.
You have a lot of Stuff, like Wetness against the Burn, but I can't set my Arrows on Fire by shooting through the Braziers? I did not expect to learn about Map and Menu at the End of the Dungeon, but the Island Map isn't all that Useful anyway, Inventory kind of feels unnecessary, and the rest is more or less nonfunctional at the moment anyway.
The 2 Claw Dashing Enemies are kind of a Joke in Terms of difficulty, the take longer to wind up then you take to regenerate a bit of Stamina and swing, so you can just stunlock them completely.
I keep pressing DPad Down in the Dungeon to use Items instead of UseItem, it feels so much more natural in the Hectic of the Combat. And apparently the Communists can grab me through the Shield. Fine, I'll not use that then.
Having a Pipes map is nice. Not knowing where the Lever for the broken one is isn't. Enemies following you into the next Room also isn't I think. Took a bit, found the Lever. Apparently I had one more Key then I thought, its obscured by the FPS Counter.
The small winding Pathway Areas are trivialized by the fact that you can just dash over all the corners/bends and shorten the Paths to maybe a quarter of the Length.
If you have variable Waterdepths already, shouldn'T the Puddle to make you wet in the Dungeon be enough if its only waist deep? So you don'T slow down as much when having to swim through it?
Neat shortcut at the Watergun, didn'T expect that.
That Boss has a lot of Health. A Lot. Messed up with the Itemswitching again and again, that really needs to be more fluid I think, but I have no Idea how to. Or rather, I keep switching Weapons, but then trying to use an Item instead of the Weapon in Question. Something is unintuitive there.
I also can't use the Watergun when I'm on Fire? Or maybe I just pressed Left Shoulder instead of Left Trigger. See the part above, something is off there. It only happens when I'm stuck in Combat and have to do it intuitively without thinking, so your default Controls might be off somewhat. Or just allow the Watergun/Crossbow to shoot with both shoulder and trigger?
You can stunlock the Boss into repeating his ultimate Move, until the Watergun randomly decided to not work anymore. Seems you only get 4 Shots before the Boss becomes just completely immune to the Watergun or something like that. Guess I'll remove that Item from the Bar aswell, leaving only the regular Crossbow.
Its nice that the Bossfight works with the Environment so well. Its not nice that its just a ring around the Border, something more dynamic could maybe be better. And I can't drown the Boss, or use most of the Items in there, they just kind of feel useless in that Fight. Other then that it was a Fun Fight. And a Fun Demo overall. Graphics should be prettied up I think, some Sounds are missing, but were they aren't they fit well. Music doesn't fit so well most of the Time, the Bossmusic was alright, and I really liked the Title Theme, but the Rest not so much.
I should be able to swim off Maps and/or move over to other Areas everywhere where there isn't a blockage by Rocks or Trees or something, even if its just empty Ocean and I drown or get eaten by Sharks. The Design is a bit over the Place, between a Shipwrecked Tropical Island, medieval equipment, modern Watergun and MP3-Player and the Enemies. Best for them would probably be natives with weird Shadowweapons and funky masks or something. At least thats how I pictured them in my Head. With thriving Shadowtentacles to grab me, voodoo/tiki Masks Plant clothing and all that.
And your Trees have some issues. Could sway a little less I think, need to be thinner Trunks, and fade out seemingly in screenwide Rows rather then a circle around the Player.
Still, very Enjoyable Demo, played roughly 3 Hours.
Hey, glad you had a good time. Sorry for taking a bit to reply to your post. I won't reply to every section, but I will say that the anon who said the game is GMS2 in the thread was correct. I'm also happy that the majority of your complaints are about things that are in test phases, (tree graphics, visuals of player/armor/weapons/enemies) music (as it's all royalty free and I know nothing about music editing yet), and more. There are also things that I feel will make more sense once related systems are implemented, such as being unable to change gear outside of the box. My next main goal is going to be implementing the options menu while in the game proper, as well as adding difficulty options.
First off, the music and theme are really nice - exploring a tropical island is always a good time. The survival guide is really funny and a nice touch- it shows me that you got a lot of creativity and good ideas. I enjoyed exploring the island, but sadly didn't make it so far - only got to the entrance of the first ruins.
The main thing that kept me from playing more is the combat - I feel like combat is too sluggish and lacks good UI/UX feedback. The combat mechanic makes it so that its very much whoever gets in the first attack will do a bunch of damage or even outright win, as the first attack stuns the other person and then makes it very hard to break out of the stun without taking numerous hits. Maybe I'm just not understanding something.. but after 5 attempts I hung up the towel, I just couldn't seem to get the hang of combat and it was beginning to frustrate me.
One of the other issues is the graphics - some aspects of the graphics are very hard to get past, namely the fact that the player and enemies are all the same sprite. It would be really nice to see some variation here. Also, the environment is a bit too simple in my opinion. It would really help adding some more foliage, ground variation and props.
I will keep my eye open for the next update!
Hey, thanks for playing.
For the most part I think your complaints can just be attributed to the game being early in development, and a lot of things being place holders and test assets. All of it will be fixed in the future.
Thanks again.
That makes sense. Goodluck on development, I will try it again when you make the next update!
First thing I want to note is that the music and presentation are really, really nice. It took me more than a few seconds to realize you could use the mouse to look around, and I also took a few seconds to notice the control button indicators on the signs. I'm old and my brain is pickled.
The combat is satisfying, the controls make sense, the enemies that I've encountered are all fun to fight. Really good stuff all around.
Hey, thanks for playing. I'm glad you had a good time. How far in did you manage to make it?
Long demo.
Great concept, great execution. So I'll be harsh.
Goods:
- I loved the grab attack that combo with your right hand weapon. And the combat in general.
- Loved survival elements like the depleting stamina over time
- loved water/lava environment interaction of the lava dungeon
- loved that enemies can poison each other and drown
- loved the pipe map
Questionable:
Shipwreck is a title that tells me nothing of the game. Moreover: beside the tutorial, the location is not even much islandy (like mountains and lava dungeon); same thing for enemies. But since right now there is almost no art, it's fine.
The Boss of the lava smithy has a big charging attack that covers the whole screen. You can avoid it all together (also the little fireballs) by goin' into water, but you never explained this interaction(for what I saw), so maybe put it somewhere into the dungeon. The boss maybe has too much health. Boss' big charging projectile has an animation, the flame mitra atk needs it too. So you have time to switch from crossbow to shield or fleeing into water; right now the only viable action is dodging.
The lever you find in the dungeon and the leverless mechanism to reroute water needs a better sprite to understand wtf they are ( I got it right away for some reason, but dunno why).
Crossbow is overpowered and encourage a lame playstyle. (Big problem ihmo).
Enemies can stunlock you to death way too easily.
Dunno if its a bug, but when I pickup a new equip I would like to use it right away and not wait till I reach a loadout chest.
Bugs:
- choosing options crashed the whole game, but you know that
- Audio bugged out. I finished the tutorial yesterday before going to sleep, but I didn't want do redo it, so I leaved the game running . In the morning the audio was out. It's a super rare case, but the more you know
Hey, thanks for playing.
Shipwreck is a title that tells me nothing of the game. Moreover: beside the tutorial, the location is not even much islandy (like mountains and lava dungeon); same thing for enemies. But since right now there is almost no art, it's fine.
It's a working title. Hopefully I'll come up with something better. In the end it will be heavily based off of the Hawaiian islands.
The Boss of the lava smithy has a big charging attack that covers the whole screen. You can avoid it all together (also the little fireballs) by goin' into water, but you never explained this interaction(for what I saw), so maybe put it somewhere into the dungeon. The boss maybe has too much health. Boss' big charging projectile has an animation, the flame mitra atk needs it too. So you have time to switch from crossbow to shield or fleeing into water; right now the only viable action is dodging.
Based on what I'm reading, I'm fine with leaving the boss a bit mysterious, and with some tricky timing.
The lever you find in the dungeon and the leverless mechanism to reroute water needs a better sprite to understand wtf they are ( I got it right away for some reason, but dunno why).
100% true.
Crossbow is overpowered and encourage a lame playstyle. (Big problem ihmo).
I might make it have a limited amount of ammo in the future.
Enemies can stunlock you to death way too easily.
Was there any enemy in particular you had the most trouble with?
Dunno if its a bug, but when I pickup a new equip I would like to use it right away and not wait till I reach a loadout chest.
Not a bug, this is working as intended. I'm hoping it'll feel better in the future once I get a weapon crafting system in there.
choosing options crashed the whole game, but you know that
Was this in the "pause" menu? I wouldn't expect choosing options to crash the game, it should just show a little message pop up with a number.
Audio bugged out. I finished the tutorial yesterday before going to sleep, but I didn't want do redo it, so I leaved the game running . In the morning the audio was out. It's a super rare case, but the more you know
Huh, interesting. I'll have to try that myself.
Very rare that I get anyone saying they got as far as you did. I'm very grateful you managed to get all the way through it. I know it can be very difficult at times.
Based on what I'm reading, I'm fine with leaving the boss a bit mysterious, and with some tricky timing.
Good for me, but maybe travel half dungeon to fight him again is a bit much.
Was there any enemy in particular you had the most trouble with?
Wolverine/claws enemies. The problem spikes with multiple to fight at once. if you get hit by one and the other is near enough to hit you, it's over. But again, it's your fault to be hit when you have run+dodge and can dodge away after a sword atk.
Not a bug, this is working as intended. I'm hoping it'll feel better in the future once I get a weapon crafting system in there.
While I understand the design reason, it feels pretty underwhelming to pick up a new item and get deny to try it. Yep, picking up a blueprint that you craft at camp will solve the issue.
Was this in the "pause" menu? I wouldn't expect choosing options to crash the game, it should just show a little message pop up with a number
Yep, I got 4.
Very rare that I get anyone saying they got as far as you did. I'm very grateful you managed to get all the way through it. I know it can be very difficult at times.
Np. The pacing, gameplay and variety are great.
The survival guide is amazing.
I am making a new top-level comment, since the game is a lot of fun and I did not run it in a proper environment before. The game is very good and very large!
I am playing it at proper speed. I retract my previous comment on fast travel, the player character walks fairly quickly. (EDIT: Later on, I am wondering whether I should re-retract my comment, since I did resort to dashing to travel more quickly - but the design of the game makes it not that important, since not all progress in levels (buttons, etc.) is lost when respawning, making fast-travel less of a problem).
I like that enemies can end up poisoning themselves.
I saw you added a cooldown indicator in the most recent update, nice :) .
In the indoors room with 4 poison-shooters, the crossbow caused one of them to fall down, but then it got stuck falling down repeatedly, eventually dying. I would guess that is a bug if the intention is that enemies also reappear at the last known location with 10 health lost, though enemies and the player character may have different desired handling.
There is maybe a 1 second delay when pressing and holding '1' or '2' to get the radial menu, which can be significant in combat. Though, is it because '1' and '2' can also be tapped quickly to tap through items? If so, the current approach may be good.
I am not certain, but I think some enemies that I did not defeat despawned after I died. Is that intentional? Or are enemies spawning randomly upon the player character dying and respawning?
Wait, is it on purpose that while in the menu accessed with 'Esc', the game is not paused, and you can die? Is that for multiplayer? For singleplayer, that seems a bit annoying.
Restocking upon entering a camp may not work fully always.I only found 3 armor items before finding the map in the lava indoor area. I never found an outdoors map. I did find an MP3 player at some point.
I sometimes messed up dodging, which caused lava deaths. You must press and release space quickly, correct?
At one point, I used multiple healing "potions" in a row, but I did not get healed further apart from the first one. I was on fire at the time, though even after the fire status effect had ended, chugging another healing "potion" did not help. I was at about 60% health.
In the room with a lever that is "defended" by a rotating trap with fireballs, I multiple times tried to pull the lever, but failed, and ended up burning to death. I do not know whether I was too far away from the lever to pull it. Wait, is it only possible to change the direction while water is flowing through the pipe? Would it make sense to add a "declined"/"rejected" sound when attempting to change the direction of a pipe using a lever that has no water, such that the player knows that the player did interact correctly, but that the action is not available?
I got very far, but I ended up with a GameMaker GML error, seen below, where I could not ignore it, and only "abort". And since the game does not save anything after shutting down, I lost all progress, and I did not get to the boss, even though I only needed to reroute the final pipes to the boss room. I imagine that you have saving on your TODO-list, but with such a large and good game, I think you should prioritize getting a save system up and running, such that the game can be continued after closing it down (for instance due to a crash or the player quitting and wanting to play later).
Error message pop-up:
I had acquired the water gun, and was busy attempting to switch to the shield by quickly tapping '1' multiple times.
I'm glad you had the opportunity to play the game at its correct speed.
I saw you added a cooldown indicator in the most recent update, nice :) .
Thanks.
In the indoors room with 4 poison-shooters, the crossbow caused one of them to fall down, but then it got stuck falling down repeatedly, eventually dying. I would guess that is a bug if the intention is that enemies also reappear at the last known location with 10 health lost, though enemies and the player character may have different desired handling.
I thought I'd fixed that, but I guess not.
I am not certain, but I think some enemies that I did not defeat despawned after I died. Is that intentional? Or are enemies spawning randomly upon the player character dying and respawning?
Once you get past the tutorial, enemy spawns are random, up until you get into the Mountain Smithy, so that changes every day.
Wait, is it on purpose that while in the menu accessed with 'Esc', the game is not paused, and you can die? Is that for multiplayer? For singleplayer, that seems a bit annoying.
Yeah, getting an actual pause menu implemented just hasn't happened yet. I'll be implementing it in the future for sure.
Things still aren't perfect with my enemy spawning. For some reason it's just remained buggy even though I've attempted multiple fixes, and then testing the fixes is tricky because things are randomized.
Restocking upon entering a camp may not work fully always.
I'll look into it.
At one point, I used multiple healing "potions" in a row, but I did not get healed further apart from the first one. I was on fire at the time, though even after the fire status effect had ended, chugging another healing "potion" did not help. I was at about 60% health.
The game has an injury system where your HP cap is reduced a little bit by damage sources, and fire damage is particularly injurious. I tried to explain this a bit in the survival guide, but it's still not very obvious. I'll make it a bit more obvious on the health bar.
In the room with a lever that is "defended" by a rotating trap with fireballs, I multiple times tried to pull the lever, but failed, and ended up burning to death. I do not know whether I was too far away from the lever to pull it. Wait, is it only possible to change the direction while water is flowing through the pipe? Would it make sense to add a "declined"/"rejected" sound when attempting to change the direction of a pipe using a lever that has no water, such that the player knows that the player did interact correctly, but that the action is not available?
You're correct that the levers don't work if water isn't flowing beneath them. I'll add a sound effect like you suggested.
I got very far, but I ended up with a GameMaker GML error, seen below, where I could not ignore it, and only "abort". And since the game does not save anything after shutting down, I lost all progress, and I did not get to the boss, even though I only needed to reroute the final pipes to the boss room. I imagine that you have saving on your TODO-list, but with such a large and good game, I think you should prioritize getting a save system up and running, such that the game can be continued after closing it down (for instance due to a crash or the player quitting and wanting to play later).
Yeah there's still bugs I haven't worked out. I'll attempt to reproduce the one you found and fix it. I'll also make sure saving is added to my list.
I gave it a go this morning for the first time. I don't usually play games like this so I think its safe to say my feedback might be less than useful. Either way, here goes:
-Can't access options menu in game? It's crossed out, and the output message I get when trying is "4"
-The perspective makes the trees between the player and the camera very annoying. There's one enemy after getting the sword that's hidden in the trees and hard to target if you know he's there. I saw in the thread that you are working on the tree-transparency thing, and I think that will be a welcomed addition
-First time messing with the chest and it's hard to tell what's equipped - i think the only difference is that equipped items have a white outline? I got used to it a bit later but the first time messing with it, I was confused especially due to the layout. Everything is to the left, so I figured if I "take" something, it'll show up on the right or something. Again I figured it out while playing, but it still might be a good idea to better highlight what you have equipped and how many items are available for you to take. I saw the bag limit, but that doesn't tell me how many I have in the chest to take (or maybe i'm blind?)
-Wolverine is the first tough enemy, especially with the close quarters. Took me a few tries
-The purple poison gauntlet is very annoying to deal with as a melee character. Drowning them and waiting behind trees (they don't reposition enough to get me if I camp behind a tree) to heal is the most efficient strategy, since I died twice and I really didn't want to do the swim over there again. I think this part of the stage would benefit from a) more cover or b) more tools at the players disposal (maybe give them the crossbow when they finish swimming over?) since dashing/walking towards the poison boys can easily get you hit, which while not deadly is more frustrating than anything
-The crossbow is cool. I like it more than the sword/shield
-The music and setting is kind of mismatched for me. I'm in a hallway with two wolverine looking guys after getting out of some castle-type building, and the music (and I guess setting?) doesn't really make sense. Same with the game type, I guess. Individually all the pieces are good - but together they make a picture I don't quite get. This might be on my end more than anything else, I guess. Perhaps thinks make more sense later on
-The wolverine hallway is where I get filtered. I can deal with one, but the second guy splits my head from my neck without much effort.
Overall the game is cool, but some things are still a mystery, like: the passage of time seems important (you even have a separate screen telling you how many hours have passed for certain actions) but as far as I can tell there's no further meaning to this. Are my hours spent on the island tracked?
Either way, from a game design perspective you know what you're doing. The challenges make sense and you tend to introduce a new mechanic before giving us an easy then a hard challenge, which I like a lot in games.
Keep up the good work
Hey, thanks for playing.
-Yeah it's not implemented yet. It's high on the to do list.
-It's implemented in the current hot fix.
-I admit, it's not the most intuitive thing, but it seems like you mostly figured it out, which I'm grateful for. A lot of the design there is because of the limited screen space, including the two different menus. As for the how many items are available to take, the answer is actually infinite, and the convention of consumables being a finite thing is something I have yet to figure out how to help people unlearn.
-Glad you got past it.
-Yeah I might remove that section, or shorten it dramatically since its purpose is to teach the player how to deal with getting poisoned, and not necessarily for the player to actually go through and kill everything.
-Glad you liked it.
-Yeah, this has been one of those sticking points I'm unsure what to make of. It might just be one of those things you don't get, but at least for me I love the cozy island vibes contrasted with an action game.
-I may need to make the tutorial easier, but I'm still thinking on it.
I'm glad you largely seem to have enjoyed it. The day night cycle will be more important later down the line, but for now it doesn't mean much.
Tried to run it, but there were missing dlls
MF.dll
MFPlat.dll
That's very strange. I don't know what would cause that error, and I'll look into it. Thank you.
Hey, I had the error in another game. Seems like the problem is that I'm on Windows N (a weird euro edition that cuts out a lot of cruft). That includes windows media player stuff. Here is the instructions for fixing it, in case it comes up with other players in the future:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/media-feature-pack-for-windows-10-n-...
I feel the melee system could be made more fun if the player has just a bit more range than the enemies, but once I got the sword, that was mostly solved.
When I first got to the poison enemy, it was hard to tell where it was because it kept backing into the trees. For situations like this, consider dimming the foregrounds that are directly in front of the player and affected enemy, with almost no exceptions even for ambushes.
I think you should have the "Switch between items" sign near where you can swap them out in the first place.
I appreciated the stab system once I learned it. The game is surprisingly complex.
I think you should work on smoothing out the wall hitboxes to not just being an even 32x32
Consider speeding up the player's speed OR zoom in your camera a bit so it seems like everything is going "faster" because as it is it "feels" slow.
Playing with a KB/M setup it was awkward to even want to use the items besides the healing juice because they don't give enough benefit to justify me remembering to use them. If poison was worse or the stamina potion recovered much more it could be worth it.
It was amusing to see all the enemies die to drowning, but I'm not sure that was intended?
The more systems that were added onto the game the more fun it was and I think that you have just the right number of active combat systems to not be too complex. It surprised me that I finished it because it was hard at some points but I did get to where the sign said end of demo. I explored a bit more (made it to the smithy place before giving up). Overall, good demo. I think it has great potential once polished up a bit.
Hey, thanks for playing.
There will be other weapons in the final game too, so there will also be more options in general.
Yeah, I'm planning on adding something like that. I don't know if I'd want to stop the enemy from ambushing the player due to it, but I understand where you're coming from.
Not a bad idea. My only worry is overloading the player, which is why I save that tutorial for later on.
Glad you enjoyed the differences between attacks in the game.
Would you be able to elaborate on what you mean by smoothing out the wall hitboxes?
I'll consider it. Thanks for the input.
Hmmm, maybe I'll make poison worse. Or at least make the poison enemies deal more poison. Can you elaborate on what about the controls specifically felt awkward?
It was partially intended. Obviously if the AI was better they'd be smart enough to not do that, but for now they are not smart enough.
I'm glad you got all the way to the smithy. I'm unsure about anything saying it was the end of the demo. Do you mean the end of the tutorial?
Thanks again.
>smoothing the hitboxes
Going back into the game, it might have to do with the player's hitbox vs the walls. This pic should illustrate what I mean. You should be able to do what the character on the right does here:
>awkward item controls
It was probably just a case of too many buttons for me to want to bother to reach for 1 or 2 mid fight or while I'm in danger. More a personal quirk than a flaw.
>end of demo
Yes, I guess I meant end of the tutorial. I must have misread. At that point it was more open and I ran out of time to keep going. Don't know if there's a continue function, but it might be nice to have that in case a player drops the game and wants to come back later.
I really liked the game, though I have a special setup (running the game in a virtual machine, no viruses or bitcoin miners for me), which the game runs slowly on.
Most of the following are nits.
Music has cracking noises, but that may be my setup.
Menu UI is not pretty, but works, and can be fixed later.
Which engine do you use?
When I was bleeding at the beginning of the game, I thought I was bleeding to death, and that I had to do something before dying. So I was relieved that I did not die off, but that it was just a status effect.
Why am I murdering all these poor people? Some of them I attack first.
I am a little bit confused by the chest and equipment UI.
What is the purpose of the day-night time cycle?
Could it make sense to have a prompt come up when an interactable object is nearby? Though, that may be noisy, and it may be better as it currently is.
I can see that the sword swing is blocked by trees, but I am confused about what the collision shapes of the trees are. Is it pixel-perfect for the tree shape? I find that a bit unintuitive.
I dislike that enemies can be effectively invisible when behind trees. The lock-on helps, though. Have you considered mitigating this somehow, like maybe using a shader to show an outline when an enemy is behind a tree? Or, if enemies are meant to be able to hide, only do it for enemies that the player has "seen"/"discovered"?
I cannot open the chest with "E" if I am standing diagonally from it.
I can discover hidden enemies by clicking "X" repeatedly with the cursor over trees.
I think my character executed an attack once going on land which I "queued" several seconds before when I was in the water.
Why did my character's maximum stamina bar go down? Damage or poison? Though it is restored when sleeping or respawning. Or does it goes down upon stamina usage? Would that discourage travelling quickly outside of combat?
I had a much easier time scaring the shooting enemies into the water and having them drown than killing them, on the long horizontal beach.
While the test crossbow is obvious, is there any way to survive the first castle room if you do not pick it up and equip it? Though this may be good, to ensure that the player does know how to pick up and equip items. I just wonder if it may be a source of frustration. I did pick it up and equip it on the first time, though, just speculation on my part.
I did not know you could access the menu and inventory by clicking "Esc".
It would be really nice once you implement Options while playing, at least being able to turn down or shut off music.
For some weapons, like the crossbow, a "cooldown" indication might be nice. Maybe on top of the icon.
Would it make sense to describe consuming a ration as restoring not "stamina", but "current maximum stamina"?
There is a long distance between the checkpoints in the "river castle", though my setup is also lagging. I did not complete the game, but did get a fairly long distance into the "river castle". I experimented a bit too much with stamina, blocking with the shield and a "claws enemy", and ended up dying.
Hey, thanks for playing.
That's probably your set up. I'm not sure what you'd be referring to otherwise.
Yep, hopefully I'll have it looking pretty down the line.
Game Maker Studio 2.
Yeah, bleed isn't too dangerous of a status effect. You wake up shipwrecked, which is why it happens.
They're just test enemies honestly.
Believe it or not, it used to be a lot worse. Can you elaborate on what exactly confused you about it?
The day night cycle will eventually correspond to more difficult enemies appearing at night.
That's a good idea. I could easily have a little icon appear when something interactable is in sight.
The trees hit boxes are just squares for now. That's something that might be improved in the future.
I'm planning on having trees vanish when a dangerous creature is hidden beyond them in the future. It's on the to do list.
Hmmm, if it's awkward feeling, I can fix that.
How much did that happen? Were there ever enemies who seemed stuck in the trees?
A queued attack through water? I'll look into that. It's very possible.
Your stamina cap goes down over time with stamina usage. If I recall correctly, you lose 10% of your stamina cap based on how much stamina you use at a given time, so if you spend 100% stamina you'll be left with a 10% reduction. It could discourage traveling quickly, but you can plan accordingly and bring more rations.
That's kind of intentional. Personally I like the idea of some enemies having weaknesses to water, and they are one of them.
Technically it's possible to get through that room without the crossbow, but there's no way for you to know it, because it uses the completely unexplained magic system. The intent was to force the player to both use the crossbow, and probably use kukui juice (antidote) to survive.
Yeah, it's a little unnecessary to know, so I don't actually teach it until the player gets to the Mountain Smithy and acquires the map.
100% correct about that. It's on the to do list.
That's not a bad idea at all. I'll do that.
Yeah, that's accurate. Usually I use the terms Stamina, Stamina Cap, and Stamina Max. Stamina Cap is what gets reduced over time. The reason I didn't describe it as such in the tutorial was just because it seemed to me like it would be a little more confusing than just saying stamina.
By river castle, do you mean the area where you're trying to get up river past the enemies? That area is part of a lengthy one that forces the player to use what they've learned. I hope you get the chance to try again.
I hope you had a fun time.
I think it was mainly the part where when you press 'E' at a chest, you get into one UI window. And then, after that, when you press (I think) 'Esc', you do not exit that UI window, but you enter another UI window, after which you can press 'Esc' again to exit.
I do not know what a better alternative would be. From what I know of GameMaker, one of its weaknesses is likely UI elements. But I have no knowledge of GMS and what features it offers.
I wonder whether that would work if you want enemies to be hidden, but I imagine you have thought about those parts since it is on your TODO-list.
I think it's not necessary if a pop-up is added when you can interact with an object using 'E', but if you do not add that or a different method, then I think it would be more ergonomic for players.
I can only recall of one instance, I think it is when you are introduced the first time to shooting enemies. Like, a shooting enemy is standing in one place, and then another enemy attacks from behind when you get too close to the shooting enemy. I do not think that enemy was stuck, more hiding. In general, the enemies seemed like they had really good pathfinding.
I think you could use some playtesting on that. While I would guess that just about no one would forget the crossbow, some may forget to equip it or choose not to, and I would hope that the player would die quickly, such that the player does not have to endure a slow and impossible-to-win-or-escape fight to the death. However, I really like the aspect of ensuring that the player knows how to equip and use items, since it is a core mechanic.
In general, I had fun. I do think my (over-)cautious approach of running the game in a virtual machine and thus the game being rather slower than normal hindered my fun. I think I might have had great fun playing the game if running the game outside of a virtual machine.
Just finished your tutorial. Will play more afterwards but i want to give you my first impressions before i forget them:
In the cave with the abyss just before the halberdier boss, the enemies seem to not always die from falling down. The cute sound plays and you can see them falling off, but suddenly they are back on the ground, attacking.
The trees sometimes dont move, like they are frozen until they suddenly decide to move with the wind again. That seems a little bugged, because i would expect them to move just a little bit to show there is currently no wind instead of being totally still.
If i understand it correctly, you are free to fill up on consumables as you like (as in the chest has an unlimited supply). May i suggest automatic restocking of your inventory on opening a chest? As done in dark souls with flasks, this would be a nice quality of life feature.
In the beginning i had some problems punching the first claw dude to death, which i liked. But after the tutorial the first halberd wielding guy next to the river was a bit useless. I could just shoot him repeatedly as he had trouble crossing the river.
Ignore any of those nitpicks if they are intended and/or are the basis for intended features later on. Having said all that, i adore the style and have lots of fun with it. It is indeed very soulful and one can feel the love you put into making this. It feels like a Cheerful Souls: Prepare to Vacate in the Carribean kinda game.
Hey, thanks for playing.
For now, all creatures use the same code when falling down a hole, which involves them taking 10% of damage to their HP while returning to the last safe position. I'll likely end up changing that and make it something based on difficulty options later down the line.
Hmmm, if it looks odd, then I can definitely fix that. When they don't move, it is because the wind is at zero, but I can set the lowest possible wind amount to some very low number.
Something similar to that does happen. Your items get restocked when resetting the day, and when returning to camp. There's even a message that pops up on screen.
Yeah, I need to improve the enemy AI further. It's on the to-do list.
I'm happy you enjoyed it.