I am going to probably sound like a lot of the other players here. What I liked about the demo is the audio and art style, I think that you've basically already figured out a good theme here.
However, the gameplay and tutorial was pretty overwhelming right away and I found myself just being blasted without really feeling like I had a good grasp on what I was supposed to do. Maybe you can slow things down and introduce the gameplay mechanics in less of a big dump.
Not my cup of tea, maybe I'm just getting old, but I found it too difficult to time my actions for whatever reason. Only got the boss down to maybe 80% at best. Visuals and SFX are nice. I used a controller to play, it worked fine but it felt weird having to hold r + face buttons to deflect, so I mostly used the outer ring.
Music and Visuals are alright. Except for the Player Square, that needs work. Controls are horrible. Played with Controller, First I need to use Left Shoulder to advance, but then it swaps between Attack/Counter options and I need to use facebutton down to select? With other Face buttons swapping aswell? Also keeps talking about WASD even tho I'm on controller.
Tutorial requires D-Pad and/or talks about D-Pad for the Outer Stuff, and WASD for the inner Stuff if I recall correctly. Thought I had it figured out and it was DPad for outer and FaceButtons for inner, but apparently it was FaceButtons for outer and RMB+FaceButtons for inner? I got very confused on what I was supposed to do, and it took a while to get comfortable with the Controls itself. Timings are extremely short. On Controller, swapping between DPad Inputs for the Directions as quickly as WASD is not really possible, since it uses the same Finger. Also tells me to only deflect/whatever the glowing/color Stuff, but apparently the white Stuff also damages me?
D-pad is entirely optional. There was never any mention of it related to the outer or inner square. As for only deflecting colored stuff, the tutorial only mentions to 'hit the stars that spin glowing/colored stuff' for that moveset in particular. When you reach a new moveset, it tells you exactly how to deal with them as well.
I think this game would benefit greatly from slowly introducing mechanics, and interspersing them with gameplay. The tutorial dump at the beginning is very intense and long. Remember, most gamers (myself included) are horrible ADD monsters. A nice gaming experience would be something like, learn one single thing, and then be able to play with it for a few minutes and master it. Then learn another thing. Etc...
The look of the game is great tho, I like the simple style.
I think the concept and the music are nice. I like the idea of having low and high risk attacks for the player with different patterns, although the former needs to deal some pity damage if you fail to really be low risk. There's also an extrinsic push to pick the high risk option simply because it's more fun.
I would like to see more feedback for the player. Visually the cat uses blades, stars, bombs, gears, a boot, etc. The tutorial helps of course but perhaps what you really need is a more consistent visual theme. The monochromatic aesthetic makes it ideal for this, specific colors and shapes can easily indicate the current threat and what needs to be done.
Thanks for playing. I agree it's not consistent at all, but that's because this cat (which is actually a placeholder graphic) boss is a combination of different bosses in the game, hence the wildly different movesets. I wanted the prototype to showcase the kinds of battles the player would face.
I have no real idea what I was doing. I think you need better visual indicators of whether or not a parry worked or is even happening in the first place. You call it a swing, I saw no swinging. The music was good though. Hopefully in the future your gameplay feels better and your tutorial is more incremental
I think there are more issues with my brainpower than there are with the game, but I tried it 4 times and never really got the hang of it. This all concerns the Counter set of moves, since the attack one is simple enough.
I understand Counters conceptually, but I just couldn't execute it in practice. Perhaps the controls could also be expanded, since I never did more than 2% counter damage despite trying it out every chance given - and I think this is an issue of me misunderstanding controls. I read through them every restart, but it simply wouldn't work as I'd expect it ingame. I never saw a star/knife thing be reflected, despite holding space, pressing space, and various other combinations
The "quickly press the directional keys where the two ticking things" are was fine, but reflecting knives/starts would never work, no clue why. Again, this is probably mostly due to me not having experience with games like these and not an error with the game or whatever, but that also might be a sign that your control scheme is not idiotproof, since I got filtered hard by it.
Perhaps you could benefit from a more handholding approach, where you have the tutorial text, then a prompt similar to "try and land this attack/try and do this counter" before proceeding.
Otherwise, the sound and visuals are fine. The main character looks very boring compared to the Cool Cat enemy, though, but that might be your intention.
Again, I'm sure the game works fine, but I got filtered.
For reference I was using a keyboard and not a controller
Thanks for trying it out. The issue I figured would happen with the stars and knives is that their first point of contact is literally a (pixel-wide) point (despite their whole graphic being their hitbox), which could make it hard to figure precisely when you're supposed to strike.
Comments
real fucking hard, got as filtered as everyone else, main issue is there is just too much complexity right out of the gate
i do like these minigames though, also very cool visuals and sfx
I am going to probably sound like a lot of the other players here. What I liked about the demo is the audio and art style, I think that you've basically already figured out a good theme here.
However, the gameplay and tutorial was pretty overwhelming right away and I found myself just being blasted without really feeling like I had a good grasp on what I was supposed to do. Maybe you can slow things down and introduce the gameplay mechanics in less of a big dump.
Not my cup of tea, maybe I'm just getting old, but I found it too difficult to time my actions for whatever reason. Only got the boss down to maybe 80% at best. Visuals and SFX are nice. I used a controller to play, it worked fine but it felt weird having to hold r + face buttons to deflect, so I mostly used the outer ring.
Music and Visuals are alright. Except for the Player Square, that needs work. Controls are horrible. Played with Controller, First I need to use Left Shoulder to advance, but then it swaps between Attack/Counter options and I need to use facebutton down to select? With other Face buttons swapping aswell? Also keeps talking about WASD even tho I'm on controller.
Tutorial requires D-Pad and/or talks about D-Pad for the Outer Stuff, and WASD for the inner Stuff if I recall correctly. Thought I had it figured out and it was DPad for outer and FaceButtons for inner, but apparently it was FaceButtons for outer and RMB+FaceButtons for inner? I got very confused on what I was supposed to do, and it took a while to get comfortable with the Controls itself. Timings are extremely short. On Controller, swapping between DPad Inputs for the Directions as quickly as WASD is not really possible, since it uses the same Finger. Also tells me to only deflect/whatever the glowing/color Stuff, but apparently the white Stuff also damages me?
D-pad is entirely optional. There was never any mention of it related to the outer or inner square. As for only deflecting colored stuff, the tutorial only mentions to 'hit the stars that spin glowing/colored stuff' for that moveset in particular. When you reach a new moveset, it tells you exactly how to deal with them as well.
I think this game would benefit greatly from slowly introducing mechanics, and interspersing them with gameplay. The tutorial dump at the beginning is very intense and long. Remember, most gamers (myself included) are horrible ADD monsters. A nice gaming experience would be something like, learn one single thing, and then be able to play with it for a few minutes and master it. Then learn another thing. Etc...
The look of the game is great tho, I like the simple style.
I think the concept and the music are nice. I like the idea of having low and high risk attacks for the player with different patterns, although the former needs to deal some pity damage if you fail to really be low risk. There's also an extrinsic push to pick the high risk option simply because it's more fun.
I would like to see more feedback for the player. Visually the cat uses blades, stars, bombs, gears, a boot, etc. The tutorial helps of course but perhaps what you really need is a more consistent visual theme. The monochromatic aesthetic makes it ideal for this, specific colors and shapes can easily indicate the current threat and what needs to be done.
Thanks for playing. I agree it's not consistent at all, but that's because this cat (which is actually a placeholder graphic) boss is a combination of different bosses in the game, hence the wildly different movesets. I wanted the prototype to showcase the kinds of battles the player would face.
I have no real idea what I was doing. I think you need better visual indicators of whether or not a parry worked or is even happening in the first place. You call it a swing, I saw no swinging. The music was good though. Hopefully in the future your gameplay feels better and your tutorial is more incremental
Thanks for the feedback. I updated the game so now it's got a more explanatory and hands-on tutorial.
I think there are more issues with my brainpower than there are with the game, but I tried it 4 times and never really got the hang of it. This all concerns the Counter set of moves, since the attack one is simple enough.
I understand Counters conceptually, but I just couldn't execute it in practice. Perhaps the controls could also be expanded, since I never did more than 2% counter damage despite trying it out every chance given - and I think this is an issue of me misunderstanding controls. I read through them every restart, but it simply wouldn't work as I'd expect it ingame. I never saw a star/knife thing be reflected, despite holding space, pressing space, and various other combinations
The "quickly press the directional keys where the two ticking things" are was fine, but reflecting knives/starts would never work, no clue why. Again, this is probably mostly due to me not having experience with games like these and not an error with the game or whatever, but that also might be a sign that your control scheme is not idiotproof, since I got filtered hard by it.
Perhaps you could benefit from a more handholding approach, where you have the tutorial text, then a prompt similar to "try and land this attack/try and do this counter" before proceeding.
Otherwise, the sound and visuals are fine. The main character looks very boring compared to the Cool Cat enemy, though, but that might be your intention.
Again, I'm sure the game works fine, but I got filtered.
For reference I was using a keyboard and not a controller
Thanks for trying it out. The issue I figured would happen with the stars and knives is that their first point of contact is literally a (pixel-wide) point (despite their whole graphic being their hitbox), which could make it hard to figure precisely when you're supposed to strike.