Enemies who look like squares rotated by 45 degrees, are very confusing, they make you question whether "that square" is a drop or a mob making it harder to decide whether a position is safe or not I know they're probably temporary sprites, but they really should look like something else even as WiP, especially the tiny ones.
In menu where you pick next stage, when picking the buff symbol (dunno what it's called) it lacks some sort of confirmation. There were many times when I clicked it, and then waited 1 second before realizing "oh I need to pick the next stage now". There's nothing to indicate that something happened, like a sound or whatever, initially I thought it's a bug that locks the game, because I thought the stage is not loading.
Getting new guns feels really exciting because there's so much variety.
I think enemy bullets should disappear after killing all enemies. Getting killed after finishing the level would be very frustrating, and I feel like it doesn't add anything to the game. The possibility of surviving by the skin of your teeth, because you killed last monster 0.1s before the bullet hit you is much more interesting.
Really appreciate little details like, horned guys having unhappy faces when getting hit, old blood changing color or the satisfying vibration of high hp mobs when you're frying them with a laser.
When you press Tab to see info about your gun, and pick next stage and get level up window - the info about a gun obscures upgrades and you can't turn it off with a Tab.
I will try and have all the placeholders replaced because yeah they're really ugly.
There's nothing to indicate that something happened, like a sound or whatever, initially I thought it's a bug that locks the game, because I thought the stage is not loading.
Mostly overlooked by me, will make it clearer.
I think enemy bullets should disappear after killing all enemies.
Good point, will do that.
When you press Tab to see info about your gun, and pick next stage and get level up window - the info about a gun obscures upgrades and you can't turn it off with a Tab.
You can remove it by hovering with the mouse, but yes its a bug, will fix.
I like the theme of the game, reminded me somehow of doom with the font. This might be the first time I play a game like this, for that it was straight forward to learn.
I did have a issue which might be related to my hardware, I played on a laptop with touchpad and whenever I moved with WASD, I wasn't able to move the mouse. I know it's meant to be played with a real mouse and not a flimsy touchpad, but still this looks like a bug to me, wonder if I'm the only one that had this. Because of that I couldn't progress much.
The visuals are cool from what I saw, the color pallete works well, monsters are clear to see. When monsters die they leave these tokens on the ground, I wish there would be some sort of effect on them, like a glow or shine or something.
Yeah that's up to your touchpad settings. For Windows at least; some laptops have a "palmcheck" you'd need to disable and setting the sensitivity to max should make it go away.
I'll see about making the runes look nicer, you're not the only one who's said that.
game is nice, played a few runs but never got farther then 3 or 4 levels because i suck. i`ll probably keep playing some more and update the feedback if i find things that others have not already said.
took me a while to realise i could break walls but so far i did not see how this affects gameplay at all. the monster designs that you got so far are nice, so are the guns, but oddly enough i had more success with the initial pistol. shield gun, orbit, or low range in general seemed too risky. smg seems OP and there is one that shoots few bullets all over the place that seems very weak.
enjoyed seeing lots of gun variety, even saw a laser... must have seen about 10 or more, and tbh if you had told me that there were a lot but kept them from appearing too early maybe you would bait me into playing the game for longer to see more guns...
the vs-like progression is nice, i saw some stuff that seems suited for the long run while others would give immediate improvements, which i think is a good design decision
granade launcher could ricochet or go over walls
i spawned inside an explosive blue crystal once
the terrain design is nice, but could have some eye candy around
running this on iGPU got me about 60fps with some dips, but my god there must be something wrong with the portal when you finish the level because upon finishing it it would get to 4(four) and lowering the resulution did not improve it... while in the `tech tree` the fps would remain near 4 and only go back to near 60 on the next level. the `tech tree` itself refused to tell me any information when i hovered on its elements
Oh there are much more devastating weapons than the SMG.
i spawned inside an explosive blue crystal once
That would be a really low chance of happening. But I haven't actually put in anything to prevent that from happening so thanks for telling me!
the terrain design is nice, but could have some eye candy around
Yeah its pretty barren right now, haven't really put in anything like that yet.
running this on iGPU got me about 60fps with some dips, but my god there must be something wrong with the portal when you finish the level because upon finishing it it would get to 4(four) and lowering the resulution did not improve it... while in the `tech tree` the fps would remain near 4 and only go back to near 60 on the next level. the `tech tree` itself refused to tell me any information when i hovered on its elements
You're the second person that has gotten that portal bug then. I've been testing the game on a 13 year old craptop with a really awful iGPU sometimes and that piece of shit doesn't have any problems like that. So I have really no idea why it happens. I'll beg you to try it again if I can figure out what to test to fix it. Only levels with certain modifiers will have tooltips when you hover over the icons in the map, but I've been getting so many complaints about just that so I'll probably change it.
hey, i downloaded the Windows version and run it on Wine and that portal performance issue does`t happen, so i`m guessing it could be an issue with my drivers or something since other linux users did not have this problem.
Very fun, great feel to the shooting. I hope there's no meta progression planned, but that's just personal preference.
My one gripe was that the stationary close range enemies kill the pacing of levels. Spawners and mages are irrelevant during the fun, hectic beginning portions of levels and I always ended up just doing a circle in an otherwise empty level mopping them up. They don't really pose any threat, just add tedium. The ranged stalks are implemented much better, they participate through the whole level so you're incentivized to kill them on the way.
Meta progression was planned. But I just can't bring myself to add any... Down the line I'd like to unlockable characters with a bit different stats and special ability, but that'd be the only thing.
Never played this before, so a lot of this will be stuff you've already heard. Hope some of it is useful at least. Initial impressions below:
- Gamefeel is great. You definitely understand how to juice up your shooting.
- Game's audio is quite low to start, but that's probably better than it immediately blasting your ears.
- When killing the little green dudes, I was spooked by the runes that fly towards you. Would be nice if they were somehow more distinct so people didn't mistake them for enemies.
- Render scale is a weird setting to include in a pixel-art game. Not sure if it's for performance or what.
- Art is great so far. I like the smaller sprite sizes. Not sure about the rixels on the runes etc. but I think only devs get annoyed at those. HUD is a bit of a weak spot for me. Could also use a 'dash' animation.
- Destructible environment is great. I love how you can dig with the shield gun, or blow holes in the wall with the rocket launcher.
- Mowing down enemies is extremely satisfying and surprisingly performant. Well done on the optimization front so far.
- It's hard to tell how much ammo I'm about to use when I reload at a glance.
- Really like the progression so far, being able to move freely around a map and then choose the next map to travel to. It's a massive improvement from vampire survivors, as there's significantly more player agency.
- Is there any reason *not* to level up immediately once you've gotten enough points? If there isn't, you should just auto-level the player. - After seeing the "rune interest rate" power, I can somewhat understand this, but I'm still not sure if it wouldn't just be better to auto-level.
- Music is pretty good, although it doesn't play very often.
Overall: The GAME is GOOD. I think this has a very large market, and even with this early version it's very addictive and enjoyable. Keep on it.
Its a bit of a pet peeve of mine... So many games have ear bleedingly loud volume when you start it so I intentionally made the default pretty low.
I made the runes have pretty dull colors so they'd be really distinct from enemies because there can potentially be so many of them on the ground. But yeah I know most games have really colorful gems and stuff, I might need to rethink it.
Render scale was mostly there to test stuff, will probably remove it in the future.
I could fix the rixels on things like the runes, but I'm not sure if it'd be worth the effort. If it really annoys you you can set the resolution ingame to 960x540 to have it pixel perfect (or press Auto on the render scale at your monitor nat. res.), should still look alright on 1080p and 4k. Only some text will look a bit off but I haven't decided yet how I want to handle it. Yeah I'm not the best at making UI, but will try to improve it.
Dash animation, yes!
"It's hard to tell how much ammo I'm about to use when I reload at a glance." Good point.
"Is there any reason *not* to level up immediately once you've gotten enough points?" For now, there's that skill yeah and then there are shops where you can spend runes too. But I'd like to have more ways of spending it.
The music should play as long as there are enemies around, maybe it shouldn't stop after killing them. Or play something else. But, some people have had a bug where it stopped playing entirely. Maybe you got it too.
It doesn't feel like the Font itself is blurry in the Title anymore, but I don't know what or if you changed anything. But the inside of the Outline feels like it at a few Points. Like the horizontal Lines on the P, second O and N on the big Options Titlescreen when I open that up i.e. seem to have an extra halfway dark Pixelline next to the outline on the inside, like the Font is just scaled poorly there.
Don't know if the swapping sounds were there before, but they feel nice. I also like the new HUD, gives much more Vision of the Screen it seems. Don't know why the Borders are inconsistend tho. It looks like you reused the 'Gun-selected' Border for the Stamina Bar, which works on highlighting that the Bar is full again, nice effect, but don't know if its necessary, and dimmed for the Map instead of the same one as everywhere else. And your Borders inner grey transitions a bit too apruptly from dark to light on the upper left. Here the blurryness also returns a bit on the Rune counter Text. This makes me assume it has something to do with poor Fontscaling on specific Sizes only.
Holding Tab for Information when not hovering the Weapon has the little info Window of the currently equipped Weapon blink. I'd prefer it if it staid visible.
When the map is finished, it would be nice if Weapons don't consume any Ammo, so I can try out what dropped in the Level without loosing Ressources.
Since you have a Info window on the Weapons, one for the Levels you can choose would be nice, so I know if its a Shop/Boss/Whatever without just knowing the Icons and Colors by Heart.
Picked up piercing+2 which ruined my explosive Pistol for me, nice. Seems to be the Gun drop rate and level difficulty got both reduced tho, which is nice.
I like the Ruins Levels, good to see new Variation in the Leveldesigns.
Your Tab info window sometimes seems to not work properly, and stick on screen. But it fixes itself when you just tab again.
Your Overworld Map also sometimes generate poorly, with progression Lines being right on top of one another, and Nodes being just slightly behind each other. Works well, but looks odd.
Death needs more of an Impact, you immediately jump to the Death Screen when you died, some slow motion explosion or whatever before might be good.
Your Crosshair can become pretty difficult to see if you're on a red Weapon in a red Level with lots of bloddy Corpses.
Overall, it's still as addiciting as the last Times.
I realize now I should've asked you to take screenshots of any weird things... You're still the only one that I've heard having the blur issues, but if you have it some one else can too, and its really annoying me. But I did change some things around and it sounds like its fixed it in some places. I use pixel fonts with a fixed size and never scale it, but not everywhere; might change that. What resolution did you play in?
The rune border effect in the UI is meant to signify activity/ready, the health bar has an effect too when you get hit but people probably don't notice that heh. I've been a bit indecisive about how I want to look on the radar. Haven't done much with the look of the UI since I made it, so will do another pass.
The info button works on press and not hold, maybe it should be an option to change.
Unlimited ammo on clearing a map is a good idea. I watched a vid of someone playing and he picked up and dropped an extremely good gun without even trying it out and it made me really sad...
A lot of people have commented on the same thing about map tooltips (the icons being pretty bad doesn't help either I guess).
Some skills only being good for some guns is intended, there'll be more of that later. Sorry.
I'd like to have a lot more variety in the maps yeah, this is meant to be the first map of several with the environments getting more abstract.
Yeah there's some bugs I know about with the info screen, will fix. Same with the map.
Haven't gotten around to making the death screen better yet!
I noticed that about the crosshair too only after updating the death animations, will have to improve it somehow.
I know this genre isn't one you really play, but I enjoy hearing your perspective on the game. Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
I should've probably provided a Screenshot of the blurriness etc. in the first Place. I'm playing at 2560x1440, Heres a capture of the Options Screen, I cycled some of the most problematic Areas in red. Zooming in in Aseprite indeed revealed it to have blurred Edges there.
Thank you for the screenshot. There are some things I've just done quickly and haven't really look at again. It looks as bad for me I just haven't paid enough attention; so it should be like that for everyone you're the only one that looked closely enough to notice it. So I'm pretty sure the issue you had before was separate and fixed. This is a problem with the outline when scaling the text, will fix! thank you. Maye change out the font entirely.
Hey man thanks for playing, the long vid was great! Its really good to see how people play it, I don't think I've seen anyone else use the shield gun that much haha. Enemies are all demons so yeah greens are something like imps, kind of look like goblins with horns actually... The price mentioned for the wild at heart skill is the spread increase yeah, for most runs it'll probably be bad for you but for some guns it doesn't really matter at all. Or is even good. I do have buttons for zoom already actually but they get disabled in build, so it'd be an easy thing to add.
I'll get some recording for you too on your game, hopefully this week.
Man the shield gun almost feels like a necessity for me.
One of my shower thoughts I had about your game after playing some more (but not recording) was how I think it would be better if your stages instead of being square, would be wide vertical paths. Right now you spawn in those big rooms, and try to run around inside them, but I think going from the bottom to the top while killing demons on your way to the portal would be better.
imps, kind of look like goblins with horns
cute
I'll get some recording for you too on your game, hopefully this week.
I did not watch it until the end, because I did not want to spoil myself, but it was fun. You really are a one man army.
I knew the walls were destructible, but I never thought to use the shield gun to mine myself an escape route.
Game feels really good. Reminds me of Nuclear Throne but with a lot of great changes.
Feels fresh after all the simple and heavily randomized roguelites that exists.
The descriptions on level ups that actually give you proper detail on what you're investing in, the level ups are unique and varied, the weapons are fun to use, the portals have a cool effect to them.
Great game. Will be playing in my free time even after Demoday is over.
the enemy types feel different enough that its interesting to interact with them. i especially like when a Sh gets stuck in a crowd of enemies and its like i'm fighting a blob that shoots bullets
i consistently run out of blue and red ammo due to the large amount of enemies in the late game, though i realize now i should probably be using the shield gun to deal with tiny guys to avoid that. shops seem pretty vital to the run so they're the only paths i feel like i can take, but like i said i might be budgeting ammo poorly. i have no idea what the ouroboros map rune means, i assume its a empty space so i just avoid it. i think the radar dots should be bigger since i literally had to wipe dust off of my screen to see the last enemy once. the background and walls should be more contrasting
personally i wish i had more control over my build, like if i paid runes to select the upgrade i want instead of paying for a chance to upgrade. i also wish i could regain tiny amounts of health. i'd prefer dash to be bound to ctrl
i haven't gotten to the final boss yet but i'll probably keep playing until i beat it
bugs:
ammo counter doesn't update when you pick up ammo until you reload
i'm pretty sure i picked up an ammo pack and its shadow remained on the ground
i consistently run out of blue and red ammo due to the large amount of enemies in the late game, though i realize now i should probably be using the shield gun to deal with tiny guys to avoid that. shops seem pretty vital to the run so they're the only paths i feel like i can take
Its interesting to me to hear how people fare with the ammo amount, I'll say you can get by without using the shield gun much and avoiding stores. But you probably need to know a lot about the game then.
i have no idea what the ouroboros map rune means, i assume its a empty space so i just avoid it.
It heals you to full, need to make it more evident.
i think the radar dots should be bigger since i literally had to wipe dust off of my screen to see the last enemy once. the background and walls should be more contrasting
Haha I hear you, will change it somehow.
personally i wish i had more control over my build, like if i paid runes to select the upgrade i want instead of paying for a chance to upgrade.
There will be some ways to do it in the future, and more interesting ways to build. For example to pay a fee to re-roll skills at a level up.
i also wish i could regain tiny amounts of health
You regain about 10% every time you enter a portal.
i'd prefer dash to be bound to ctrl
You can rebind keys in the options menu.
i haven't gotten to the final boss yet but i'll probably keep playing until i beat it
You'd be the first except me! I'll caution you if you get to the last level because I doubt its obvious; you have to destroy four things to make the boss spawns. They're blue blips on the radar.
ammo counter doesn't update when you pick up ammo until you reload
Overall quite good. At first I had no idea what the random pickups were, but later found out it was some ammo. Ammo seems pretty unnecessary honestly, I might get rid of it. I couldn't buy anything in the shop and had no idea how much things costed. Also I kept accidentally hitting play next level instead of increasing my stats on level up, so maybe force that interaction before moving on to the next level. The work you put into polish so far is definitely evident so really nice job there
Generally stronger weapons will eat up a lot more ammo, so you'll have to balance it a bit, but early game you have plenty. What the pickups actually do need to be clearer yeah. It should say the price of things when you walk over the items, but if you can't afford something that text will be grey - it might be a bit too hard to see actually.
The work you put into polish so far is definitely evident so really nice job there
Thanks! Yeah the polish is just all over the place right now though hah.
It really is a nice game, the first few rounds looked easy but then the game became really challenging, if there was an issue, it could be the menus that are too detailed compared to the fast-paced feeling of the game, the stats screen opened by tab could close itself after you've picked something on the ground maybe, but otherwise it feels really good to play
The game feels well balanced, speed and ammo count feels like a gimmick at the start since you outrun everything but when you start to have heavy guns and faster enemies, or when you only have one ammo type guns and you empty them all, you feel stupid
Thanks for playing and the feedback! I'm gonna try to simplify the stats screen for the guns, icons too! But really you're more meant to take your time after finishing a level and choose what guns to take with you, grabbing guns in the middle should be more of a desperation move.
I had the same thing as HappyTimeGuy, didn't load the first time but worked when I started it again. Works great on Linux.
It's annoying that the mouse is still restricted to the screen while paused, would be good if it could be turned off specifically then but not while in game
Music wasn't playing until I paused
I don't play this sort of thing much, I got to 179592 points. I completely forgot that Shift was dodge and not Space so I made a risky move that relied on the ability that allows you to dodge through enemies without actually using it and lost 80% of my health as a result.
I had the same thing as HappyTimeGuy, didn't load the first time but worked when I started it again.
Noted, will fix. Glad to hear its working well on Linux.
It's annoying that the mouse is still restricted to the screen while paused, would be good if it could be turned off specifically then but not while in game
Good point!
Music wasn't playing until I paused
Odd, will have to look into it.
I completely forgot that Shift was dodge and not Space so I made a risky move that relied on the ability that allows you to dodge through enemies without actually using it and lost 80% of my health as a result.
Hehe oh well it happens, but you can also change keybinds in the options.
I enjoyed my time of a few rounds, even if I didn't win one. The gunplay felt good, and the gun and player modifiers were fun to mess around with. UI is pretty decent. Only Issue with it is that the scroll wheel sometimes scrolls twice instead of once sometimes for weapon switch, dunno if it's just my end though. It's a bit hard to understand the difference between the red/blue/purple encounters, though I'd assume I'd figure it out if I played more. Otherwise I think the map icons were easy enough to figure out after encountering them once.
The levels did feel a bit long to clear, especially the open ones. I ended up marry-go-riding around the level to kill the orange towers and orbs. Though it was entertaining still to do the dodging and fighting, I was just getting a bit weary to do it for that long at once. Though I don't think there's much to be done, it seems to be the style of shooter this game is about, with lots of enemies to take on at once.
Enemies felt pretty good, each one has a purpose and doesn't feel tacked on. Only thing that felt weird are the big purple guy's attack. I can't tell if it's an AOE that sometimes triggers or if you get damaged immediately upon entering the circle. Would probably be fixed with an attack animation of some kind.
You're not the only one that have had issues with the scroll wheel, I'll rewrite the logic for it.
The levels did feel a bit long to clear, especially the open ones.
Yeah that's pretty much the game haha. But of course it can be improved, and I'll try.
I can't tell if it's an AOE that sometimes triggers or if you get damaged immediately upon entering the circle.
Its meant to be an AoE attack, you'll get damaged from touching the circle. I'd like to have all enemies have attack animations and better attack FXs, so hopefully it'll be more clear what is happening in the future.
i had a nice playthrough. although i was unable to reach the boss, i think i made it more than halfway through the game and had a good time. as before, a warning that I suck at bullet hell/heaven/whatever games, so any criticisms should be read with that in mind.
starting off simple, the new UI and music selection are both very good. both fit the style of the game very well. one UI suggestion would be to add more notice about your currently equipped gun. right now it's just the border getting text, and while it's conveys the idea well and is visible from a distance, i'd still consider adding some highlight or something similar, since there are UI elements by default which have that text highlight effect.
i mentioned this last DD i'm sure, but the background of weaponboxes being an ammo counter + being the correct ammo color is a great design decision. usually these games have issues display this information to players, leading to frustrating moments of a player misjudging their current ammo and dying. i had no such issues there and was always aware of my current and remaining ammo.
the level design was good. there was a healthy mix of open rooms, caves, buildings of some sort and some inbetween mixes. there are also some QoL fixes i think were not present in DD. things like the ammo and guns going to the middle of the map on level completion. good stuff.
you mentioned being interested in the difficulty. while i don't think the game is very difficult, the issues is that it comes in waves. for example, the M(eteor ?) enemy came in later in comparison to other enemies, but the stationary orange alien that fires projectiles is much, much more dangerous. Same with the spawner enemy. Both Spawners and Meteors stand around a small area and patrol/idle I come closer, while the orange projectile guy shoots me from offscreen. If there's a lot of them, my screen fills up with red projectiles incredibly quickly. The most dangerous of all is the moving projectile enemy, and he would be my #1 priority by far. Levels with caves then became piss easy, since i'd sit in a corner and shoot the melee enemies, then mop up the projectile enemies. Compare that to a fully open level where I need to dash and move around constantly. I think this is the design of games of this genre and is to be expected, but perhaps some balancing is in order. Maybe prevent the stationary aliens from shooting from so far away or something.
again, this might be an issue for me since i suck at these, so i wouldn't worry too much about balance
my favorite part of the playthrough was making fun weapon combinations. i had a cold damage (Northern) SMG, and a modified triple shotgun as my top loadout. it was great fun mixing and matching weapons. perhaps a good levelup choice would be holding more weapons.
a small error i noticed was being able to use mousehwheel on the map select screen. i thought it would move the map up/down, but instead i was able to switch guns there. not a big deal, but it's always a bit immersionbreaking to be able to control my character on the map screen.
the game was lots of fun. as always, keep up the good work
Wow didn't even reach the boss even though you promised to I'm so extremely disappointed... Hehe just kidding its perfectly fine, thanks for playing!
i'd still consider adding some highlight or something similar, since there are UI elements by default which have that text highlight effect.
Will do.
you mentioned being interested in the difficulty
Yeah its one thing I find is hard to strike to right balance for, its incredibly easy to make the game really hard and just overwhelm the player; having it easier but still fun is harder. I can get to and kill the boss pretty easily every time but I know absolutely everything about the game of course. I've really started to understand why so many similar games opt for early access. I'd like to increase the enemy variety greatly, I think I could get the balance better then. But yeah enemies are definitely meant to pose danger differently, sort of like how in DOOM you need to take out the hit scanners first of all because they'll chip down your health otherwise; so take out the shooters while the others will mostly just get in your way. I think I tuned the very first levels too easy though, but sitting still like that can be very dangerous if you don't have another way out for example as if you can't kill them fast enough you'll get overwhelmed. The towers that shoot you across the map are there to incentivize you to keep moving and destroy them, they'll also destroy walls in the path so if you try to hunker down and camp eventually new paths will open up. But yeah if I add more different enemies it'd be better I think.
my favorite part of the playthrough was making fun weapon combinations.
I'm not surprised considering the game you're making haha. I think the weapons you can only get a bit later are more interesting than the first ones you get, really the whole game plays better a few levels in imo. There are 29 different gun "templates" that can get 46 different modifications right now but I'd like to increase the variety more. And some light crafting.
a small error i noticed was being able to use mousehwheel on the map select screen.
Not the first person to comment on that, I'll change it.
On first load it indefinitely hung on 'loading...', but just restarting and trying again it worked fine each time, so I hope that doesn't trip anyone else up. Had silky smooth fps on a 2060 and I played long enough to be killed by some very aggressive placeholders, looks good
Thank you for trying it out! Yeah several people have had that same issue, I refactored how assets are loaded right before DD so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I am certain I can fix it though.
Comments
Enemies who look like squares rotated by 45 degrees, are very confusing, they make you question whether "that square" is a drop or a mob making it harder to decide whether a position is safe or not
I know they're probably temporary sprites, but they really should look like something else even as WiP, especially the tiny ones.
In menu where you pick next stage, when picking the buff symbol (dunno what it's called) it lacks some sort of confirmation. There were many times when I clicked it, and then waited 1 second before realizing "oh I need to pick the next stage now".
There's nothing to indicate that something happened, like a sound or whatever, initially I thought it's a bug that locks the game, because I thought the stage is not loading.
Getting new guns feels really exciting because there's so much variety.
I think enemy bullets should disappear after killing all enemies. Getting killed after finishing the level would be very frustrating, and I feel like it doesn't add anything to the game. The possibility of surviving by the skin of your teeth, because you killed last monster 0.1s before the bullet hit you is much more interesting.
Really appreciate little details like, horned guys having unhappy faces when getting hit, old blood changing color or the satisfying vibration of high hp mobs when you're frying them with a laser.
When you press Tab to see info about your gun, and pick next stage and get level up window - the info about a gun obscures upgrades and you can't turn it off with a Tab.
Thank you for playing and the feedback!
I will try and have all the placeholders replaced because yeah they're really ugly.
Mostly overlooked by me, will make it clearer.
Good point, will do that.
You can remove it by hovering with the mouse, but yes its a bug, will fix.
I like the theme of the game, reminded me somehow of doom with the font.
This might be the first time I play a game like this, for that it was straight forward to learn.
I did have a issue which might be related to my hardware, I played on a laptop with touchpad and whenever I moved with WASD, I wasn't able to move the mouse. I know it's meant to be played with a real mouse and not a flimsy touchpad, but still this looks like a bug to me, wonder if I'm the only one that had this.
Because of that I couldn't progress much.
The visuals are cool from what I saw, the color pallete works well, monsters are clear to see.
When monsters die they leave these tokens on the ground, I wish there would be some sort of effect on them, like a glow or shine or something.
Thanks for trying it out!
Yeah that's up to your touchpad settings. For Windows at least; some laptops have a "palmcheck" you'd need to disable and setting the sensitivity to max should make it go away.
I'll see about making the runes look nicer, you're not the only one who's said that.
game is nice, played a few runs but never got farther then 3 or 4 levels because i suck. i`ll probably keep playing some more and update the feedback if i find things that others have not already said.
took me a while to realise i could break walls but so far i did not see how this affects gameplay at all. the monster designs that you got so far are nice, so are the guns, but oddly enough i had more success with the initial pistol. shield gun, orbit, or low range in general seemed too risky. smg seems OP and there is one that shoots few bullets all over the place that seems very weak.
enjoyed seeing lots of gun variety, even saw a laser... must have seen about 10 or more, and tbh if you had told me that there were a lot but kept them from appearing too early maybe you would bait me into playing the game for longer to see more guns...
the vs-like progression is nice, i saw some stuff that seems suited for the long run while others would give immediate improvements, which i think is a good design decision
granade launcher could ricochet or go over walls
i spawned inside an explosive blue crystal once
the terrain design is nice, but could have some eye candy aroundrunning this on iGPU got me about 60fps with some dips, but my god there must be something wrong with the portal when you finish the level because upon finishing it it would get to 4(four) and lowering the resulution did not improve it... while in the `tech tree` the fps would remain near 4 and only go back to near 60 on the next level. the `tech tree` itself refused to tell me any information when i hovered on its elements
Thanks for playing!
Oh there are much more devastating weapons than the SMG.
That would be a really low chance of happening. But I haven't actually put in anything to prevent that from happening so thanks for telling me!
Yeah its pretty barren right now, haven't really put in anything like that yet.
You're the second person that has gotten that portal bug then. I've been testing the game on a 13 year old craptop with a really awful iGPU sometimes and that piece of shit doesn't have any problems like that. So I have really no idea why it happens. I'll beg you to try it again if I can figure out what to test to fix it. Only levels with certain modifiers will have tooltips when you hover over the icons in the map, but I've been getting so many complaints about just that so I'll probably change it.
hey, i downloaded the Windows version and run it on Wine and that portal performance issue does`t happen, so i`m guessing it could be an issue with my drivers or something since other linux users did not have this problem.
Hey man thanks for testing and letting me know. I have looked into it a bit but I have no idea why it would happen still.
Very fun, great feel to the shooting. I hope there's no meta progression planned, but that's just personal preference.
My one gripe was that the stationary close range enemies kill the pacing of levels. Spawners and mages are irrelevant during the fun, hectic beginning portions of levels and I always ended up just doing a circle in an otherwise empty level mopping them up. They don't really pose any threat, just add tedium. The ranged stalks are implemented much better, they participate through the whole level so you're incentivized to kill them on the way.
Thank you for playing!
Meta progression was planned. But I just can't bring myself to add any... Down the line I'd like to unlockable characters with a bit different stats and special ability, but that'd be the only thing.
Those are all good points, will improve!
Never played this before, so a lot of this will be stuff you've already heard. Hope some of it is useful at least. Initial impressions below:
- Gamefeel is great. You definitely understand how to juice up your shooting.
- Game's audio is quite low to start, but that's probably better than it immediately blasting your ears.
- When killing the little green dudes, I was spooked by the runes that fly towards you. Would be nice if they were somehow more distinct so people didn't mistake them for enemies.
- Render scale is a weird setting to include in a pixel-art game. Not sure if it's for performance or what.
- Art is great so far. I like the smaller sprite sizes. Not sure about the rixels on the runes etc. but I think only devs get annoyed at those. HUD is a bit of a weak spot for me. Could also use a 'dash' animation.
- Destructible environment is great. I love how you can dig with the shield gun, or blow holes in the wall with the rocket launcher.
- Mowing down enemies is extremely satisfying and surprisingly performant. Well done on the optimization front so far.
- It's hard to tell how much ammo I'm about to use when I reload at a glance.
- Really like the progression so far, being able to move freely around a map and then choose the next map to travel to. It's a massive improvement from vampire survivors, as there's significantly more player agency.
- Is there any reason *not* to level up immediately once you've gotten enough points? If there isn't, you should just auto-level the player. - After seeing the "rune interest rate" power, I can somewhat understand this, but I'm still not sure if it wouldn't just be better to auto-level.
- Music is pretty good, although it doesn't play very often.
Overall: The GAME is GOOD. I think this has a very large market, and even with this early version it's very addictive and enjoyable. Keep on it.
Thank you for playing and for the feedback!
Its a bit of a pet peeve of mine... So many games have ear bleedingly loud volume when you start it so I intentionally made the default pretty low.
I made the runes have pretty dull colors so they'd be really distinct from enemies because there can potentially be so many of them on the ground. But yeah I know most games have really colorful gems and stuff, I might need to rethink it.
Render scale was mostly there to test stuff, will probably remove it in the future.
I could fix the rixels on things like the runes, but I'm not sure if it'd be worth the effort. If it really annoys you you can set the resolution ingame to 960x540 to have it pixel perfect (or press Auto on the render scale at your monitor nat. res.), should still look alright on 1080p and 4k. Only some text will look a bit off but I haven't decided yet how I want to handle it. Yeah I'm not the best at making UI, but will try to improve it.
Dash animation, yes!
"It's hard to tell how much ammo I'm about to use when I reload at a glance." Good point.
"Is there any reason *not* to level up immediately once you've gotten enough points?" For now, there's that skill yeah and then there are shops where you can spend runes too. But I'd like to have more ways of spending it.
The music should play as long as there are enemies around, maybe it shouldn't stop after killing them. Or play something else. But, some people have had a bug where it stopped playing entirely. Maybe you got it too.
I had a lot of fun with this one. I was always excited to see what sort of wacky gun would be dropped next.
Thanks for playing! Hopefully I can make a lot more fun and interesting guns, with proper graphics.
The gun is indeed good. The SMG is the best though. It seems V-sync breaks the game somewhere down the line.
Thanks for playing! I looked up your vod and saw it break completely, never seen that before! Very strange, will fix.
It doesn't feel like the Font itself is blurry in the Title anymore, but I don't know what or if you changed anything. But the inside of the Outline feels like it at a few Points. Like the horizontal Lines on the P, second O and N on the big Options Titlescreen when I open that up i.e. seem to have an extra halfway dark Pixelline next to the outline on the inside, like the Font is just scaled poorly there.
Don't know if the swapping sounds were there before, but they feel nice. I also like the new HUD, gives much more Vision of the Screen it seems. Don't know why the Borders are inconsistend tho. It looks like you reused the 'Gun-selected' Border for the Stamina Bar, which works on highlighting that the Bar is full again, nice effect, but don't know if its necessary, and dimmed for the Map instead of the same one as everywhere else. And your Borders inner grey transitions a bit too apruptly from dark to light on the upper left. Here the blurryness also returns a bit on the Rune counter Text. This makes me assume it has something to do with poor Fontscaling on specific Sizes only.
Holding Tab for Information when not hovering the Weapon has the little info Window of the currently equipped Weapon blink. I'd prefer it if it staid visible.
When the map is finished, it would be nice if Weapons don't consume any Ammo, so I can try out what dropped in the Level without loosing Ressources.
Since you have a Info window on the Weapons, one for the Levels you can choose would be nice, so I know if its a Shop/Boss/Whatever without just knowing the Icons and Colors by Heart.
Picked up piercing+2 which ruined my explosive Pistol for me, nice. Seems to be the Gun drop rate and level difficulty got both reduced tho, which is nice.
I like the Ruins Levels, good to see new Variation in the Leveldesigns.
Your Tab info window sometimes seems to not work properly, and stick on screen. But it fixes itself when you just tab again.
Your Overworld Map also sometimes generate poorly, with progression Lines being right on top of one another, and Nodes being just slightly behind each other. Works well, but looks odd.
Death needs more of an Impact, you immediately jump to the Death Screen when you died, some slow motion explosion or whatever before might be good.
Your Crosshair can become pretty difficult to see if you're on a red Weapon in a red Level with lots of bloddy Corpses.
Overall, it's still as addiciting as the last Times.
I realize now I should've asked you to take screenshots of any weird things... You're still the only one that I've heard having the blur issues, but if you have it some one else can too, and its really annoying me. But I did change some things around and it sounds like its fixed it in some places. I use pixel fonts with a fixed size and never scale it, but not everywhere; might change that. What resolution did you play in?
The rune border effect in the UI is meant to signify activity/ready, the health bar has an effect too when you get hit but people probably don't notice that heh. I've been a bit indecisive about how I want to look on the radar. Haven't done much with the look of the UI since I made it, so will do another pass.
The info button works on press and not hold, maybe it should be an option to change.
Unlimited ammo on clearing a map is a good idea. I watched a vid of someone playing and he picked up and dropped an extremely good gun without even trying it out and it made me really sad...
A lot of people have commented on the same thing about map tooltips (the icons being pretty bad doesn't help either I guess).
Some skills only being good for some guns is intended, there'll be more of that later. Sorry.
I'd like to have a lot more variety in the maps yeah, this is meant to be the first map of several with the environments getting more abstract.
Yeah there's some bugs I know about with the info screen, will fix. Same with the map.
Haven't gotten around to making the death screen better yet!
I noticed that about the crosshair too only after updating the death animations, will have to improve it somehow.
I know this genre isn't one you really play, but I enjoy hearing your perspective on the game. Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
Thank you for the screenshot. There are some things I've just done quickly and haven't really look at again. It looks as bad for me I just haven't paid enough attention; so it should be like that for everyone you're the only one that looked closely enough to notice it. So I'm pretty sure the issue you had before was separate and fixed. This is a problem with the outline when scaling the text, will fix! thank you. Maye change out the font entirely.
Hey SPECXHT! It's good to see you back with The Gun Is Good on another DD.
I recorded myself play.
https://mega.nz/file/PZkEHBwY#C1nDw1l401QkZbFdArgMkOjijAJ9oAQ59LB2E1-C5oI
probably not the best commentary, because I was trying my best, but I hope seeing how bad players like me play could be helpful to you.
Hey man thanks for playing, the long vid was great! Its really good to see how people play it, I don't think I've seen anyone else use the shield gun that much haha. Enemies are all demons so yeah greens are something like imps, kind of look like goblins with horns actually... The price mentioned for the wild at heart skill is the spread increase yeah, for most runs it'll probably be bad for you but for some guns it doesn't really matter at all. Or is even good. I do have buttons for zoom already actually but they get disabled in build, so it'd be an easy thing to add.
I'll get some recording for you too on your game, hopefully this week.
Man the shield gun almost feels like a necessity for me.
One of my shower thoughts I had about your game after playing some more (but not recording) was how I think it would be better if your stages instead of being square, would be wide vertical paths. Right now you spawn in those big rooms, and try to run around inside them, but I think going from the bottom to the top while killing demons on your way to the portal would be better.
cute
oh, that would be nice. I look forward to it.
I like the idea, while I won't change it to the default for levels I'll definitely use it for some.
Maybe some sort of story mode in future could use it. I just thought of Contra for some reason.
I look forward to play your future demos.
I did not watch it until the end, because I did not want to spoil myself, but it was fun. You really are a one man army. I knew the walls were destructible, but I never thought to use the shield gun to mine myself an escape route.
Game feels really good. Reminds me of Nuclear Throne but with a lot of great changes.
Feels fresh after all the simple and heavily randomized roguelites that exists.
The descriptions on level ups that actually give you proper detail on what you're investing in, the level ups are unique and varied, the weapons are fun to use, the portals have a cool effect to them.
Great game. Will be playing in my free time even after Demoday is over.
Thank you for playing!
Glad to hear that, its very inspired by Nuclear Throne yeah.
it's really good.
the enemy types feel different enough that its interesting to interact with them. i especially like when a Sh gets stuck in a crowd of enemies and its like i'm fighting a blob that shoots bullets
i consistently run out of blue and red ammo due to the large amount of enemies in the late game, though i realize now i should probably be using the shield gun to deal with tiny guys to avoid that. shops seem pretty vital to the run so they're the only paths i feel like i can take, but like i said i might be budgeting ammo poorly. i have no idea what the ouroboros map rune means, i assume its a empty space so i just avoid it. i think the radar dots should be bigger since i literally had to wipe dust off of my screen to see the last enemy once. the background and walls should be more contrasting
personally i wish i had more control over my build, like if i paid runes to select the upgrade i want instead of paying for a chance to upgrade. i also wish i could regain tiny amounts of health. i'd prefer dash to be bound to ctrl
i haven't gotten to the final boss yet but i'll probably keep playing until i beat it
bugs:
Thank you very much for playing and the feedback!
Its interesting to me to hear how people fare with the ammo amount, I'll say you can get by without using the shield gun much and avoiding stores. But you probably need to know a lot about the game then.
It heals you to full, need to make it more evident.
Haha I hear you, will change it somehow.
There will be some ways to do it in the future, and more interesting ways to build. For example to pay a fee to re-roll skills at a level up.
You regain about 10% every time you enter a portal.
You can rebind keys in the options menu.
You'd be the first except me! I'll caution you if you get to the last level because I doubt its obvious; you have to destroy four things to make the boss spawns. They're blue blips on the radar.
I thought I had fixed that one, I guess not...
Thanks!
the gun is good indeed
good job starting us off with something fun like an explosive pistol
I'm impressed with the amount of enemies you manage to have on screen while keeping the game pretty well-performing
boomstick and super boomstick, their bullets could do with some speed variation. currently they just come out as a really obvious arc
if it's not possible to buy a level up because you're too poor, then probably just don't offer it and instead skip that screen
cool game, I like
Thanks for playing and the feedback!
Good idea, will implement. Shotguns' bullets will probably be made smaller as well.
The thinking there is to not start the next level automatically after loading, but I'll consider it.
Overall quite good. At first I had no idea what the random pickups were, but later found out it was some ammo. Ammo seems pretty unnecessary honestly, I might get rid of it. I couldn't buy anything in the shop and had no idea how much things costed. Also I kept accidentally hitting play next level instead of increasing my stats on level up, so maybe force that interaction before moving on to the next level. The work you put into polish so far is definitely evident so really nice job there
Thank you for playing!
Generally stronger weapons will eat up a lot more ammo, so you'll have to balance it a bit, but early game you have plenty. What the pickups actually do need to be clearer yeah. It should say the price of things when you walk over the items, but if you can't afford something that text will be grey - it might be a bit too hard to see actually.
Thanks! Yeah the polish is just all over the place right now though hah.
It really is a nice game, the first few rounds looked easy but then the game became really challenging, if there was an issue, it could be the menus that are too detailed compared to the fast-paced feeling of the game, the stats screen opened by tab could close itself after you've picked something on the ground maybe, but otherwise it feels really good to play
The game feels well balanced, speed and ammo count feels like a gimmick at the start since you outrun everything but when you start to have heavy guns and faster enemies, or when you only have one ammo type guns and you empty them all, you feel stupid
Thanks for playing and the feedback!
I'm gonna try to simplify the stats screen for the guns, icons too! But really you're more meant to take your time after finishing a level and choose what guns to take with you, grabbing guns in the middle should be more of a desperation move.
The game got stuck at the loading screen the first time I started it, but upon restart it worked fine.
Really fun game even if the art style is a bit crude.
Yeah I will fix that, thanks for playing!
Pretty cool game, I like it.
I had the same thing as HappyTimeGuy, didn't load the first time but worked when I started it again. Works great on Linux.
It's annoying that the mouse is still restricted to the screen while paused, would be good if it could be turned off specifically then but not while in game
Music wasn't playing until I paused
I don't play this sort of thing much, I got to 179592 points. I completely forgot that Shift was dodge and not Space so I made a risky move that relied on the ability that allows you to dodge through enemies without actually using it and lost 80% of my health as a result.
Thank you for playing and giving feedback!
Noted, will fix. Glad to hear its working well on Linux.
Good point!
Odd, will have to look into it.
Hehe oh well it happens, but you can also change keybinds in the options.
I enjoyed my time of a few rounds, even if I didn't win one. The gunplay felt good, and the gun and player modifiers were fun to mess around with. UI is pretty decent. Only Issue with it is that the scroll wheel sometimes scrolls twice instead of once sometimes for weapon switch, dunno if it's just my end though. It's a bit hard to understand the difference between the red/blue/purple encounters, though I'd assume I'd figure it out if I played more. Otherwise I think the map icons were easy enough to figure out after encountering them once.
The levels did feel a bit long to clear, especially the open ones. I ended up marry-go-riding around the level to kill the orange towers and orbs. Though it was entertaining still to do the dodging and fighting, I was just getting a bit weary to do it for that long at once. Though I don't think there's much to be done, it seems to be the style of shooter this game is about, with lots of enemies to take on at once.
Enemies felt pretty good, each one has a purpose and doesn't feel tacked on. Only thing that felt weird are the big purple guy's attack. I can't tell if it's an AOE that sometimes triggers or if you get damaged immediately upon entering the circle. Would probably be fixed with an attack animation of some kind.
Thanks for playing and the feedback!
You're not the only one that have had issues with the scroll wheel, I'll rewrite the logic for it.
Yeah that's pretty much the game haha. But of course it can be improved, and I'll try.
Its meant to be an AoE attack, you'll get damaged from touching the circle. I'd like to have all enemies have attack animations and better attack FXs, so hopefully it'll be more clear what is happening in the future.
What an insanely fun game. It'd be nice if there were purchaseble weapon upgrades but other than that bloody good work.
I'm really glad to hear that, thanks for playing! Yeah some minor crafting things like that are planned.
ahoy.
i had a nice playthrough. although i was unable to reach the boss, i think i made it more than halfway through the game and had a good time. as before, a warning that I suck at bullet hell/heaven/whatever games, so any criticisms should be read with that in mind.
starting off simple, the new UI and music selection are both very good. both fit the style of the game very well. one UI suggestion would be to add more notice about your currently equipped gun. right now it's just the border getting text, and while it's conveys the idea well and is visible from a distance, i'd still consider adding some highlight or something similar, since there are UI elements by default which have that text highlight effect.
i mentioned this last DD i'm sure, but the background of weaponboxes being an ammo counter + being the correct ammo color is a great design decision. usually these games have issues display this information to players, leading to frustrating moments of a player misjudging their current ammo and dying. i had no such issues there and was always aware of my current and remaining ammo.
the level design was good. there was a healthy mix of open rooms, caves, buildings of some sort and some inbetween mixes. there are also some QoL fixes i think were not present in DD. things like the ammo and guns going to the middle of the map on level completion. good stuff.
you mentioned being interested in the difficulty. while i don't think the game is very difficult, the issues is that it comes in waves. for example, the M(eteor ?) enemy came in later in comparison to other enemies, but the stationary orange alien that fires projectiles is much, much more dangerous. Same with the spawner enemy. Both Spawners and Meteors stand around a small area and patrol/idle I come closer, while the orange projectile guy shoots me from offscreen. If there's a lot of them, my screen fills up with red projectiles incredibly quickly. The most dangerous of all is the moving projectile enemy, and he would be my #1 priority by far. Levels with caves then became piss easy, since i'd sit in a corner and shoot the melee enemies, then mop up the projectile enemies. Compare that to a fully open level where I need to dash and move around constantly. I think this is the design of games of this genre and is to be expected, but perhaps some balancing is in order. Maybe prevent the stationary aliens from shooting from so far away or something.
again, this might be an issue for me since i suck at these, so i wouldn't worry too much about balance
my favorite part of the playthrough was making fun weapon combinations. i had a cold damage (Northern) SMG, and a modified triple shotgun as my top loadout. it was great fun mixing and matching weapons. perhaps a good levelup choice would be holding more weapons.
a small error i noticed was being able to use mousehwheel on the map select screen. i thought it would move the map up/down, but instead i was able to switch guns there. not a big deal, but it's always a bit immersionbreaking to be able to control my character on the map screen.
the game was lots of fun. as always, keep up the good work
Yo!
Wow didn't even reach the boss even though you promised to I'm so extremely disappointed... Hehe just kidding its perfectly fine, thanks for playing!
Will do.
Yeah its one thing I find is hard to strike to right balance for, its incredibly easy to make the game really hard and just overwhelm the player; having it easier but still fun is harder. I can get to and kill the boss pretty easily every time but I know absolutely everything about the game of course. I've really started to understand why so many similar games opt for early access. I'd like to increase the enemy variety greatly, I think I could get the balance better then.
But yeah enemies are definitely meant to pose danger differently, sort of like how in DOOM you need to take out the hit scanners first of all because they'll chip down your health otherwise; so take out the shooters while the others will mostly just get in your way. I think I tuned the very first levels too easy though, but sitting still like that can be very dangerous if you don't have another way out for example as if you can't kill them fast enough you'll get overwhelmed. The towers that shoot you across the map are there to incentivize you to keep moving and destroy them, they'll also destroy walls in the path so if you try to hunker down and camp eventually new paths will open up. But yeah if I add more different enemies it'd be better I think.
I'm not surprised considering the game you're making haha. I think the weapons you can only get a bit later are more interesting than the first ones you get, really the whole game plays better a few levels in imo. There are 29 different gun "templates" that can get 46 different modifications right now but I'd like to increase the variety more. And some light crafting.
Not the first person to comment on that, I'll change it.
Thanks!
>Wow didn't even reach the boss even though you promised to I'm so extremely disappointed.
fuck it
added it back onto my list. i WILL reach the end.
Haha, well don't neglect other devs on my account!
On first load it indefinitely hung on 'loading...', but just restarting and trying again it worked fine each time, so I hope that doesn't trip anyone else up. Had silky smooth fps on a 2060 and I played long enough to be killed by some very aggressive placeholders, looks good
i had the same issue when starting the game for the first time
Thank you for trying it out! Yeah several people have had that same issue, I refactored how assets are loaded right before DD so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I am certain I can fix it though.