Thanks for the video commentary. I'll reply as I'm watching through it
I definitely see a lot of people struggled with aiming the attacks since its bound to tilting up/down intended for controllers, but I added in mouse aiming in the latest revision like you were attempting. And lots of people similarly didn't realize you needed charged attacks to permanently kill rewindable enemies, I'm testing adding a system to kill without them anyway, but man its tough to watch people struggle with that bit. Some people killed the bosses in a few seconds, some took several minutes to randomly hit a charged attack at the end and have no reason why they killed it.
I had a 'camera peeks up/down while holding up/down' feature, you can even see the MC tilting his head up when you hold it since I animated it, but even with some tolerance lagtime I found it too distracting if you were using up/down to angle attacks, so its just commented out in the code. The later revisions also slow down movement significantly.
Noticed very few people tried attacking to reflect projectiles. Definitely should make the non-dangerous lavafalls in the background be a more desaturated color so people don't think it will kill them.
The bossfight you think you skipped was just the three skeletons in the rotating iris area, wasn't meant to be hard. Definitely should let the AI for some platform enemies like the big electro robot bossfight move to different floors for an open shot, I didn't configure its jump nodes properly.
I don't know if you are familiar with Starbound, but it has a really nice camera system which lets you hold a button and move camera off centre while still keeping the character on screen e.g if you know you are going to be moving to the right, you can move the cam so that the character would at far left side of the screen. I am not sure if it would be possible for you to implement something like that with how you move and rotate the camera sometimes, but I think it would be a nice addition to the game.
the three skeletons
oh, I completely forgot about your skelly boys.
Definitely should make the non-dangerous lavafalls in the background be a more desaturated color so people don't think it will kill them.
I feel like everything in your game tries to kill the player, so don't be surprised when players try to either play very carefully and get scared of everything, or they get tilted hard and try to rush with using the time power over and over even for easier sections.
big electro robot
yes, he really needs better artificial intelligence.
Context: I am running the game on Linux, using Wine, on a low-spec system.
Nitpick: I clicked on the background in the main menu, and I think it interprets that click as clicking on the currently selected menu item. Switching between save slots seems to ignore some clicks, at least if you click quickly.
Nitpick: I am trying to exit the game or return to the main menu, but pressing 'Esc' brings up a configuration menu instead. Might just be the demo.
The game is really pretty and the environment background is full of life.
The game is great so far. I have gotten to a lift. I went up the lift, smashed some weapons (since I distrust everything now), went down the lift, went to the save spot, went up the lift again, and now a mimic chest has revealed itself.
I do not remember if the 'e' control was explained, to show the map.
The gravity and orientation changing is nice.
The game is honestly beautiful.
I sometimes am confused whether an enemy is dead or merely damaged.
Am I hitting enemies back in time?? That is really nice. I do not know how much damage I am dealing to them. I feel like I have been in a stalemate with a giant, jumping eyeball for some time now. I ended up going past it. Wait, after lots and lots of hits, did I finally kill it? Oh, wait, can these monsters also go back in time, and I have to get to the "original position" of them? Or something?
In the key level, I got a bit confused about which way to go and why. It seems there are short-cuts, but I think I ended up back-tracking and taking a short-cut to the key after collecting the key. But that may just be my own poor navigation skills.
There was a pressure plate right before using the key, but I do not know if it did anything.
The boss battle against the robot boss with legs (the third boss battle?) felt underwhelming. I hit him a couple of times, he jumped down, stunned me, I rewound time, avoided being stunned, and then hit him a couple of times, and then he was destroyed.
Is there any reason to go back to a previous level using the gates? Looking for secrets?
Is this a bug?
For destroying certain enemies, is the trick that you have to force them into rewinding time, and just before they arrive at the start of their time, you should hit them with a charged shot?
I completed the demo, though when I press any kind of key, nothing happens.
This feels much more like a good game than a demo. Apart from that possible angle bug, and a small amount of confusion in the robot level, this felt nice. I wonder if there is any kind of interesting manipulation with enemies and time you can do, or puzzles and time. Like, where you must rewind time to solve it or kill the enemy, not only as a way to "undo" a mistake. On the other hand, the game has been designed with you using time rewinding to explore, investigate and learn, and figuring out how to solve the puzzle or kill an enemy is still interesting despite having access to rewind, at least for how long I played.
I think I played for much more than one hour. I did not really use the map. I also never back-tracked, apart from when I got confused. I did find and get some of the map "shrines". How long does it take you to design and implement the levels? They feel full of life and details. I did not keep track of how many new mechanics were introduced, I did experience some new mechanics, and lots and lots of new enemies, with different attributes, attacks, behaviors, and such. There were physics here and there, such as with platforming. It feels like a very nice game. Will you release on Steam? Other platforms?
It looks nice, and it feels like it's got a ton of dev time put into it, but I am very confused. Some notes:
- In the first level, the plant that attacks by shooting some brown balls, the balls merge with the environment too much. They're the same brown and all.
- The character will constantly drop grabbed gears when platforming around for seemingly no issue. Seems like it has to do with hitboxes. Similarly the times when I can pick it up or end up hitting it instead seems to not be very consistent as well.
- The climbing animation is sorta bizarre. I notice it still adheres to the pixel grid properly and all, but it feels oddly smooth in a stiff way.
- I don't think you should be slowed down every time you walk in front of a gate.
- Rewinding feels too slow.
- If I release a charge attack before it finishes charging, I think it should do a normal attack instead.
- In the metallic cogwheels room with the balance platforms on a chain, I seem to be making them lighter by standing on them?
I am overall very confused, and the whole thing seems to just be a death trap requiring me to rewind every couple seconds rather than an intricate puzzle that makes use of the time mechanics in some interesting way. Many of the enemies seem to do attacks that are very poorly communicated and as a result I'm just going "what?" every other room. I also don't understand why some enemies get rewinded while others get killed, and sometimes rewinding an enemy rewinds them out of existence... it all feels very random.
Thanks for the detailed feedback. Yeah that first turret could use some improved visibility, that's one I'll touch up first. The nuts it fires are exploding into clumps of flowers, its even less easy to see on ground with flowers already on it.
I think I'll rework how the held object system works significantly. Right now it tries to block your movement by giving an additional hitbox over the player's head checking multiple points along the size of the object, to a priori stop movement. If you jump up and down, you'll notice you bonk into ceilings like you're that much taller. But if you do clip into a surface anyway, it dislodges it and you drop it. And that keeps physics objects from ever clipping into walls and getting stuck. But I could either just allow it- and try to recover physics objects if they do get stuck, and force them to be kept held even if the player clips into a wall. No reason the player should drop an object being carried without an input (or being hit, or I also make it dislodge if a huge physics force is applied to it like an explosion or another object hitting it)
You're the second person to say something about the climbing animation and I'm curious what people see in it, I know its a bit different than other animations because it mean the whole body of the player had to sort of tuck over into the crouch animation and flip in place which was awkward to animate, but also because its playing at 60 FPS whereas other player animations tend to be 15 or 20 FPS. That probably makes it seem "too smooth", but without it, either the climb is unresponsively slow, or he looks like he's teleporting. For comparison, the idle standing loop is 16 frames at 15 FPS in a 60 FPS game (4 gameplay frames per 1 animation frame). The ledgegrabclimb animation is 16 frames at 60 FPS.
If you want to test out a faster rewind to see if its more to your liking, try activating the cheat debug menu, go to "edit save file" and change the "rewindspeed" parameter from 1 to whatever you want. Hell, you can rewind at 500 fps if you want, the game engine is STABLE. I had it set to 2 for a long time, but I think the precision platforming lends itself to 1x rewind speed, I dunno, its not set in stone.
I'll test out 'release charging = normal attack', good idea, I'll see if its better
Important bit about the chain scale platform in the castle level: All the traps are reversed in time. If you see that lever in the middle area next to the fireball spitting gargoyle, if you hit it with a charged attack, you'll reverse the flow of time and make the traps all go forwards. Every trap can be forwards or backwards, its the planned dungeon gimmick for that area (3 main dungeons with 3 gimmicks, ex all the volcano area rotates 90 degrees gravity at a time). So the chain scales in forwards time act like you'd expect, but in reverse time, adding weight to them makes them go up! Because, uh, reverse-time physics
About the climbing animation, I think it feels like the whole sprite is contained within a square, and then it goes right side up left side up etc. deforming the insides, rather than looking like someone who's actually climbing. I think coming up with a few keyframes would be better.
made me feel like a kid, as in, not knowing how to play games and having to experiment to figure things out.
really good, but confusing at time due to the lack of direction(then again, if it an artistic choice, I get it, I like the game as it is)
some areas get a bit annoying, since you can get stuck spamming the reverse time mechanic to escape a death loop.
Overal, I really like the game, and it feels like it could be a final product, but having said that, this is the kind of shit that filters people HARD, so do keep that in mind.
Thanks! Metroidvania can definitely be confusing in direction and encourage more open ended exploration, something not really in this linear demo, but in the final game. I'll have to make sure to test out methods to keep people on track, one reason I made sure to add in the scripts that pan the camera around and show you areas.
But yeah anything this punishing to players is definitely going to be niche
The movement definitely feels a lot better now, but I still think the acceleration could be a tiny bit lower.
Thanks to being able to aim attacks, I noticed that the ground in the first area has some layering issues.
The dash needs a minimum speed to activate so you can't do it while standing still.
The air control still doesn't feel right. I think that a maximum-height jump from a standstill from this position while holding left the entire time should make you land around the red line here:
Yeah I should have tweaked the foreground tileset to have fully blocked out ground and saved it as a separate file, I was just copying a doodad tileset for it, no biggy.
One thing about the time dash is it actually has some uses even if you're not moving. It jumps you and any platform you're standing on and any physics object you're holding/throwing all fast forward through time. You can see it if you stand on a platform. It also means you can use it to dispel timed debuffs earlier, or other such effects. I figure it shouldn't be a big issue if players derp and use it for no reason, since you can just rewind time and be refunded any spent time juice.
I'm still not sure about the air control. I feel like a precision platformer benefits from having more air control instead of less. In that last update I changed the acceleration (240->200 ground, 240->120 air) and deceleration while held (380->500 ground, 380->250 air) and a bunch of other parameters. I feel like if air control was too locked into your starting speed, it would be harder to land on moving platforms. I do want to strike a balance with it, so thanks for the feedback, I'll test it out
i thought the plant elevator was spiked and would kill me if i jumped on it
why does a man who can jump around and do pull ups die to a bee
iduno how to use green save spot
the room of a thousand lasers was MEGA EPIC and BRILLIANT and if i'm being tbqhwy lad the rest of the game in comparison was kinda yawn cuz i just kinda ran forward with reckless abandon because i'm invincible, the axe man's big kaizo burrito on the other hand was a bit TOO exciting (specifically being FUCKING INSTAKILLED by axe man) [i had heart palpitations]
oh and the visuals are an obvious 10/10 and the music is epic but i hardly stopped to smell the flowers because they're all hellish death dimensions
Just walking over a save spot automatically saves. A lot of people think saves/maps/warp doors shouldn't slow down the player, I'll test that out, I thought it added the feedback to people to know their game just saved, maybe I could add an indicator in addition to the big glow & green trace of the player's previous movement
This game is the savescummer's dream. The mechanics encourage you to YOLO everything since there's no risk associated. The dash is extremely useful to dodge almost everything. You almost don't have to time anything thanks to it. The save points a bit useless in that regard. I did die to the final boss since I ran out of mana? I'm not sure that mechanic ever came into play before that point. It could be a bigger point in the game. I had no issue with the movement, just takes a while to get used to. Only problem is that it's too easy to misinput the crouching slide. You could do what other games do and have crouch+jump for slide. The ledge grabbing shouldn't be automatic imo, since a lot of times you just wanna fall or run past.
Yeah these are all just small previews of content for a much larger game, the six main biomes I have fleshed out. My intention is that it will ramp up through the game, getting to the crazy hard platforming like that laser room that requires abusing time travel to brute force it- but ~then~ I can start introducing the more complicated gameplay elements: Enemies and traps that manipulate time too. Some more direct like 'drain or disable your rewind', or others that can drag you back in time, or travel forwards in time regardless of your rewind, or fire projectiles that travel back in time and kill you in the past...
Crouch slide is getting a lot of attention from me to tweak it, definitely the most maligned. My last update made it respond only to how long you hold it, but I think it might still need a different input like you said. I am not sure about ledge grabbing, I made it ignore ledges if you hold the down button now, but I wonder about making it require you to hold left/right
After all these months it feels good to finally try a demo of it. The rewind tech is very impressive and the death animations where the guy get torn intro shreds are fun. How the world twists and turn is also incredible.
The movement feels slugish. I think a big part of the difficulty of this game is that your character takes a long time to react to your inputs which makes it necessary to know what you have to press before it happens. Of course this means dying and rewinding. I did the double tap on accident a lot more times than I wanted.
I don't think this game is unfair at all. It can't be thanks to the rewind mechanic. However it is a game thats tests the player's patience since the rewind encourages brute forcing solutions. Since you can retry almost any 1-2 seconds of gameplay, it is just a matter of getting lucky in hitting the right keys. This is specially true for the last parts of the game (you like the spinning fire wheels mario maker level dont ya?). Even if you get hit by an enemy that depletes the rewind juice, you just have to stand still for a moment to let it replenish. This feeds into the "be patient and you win" feeling. Maybe you are looking for that and it is good, just be mindful that once a player learns to restart until they win, it will be harder for them to think about new ways to solve complex situations.
There were a lot of moments when I wasn't sure what was dangerous and what was not. There were a couple times that I died without having an idea of why. After finishing the game I'm not sure how enemies are killed. I think there are different rules for each kind of enemy.
What happened in the last boss fight was hilarious in hindsight. I was not thrilled at that moment though.
From what I saw in the threads, you have a great base to make levels and interesting situation. It will be cool to see where you take this game!
Thanks for the feedback. Trying to get the right balance of movement where some people say its too twitchy, others too slow. The final area of the game was just a joke to make it intentionally ridiculously hard, but the rest should show that brute forcing can work against even difficult areas like the laser maze. I am still debating some kinds of "add a red outline to hazards" sort of modern approach, to see how it stacks up against the art. Since yeah like an IWBTG kind of game, I could argue its okay to let people be confused about what killed them and then rewind time trivially. But its about striking a balance, thanks!
I think restrictions on how the rewind juice is used could make it more interesting to design around. For example have it be a limited resource and put rewind juice in places around the level. Or make it so in some areas it cannot be used.
I don't think a red outline would be good specially since you enjoy surprising the player and telling them ahead of time of the danger would defeat the purpose. The thing right now is that dying is inconsequential. I believe that putting some way to make dying sting just a bit more would make all those enemies and dangers click better.
Very nice. Didn't beat it; the final area just got too silly. (parts of the second-to-last area had a few too many lasers as well, I had no dang idea what was happening most of the time and just brute-forced it)
Movement feels very slippery for how precise you need to be (at least on keyboard), and the boss encounters are absolutely trivial compared to how ridiculous the platforming gets, but it's got solid mechanics and wonderful art. The addition of a map and fast travel points seems a bit superfluous in the game's current state, but I assume it's planned to be less linear eventually.
Yeah its planned to be a full size game, think super metroid map size, with 6 primary tilesets / areas, so this was a tasting of each zone's assets. But movement definitely needs some refinement, that was one of the big takeaways
I like it, time mechanic is always cool, movement feels solid and i like that the world twists and turns.
but my biggest complaint is that your tilesets and objects all blend together. It's next to impossible to see enemies and traps unless you move super slowly and watch intensely. It's cool punishing the player sometimes but it happens way too often and combined with the player only have 1 hp makes it more frustrating than fun for me.
Thanks, I may test out the 'add red outline to enemies/traps while they're a collision danger' kind of system that a lot of modern games have, I kind of avoided it to keep the art more organic but it might be worth a try
Great game, wonderful experience (26min, 346 deaths posted last thread).
I'm glad I pud pressure on you to put out a demo build.
First and most important question: was this a tasting buffet of most area/worlds of the game, or this is really the game?
I hope it's the former, not the latter. There is a ton of work on each area and it would be a shame to steamroll through it in an hour.
I usually don't like unfair games, but since we can rewind time I suppose you can indeed fight broken with broken. It's fun, and it's great design to never softlock yourself once you start rewinding (or I just got super lucky)
I have copied the list you posted and added what I agree you should work on:
* decrease player max speed, adjust accel to match
* increase decel on ground to be less slippery
- coyote time, or bigger coyote window
* make crouch slide terminate early when released
* change the input for dodge/lunge. (as a fighter player I had no issues. Maybe the solution for a dedicated key is to have it on alt/shift/middle mouse, Q is a problem)
* add ability to kill rewinding enemies by striking them with normal attacks (dunno about the metroidvania scaling, but ihmo it should be default, or one of the first things you uhnlock. ofc it wont work on bosses and elite enemies)
* maybe add a red outline or flash effect to hazards that you touch that kill you? something to visually indicate -what- did it
* rework the temporary menu to be less obtuse, allow multiple selection methods like mouse click and left/right slot changing buttons, make it hard locked to mouse/wasd/arrows instead of in-game controls
* allow changing controls via in-game debug menu
* lock the 'cheating' debug controls unless you directly activate a cheat button, so people don't do it by accident
Other than that there isn't much to say, beside the menus this content great and already shippable.
Thanks for the checklist. Yeah this is just a demo sampling of a larger game, not even a fraction of the content I've already created, I didn't want to throw in the most complicated stuff. Coyote time in particular is something I think I'll have to try out, should help the slipping-off-ledges. And killing rewindable enemies with normal attacks is my next task, using a 'need to deal X damage before they finish rewinding' system.
Aesthetic, sound, music, physics/timetravel are all great. Good job on that front. The movement felt a tad fast, but the main thing that felt too fast was the crouch slide, it's just so quick it feels a bit slippy. Though I will admit it helped a few times when in a bind, it also got triggered accidently and killed me a decent bit. It currently feels a bit weird that the world has warps and teleports currently, given how linear it is besides getting some keys. I imagine that metroidvania elements will be added later though, so for a base of that future system it looks good.
Subjectively though I didn't enjoy this nearly as much as I thought. I was never a fan of a ton-of-deaths games like IWTBTG, but this game was definitely better than those since the time travel makes the time loss almost non existent. Regardless, the amount of deaths made me view the game differently and it felt more like trial and error than my skill at times. That was especially the case by the end, but I imagine that's on purpose in reference to kaizo.
So yeah, game's really good, right up the alley of many gamers, though not for me I think.
Thanks! Crouch slide definitely needs the most work of anything, and the rest of movement parameters. Yeah the metroidvania elements are in place for a larger game
I feel like the movement and jumping was very fast so it was hard to control my momentum. But I guess it's fine in a game where I can just rewind mistakes?
I feel like there were definitely time travel mechanics I wasn't grasping.
Definitely going to tune up the movement with a lot of feedback I've gotten. And trust me, not only are there time mechanics in some areas of the demo that aren't obvious or easy to understand, but the final game will have some truly nutty stuff (think 'going forwards in time while everything else goes backwards' or 'getting killed in the past')
I saw you changed the movement so I tried it out. I think it's better, I still found myself sliding forward on the ground farther than I wanted to.
I'm stuck on the lava floating guy. I think I'm realizing I don't know how to kill stuff? I just put them in the shiny blue form but they just come back?
Edit: also after the update the game wouldn't open from itch.io app. I had to find the exe on disk and open that way.
Awesome game, I'm glad Castlevania Granddad can rewind time because those deaths sure look painful.
I had no major issues while playing. I guess the MC was a bit too grabby with ledges at times and that dash maneuver probably needs to get remapped to something more deliberate because at least I tend to tap the directional movements to make small adjustments rather than performing a long jump. Also, I found this bug but don't worry, I was fine afterwards.
I also think the Mario level was pushing it a little bit in terms of difficulty, but that's fine because I found it hilarious. On the topic of the final boss, think the pile of bones in the starting area made it clear that skulls can rewind you, but I believe it's likely players may miss it so perhaps you should make one drop from the ceiling or something instead
Does geriatric alucard feel it every time he dies? What a horrible fate.
Tweaking movement parameters is a top priority for me, I'll definitely remap the dodge/lunge, and try to allow crouch sliding and walking for finer movements. Might also want to use a different set of enemies in the final area, the skull barons confused a lot of people since they were only introduced at the least opportune moment and they're meant to be annoying hazards ala castlevania medusa heads, so that was kind of a dick move to ambush the player at the last moment.
holy presentation batman! the pixel art and animations are very smooth. I think the protagonist is using skeletal puppet animations? it's used very nicely here.
not sure if this was the intention but I find this kind of like rage platformers that suddenly kill you unexpectedly a lot. time reversal is a good mechanic in such a game since it removes the tedious part of these games
never did figure out how to properly dispose of enemies that rewind time when they die
Thanks! The MC animations are made up of 6 layers, all manual pixel art sprites- cape, lower body, upper body, staff, flare, gauntlets. No rendering from skeletons, just a lot of aligning sprite sheets. I do find that balancing the game will be hard given the intersection of 'very frustrating instadeath mechanics' and 'trivialize threats by rewinding time' and 'traps/enemies who manipulate time too'. So it sure helps to get feedback.
Right now enemies are two classes, either they die normally to attacks, or they are rewindable- enough damage makes them slide backwards in time, and they can only be killed with a charged attack at low health or rewinding. I'm going to try a new system where normal attacks can build up a lethal damage on enemies while they rewind, ie once they start rewinding, you hit them a few times before it ends and it finishes them off, which would be an alternative to the charged attack (which I'll probably make do 3x instead of 2x damage, to compensate). That will be a bit of work so it won't be in this demo, but hope it makes the combat easier to grok
Played until the end of the "mario level" where the black knight suddenly caused time to rewind a lot, killing me. No real idea what happened there.
Some thought I had while playing:
The game has a nice concept, but needs some polishing in its design. An example of the design working well was the part with the lasers, an example of the design working poorly was that mario level. Since the player can just rewind time, it becomes too easy to just trial and error the levels. After a while this becomes tedious.
There is also a lack of visual clarity. Why do some enemies suddenly cause time to rewind for you? Can I kill enemies (until the skeleton boss battle I thought you could only rewind them)? What parts of the level will kill you? This is a lot less of a problem due to the time rewind mechanic, but it still isn't great. Saving is also unclear, and it's strange that it's forced whenever you step on a safepoint.
The movement of the player character feels "slippery" and hard to control. As all movement based issues, it's hard to put into words what exactly is wrong.
There is an extreme attention to detail, and the levels look beautiful. However, they also feel extremely cluttered and short. This is no doubt worsened by the gameplay which allows you to rush through everything with trial and error. The fast pace really hurts, since there's no reason to look for shortcuts as everything is so frenetic.
The bosses were a pushover in case of the skellyboys and the second boss. That black knight fucked me up, jumping his fire seems very precise, and something (I don't know what) causes long time rewinds. This occurs a lot, some parts are extremely easy, others are extremely hard.
Conclusion:
The game has a great concept, great visuals and great potential. But needs polishing in its movement, visual clarity, and difficulty design.
Don't worry you played the whole demo then, nothing left but a 'you win' screen if you kill the axeman. Thanks for the help, I know this demo tried to cram a bit more ideas into the game to show off mechanics then what I'd want in a learning curve for the real game. I plan to have a lot of 'normal' platforming in the earlier game, ramping up as you encounter more time-manipulating traps and enemies that make it more challenging through your ability to rewind time. But cramming those in early can be very confusing- the imps rewind time if you hurt, but don't kill them, the clump of skulls rewinds you if you touch them, skeleton archers can sometimes shoot arrows that travel backwards in time and kill you in the past, and those big skulls in the 1-1-with-a-twist level rewind you through time if they touch you. So yeah, a lot of cluttered ideas for a demo and that's not even 1/10 of whats in store.
Most people seem to agree the movement is too fast and especially the lunge/dodge/slide need a rework, that's a top priority. Making it more precise and slower.
Are you really just playing a backwards recording of the Music from a seperate File instead of playing the File backwards?
And why are you baking the Graphics into the exe but not the Audio?
Do you really need a external Template for how your Savefile looks like?
When in the TitleScreen, while you're below the new/load/quit selection, the topleft Text becomes Red and attaches to the Cursor.
New Game just has me select a Slot, but I can't use it to load the Slot I've selected? The menu is very weirdly laid out, but it is just a temporary Menu.
Why does the Camera move to the right when I Jump up? Is it just trying to conform to the closest Ground/Walls without taking my Action into account or something like that?
It takes a really long Time to slow back down. When I just walk across the Pier in Distance, I need nearly the same Distance to come to a Stop. The Character isn't even running very fast animationwise, is the Floor made out of Ice?
When I cling to a Wall, then let go and turn around rapidly, I cling to it again immediately, which feels super odd. Same when I cllimb up and hold movement down, I climb into crouching, which then immediately has me Dash across the Floor.
The Rotating of the World is neat, but straining on the Eyes with Pixelart. Also seems to only be in certain Areas, as regular small Hills don't rotate it? If you have a more global feeling rotation like that, shouldn't it always align the Floor?
Graphics for the Safespot are neat, but why does it slow me down while saving? Why even have Auto-activated ones in the first Place? Why not saferooms like Castlevania, you're clearly inspired by it anyway.
Rewinding across a Savefile also doesn't do anything it seems, the Save seems to stay on the new Version instead of reverting.
You can't rewind long enough, so if you don't rewind almost immediately after dying, you're stuck in a State where your Movement causes you to slide into the Trap again.
Automatically crouching when across a small Space is nice, but then you slide a giant Distance out of it if it doesn't align with your Slide Distance just right.
Tried out your saving just to be save, it indeed does not rewind itself.
Theres Tons of Traps out there which all instantly kill you, but they aren't very distinct from the cluttered Backgrounds, so it really becomes a try and Error kind of Thing, where you just rush through until you run into something that kills you, rewind for a while until you're in a safespot and then try again. Which isn't very Fun, it just feels like being forced to die all the Time. The Traps also make no Sense, obviously not in who put them there, they rarely do anyway, but also in their Location or Type of Trap. there are random Spikes, Flamethrowers, Blades, Gears or whatever just thrown about, with some Enemies in between where there was Room. Together with the rather 'floaty' movement as described above, where you aren't really able to make much precise movement without planning it ahead of Time, and then try to execute it all at once, and the Movement also holding your Hand a little too much, always trying to guess if you're wanting to crouch, climb up somewhere, hang from a Wall etc, it makes traversing the Level more annoying then Fun, at least for me. Gave up pretty early, after the small round Room with the 3 Skeletons in it, when the purple Teleporter Thing just took me back to the beginning for no Reason at all. I was expecting a Time travel Shenanigan Castlevania, and instead got one of those Rage Games, but with the Ability to instantly repeat the last try instead of having to go all the Way back. Which just kind of feels nonsensical to me. Sorry.
Thanks for the feedback, its been helpful and I've been assembling to-do lists based on everything folks have said. Yeah I was at the last minute putting resources internal to the .exe and didn't sort out music/sfx in time for the demo, so they're left dangling. The windows sound API and runtime independent playback means just having two copies of each sound is the easiest way to play in reverse, just swapping them and their positions. No reason I had to keep that save tile template in there though, that's just an oversight
I see everyone agrees that yeah I need to tune up that temporary menu and more importantly the player movement parameters, I'll add some more decel-when-not-held and terminate crouch slides if not held, should allow for finer movement. Tuning up the movement is my priority now, that's definitely a sticking point. Thanks!
Very interesting game, impressed that the time travel mechanics work so well doesn't feel janky at all. I never play platformers nor metroidvainas so this isn't my genre at all. Love the pixel art.
I felt like I had no idea where I was going the entire time, I just ran forwards aimlessly and somehow progressed in the right direction. It felt like you moved way too fast at the start but after playing through it, it was fine really. Same with the speed up ability, thought it was unusable at the start but I got how to use it in the end, using it to fight enemies was fun. I'm not even sure how to actually fully kill enemies after completing the game, I just flailed at them wildly while they were in "ghost form" and they seemed to die.
The most fun parts to me were the shenanigans with time travel, like the juice that prevented you from using it or enemies forcibly reversing you. The boss was great. I didn't care much for the platforming, but again that's probably just me. It could get a bit annoying when you kept dying and dying every millisecond and having to reverse time, especially with the same death sound effect (could be nice if there were several). But I guess that's the game really so nothing to do.
I fucking hated the last area and the vast majority of my deaths were there, only played through it and finished because I'm a stubborn bastard. Some hitboxes felt really unfair but it was mostly evident in the last area, like in the pic below is the exact frame I died on from a hatchet in the ground.
The double tap to jump was nice but sometimes it could trigger to easily, when inching closer to something for example. Maybe its better to play with a gamepad. Would moving the camera around slightly with the mouse work?
I wonder if the timer at the end is really accurate, it felt like I took a lot longer. But I didn't time it myself... And yeah, most deaths were on the last level.
Thanks! There's a lot more unused traps and enemies that interact with time travel in crazy ways, things like desynchronized rewind (try pressing that button in the debug menu if you want to see). The current setup is that enemies are either 'rewindable' or not, and those rewindable can only be killed by a charged attack, otherwise they just rewind. But I think after feedback here what I'll do is add a system that kills them permanent if you hit them with multiple normal attacks while they're rewinding, like 'build up 3 glyphs around them and they explode', so you could just kill them by spamming attacks.
I'm going to adjust some of the platforming, people seem to agree its too fast and the double tap input for dodge sucks, I agree. And I'm just glad to see people banged their heads against that 1-1 with a twist level even though I intentionally made it stupid. Thanks for the feedback!
The movement feels slippery and imprecise. The walking speed is a bit too fast and friction needs to be higher, and there's way too much air control.
Needs coyote time.
Jumping out of water feels unresponsive. Make the player attempt to jump each frame you're holding down the jump button (after a delay so you don't immediately jump out of the water when entering it).
Hide the cursor entirely if you're not using it instead of only when it's idle.
The dash is so long it seems impractical for anything but backtracking. It goes past the edge of the screen from the starting point. Being able to look ahead with the mouse would help, but it still feels too long.
Not being able to cross gaps like the first spike pit makes me even less sure about what the dash is supposed to be good for.
Enemies and traps don't stand out from the environment at all.
There's no indication as to whether a drop will kill you or not. Blasphemous had a decent solution with the fog above bottomless pits.
The pink petals on those plant enemies that try to bite you when you stand on them look too much like spikes.
What's the point of the side paths that send you back to where you've already been with no kind of reward, like the portal in the water? I know you posted a video about being able to jump into the water while holding something heavy to skip ahead, but why not just make it a one-way portal?
Why do some enemies become intangible and can only be killed with a charged attack after being hit them while some don't? I don't see the pattern or what it's supposed to represent.
Why does it take so many hits to kill tiny enemies like bats?
Try to avoid having too many waiting-based obstacles. Waiting for some spikes to retract with nothing else happening is not a challenge.
Traps that you have no way of knowing are there until they kill you and force you to rewind just get annoying at a certain point.
How was I supposed to know that the lava fall in the room with the wizard guy wouldn't kill me? I'm pretty sure it did, until I came back to the room and suddenly I could just go through it.
There's no reason not to pause the game while the map is open. Also, needs a minimap.
That robot with the blue lasers is complete bullshit. You can't have an enemy with rapid fire, instant, untelepgrahed ranged attacks that kill you in one hit. I managed to kill it by constantly rewind and mashing the attack button, but it felt incredibly unsatisfying.
I don't think you ever explained or lead the player to intuit that you can reflect (some?) projectiles with attacks until it's suddenly required in the industrial area.
Does the robot boss even attack you? It didn't before I killed it, at least.
There's seemingly no rhyme or reason as to which enemies do contact damage and which don't.
You need to add some switches/shortcuts that let you disable/bypass obstacles you've already beaten, especially if want anyone to ever want to backtrack through these levels.
The levels need some breather segments. Having it be all kaizo all the time gets exhausting.
The slippery movement leads to a lot of tedious trial and error with rewinding.
The crouch slide keeps getting me killed in the Mario level when I just want to crouch under the blades. I don't think I've ever used it intentionally.
The hitbox for the swinging blades extends too far back. The brass part shouldn't kill you.
Even as a joke, the Mario level is awful. Just pure trial and error. And then to top it off there's enemies at the end that drain your rewind just by touching you and force you to redo the whole thing from the beginning. I would've given up after the third time if it weren't for the invulnerability cheat.
This yellow status effect that prevents you from moving while and after rewinding is fucking annoying. It just makes the game feels unresponsive.
It took me a long time to realize what was even causing said status effect during the boss fight. The animation is barely noticeable.
The boss has a dead zone where he can't hit you with either attack.
I never used the dash ability once past the beginning.
Having the game open somehow prevents me from drag scrolling in Brave (Chromium).
Thanks for the detailing feedback! I'm adjusting a ton of the stuff based on what people have said, I can adjust platforming parameters by just changing a few values so I'll decrease max speed, increase deceleration, decrease air acceleration, change the dodge/lunge inputs, etc. Everyone seems to agree its too fast/jumpy. Water jumping is a good point, I'll try to increase the input buffer or the range you can jump on a surface, and especially the crouch slide
I might reupload the demo with some basic signs at forks in the road saying stuff like 'portal to start of level' or 'turn left for a save point', a lot of people had issues with that.
Even with the mario level being intentionally obnoxious, I think you're right I should adjust some hitboxes, I'll change which parts are chain and which are blade
Comments
Hey HappyTimeGuy, I recorded myself playing your game. I hope seeing how I play, and hearing my commentary is going to be helpful to you.
https://mega.nz/file/iY8zAbDT#JgHAaVLDygkuaZHWVhDqn-LflGhVzP5MPd2VzYqRxaE
Thanks for the video commentary. I'll reply as I'm watching through it
I definitely see a lot of people struggled with aiming the attacks since its bound to tilting up/down intended for controllers, but I added in mouse aiming in the latest revision like you were attempting. And lots of people similarly didn't realize you needed charged attacks to permanently kill rewindable enemies, I'm testing adding a system to kill without them anyway, but man its tough to watch people struggle with that bit. Some people killed the bosses in a few seconds, some took several minutes to randomly hit a charged attack at the end and have no reason why they killed it.
I had a 'camera peeks up/down while holding up/down' feature, you can even see the MC tilting his head up when you hold it since I animated it, but even with some tolerance lagtime I found it too distracting if you were using up/down to angle attacks, so its just commented out in the code. The later revisions also slow down movement significantly.
Noticed very few people tried attacking to reflect projectiles. Definitely should make the non-dangerous lavafalls in the background be a more desaturated color so people don't think it will kill them.
The bossfight you think you skipped was just the three skeletons in the rotating iris area, wasn't meant to be hard. Definitely should let the AI for some platform enemies like the big electro robot bossfight move to different floors for an open shot, I didn't configure its jump nodes properly.
I don't know if you are familiar with Starbound, but it has a really nice camera system which lets you hold a button and move camera off centre while still keeping the character on screen e.g if you know you are going to be moving to the right, you can move the cam so that the character would at far left side of the screen. I am not sure if it would be possible for you to implement something like that with how you move and rotate the camera sometimes, but I think it would be a nice addition to the game.
oh, I completely forgot about your skelly boys.
I feel like everything in your game tries to kill the player, so don't be surprised when players try to either play very carefully and get scared of everything, or they get tilted hard and try to rush with using the time power over and over even for easier sections.
yes, he really needs better artificial intelligence.
Context: I am running the game on Linux, using Wine, on a low-spec system.
Nitpick: I clicked on the background in the main menu, and I think it interprets that click as clicking on the currently selected menu item. Switching between save slots seems to ignore some clicks, at least if you click quickly.
Nitpick: I am trying to exit the game or return to the main menu, but pressing 'Esc' brings up a configuration menu instead. Might just be the demo.
The game is really pretty and the environment background is full of life.
The game is great so far. I have gotten to a lift. I went up the lift, smashed some weapons (since I distrust everything now), went down the lift, went to the save spot, went up the lift again, and now a mimic chest has revealed itself.
I do not remember if the 'e' control was explained, to show the map.
The gravity and orientation changing is nice.
The game is honestly beautiful.
I sometimes am confused whether an enemy is dead or merely damaged.
Am I hitting enemies back in time?? That is really nice. I do not know how much damage I am dealing to them. I feel like I have been in a stalemate with a giant, jumping eyeball for some time now. I ended up going past it. Wait, after lots and lots of hits, did I finally kill it? Oh, wait, can these monsters also go back in time, and I have to get to the "original position" of them? Or something?
In the key level, I got a bit confused about which way to go and why. It seems there are short-cuts, but I think I ended up back-tracking and taking a short-cut to the key after collecting the key. But that may just be my own poor navigation skills.
There was a pressure plate right before using the key, but I do not know if it did anything.
The boss battle against the robot boss with legs (the third boss battle?) felt underwhelming. I hit him a couple of times, he jumped down, stunned me, I rewound time, avoided being stunned, and then hit him a couple of times, and then he was destroyed.
Is there any reason to go back to a previous level using the gates? Looking for secrets?
Is this a bug?
For destroying certain enemies, is the trick that you have to force them into rewinding time, and just before they arrive at the start of their time, you should hit them with a charged shot?
I completed the demo, though when I press any kind of key, nothing happens.
This feels much more like a good game than a demo. Apart from that possible angle bug, and a small amount of confusion in the robot level, this felt nice. I wonder if there is any kind of interesting manipulation with enemies and time you can do, or puzzles and time. Like, where you must rewind time to solve it or kill the enemy, not only as a way to "undo" a mistake. On the other hand, the game has been designed with you using time rewinding to explore, investigate and learn, and figuring out how to solve the puzzle or kill an enemy is still interesting despite having access to rewind, at least for how long I played.
I think I played for much more than one hour.
I did not really use the map. I also never back-tracked, apart from when I got confused. I did find and get some of the map "shrines".
How long does it take you to design and implement the levels? They feel full of life and details. I did not keep track of how many new mechanics were introduced, I did experience some new mechanics, and lots and lots of new enemies, with different attributes, attacks, behaviors, and such.
There were physics here and there, such as with platforming.
It feels like a very nice game. Will you release on Steam? Other platforms?
It looks nice, and it feels like it's got a ton of dev time put into it, but I am very confused. Some notes:
- In the first level, the plant that attacks by shooting some brown balls, the balls merge with the environment too much. They're the same brown and all.
- The character will constantly drop grabbed gears when platforming around for seemingly no issue. Seems like it has to do with hitboxes. Similarly the times when I can pick it up or end up hitting it instead seems to not be very consistent as well.
- The climbing animation is sorta bizarre. I notice it still adheres to the pixel grid properly and all, but it feels oddly smooth in a stiff way.
- I don't think you should be slowed down every time you walk in front of a gate.
- Rewinding feels too slow.
- If I release a charge attack before it finishes charging, I think it should do a normal attack instead.
- In the metallic cogwheels room with the balance platforms on a chain, I seem to be making them lighter by standing on them?
I am overall very confused, and the whole thing seems to just be a death trap requiring me to rewind every couple seconds rather than an intricate puzzle that makes use of the time mechanics in some interesting way. Many of the enemies seem to do attacks that are very poorly communicated and as a result I'm just going "what?" every other room. I also don't understand why some enemies get rewinded while others get killed, and sometimes rewinding an enemy rewinds them out of existence... it all feels very random.
Thanks for the detailed feedback. Yeah that first turret could use some improved visibility, that's one I'll touch up first. The nuts it fires are exploding into clumps of flowers, its even less easy to see on ground with flowers already on it.
I think I'll rework how the held object system works significantly. Right now it tries to block your movement by giving an additional hitbox over the player's head checking multiple points along the size of the object, to a priori stop movement. If you jump up and down, you'll notice you bonk into ceilings like you're that much taller. But if you do clip into a surface anyway, it dislodges it and you drop it. And that keeps physics objects from ever clipping into walls and getting stuck. But I could either just allow it- and try to recover physics objects if they do get stuck, and force them to be kept held even if the player clips into a wall. No reason the player should drop an object being carried without an input (or being hit, or I also make it dislodge if a huge physics force is applied to it like an explosion or another object hitting it)
You're the second person to say something about the climbing animation and I'm curious what people see in it, I know its a bit different than other animations because it mean the whole body of the player had to sort of tuck over into the crouch animation and flip in place which was awkward to animate, but also because its playing at 60 FPS whereas other player animations tend to be 15 or 20 FPS. That probably makes it seem "too smooth", but without it, either the climb is unresponsively slow, or he looks like he's teleporting. For comparison, the idle standing loop is 16 frames at 15 FPS in a 60 FPS game (4 gameplay frames per 1 animation frame). The ledgegrabclimb animation is 16 frames at 60 FPS.
If you want to test out a faster rewind to see if its more to your liking, try activating the cheat debug menu, go to "edit save file" and change the "rewindspeed" parameter from 1 to whatever you want. Hell, you can rewind at 500 fps if you want, the game engine is STABLE. I had it set to 2 for a long time, but I think the precision platforming lends itself to 1x rewind speed, I dunno, its not set in stone.
I'll test out 'release charging = normal attack', good idea, I'll see if its better
Important bit about the chain scale platform in the castle level: All the traps are reversed in time. If you see that lever in the middle area next to the fireball spitting gargoyle, if you hit it with a charged attack, you'll reverse the flow of time and make the traps all go forwards. Every trap can be forwards or backwards, its the planned dungeon gimmick for that area (3 main dungeons with 3 gimmicks, ex all the volcano area rotates 90 degrees gravity at a time). So the chain scales in forwards time act like you'd expect, but in reverse time, adding weight to them makes them go up! Because, uh, reverse-time physics
Thanks for the explanations.
About the climbing animation, I think it feels like the whole sprite is contained within a square, and then it goes right side up left side up etc. deforming the insides, rather than looking like someone who's actually climbing. I think coming up with a few keyframes would be better.
made me feel like a kid, as in, not knowing how to play games and having to experiment to figure things out.
really good, but confusing at time due to the lack of direction(then again, if it an artistic choice, I get it, I like the game as it is)
some areas get a bit annoying, since you can get stuck spamming the reverse time mechanic to escape a death loop.
Overal, I really like the game, and it feels like it could be a final product, but having said that, this is the kind of shit that filters people HARD, so do keep that in mind.
Thanks! Metroidvania can definitely be confusing in direction and encourage more open ended exploration, something not really in this linear demo, but in the final game. I'll have to make sure to test out methods to keep people on track, one reason I made sure to add in the scripts that pan the camera around and show you areas.
But yeah anything this punishing to players is definitely going to be niche
Yeah I should have tweaked the foreground tileset to have fully blocked out ground and saved it as a separate file, I was just copying a doodad tileset for it, no biggy.
One thing about the time dash is it actually has some uses even if you're not moving. It jumps you and any platform you're standing on and any physics object you're holding/throwing all fast forward through time. You can see it if you stand on a platform. It also means you can use it to dispel timed debuffs earlier, or other such effects. I figure it shouldn't be a big issue if players derp and use it for no reason, since you can just rewind time and be refunded any spent time juice.
I'm still not sure about the air control. I feel like a precision platformer benefits from having more air control instead of less. In that last update I changed the acceleration (240->200 ground, 240->120 air) and deceleration while held (380->500 ground, 380->250 air) and a bunch of other parameters. I feel like if air control was too locked into your starting speed, it would be harder to land on moving platforms. I do want to strike a balance with it, so thanks for the feedback, I'll test it out
i thought the plant elevator was spiked and would kill me if i jumped on it
why does a man who can jump around and do pull ups die to a bee
iduno how to use green save spot
the room of a thousand lasers was MEGA EPIC and BRILLIANT and if i'm being tbqhwy lad the rest of the game in comparison was kinda yawn cuz i just kinda ran forward with reckless abandon because i'm invincible, the axe man's big kaizo burrito on the other hand was a bit TOO exciting (specifically being FUCKING INSTAKILLED by axe man) [i had heart palpitations]
oh and the visuals are an obvious 10/10 and the music is epic but i hardly stopped to smell the flowers because they're all hellish death dimensions
oh also how tf do i save a webm of this game in 2016 and the title is still TBD
He's allergic to beestings, canon preserved
Just walking over a save spot automatically saves. A lot of people think saves/maps/warp doors shouldn't slow down the player, I'll test that out, I thought it added the feedback to people to know their game just saved, maybe I could add an indicator in addition to the big glow & green trace of the player's previous movement
thanks!
also HRB was a hoot
This game is the savescummer's dream. The mechanics encourage you to YOLO everything since there's no risk associated. The dash is extremely useful to dodge almost everything. You almost don't have to time anything thanks to it. The save points a bit useless in that regard. I did die to the final boss since I ran out of mana? I'm not sure that mechanic ever came into play before that point. It could be a bigger point in the game. I had no issue with the movement, just takes a while to get used to. Only problem is that it's too easy to misinput the crouching slide. You could do what other games do and have crouch+jump for slide. The ledge grabbing shouldn't be automatic imo, since a lot of times you just wanna fall or run past.
Yeah these are all just small previews of content for a much larger game, the six main biomes I have fleshed out. My intention is that it will ramp up through the game, getting to the crazy hard platforming like that laser room that requires abusing time travel to brute force it- but ~then~ I can start introducing the more complicated gameplay elements: Enemies and traps that manipulate time too. Some more direct like 'drain or disable your rewind', or others that can drag you back in time, or travel forwards in time regardless of your rewind, or fire projectiles that travel back in time and kill you in the past...
Crouch slide is getting a lot of attention from me to tweak it, definitely the most maligned. My last update made it respond only to how long you hold it, but I think it might still need a different input like you said. I am not sure about ledge grabbing, I made it ignore ledges if you hold the down button now, but I wonder about making it require you to hold left/right
Beat the entire demo
After all these months it feels good to finally try a demo of it. The rewind tech is very impressive and the death animations where the guy get torn intro shreds are fun. How the world twists and turn is also incredible.
The movement feels slugish. I think a big part of the difficulty of this game is that your character takes a long time to react to your inputs which makes it necessary to know what you have to press before it happens. Of course this means dying and rewinding. I did the double tap on accident a lot more times than I wanted.
I don't think this game is unfair at all. It can't be thanks to the rewind mechanic. However it is a game thats tests the player's patience since the rewind encourages brute forcing solutions. Since you can retry almost any 1-2 seconds of gameplay, it is just a matter of getting lucky in hitting the right keys. This is specially true for the last parts of the game (you like the spinning fire wheels mario maker level dont ya?). Even if you get hit by an enemy that depletes the rewind juice, you just have to stand still for a moment to let it replenish. This feeds into the "be patient and you win" feeling. Maybe you are looking for that and it is good, just be mindful that once a player learns to restart until they win, it will be harder for them to think about new ways to solve complex situations.
There were a lot of moments when I wasn't sure what was dangerous and what was not. There were a couple times that I died without having an idea of why. After finishing the game I'm not sure how enemies are killed. I think there are different rules for each kind of enemy.
What happened in the last boss fight was hilarious in hindsight. I was not thrilled at that moment though.
From what I saw in the threads, you have a great base to make levels and interesting situation. It will be cool to see where you take this game!
Thanks for the feedback. Trying to get the right balance of movement where some people say its too twitchy, others too slow. The final area of the game was just a joke to make it intentionally ridiculously hard, but the rest should show that brute forcing can work against even difficult areas like the laser maze. I am still debating some kinds of "add a red outline to hazards" sort of modern approach, to see how it stacks up against the art. Since yeah like an IWBTG kind of game, I could argue its okay to let people be confused about what killed them and then rewind time trivially. But its about striking a balance, thanks!
I think restrictions on how the rewind juice is used could make it more interesting to design around. For example have it be a limited resource and put rewind juice in places around the level. Or make it so in some areas it cannot be used.
I don't think a red outline would be good specially since you enjoy surprising the player and telling them ahead of time of the danger would defeat the purpose. The thing right now is that dying is inconsequential. I believe that putting some way to make dying sting just a bit more would make all those enemies and dangers click better.
Very nice. Didn't beat it; the final area just got too silly. (parts of the second-to-last area had a few too many lasers as well, I had no dang idea what was happening most of the time and just brute-forced it)
Movement feels very slippery for how precise you need to be (at least on keyboard), and the boss encounters are absolutely trivial compared to how ridiculous the platforming gets, but it's got solid mechanics and wonderful art. The addition of a map and fast travel points seems a bit superfluous in the game's current state, but I assume it's planned to be less linear eventually.
Yeah its planned to be a full size game, think super metroid map size, with 6 primary tilesets / areas, so this was a tasting of each zone's assets. But movement definitely needs some refinement, that was one of the big takeaways
I like it, time mechanic is always cool, movement feels solid and i like that the world twists and turns.
but my biggest complaint is that your tilesets and objects all blend together. It's next to impossible to see enemies and traps unless you move super slowly and watch intensely. It's cool punishing the player sometimes but it happens way too often and combined with the player only have 1 hp makes it more frustrating than fun for me.
Thanks, I may test out the 'add red outline to enemies/traps while they're a collision danger' kind of system that a lot of modern games have, I kind of avoided it to keep the art more organic but it might be worth a try
Great game, wonderful experience (26min, 346 deaths posted last thread).
I'm glad I pud pressure on you to put out a demo build.
First and most important question: was this a tasting buffet of most area/worlds of the game, or this is really the game?
I hope it's the former, not the latter. There is a ton of work on each area and it would be a shame to steamroll through it in an hour.
I usually don't like unfair games, but since we can rewind time I suppose you can indeed fight broken with broken. It's fun, and it's great design to never softlock yourself once you start rewinding (or I just got super lucky)
I have copied the list you posted and added what I agree you should work on:
* decrease player max speed, adjust accel to match
* increase decel on ground to be less slippery
- coyote time, or bigger coyote window
* make crouch slide terminate early when released
* change the input for dodge/lunge. (as a fighter player I had no issues. Maybe the solution for a dedicated key is to have it on alt/shift/middle mouse, Q is a problem)
* add ability to kill rewinding enemies by striking them with normal attacks (dunno about the metroidvania scaling, but ihmo it should be default, or one of the first things you uhnlock. ofc it wont work on bosses and elite enemies)
* maybe add a red outline or flash effect to hazards that you touch that kill you? something to visually indicate -what- did it
* rework the temporary menu to be less obtuse, allow multiple selection methods like mouse click and left/right slot changing buttons, make it hard locked to mouse/wasd/arrows instead of in-game controls
* allow changing controls via in-game debug menu
* lock the 'cheating' debug controls unless you directly activate a cheat button, so people don't do it by accident
Other than that there isn't much to say, beside the menus this content great and already shippable.
ED, added screen. GL dud.
Thanks for the checklist. Yeah this is just a demo sampling of a larger game, not even a fraction of the content I've already created, I didn't want to throw in the most complicated stuff. Coyote time in particular is something I think I'll have to try out, should help the slipping-off-ledges. And killing rewindable enemies with normal attacks is my next task, using a 'need to deal X damage before they finish rewinding' system.
Aesthetic, sound, music, physics/timetravel are all great. Good job on that front. The movement felt a tad fast, but the main thing that felt too fast was the crouch slide, it's just so quick it feels a bit slippy. Though I will admit it helped a few times when in a bind, it also got triggered accidently and killed me a decent bit. It currently feels a bit weird that the world has warps and teleports currently, given how linear it is besides getting some keys. I imagine that metroidvania elements will be added later though, so for a base of that future system it looks good.
Subjectively though I didn't enjoy this nearly as much as I thought. I was never a fan of a ton-of-deaths games like IWTBTG, but this game was definitely better than those since the time travel makes the time loss almost non existent. Regardless, the amount of deaths made me view the game differently and it felt more like trial and error than my skill at times. That was especially the case by the end, but I imagine that's on purpose in reference to kaizo.
So yeah, game's really good, right up the alley of many gamers, though not for me I think.
Thanks! Crouch slide definitely needs the most work of anything, and the rest of movement parameters. Yeah the metroidvania elements are in place for a larger game
This is sick. So trippy and visually dense.
I feel like the movement and jumping was very fast so it was hard to control my momentum. But I guess it's fine in a game where I can just rewind mistakes?
I feel like there were definitely time travel mechanics I wasn't grasping.
Definitely going to tune up the movement with a lot of feedback I've gotten. And trust me, not only are there time mechanics in some areas of the demo that aren't obvious or easy to understand, but the final game will have some truly nutty stuff (think 'going forwards in time while everything else goes backwards' or 'getting killed in the past')
I saw you changed the movement so I tried it out. I think it's better, I still found myself sliding forward on the ground farther than I wanted to.
I'm stuck on the lava floating guy. I think I'm realizing I don't know how to kill stuff? I just put them in the shiny blue form but they just come back?
Edit: also after the update the game wouldn't open from itch.io app. I had to find the exe on disk and open that way.
hold attack to charge up a blast
Awesome game, I'm glad Castlevania Granddad can rewind time because those deaths sure look painful.
I had no major issues while playing. I guess the MC was a bit too grabby with ledges at times and that dash maneuver probably needs to get remapped to something more deliberate because at least I tend to tap the directional movements to make small adjustments rather than performing a long jump. Also, I found this bug but don't worry, I was fine afterwards.
I also think the Mario level was pushing it a little bit in terms of difficulty, but that's fine because I found it hilarious. On the topic of the final boss, think the pile of bones in the starting area made it clear that skulls can rewind you, but I believe it's likely players may miss it so perhaps you should make one drop from the ceiling or something instead
Does geriatric alucard feel it every time he dies? What a horrible fate.
Tweaking movement parameters is a top priority for me, I'll definitely remap the dodge/lunge, and try to allow crouch sliding and walking for finer movements. Might also want to use a different set of enemies in the final area, the skull barons confused a lot of people since they were only introduced at the least opportune moment and they're meant to be annoying hazards ala castlevania medusa heads, so that was kind of a dick move to ambush the player at the last moment.
Thanks for the feedback!
holy presentation batman! the pixel art and animations are very smooth. I think the protagonist is using skeletal puppet animations? it's used very nicely here.
not sure if this was the intention but I find this kind of like rage platformers that suddenly kill you unexpectedly a lot. time reversal is a good mechanic in such a game since it removes the tedious part of these games
never did figure out how to properly dispose of enemies that rewind time when they die
climbing up ledges is a bit eeeh
Thanks! The MC animations are made up of 6 layers, all manual pixel art sprites- cape, lower body, upper body, staff, flare, gauntlets. No rendering from skeletons, just a lot of aligning sprite sheets. I do find that balancing the game will be hard given the intersection of 'very frustrating instadeath mechanics' and 'trivialize threats by rewinding time' and 'traps/enemies who manipulate time too'. So it sure helps to get feedback.
Right now enemies are two classes, either they die normally to attacks, or they are rewindable- enough damage makes them slide backwards in time, and they can only be killed with a charged attack at low health or rewinding. I'm going to try a new system where normal attacks can build up a lethal damage on enemies while they rewind, ie once they start rewinding, you hit them a few times before it ends and it finishes them off, which would be an alternative to the charged attack (which I'll probably make do 3x instead of 2x damage, to compensate). That will be a bit of work so it won't be in this demo, but hope it makes the combat easier to grok
Played until the end of the "mario level" where the black knight suddenly caused time to rewind a lot, killing me. No real idea what happened there.
Some thought I had while playing:
Conclusion:
The game has a great concept, great visuals and great potential. But needs polishing in its movement, visual clarity, and difficulty design.
Don't worry you played the whole demo then, nothing left but a 'you win' screen if you kill the axeman. Thanks for the help, I know this demo tried to cram a bit more ideas into the game to show off mechanics then what I'd want in a learning curve for the real game. I plan to have a lot of 'normal' platforming in the earlier game, ramping up as you encounter more time-manipulating traps and enemies that make it more challenging through your ability to rewind time. But cramming those in early can be very confusing- the imps rewind time if you hurt, but don't kill them, the clump of skulls rewinds you if you touch them, skeleton archers can sometimes shoot arrows that travel backwards in time and kill you in the past, and those big skulls in the 1-1-with-a-twist level rewind you through time if they touch you. So yeah, a lot of cluttered ideas for a demo and that's not even 1/10 of whats in store.
Most people seem to agree the movement is too fast and especially the lunge/dodge/slide need a rework, that's a top priority. Making it more precise and slower.
Thanks for all the feedback, and good luck!
Are you really just playing a backwards recording of the Music from a seperate File instead of playing the File backwards?
And why are you baking the Graphics into the exe but not the Audio?
Do you really need a external Template for how your Savefile looks like?
When in the TitleScreen, while you're below the new/load/quit selection, the topleft Text becomes Red and attaches to the Cursor.
New Game just has me select a Slot, but I can't use it to load the Slot I've selected? The menu is very weirdly laid out, but it is just a temporary Menu.
Why does the Camera move to the right when I Jump up? Is it just trying to conform to the closest Ground/Walls without taking my Action into account or something like that?
It takes a really long Time to slow back down. When I just walk across the Pier in Distance, I need nearly the same Distance to come to a Stop. The Character isn't even running very fast animationwise, is the Floor made out of Ice?
When I cling to a Wall, then let go and turn around rapidly, I cling to it again immediately, which feels super odd. Same when I cllimb up and hold movement down, I climb into crouching, which then immediately has me Dash across the Floor.
The Rotating of the World is neat, but straining on the Eyes with Pixelart. Also seems to only be in certain Areas, as regular small Hills don't rotate it? If you have a more global feeling rotation like that, shouldn't it always align the Floor?
Graphics for the Safespot are neat, but why does it slow me down while saving? Why even have Auto-activated ones in the first Place? Why not saferooms like Castlevania, you're clearly inspired by it anyway.
Rewinding across a Savefile also doesn't do anything it seems, the Save seems to stay on the new Version instead of reverting.
You can't rewind long enough, so if you don't rewind almost immediately after dying, you're stuck in a State where your Movement causes you to slide into the Trap again.
Automatically crouching when across a small Space is nice, but then you slide a giant Distance out of it if it doesn't align with your Slide Distance just right.
Tried out your saving just to be save, it indeed does not rewind itself.
Theres Tons of Traps out there which all instantly kill you, but they aren't very distinct from the cluttered Backgrounds, so it really becomes a try and Error kind of Thing, where you just rush through until you run into something that kills you, rewind for a while until you're in a safespot and then try again. Which isn't very Fun, it just feels like being forced to die all the Time. The Traps also make no Sense, obviously not in who put them there, they rarely do anyway, but also in their Location or Type of Trap. there are random Spikes, Flamethrowers, Blades, Gears or whatever just thrown about, with some Enemies in between where there was Room. Together with the rather 'floaty' movement as described above, where you aren't really able to make much precise movement without planning it ahead of Time, and then try to execute it all at once, and the Movement also holding your Hand a little too much, always trying to guess if you're wanting to crouch, climb up somewhere, hang from a Wall etc, it makes traversing the Level more annoying then Fun, at least for me. Gave up pretty early, after the small round Room with the 3 Skeletons in it, when the purple Teleporter Thing just took me back to the beginning for no Reason at all. I was expecting a Time travel Shenanigan Castlevania, and instead got one of those Rage Games, but with the Ability to instantly repeat the last try instead of having to go all the Way back. Which just kind of feels nonsensical to me. Sorry.
Thanks for the feedback, its been helpful and I've been assembling to-do lists based on everything folks have said. Yeah I was at the last minute putting resources internal to the .exe and didn't sort out music/sfx in time for the demo, so they're left dangling. The windows sound API and runtime independent playback means just having two copies of each sound is the easiest way to play in reverse, just swapping them and their positions. No reason I had to keep that save tile template in there though, that's just an oversight
I see everyone agrees that yeah I need to tune up that temporary menu and more importantly the player movement parameters, I'll add some more decel-when-not-held and terminate crouch slides if not held, should allow for finer movement. Tuning up the movement is my priority now, that's definitely a sticking point. Thanks!
Very interesting game, impressed that the time travel mechanics work so well doesn't feel janky at all. I never play platformers nor metroidvainas so this isn't my genre at all. Love the pixel art.
I felt like I had no idea where I was going the entire time, I just ran forwards aimlessly and somehow progressed in the right direction. It felt like you moved way too fast at the start but after playing through it, it was fine really. Same with the speed up ability, thought it was unusable at the start but I got how to use it in the end, using it to fight enemies was fun. I'm not even sure how to actually fully kill enemies after completing the game, I just flailed at them wildly while they were in "ghost form" and they seemed to die.
The most fun parts to me were the shenanigans with time travel, like the juice that prevented you from using it or enemies forcibly reversing you. The boss was great. I didn't care much for the platforming, but again that's probably just me. It could get a bit annoying when you kept dying and dying every millisecond and having to reverse time, especially with the same death sound effect (could be nice if there were several). But I guess that's the game really so nothing to do.
I fucking hated the last area and the vast majority of my deaths were there, only played through it and finished because I'm a stubborn bastard. Some hitboxes felt really unfair but it was mostly evident in the last area, like in the pic below is the exact frame I died on from a hatchet in the ground.
The double tap to jump was nice but sometimes it could trigger to easily, when inching closer to something for example. Maybe its better to play with a gamepad. Would moving the camera around slightly with the mouse work?
I wonder if the timer at the end is really accurate, it felt like I took a lot longer. But I didn't time it myself... And yeah, most deaths were on the last level.
Thanks! There's a lot more unused traps and enemies that interact with time travel in crazy ways, things like desynchronized rewind (try pressing that button in the debug menu if you want to see). The current setup is that enemies are either 'rewindable' or not, and those rewindable can only be killed by a charged attack, otherwise they just rewind. But I think after feedback here what I'll do is add a system that kills them permanent if you hit them with multiple normal attacks while they're rewinding, like 'build up 3 glyphs around them and they explode', so you could just kill them by spamming attacks.
I'm going to adjust some of the platforming, people seem to agree its too fast and the double tap input for dodge sucks, I agree. And I'm just glad to see people banged their heads against that 1-1 with a twist level even though I intentionally made it stupid. Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks for the detailing feedback! I'm adjusting a ton of the stuff based on what people have said, I can adjust platforming parameters by just changing a few values so I'll decrease max speed, increase deceleration, decrease air acceleration, change the dodge/lunge inputs, etc. Everyone seems to agree its too fast/jumpy. Water jumping is a good point, I'll try to increase the input buffer or the range you can jump on a surface, and especially the crouch slide
I might reupload the demo with some basic signs at forks in the road saying stuff like 'portal to start of level' or 'turn left for a save point', a lot of people had issues with that.
Even with the mario level being intentionally obnoxious, I think you're right I should adjust some hitboxes, I'll change which parts are chain and which are blade