Thanks for playing and sharing your thoughts! Indeed this was aimed as a game-mode prototype for Demo Day. The way of pickups will have to be improved and I really liked your proposal of showing them as menu in Growth mode. I agree that lategame isn't well balanced and there's little I can do - the nature of Mutations and how they stack will always have player's power grow much more rapidly than enemies. I guess having a win-state is a must, otherwise I'd need to scale enemies unproportionally as well to end the game which will probably feel worse than allowing player to win. The thing I must do is to move the difficulty spike from the early game to later.
Performance improvement is a must for this game mode to work.
I have some ideas how I can spice this game mode up a bit:
Make zooid counts limited by how many of them you have picked up. So you start with, let's say, 5 of each starting zooid available (also costing nutrition) and you can increase the limit by picking up the same zooid again and again. Zooid drops would make sense and stay important.
Allow sacrificing zooids for Mutations or another zooid drops or just XP - allows you to clear your inventory of unused zooids
Raw notes from while I was watching the video. Some things you figured out later in the video, but I still note them - ideally they should be clear from the start:
Enemies at the start don't let you figure things out - they could be passive until first level up
Not clear what Grinder affects - would be useful to highlight zooids that other buffing zooids affect
Not clear which pickups are shops and which ones are rewards for leveling up
Not clear that level up awards appear in the center of the arena - could have a little zoom-out cinematic animation to show how they spawn the first time
Survivors save file doesn't get deleted
Starting Advena Layout is very non-optimal
Shop tooltip could appear when you're over it to display what or why not you are getting the shop item
Annoying to check Mutation rewards and keep off the fights at the same time
"I wish there was a way to prioritize which parts grow back" - parts grow back in the order they were grown. Re-placing parts (drag and drop in Growth mode) moves them back to the list. I should display the priority number, but it might too much for players to think of at the start. One of suggestions were allowing to keep snapshots of your layout for different occasions and allow switching through them. In your case swimming around with 2 movers and 5 structures only doesn't make much sense. You'd rather modify yourself to be faster or have more fighting power to defend yourself until you get back the lost nutrition and grow back to full form.
Idea: dead zooid ghosts could display the order they're going to grow back at
Game should display multiple tooltips if there are multiple things hovered - in rare cases it might happen in normal play, I think it should be good to have.
Good idea to show Mutation selection in Growth mode!
Highlight the zooids you are hovering Mutation for - as you've suggested, selection buttons in Growth mode would be easier to do for highlights.
Note - you have been looking at stats on the left of the screen which didn't have Mutations applied. Should also display Mutation stats there
More potent poison should change color - nice
Your range could have been higher due to powerup.
Self note: Enemies clump up too much - they are after action, might need to thing about some sort of disperse intention
Squiter initial poison range is unproportionally too large compared to its projectile
Powerup Addiction Agonizer or any other buffing zooid is pointless.
Zooids should have their breed name somewhere written
Game's dropping frames because something is "leaking" memory and makes physics raycasts more expensive. It's an old bug and I'm not sure if it's Unity's fault or not - in normal gameplay reloading scenes fixes this issue. In Survival mode you're always in the same scene, so the issue becomes more apparent. Also there are more enemies spawned as you play so the performance issue gets worse anyway - need to optimize AI to be less taxing in high numbers or overall.
Need to explain Strain stat somewhere, maybe in sub-tooltips like card games do
ESC should open the Menu to exit if it wasn't for the performance.
My lack of update notes on the itch page didn't indicate that I made some updates, so some things were already fixed before I watched your video:
Level up rewards do not overlap for several level-ups
When starting the Survivals you appear in the exact centre of the arena, preventing you from accidentally picking up starting Mutation
Some random balance ideas I had while watching the video:
Radial restores 1 healing point on getting damaged
Radial gets a speed buff on getting damaged
Poison increases Melee damage dealt
Flail carries buff effects!
Mines carry buff effects and apply the m on explosion
Survivors improvements:
Environment upgrade to spawn more environment Eggs
Environment upgrade to increase the size of arena (and the radius of enemy spawners so they're more dispersed)
Picking up already owned zooid pickups could give a random Mutation for the zooid
Hey, that's quite a long list of things you were able to come up with while watching the video. I am happy my feedback was so useful to you.
All buffing zooids are pointless because of the upgrades, yes.
I think limiting the number of zooids of the same type you have and collecting them instead is a great idea. I think you could go even more extreme with the idea and have them be permanently eaten.
It really was not clear if the buffs were effecting only the zooids you already had on your creature, or if they would apply their buffs on future grown parts.
The ability to change between different build presets is something I asked for in the past. Think of it as something like swapping between different armour sets in other games. I could have a reset for movement, another for all frontal attacking and so on. You might think it would be too powerful, but the option to edit your creature on the fly is already there. That would just make it quicker for players, and would not break the flow of the game. If you still think it would be unbalanced, then I guess swapping out parts like that could cost energy.
You mentioned showing the eaten zooids as "ghosts". I would need to see it in action. The idea is not bad, but you gotta maintain the visual clarity.
maybe the number of parts you can have on you could also be an upgrade.
I think the level ups should definitely be on some pause screen and not in the middle. If you still want the players to be in the middle, then make it so the middle area acts as one of your vortexes from the other mode. You level up, go to middle, hold space, all action pauses, select upgrade from a window, unpause ad back to action.
Alternatively the whole area could be made into some looping path where the player must survive while getting rid of closing zones.
if you watched my bonus videos, then you can really see how badly so much poison effects the performance on its own.
It could be that I was just far too strong, but the strain strat became not a problem at all.
one of your balance ideas is to make poison boost melee? I don't think you need to be buffing poison at all.
I don't think "Picking up already owned zooid pickups could give a random Mutation for the zooid" is a good idea, because I think the big fun of this mode is strategizing what upgrades you get out of a random pool. Getting something random entirely would be very different, but I understand some players might be into that.
Thanks! It was improved since last iteration. What was your strategy that it felt slow - did you try going at enemies first or roamed around to gain nutrition?
I mostly roamed around aimlessly so that might've had something do to with it... Tried it again today, redownloaded dunno if you changed anything, and while it does take a minute or two before you really start to get pressured its probably fine when you know a bit more what to do. Pretty fun once you get into it. Also is there a way to regrow lost body parts, like the weapons?
The goal of this demo was to try out Vampire Survivors meme in the game, so it features new game mode - Survival. I could have gone better lengths to add auto attacking, but I haven't (yet). Anyway, enjoy the arena mode with some number go up scaling. Nice to test out different Mutation builds.
Comments
I recorded playing games with commentary, and your game is one of them.
Here's the link to the whole DD50 folder:
https://mega.nz/folder/GclCXISL#gwE9S1kRTbe6amYLH2RiYA
I also made 2 short clips that I put in the bonus folder.
I am really interested what your reaction is going to be.
Also it is kinda funny how last DD I tested how life in GIMMIKO stops displaying on screen when out of space, and your game has overlapping UI.
Holy crap, so much footage, thank you! I will let you know my thoughts after watching the video
I look forward to it
Thanks for playing and sharing your thoughts! Indeed this was aimed as a game-mode prototype for Demo Day. The way of pickups will have to be improved and I really liked your proposal of showing them as menu in Growth mode. I agree that lategame isn't well balanced and there's little I can do - the nature of Mutations and how they stack will always have player's power grow much more rapidly than enemies. I guess having a win-state is a must, otherwise I'd need to scale enemies unproportionally as well to end the game which will probably feel worse than allowing player to win. The thing I must do is to move the difficulty spike from the early game to later.
Performance improvement is a must for this game mode to work.
I have some ideas how I can spice this game mode up a bit:
Raw notes from while I was watching the video. Some things you figured out later in the video, but I still note them - ideally they should be clear from the start:
My lack of update notes on the itch page didn't indicate that I made some updates, so some things were already fixed before I watched your video:
Some random balance ideas I had while watching the video:
Survivors improvements:
Hey, that's quite a long list of things you were able to come up with while watching the video. I am happy my feedback was so useful to you.
Pretty nice extra mode I think, its kinda slow to get going though. Wish it was a bit faster.
Thanks! It was improved since last iteration. What was your strategy that it felt slow - did you try going at enemies first or roamed around to gain nutrition?
I mostly roamed around aimlessly so that might've had something do to with it... Tried it again today, redownloaded dunno if you changed anything, and while it does take a minute or two before you really start to get pressured its probably fine when you know a bit more what to do. Pretty fun once you get into it. Also is there a way to regrow lost body parts, like the weapons?
Pass is
Follow the link here: https://dominas.itch.io/sipho-survivors?pass=agdg
The goal of this demo was to try out Vampire Survivors meme in the game, so it features new game mode - Survival. I could have gone better lengths to add auto attacking, but I haven't (yet). Anyway, enjoy the arena mode with some number go up scaling. Nice to test out different Mutation builds.