You have most basics down but the available content is not good in its current form.
The game is easy even on max difficulty. This could work as a design decision if the pacing was good, but currently there's just a lot of empty stretches in stages and then a few bottleneck moments that could be actual challenges. It feels like a formerly hard game that was algorithmically stripped down of its difficulty rather than a properly designed easy game. So much time is spent just holding fire with no threats.
The second boss just makes me think this would instantly be a far more interesting game if you could flip your fire from left to right, with multi-directional scrolling. Right now I have no idea why the presentation is even horizontal.
For both characters laser is completely busted and shot is comically useless in comparison. Either their damage needs to be adjusted or you should add some delay between the two so that you meaningfully hurt your mobility by using the laser. There is no visual or audio feedback on whether it is hitting bosses either.
There's waaay too many bombs. When you lose bombs on death this sort of design tends to incentivize players to not try to play the game.
Hi, I tried on Insane mode based on Evilous' comment.
Felt like my own character's attack quickly reached maximum potency (too early) where I was just wiping out the early screens before anyone could shoot.
Defeating enemies and striking the bosses is unsatisfying with no hit-stop; flashing upon receiving damage; sound-effects (from what I could tell)
Seems like your hitbox is smaller than the graphic? The crow's attacks are too narrow I presumed, unless all I have to do is make sure my soul dot doesn't touch the bad dots.
Control wise, doesn't feel satisfying to move. Its fast but I had a hard time with precise movements. Thumbsticks with gradual levels of movement speed might be a solution; hoping you can think about a way to solve that problem on a keyboard.
I beat it, I think insane mode should be the normal mode and normal mode should be the easy mode with how easy normal mode is and how insane has a real challenge.
I do agree that easy was maybe too easy, but I couldn't really tell before (in my first demo there was only one difficulty). What I'll do next time is probably downgrade insane to hard mode, and then add a harder mode on top.
Is the difficulty select screen supposed to be like that? Either show them all at once or have the selected difficulty centered.
Why isn't the laser continuous?
The boss health bar is too small and in a part of the screen you have no reason to pay attention to.
This should not have been a hit:
Needs deathbombing.
Those green and blue lines can spawn right on top of you at the start of the first boss fight.
Make R highlight the reset option on the pause menu.
Put a limit on how many of the same sound effect can play at once (particularly the enemy projectile spawn sound).
Needs a sound effect to indicate that bosses are taking damage for when you're too busy to see if you're hitting them.
The difficulty curve needs work. Stage 1 is braindead easy, even on Insane, but then the boss suddenly expects you to dodge tiny bullets from every direction before it goes back to being easy on the last pattern. Then there's a huge difficulty spike on stage 2, but the boss is piss easy.
If you have more than 7 lives, they'll start overlapping the rest of the UI.
Why are the options on the pause menu in the reverse order of what they should be?
Damn, I wanted to keep playing. Nice demo (I played as Rosemary) and appreciate the multiple difficulties because I'm not good with bullet hell games. Please, consider adding controller support for the next version. Well done creating the atmosphere: level transition and music fit very well. I also enjoyed the bosses and mechanics. That menu wheel at the start was a pretty nice touch too. Only thing I struggled to understand were the bird's (can't remember its name) feathers. Their shape could be a little polished and the fact that the bird is dark but feathers are yellow-ish don't make me associate them as a group. Nice game, team.
Comments
You have most basics down but the available content is not good in its current form.
The game is easy even on max difficulty. This could work as a design decision if the pacing was good, but currently there's just a lot of empty stretches in stages and then a few bottleneck moments that could be actual challenges. It feels like a formerly hard game that was algorithmically stripped down of its difficulty rather than a properly designed easy game. So much time is spent just holding fire with no threats.
The second boss just makes me think this would instantly be a far more interesting game if you could flip your fire from left to right, with multi-directional scrolling. Right now I have no idea why the presentation is even horizontal.
For both characters laser is completely busted and shot is comically useless in comparison. Either their damage needs to be adjusted or you should add some delay between the two so that you meaningfully hurt your mobility by using the laser. There is no visual or audio feedback on whether it is hitting bosses either.
There's waaay too many bombs. When you lose bombs on death this sort of design tends to incentivize players to not try to play the game.
Hi, I tried on Insane mode based on Evilous' comment.
I beat it, I think insane mode should be the normal mode and normal mode should be the easy mode with how easy normal mode is and how insane has a real challenge.
I do agree that easy was maybe too easy, but I couldn't really tell before (in my first demo there was only one difficulty).
What I'll do next time is probably downgrade insane to hard mode, and then add a harder mode on top.
I think that would be the perfect way to do it.
Thats a big list of stuff missing or wrongly done, thanks for the appreciation.
I'm gonna work on it and hopefully get it right next time.
Damn, I wanted to keep playing. Nice demo (I played as Rosemary) and appreciate the multiple difficulties because I'm not good with bullet hell games. Please, consider adding controller support for the next version.
Well done creating the atmosphere: level transition and music fit very well. I also enjoyed the bosses and mechanics. That menu wheel at the start was a pretty nice touch too.
Only thing I struggled to understand were the bird's (can't remember its name) feathers. Their shape could be a little polished and the fact that the bird is dark but feathers are yellow-ish don't make me associate them as a group.
Nice game, team.