- I had the impression double clicking too fast would slowdown the start of my initial attack - The blue pieces of resources are maybe not visible enough
- I like the graphics and animations - Dodging and dashing feels good
Decent base, I think the game would be served well if the enemies spawned much faster than they do now. They're weirdly tanky for my attack being so slow I'd expect a swing with that much windup to kill them a lot faster. The shield didn't feel interesting enough to use over just holding the attack button despite it keeping me safe, I think I'd prefer if it was more of an active defense with a better reward like if I timed it right an enemy got knocked back dizzy, if blocking strengthened my next attack, or if it were a charging shield bash, anything to add to it. Diagonal movement isn't normalized, it would be cool if the cardinal movement was also just as fast though. Controller support pls
Have you considered changing the title to "3 hp to wipe them all?" Haha, just kidding!
I honestly really liked the gameplay, despite not being very good at it (only once reached wave 4). Stuff like the delay before the (very wide) attacks start, the enemy types, the shield and reduced movement, it all ties together well IMO. I did use the shield, it worked against the large enemies of wave 2 which would kill me if I tried to sword them.
Gameplay wise I only have one thing to say: you seem to be heading down the path of "Struggling with wave 5? Have fun doing the first four waves over and over again just to get another shot at it". If you are going to make the player die in 1 hit, then death should not be too punishing IMO: you should either not loose a lot of progress OR it should be easy not to die. Or you could just not care about it and filter the casuals, it is your choice how noob-friendly you want it to be.
As for ideas about stuff to add... I feel like there are a lot of possibilities. Area damage spells, paralyzing/slowing down spells, spells that repel one type of enemies but not another, temporary barrier spells (to cover your back), a pet dog. Different weapons. Or how about this: a spell to transform into a dragon! Ok, I think that's enough ideaguing for today.
Anyway, looking forward to seeing this next demodays!
I boosted the flying enemies so that nobody could go further than wave 3 and notice the lack of new enemies, wave 5 will be a cool boss fight, that's my promise for next demo day, i myself have a lot of ideas in store to make the game more fair but they will take time to implement
Nice (flipped) assets. Feels like a solid enough base. Hard to say too much at an early stage like this. How is levelling/upgrading going to work? New weapons/abilities? Same but stronger stats?
Played a couple rounds, it's alright but a bit hard for me. I think weapon types and or heavy/light attack combos would be cool for this game, keeping it melee based.
looks very good, and feels good to swing the sword. with only 1 HP, i think it`s a bit too difficult. i did not have time to react, so avoiding death was more about spamming click or dashing if you get surrounded instead of using the shield. diagonal motion is faster then it should. it`s also possible to go faster then normal if you double tap or change directions quickly, not sure how intentional this is. because of how punishing the game is, you should probably give the player a way to `de-clutter` the mobs.
you can cheese it by standing in place spam clicking as long as there are no enemies behind you
Hardcore gaming right here lol Lovely art. Characters feel original enough too. I didn't expect the mc to start walking in the title screen. I think you could use this moment to tell us why we have just 1 health or why we fight. Are we sick? Have we escaped a battle before getting killed? Is it a curse? Needs controller support asap.
It looks wonderful and that's really all there is to say at the moment. I guess I shall be spicy and strongly oppose the suggestion of spamming bullets, because this feels like it's heavily benefitting from a visually grounded presentation. You can clearly design properly animated combat with attacks, knockback and attack animations and that's something to capitalize on.
Good foundation for whatever in mind you plan to lay ontop. I would suggest introducing aspects like a bullet hell; where parts of the map become hostile to the player to occupy (stampede, airstrike, etc) to force the player to dodge an obstacle that can't be attacked.
Good delay on the basic attack, but good cooldown timing too, I like the cute horned lumps hopping after you, and I like their chomping animation. I thought it was funny that you get a -1 hp even though you only have one hp, so thats a cool choice to do. Seems like the movement isn't normalized if you press two inputs, but I like that for this. The music is good and action-y. Thanks for submitting.
looks really well polished for being a first demo, the whole 1 hp its a bit frustrating at the beginning, but seems pretty catchy after figuring the controls
i'm not sure if I was missing something, but like a double click big slash could be a nice fit? and I didnt know if the items the monsters drop did anything still
This is a great start! Your pixel art style is very charming, and the animations are good. The premise is fun, with having only 1 HP. The combat itself is pretty good, but with a few iterations I think it could become really fun. It's not far off, but I do think there are some things that could be improved.
First, I'm not convinced that a shield is the right tool here. It's not really useful at all. Why block when I could be swinging my sword, which creates a barrier in the direction of my attack anyway? I don't seem to get anything out of blocking that I don't with attacking, so I tried to use the shield but never really felt it was necessary. A roll seems far, far more fun and applicable here. It not only makes things much more dynamic, but creates a lot more exciting gameplay moments.
Second, I think the attack timings are a little strange. That's not always a bad thing, but it appears that there is a big delay from hitting the button, to when you actually swing. And it's unclear when I am actually actively attacking, and what the shape of the attack hitbox is relative to the art. It almost seems like once you hold the mouse, you are sort of invulnerable from all sides. Leading me to just stand in place holding attack, waiting for the enemies to slowly file in towards my death blades.
I think the game would be better served with more clear windup, attack, and recovery frames. That is, when you hit the attack button, there is a vulnerable period before your attack is actually active, then a period where you're attacking, and then a vulnerable period where you recover. Even better would be if your attacks done in sequence were more of a combo, rather than a a linear repetitive sequence. Imagine if your first attack was a fairly safe but lower damage swipe. If you hold the attack button down, you then do a different attack, a slower but more powerful stab or something. Then if you keep holding the button down, there is an even slower but even more powerful attack. That kind of risk/reward gameplay at the micro level is what makes combat fun and satisfying, in my opinion.
Third thing, I think the enemy AI design can be improved. It feels right now as though the enemies all sort of just file in, and then eventually do a little swipe at you. For the stakes of the game (being killed in one hit), there should be a much more clear "windup" phase for the enemy attacks. Without that, you can't really make them difficult without making the game impossible. So you get stuck in making the enemies basically trivial. Imagine if the grass monster thing would like start flickering red for a second, then charge at you really quickly. With a roll, you'd have to time your roll to get out of the way, or if you were confident, you could queue up an attack that was times just right to meet him as he charged. Now you have options like, what if while he was charging, he was very vulnerable? Then if you were brave and tried to time an attack to meet his charge, you'd basically one-shot him.
Just throwing some ideas around, but hopefully you can see where I'm going. There's a ton of potential here, and I think it's just going to take a bit of experimentation to reach it.
Oh yeah, one more thing. Because the entire premise of the game is having 1HP, I really think you should show the HP bar, and really make it clear that it only has one point. That is funny and endearing, and drives home the conceit.
Nice work, keep it up on this. Like I said, I believe there is a lot of potential here.
Never thought of a combo system but I think you may be right when you say this is a good tool for the player to have fun. The shield & dash are in fact worthless right now, but I'm planning to put a lot of upgrade for them once you level up, like making your next attack more powerful after blocking an enemy attack, or reseting the dash if you kill an enemy after dashing, stuff like that.
Comments
I wasn't able to get very far.
Despite the assets being flipped, they look really good. (Spritework in general looks really beautiful).
Core gameplay is solid and could be expanded further. I like how you can cancel attacks into the shield.
Also, I don't know if this is intentional but on the main screen it says "ULOCKS", did you mean to write "UNLOCKS"?
Other than that. Very good and workable base game. I'd like to see this developed further.
- I had the impression double clicking too fast would slowdown the start of my initial attack
- The blue pieces of resources are maybe not visible enough
- I like the graphics and animations
- Dodging and dashing feels good
Decent base, I think the game would be served well if the enemies spawned much faster than they do now. They're weirdly tanky for my attack being so slow I'd expect a swing with that much windup to kill them a lot faster. The shield didn't feel interesting enough to use over just holding the attack button despite it keeping me safe, I think I'd prefer if it was more of an active defense with a better reward like if I timed it right an enemy got knocked back dizzy, if blocking strengthened my next attack, or if it were a charging shield bash, anything to add to it. Diagonal movement isn't normalized, it would be cool if the cardinal movement was also just as fast though. Controller support pls
Have you considered changing the title to "3 hp to wipe them all?" Haha, just kidding!
I honestly really liked the gameplay, despite not being very good at it (only once reached wave 4). Stuff like the delay before the (very wide) attacks start, the enemy types, the shield and reduced movement, it all ties together well IMO. I did use the shield, it worked against the large enemies of wave 2 which would kill me if I tried to sword them.
Gameplay wise I only have one thing to say: you seem to be heading down the path of "Struggling with wave 5? Have fun doing the first four waves over and over again just to get another shot at it". If you are going to make the player die in 1 hit, then death should not be too punishing IMO: you should either not loose a lot of progress OR it should be easy not to die. Or you could just not care about it and filter the casuals, it is your choice how noob-friendly you want it to be.
As for ideas about stuff to add... I feel like there are a lot of possibilities. Area damage spells, paralyzing/slowing down spells, spells that repel one type of enemies but not another, temporary barrier spells (to cover your back), a pet dog. Different weapons. Or how about this: a spell to transform into a dragon! Ok, I think that's enough ideaguing for today.
Anyway, looking forward to seeing this next demodays!
I boosted the flying enemies so that nobody could go further than wave 3 and notice the lack of new enemies, wave 5 will be a cool boss fight, that's my promise for next demo day, i myself have a lot of ideas in store to make the game more fair but they will take time to implement
Nice (flipped) assets. Feels like a solid enough base. Hard to say too much at an early stage like this. How is levelling/upgrading going to work? New weapons/abilities? Same but stronger stats?
magic abilities, new attacks, fun stuff, you know ;D
I will now play your game (again)
Played a couple rounds, it's alright but a bit hard for me. I think weapon types and or heavy/light attack combos would be cool for this game, keeping it melee based.
looks very good, and feels good to swing the sword. with only 1 HP, i think it`s a bit too difficult. i did not have time to react, so avoiding death was more about spamming click or dashing if you get surrounded instead of using the shield. diagonal motion is faster then it should. it`s also possible to go faster then normal if you double tap or change directions quickly, not sure how intentional this is. because of how punishing the game is, you should probably give the player a way to `de-clutter` the mobs.
you can cheese it by standing in place spam clicking as long as there are no enemies behind you
Hardcore gaming right here lol
Lovely art. Characters feel original enough too. I didn't expect the mc to start walking in the title screen. I think you could use this moment to tell us why we have just 1 health or why we fight. Are we sick? Have we escaped a battle before getting killed? Is it a curse?
Needs controller support asap.
It looks wonderful and that's really all there is to say at the moment. I guess I shall be spicy and strongly oppose the suggestion of spamming bullets, because this feels like it's heavily benefitting from a visually grounded presentation. You can clearly design properly animated combat with attacks, knockback and attack animations and that's something to capitalize on.
Good foundation for whatever in mind you plan to lay ontop. I would suggest introducing aspects like a bullet hell; where parts of the map become hostile to the player to occupy (stampede, airstrike, etc) to force the player to dodge an obstacle that can't be attacked.
yhea i have some sick ass bossfight like that in my head, come back at demo day 100 to see that lol
Good delay on the basic attack, but good cooldown timing too, I like the cute horned lumps hopping after you, and I like their chomping animation. I thought it was funny that you get a -1 hp even though you only have one hp, so thats a cool choice to do. Seems like the movement isn't normalized if you press two inputs, but I like that for this. The music is good and action-y. Thanks for submitting.
looks really well polished for being a first demo, the whole 1 hp its a bit frustrating at the beginning, but seems pretty catchy after figuring the controls
i'm not sure if I was missing something, but like a double click big slash could be a nice fit? and I didnt know if the items the monsters drop did anything still
overall pretty nice, gonna keep watching it
Animations and art stle is good, needs actual sound effects and music. Enemies not being one shotted at the start is dumb with how the weapon is slow.
This is a great start! Your pixel art style is very charming, and the animations are good. The premise is fun, with having only 1 HP. The combat itself is pretty good, but with a few iterations I think it could become really fun. It's not far off, but I do think there are some things that could be improved.
First, I'm not convinced that a shield is the right tool here. It's not really useful at all. Why block when I could be swinging my sword, which creates a barrier in the direction of my attack anyway? I don't seem to get anything out of blocking that I don't with attacking, so I tried to use the shield but never really felt it was necessary. A roll seems far, far more fun and applicable here. It not only makes things much more dynamic, but creates a lot more exciting gameplay moments.
Second, I think the attack timings are a little strange. That's not always a bad thing, but it appears that there is a big delay from hitting the button, to when you actually swing. And it's unclear when I am actually actively attacking, and what the shape of the attack hitbox is relative to the art. It almost seems like once you hold the mouse, you are sort of invulnerable from all sides. Leading me to just stand in place holding attack, waiting for the enemies to slowly file in towards my death blades.
I think the game would be better served with more clear windup, attack, and recovery frames. That is, when you hit the attack button, there is a vulnerable period before your attack is actually active, then a period where you're attacking, and then a vulnerable period where you recover. Even better would be if your attacks done in sequence were more of a combo, rather than a a linear repetitive sequence. Imagine if your first attack was a fairly safe but lower damage swipe. If you hold the attack button down, you then do a different attack, a slower but more powerful stab or something. Then if you keep holding the button down, there is an even slower but even more powerful attack. That kind of risk/reward gameplay at the micro level is what makes combat fun and satisfying, in my opinion.
Third thing, I think the enemy AI design can be improved. It feels right now as though the enemies all sort of just file in, and then eventually do a little swipe at you. For the stakes of the game (being killed in one hit), there should be a much more clear "windup" phase for the enemy attacks. Without that, you can't really make them difficult without making the game impossible. So you get stuck in making the enemies basically trivial. Imagine if the grass monster thing would like start flickering red for a second, then charge at you really quickly. With a roll, you'd have to time your roll to get out of the way, or if you were confident, you could queue up an attack that was times just right to meet him as he charged. Now you have options like, what if while he was charging, he was very vulnerable? Then if you were brave and tried to time an attack to meet his charge, you'd basically one-shot him.
Just throwing some ideas around, but hopefully you can see where I'm going. There's a ton of potential here, and I think it's just going to take a bit of experimentation to reach it.
Oh yeah, one more thing. Because the entire premise of the game is having 1HP, I really think you should show the HP bar, and really make it clear that it only has one point. That is funny and endearing, and drives home the conceit.
Nice work, keep it up on this. Like I said, I believe there is a lot of potential here.
Never thought of a combo system but I think you may be right when you say this is a good tool for the player to have fun. The shield & dash are in fact worthless right now, but I'm planning to put a lot of upgrade for them once you level up, like making your next attack more powerful after blocking an enemy attack, or reseting the dash if you kill an enemy after dashing, stuff like that.