There are some narrow choke points that I cannot walk through while in alchemy mixing mode/time slowdown, but that I can go through outside of that mode. I do not know whether that is intentional or not.
I meant the props in rooms, like barrels and boxes that are close to each other. It is a somewhat minor issue, but still annoying. I do not recall the specific layout of the props, just that they were close to each other and that I could not pass through in time slowdown mode while being able to outside it.
Hmm, that isn't intentional. I think I know what's causing it: slowing the game's time down means I also have to reduce the time between each physics update, otherwise everything would look choppy. The increase in physics updates coupled with the slower player movement speed means the game manages to register the collision between the barrel and the player, hence the player being stopped. I can probably just reduce the radius of the barrel collider and call it a day.
The way that enemies attack each other over friendly fire is hilarious and adds to the chaos.
Also, the main way I abuse time slowdown is by cancelling time slowdown before it runs out, since then I can immediately enter it again with the time reset.
The way that enemies attack each other over friendly fire is hilarious and adds to the chaos.
I'm glad someone caught that, I love seeing one of the triple-laser dudes accidentally hit a bomb enemy and then get blown to smithereens seconds later.
Also, the main way I abuse time slowdown is by cancelling time slowdown before it runs out, since then I can immediately enter it again with the time reset.
There actually is a cooldown to the mixing menu, however it only triggers if the timer fully runs out. I think I'll make the cooldown cumulative, meaning it grows with the more time spent in the menu and triggers whenever the menu closes.
Also, I sometimes get the impression that the physics are wonky. Like, I shot at a barrel, and the shot seemed as if it flew through the barrel. And the next shot hit the barrel. My framerate seems high, though.
As I played it and got better at it, I enjoyed it more and more.
After many, many, many attempts, I succeeded at completing it at Medium difficulty.
I did not use the electricity mix, since it would be unlikely that a player without developer hints would have been able to figure the electricity mix out. I very, very heavily abused time slowdown.
When doing alchemical mixes, I could not always decrease one component by using right-click.
A couple of times, I got trapped in rooms with no apparent enemies and red laser gates blocking the exists, basically ending runs and forcing me to commit suicide. I could hear exploding enemy ticking, but I could not figure out where the enemy was. I tried using the scythe all around the walls, and also tried using plasma-3 as an attempt at area-of-effect damage near the walls, but never figured out where the enemy might be (if it was somewhere). It would be good if you could figure out how to fix that specific instance, but if you could make the room handling have a mitigation or fallback for that kind of bug in case other similar bugs are present or occur (without making that mitigation or fallback vulnerable to exploitation by players or introducing new bugs), it would not be bad either. Like giving the gates 100,000 health, which decreases over time to 0 after 10 minutes, longer for boss rooms or rooms mean to last a long time? Unless players can use that to cheese their way through rooms in some cases.
The physics are messy, which adds to the chaos, but can also mean that an exploding enemy can be shot straight at you faster than their regular charge and explode in your face, even when you try to use freeze mixture (you can alleviate that by killing enemies quickly and destroying exploding barrels to start with). Would it be a bad change to make exploding enemies immune to physics? Or make them "heavier" against outside forces, or something?
I think there will always be "unfair" deaths in this game, but the runs are fairly quick, and the chaos and difficulty and extremely quick pace makes it feel alright after getting used to it. And there are actions the player can take to alleviate and decrease the frequency of deaths.
All in all a very nice game.
I do not know how I did it, but in one run, I somehow got two instances of the player character (maybe double-clicking the "start" button?). I ended up scything myself to death at the start of that run.
When doing alchemical mixes, I could not always decrease one component by using right-click
You might be trying to remove a chemical that was used in a reaction, i.e. used to create a chemical that you can't select normally. If a chemical isn't explicitly listed in the sidebar (e.g. x1 water) then it cannot be removed directly, you have to clear the mixture.
A couple of times, I got trapped in rooms with no apparent enemies and red laser gates blocking the exists, basically ending runs and forcing me to commit suicide. I could hear exploding enemy ticking, but I could not figure out where the enemy was.
I've had that happen a few times, usually there's one remaining enemy that's trapped on a few props. I'll look over the enemy handling code regardless. Also, I'm planning on adding a visual indicator that points to the last two or three enemies in a room to avoid this kind of situation.
Would it be a bad change to make exploding enemies immune to physics? Or make them "heavier" against outside forces, or something
No, that's a fair suggestion. I'll make them heavier. I've also been pinballed by the bomb guys like that, made me laugh my ass off.
I do not know how I did it, but in one run, I somehow got two instances of the player character.
Interesting bug, sounds like a cool power-up. I'll investigate it.
I've had that happen a few times, usually there's one remaining enemy that's trapped on a few props. I'll look over the enemy handling code regardless. Also, I'm planning on adding a visual indicator that points to the last two or three enemies in a room to avoid this kind of situation.
I cleared all the props in the rooms the times that I encountered that, like destroying all crates and barrels that I could find, but I still did not find the last enemy.
I apologize for my comments earlier, but I did get rather frustrated by the very small room with 3 exploding enemies.
Trying again, but on easy mode.
Freezing seems useful against either kind of explosive enemies, if only to stop them - is freeze level 3 with the pistol needed to freeze-stop them? Plasma appears to be effective against the gas exploding enemies.
Still dying some on easy mode, but usually clearing a number of levels before that.
The camera might behave differently when cheesing using alchemy-mix-time-slowdown than when moving around in normal time.
Appears that you need freeze-6 to guarantee freeze-stop enemies.
It did not end my run, since I could kill it using the scythe.
I decided to clear all rooms on floor 1 even after finding the exit, and succeeded on doing that the second run I found the exit.
Does using the plasma on the blast explosion enemy cause reflection and harming the player? While using it on the gas explosion enemy insta-kills that enemy? I have not yet been able to reliably visually differentiate the two types of exploding enemies, especially in darkness, but I might figure that out eventually. The color of their "eye"? Red for blast explosion enemy, yellow for gas explosion enemy?
On floor 2 now.
I still really like to cheese-snipe all the exploding barrels I can see before starting a level (using fire-3). I do not use the dash, since I am really afraid of dashing into exploding enemies and insta-dying despite this being easy difficulty.
I usually start levels with freeze-3, since that gives a decent chance of freeze-stopping exploding enemies before they annihilate you. I never use the scythe, since I feel the risk of accidentally hitting an exploding barrel and dying or losing lots of health is too high. Maybe I will change opinions if/once I get better at the game. I also start the level by going into time-slow-alchemy-mode, and see where enemies spawn, such as if an exploding enemy spawns right next to you. JUST AFTER I WROTE THIS I STARTED A LEVEL WHERE A GAS EXPLODING ENEMY SPAWNED VERY CLOSE TO ME. And time-slowing saved me. This time around I quickly moved away, switched to plasma, and insta-killed it with the gun.
I died in one room, ran away from one explosion enemy, and another explosion enemy charged me from the other direction.
3rd time I reached the exit, I will skip the other rooms on floor 1 as I think you are meant to just get to the exit.
How do I pause the game during combat?
I think I rather early on found the exit to the 3rd floor. Yes, 3rd floor.
I also sometimes shoot regular barrels simply to give me more space to hopefully be able to circle-strafe and dodge enemies.
acid-3-water-3 reliably one-shots the small laser enemies.
What are the differences between the floors? I do not know if I have found any difference between floor 1, 2 and 3 so far.
Do explosions have longer range than what their visual indicators indicate?
I found the exit on the 3rd floor and that is apparently the end of the demo.
But I only won on the Easy difficulty. I was AFK for a fair bit of the run, so the time spent is likely shorter than what the victory screen indicates.
The game began to be more fun once I learned it, and it does seem interesting. And experimentation and learning fits alchemy very well. Very fast-paced, though the time-slowdown helped with that.
If experimentation is meant to be a significant part of the theme, then in the tutorial and advertisement for the game, you could have introduction videos that might go like:
"Experiment: Alchemy is powerful yet dangerous. Discover which alchemy mixes works against an enemy ... [shows mixing acid and using it to great effect against a small laser enemy in slow motion] ... and which doesn't ... [shows mixing plasma and using it against an exploding enemy, getting killed by the counter beam in slow motion]"
Woah, that's a lot of feedback. I'm glad you're finding the game more fun after trying it again. I did end up recording the video you requested, you posted your new replies while it was rendering/uploading. I don't think you need it anymore, but here it is regardless. It has some commentary to help explain what's going on.
I found a (software) bug:
The link is dead, could you reupload the file or describe the bug?
Does using the plasma on the blast explosion enemy cause reflection and harming the player? While using it on the gas explosion enemy insta-kills that enemy?
Plasma causes lightning arc on any hit enemy, it just builds up faster on robot enemies (all enemies currently in the game.)
I have not yet been able to reliably visually differentiate the two types of exploding enemies, especially in darkness, but I might figure that out eventually. The color of their "eye"? Red for blast explosion enemy, yellow for gas explosion enemy?
Yes, red is explosive and yellow is poisonous.
What are the differences between the floors? I do not know if I have found any difference between floor 1, 2 and 3 so far.
None thus far, the latter two floors are there to just extend the length of the demo a bit. You could clear a floor in 1-2 minutes even on harder difficulties.
I realize now one area where I really messed up, I somehow got it into my mind that you have to mix water and biostuff to heal, which yields a little bit of healing, but as you show in the video, pure biostuff is sufficient and heals a large amount, making it much easier and faster to heal during combat.
I also did not think to mix more than 2 chemicals. And melee'ing bomb enemies with freezing seems like a very effective approach (but also one that could also go wrong if you mess it up given that you are getting close to explosive enemies). I think melee'ing with freezing would have worked in the small room where I encountered 3 enemies during my medium difficulty attempts, which would indeed make it a skill issue on my part (I did not think of combining melee and freezing).
Yes, the video works. Nice catch, I'll fix have it fixed for the next DD.
I think melee'ing with freezing would have worked in the small room where I encountered 3 enemies during my medium difficulty attempts, which would indeed make it a skill issue on my part (I did not think of combining melee and freezing)
Told ya. Don't feel bad though, the game is all about dying lots of times until you learn what's effective and what isn't (like you pointed out before.)
Electricity looks really powerful.
Indeed, that's why it has a slower ammo regeneration speed. However, it seems more powerful than it actually is due to the current enemy roster. The game will have all sorts of enemies beside robots, which means that electricity won't arc so neatly between crowds. All it takes is one insulator to stop the lightning chain.
I am stupid, so I will try to complete the first floor on medium difficulty without first completing it on easy difficulty.
After many deaths, I lucked out in the first room and managed to circle-strafe survive in that room which almost only had the triple-laser horrors. I then began experimenting using the pistol with which chemicals would deal good damage against them, and came to the conclusion that fire seemed very strong against them.
I have found out that you can cheese-clear some of the obstacles in a room before entering it. This is a double-edge sword, since those obstacles can also be used for cover, but being able to dash away from exploding enemies and circle-strafing might be more critical to survival than using cover.
Managed to clear a second room in that same run. However, it almost went completely wrong due to running into a box while trying to circle-strafe which was very difficult to see. I failed to experiment against the surviving enemies (their own friendly fire killed a lot of them) to see which mixes were good against what.
Experimented on what can clear boxes like that. Apparently (and logically), fire is really strong against wooden boxes.
Cheesing rooms by first clearing explosive barrels feels very helpful to survival.
Using "alchemical mixing time" for slowing time and getting an overview of what is going on before you explode before being able to react is very helpful, even when it does not feel like that is the intended purpose of the time slowdown.
Died on the third room in that run.
Some of those boxes are really durable, I used 4 shots of 5physical+45fire damage while cheesing the obstacles of a room.
Dying a couple more times.
Found out that enemies can be frozen. Also, freeze seems somewhat effective against the explosive enemies, though not necessarily one-shot territory. Are there two different exploding enemies, a gas variant and a blast variant?
Is right-click ever used for anything?
Having an exploding enemy spawn right next to you when you enter the room does not seem fair. At least you can slow down time and dash, but dashing can bring you near enemies (such as exploding enemies), especially with limited view and the darkness of the rooms.
Acid appears very effective against the small single-laser bugs.
I went into a very small room. It spawned 3 exploding gas enemies and a small single-laser bug. I am not convinced that it would be possible for anyone to clear that room without dying no matter how good they are. I am therefore not convinced the author actually played the game on medium difficulty. Can you freeze the enemies or something?
Author, please upload a video of you completing a full floor at medium difficulty. I am probably being overly skeptical.
Your game came up on the thread so I gave it another try.
A very annoying bug I found is that getting hit by the neurotoxin-causing exploding enemies will give you infinite neurotoxin DoT. I made it all the way through floor 2 while having to constantly heal and it got removed by the loading screen, but I got it in the very next room and died shortly after.
It seems to become infinite as soon as you get affected but getting affected again will increase intensity because in second floor was only a -4 DoT while on the third I got a -8 DoT
If it weren't for this bug I feel like I was getting the hang of combat, but I still think having to choose 6 different charges is too much, you could probably simplify it down to 3 charges and double the effect of each charge for example, it'd be more or less the same but with less clicking.
Another bug I found is that if you don't have the essence for your selected elements and manually remove charges by right clicking the cursor won't change to the normal one until you fire.
On that note, I suggest that, if the player doesn't have the required elements to infuse his attack, he should still be able to do a normal attack. As is, if the player wants to maintain a constant rate of fire he needs to dump all elements for just two revolver shot and then re-select them. Either that or a "select previous combination" button would be a nice quality of life thing.
Bottom line is that it got more fun with some practice so I don't think you need to necessarily make it easier, but it could use some streamlining and maybe just an easier first floor so that people aren't one-shot immediately by the exploding guys.
Game looks realy cool, love the main char's design and the alchemy mixing aspect is super interesting. Been playing on medium difficulty and it still took me quite a number of tries to get through the first room, and the longest I was able to go is 3.
- Healing sound effect is very intense, sounds more like the character is being hit. - I noticed that not all elements regenerate at the same rate - fire is faster, while plasma and larva are slower (half rate from what I can tell). I'm not sure if this is intentional, as I couldn't see a reason why it shouldn't be universal. - Opening the mixing menu right after the level starts makes the cursor invisible and shifts the camera to a dark spot. - Status effects on the player is really strong, as they last for a very long time and I couldn't find a way to get rid of them. This made me try to stay within the reach of a healing barrel, which is quite small and I ended up getting shot anyway. - Damage output of the player feels generally very low, even with reagents. Scythe has better damage than the gun but it's way too risky with all the ranged enemies and high damaging explosions. This is especially noticeable with the bombs who can tank a few shots but explode for half your health (and give you a DoT to finish you off) if you're nearby. Most of my victories was done by baiting enemies to exploding barrels and making them kill each other. - There's generally not much info is given on what each element does (apart from the obvious guesses you can infer), which is fine if you want players to figure it out but in my opinion the game is way too fast paced for that. My mind jumps to Magicka where it has a similar "experiment with elements" system but that game is quite slower and so the player has time to actually do the experimenting without blowing up in seconds.
Still, quite interested in where this game'll go, good work so far!
I noticed that not all elements regenerate at the same rate ... I'm not sure if this is intentional, as I couldn't see a reason why it shouldn't be universal
It is intentional. Plasma and larva provide exceptionally powerful utility to the player, with the former allowing you to easily apply a mixture to an entire crowd of enemies and the latter being one of the only ways to heal yourself. The slower regeneration speed is a way to bottleneck that utility.
Status effects on the player is really strong, as they last for a very long time and I couldn't find a way to get rid of them.
The status effects are very dangerous but can be easily removed if you use the right chemicals on yourself: water extinguishes burning and purifying wash (water + larva) cures poison. This isn't communicated at all so I don't blame you for not knowing.
Damage output of the player feels generally very low, even with reagents
That's mostly intentional, the player's base damage being abysmal forces you to exploit the alchemy weakness of the enemies--you can one-shot three of the four enemies in the roster if you use the right chemical combo. However, I think you're right and I could bump the base damage up a tad.
There's generally not much info is given on what each element does (apart from the obvious guesses you can infer), which is fine if you want players to figure it out but in my opinion the game is way too fast paced for that.
Agreed. The plan is to make logs for chemicals, weapons and enemies which the player can unlock and read.
I love your character design.
The transition from the spawn animation to the gameplay camera view is really jarring.
I got through a few rooms a couple times but kept crashing seemingly inexplicably.
I do not understand why I can select "nothing" in the loadout screen when starting a game, but I imagine that will become clear later as I play. Or is it just placeholder for now while the game is being developed?
Menu looks nice.
The difficulty selection might not be colorblind-friendly, but the game may already assume that players are not colorblind.
The music is loud when starting the game. Can I change the audio volume in-game?
How do I pause the game? 'P'? 'Esc'?
Is the UI for alchemy slightly buggy? Should the top-most "water" peripheral one-sixth circle-piece bar be present?
I find the game somewhat confusing, at least the alchemy part, but alchemy is frequently about experimentation and discovery, so I would assume that it is up to the player to mix and experiment.
Is there a way to quickly clear all ingredients/reset? (I cannot remember the controls). I died, but I can see that 'Tab' is used. Maybe there was a UI bug before because right-click is rarely used and 'Tab' is usually used to clear the mixture.
I have died twice now in the first room, on medium difficulty, but I am still learning at the moment.
Now I died very quickly to exploding enemies in the first room.
I have died several times in the first room now. But, after I remembered the dash, I almost survived one room with few enemies.
Is it normal for the first room to have 10+ enemies on normal/orange difficulty?
After maybe 20+ deaths, I SURVIVED A ROOM!
I abused alchemy mixing to slow down time, dashed around, hid behind crates, and survived the mass death explosions at the start of the level. And then I popped out of cover once in a while to take potshots with different chemicals at the triple-laser-death-beam robot-beetle.
I do not understand this game. A lot of it seems really polished and nice, but other parts seem only slightly polished or even confounding.
Maybe I should have gone for "easy"/green difficulty first.
Maybe a tutorial would be a good idea?
Being able to pause, and set in-game the audio level(s), would be nice as well.
I do not understand why I can select "nothing" in the loadout screen when starting a game
Why not? If the player wants to handicap themselves for an extra challenge, so be it.
The music is loud when starting the game. Can I change the audio volume in-game?
How do I pause the game? 'P'? 'Esc'
Sorry, I haven't implemented those things yet.
Is the UI for alchemy slightly buggy? Should the top-most "water" peripheral one-sixth circle-piece bar be present?
Yes, that's intentional. What's happening there is that you're mixing water (blue) with larval excretion (green) to produce purifying wash (yellow,) a chemical that can only be produced through this chemical reaction.
Is there a way to quickly clear all ingredients/reset?
Yes. Pressing TAB will dump the entire mixture whereas right-clicking on a chemical will remove one instance of that particular chemical. For example: suppose your tank has 3x water. If you right-click on the water icon, the mixture will be reduced to 2x water; if you press tab, all the water will be immediately disposed of.
Now I died very quickly to exploding enemies in the first room.
An easy way to dispatch of them is to use frigor essence, i.e. the ice chemical. You can very easily freeze the mines, which inhibits their explosion attack.
I do not understand this game. A lot of it seems really polished and nice, but other parts seem only slightly polished or even confounding.
Apologies for the confusion, I didn't have time to implement tutorials and/or documentation so the game is very difficult to pick up right now. One of my main goals for the next DD is to implement a thorough tutorial to avoid further confusion.
I like elemental system but having to pause and fiddle with different (and limited) quantities of each element during combat is very clunky, it's like magicka but in crampt rooms against generic enemies.
The utility slot item being centered on your character also means that's it's only for heals and water, you could replace it with a medkit-type item and not have to pause the game to fill up your tank with heals every time you want to use it, or allow the player to aim it so it doubles as a grenade.
Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback. On the utility slot comment: the final game will provide an upgrade tree per weapon, with each node modifying behavior in some way. The doubling-as-a-grenade concept is already in the works, what you're seeing right now is just the base behavior of the weapon.
Comments
I found a bug.
I encountered it when I was just at the edge and was shooting exploding barrels.
I already fixed this one in the experimental build, the fix will be up in the next DD build. Nice catch anyway!
There are some narrow choke points that I cannot walk through while in alchemy mixing mode/time slowdown, but that I can go through outside of that mode. I do not know whether that is intentional or not.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Chokepoints in the rooms themselves or the hallways?
I meant the props in rooms, like barrels and boxes that are close to each other. It is a somewhat minor issue, but still annoying. I do not recall the specific layout of the props, just that they were close to each other and that I could not pass through in time slowdown mode while being able to outside it.
Ah, I see. I'll look at that too.
I managed to reproduce it and uploaded a video (beware, the video upload is from some random file sharing website):
https://filepost.io/d/8ZhAbRrSxy
Hmm, that isn't intentional. I think I know what's causing it: slowing the game's time down means I also have to reduce the time between each physics update, otherwise everything would look choppy. The increase in physics updates coupled with the slower player movement speed means the game manages to register the collision between the barrel and the player, hence the player being stopped. I can probably just reduce the radius of the barrel collider and call it a day.
The way that enemies attack each other over friendly fire is hilarious and adds to the chaos.
Also, the main way I abuse time slowdown is by cancelling time slowdown before it runs out, since then I can immediately enter it again with the time reset.
I'm glad someone caught that, I love seeing one of the triple-laser dudes accidentally hit a bomb enemy and then get blown to smithereens seconds later.
There actually is a cooldown to the mixing menu, however it only triggers if the timer fully runs out. I think I'll make the cooldown cumulative, meaning it grows with the more time spent in the menu and triggers whenever the menu closes.
Also, I sometimes get the impression that the physics are wonky. Like, I shot at a barrel, and the shot seemed as if it flew through the barrel. And the next shot hit the barrel. My framerate seems high, though.
It's a known issue, the bullet projectile has some wacky collision. I'll try to improve it.
As I played it and got better at it, I enjoyed it more and more.
After many, many, many attempts, I succeeded at completing it at Medium difficulty.
I did not use the electricity mix, since it would be unlikely that a player without developer hints would have been able to figure the electricity mix out. I very, very heavily abused time slowdown.
When doing alchemical mixes, I could not always decrease one component by using right-click.
A couple of times, I got trapped in rooms with no apparent enemies and red laser gates blocking the exists, basically ending runs and forcing me to commit suicide. I could hear exploding enemy ticking, but I could not figure out where the enemy was. I tried using the scythe all around the walls, and also tried using plasma-3 as an attempt at area-of-effect damage near the walls, but never figured out where the enemy might be (if it was somewhere). It would be good if you could figure out how to fix that specific instance, but if you could make the room handling have a mitigation or fallback for that kind of bug in case other similar bugs are present or occur (without making that mitigation or fallback vulnerable to exploitation by players or introducing new bugs), it would not be bad either. Like giving the gates 100,000 health, which decreases over time to 0 after 10 minutes, longer for boss rooms or rooms mean to last a long time? Unless players can use that to cheese their way through rooms in some cases.
The physics are messy, which adds to the chaos, but can also mean that an exploding enemy can be shot straight at you faster than their regular charge and explode in your face, even when you try to use freeze mixture (you can alleviate that by killing enemies quickly and destroying exploding barrels to start with). Would it be a bad change to make exploding enemies immune to physics? Or make them "heavier" against outside forces, or something?
I think there will always be "unfair" deaths in this game, but the runs are fairly quick, and the chaos and difficulty and extremely quick pace makes it feel alright after getting used to it. And there are actions the player can take to alleviate and decrease the frequency of deaths.
All in all a very nice game.
I do not know how I did it, but in one run, I somehow got two instances of the player character (maybe double-clicking the "start" button?). I ended up scything myself to death at the start of that run.
Hi, thanks a ton for playing!
You might be trying to remove a chemical that was used in a reaction, i.e. used to create a chemical that you can't select normally. If a chemical isn't explicitly listed in the sidebar (e.g. x1 water) then it cannot be removed directly, you have to clear the mixture.
I've had that happen a few times, usually there's one remaining enemy that's trapped on a few props. I'll look over the enemy handling code regardless. Also, I'm planning on adding a visual indicator that points to the last two or three enemies in a room to avoid this kind of situation.
No, that's a fair suggestion. I'll make them heavier. I've also been pinballed by the bomb guys like that, made me laugh my ass off.
Interesting bug, sounds like a cool power-up. I'll investigate it.
I cleared all the props in the rooms the times that I encountered that, like destroying all crates and barrels that I could find, but I still did not find the last enemy.
I see, thanks for letting me know.
I was recording Demo Day games, and yours was one of them.
The link to the whole folder:
https://mega.nz/folder/PYMBCI6A#kb__dlWiUsmt-zPha-iBtA
It did not go as planned, so let me know if you got any questions.
I apologize for my comments earlier, but I did get rather frustrated by the very small room with 3 exploding enemies.
Trying again, but on easy mode.
Freezing seems useful against either kind of explosive enemies, if only to stop them - is freeze level 3 with the pistol needed to freeze-stop them? Plasma appears to be effective against the gas exploding enemies.
Still dying some on easy mode, but usually clearing a number of levels before that.
The camera might behave differently when cheesing using alchemy-mix-time-slowdown than when moving around in normal time.
Appears that you need freeze-6 to guarantee freeze-stop enemies.
I found a (software) bug:
https://file.io/Afyv7bNReoRb
It did not end my run, since I could kill it using the scythe.
I decided to clear all rooms on floor 1 even after finding the exit, and succeeded on doing that the second run I found the exit.
Does using the plasma on the blast explosion enemy cause reflection and harming the player? While using it on the gas explosion enemy insta-kills that enemy? I have not yet been able to reliably visually differentiate the two types of exploding enemies, especially in darkness, but I might figure that out eventually. The color of their "eye"? Red for blast explosion enemy, yellow for gas explosion enemy?
On floor 2 now.
I still really like to cheese-snipe all the exploding barrels I can see before starting a level (using fire-3). I do not use the dash, since I am really afraid of dashing into exploding enemies and insta-dying despite this being easy difficulty.
I usually start levels with freeze-3, since that gives a decent chance of freeze-stopping exploding enemies before they annihilate you. I never use the scythe, since I feel the risk of accidentally hitting an exploding barrel and dying or losing lots of health is too high. Maybe I will change opinions if/once I get better at the game. I also start the level by going into time-slow-alchemy-mode, and see where enemies spawn, such as if an exploding enemy spawns right next to you. JUST AFTER I WROTE THIS I STARTED A LEVEL WHERE A GAS EXPLODING ENEMY SPAWNED VERY CLOSE TO ME. And time-slowing saved me. This time around I quickly moved away, switched to plasma, and insta-killed it with the gun.
I died in one room, ran away from one explosion enemy, and another explosion enemy charged me from the other direction.
3rd time I reached the exit, I will skip the other rooms on floor 1 as I think you are meant to just get to the exit.
How do I pause the game during combat?
I think I rather early on found the exit to the 3rd floor. Yes, 3rd floor.
I also sometimes shoot regular barrels simply to give me more space to hopefully be able to circle-strafe and dodge enemies.
acid-3-water-3 reliably one-shots the small laser enemies.
What are the differences between the floors? I do not know if I have found any difference between floor 1, 2 and 3 so far.
Do explosions have longer range than what their visual indicators indicate?
I found the exit on the 3rd floor and that is apparently the end of the demo.
But I only won on the Easy difficulty. I was AFK for a fair bit of the run, so the time spent is likely shorter than what the victory screen indicates.
The game began to be more fun once I learned it, and it does seem interesting. And experimentation and learning fits alchemy very well. Very fast-paced, though the time-slowdown helped with that.
If experimentation is meant to be a significant part of the theme, then in the tutorial and advertisement for the game, you could have introduction videos that might go like:
"Experiment: Alchemy is powerful yet dangerous. Discover which alchemy mixes works against an enemy ... [shows mixing acid and using it to great effect against a small laser enemy in slow motion] ... and which doesn't ... [shows mixing plasma and using it against an exploding enemy, getting killed by the counter beam in slow motion]"
Woah, that's a lot of feedback. I'm glad you're finding the game more fun after trying it again. I did end up recording the video you requested, you posted your new replies while it was rendering/uploading. I don't think you need it anymore, but here it is regardless. It has some commentary to help explain what's going on.
The link is dead, could you reupload the file or describe the bug?
Plasma causes lightning arc on any hit enemy, it just builds up faster on robot enemies (all enemies currently in the game.)
Yes, red is explosive and yellow is poisonous.
None thus far, the latter two floors are there to just extend the length of the demo a bit. You could clear a floor in 1-2 minutes even on harder difficulties.
Pausing is not implemented yet.
Thank you very much for the video and the reply!
I realize now one area where I really messed up, I somehow got it into my mind that you have to mix water and biostuff to heal, which yields a little bit of healing, but as you show in the video, pure biostuff is sufficient and heals a large amount, making it much easier and faster to heal during combat.
I also did not think to mix more than 2 chemicals. And melee'ing bomb enemies with freezing seems like a very effective approach (but also one that could also go wrong if you mess it up given that you are getting close to explosive enemies). I think melee'ing with freezing would have worked in the small room where I encountered 3 enemies during my medium difficulty attempts, which would indeed make it a skill issue on my part (I did not think of combining melee and freezing).
Electricity looks really powerful.
Sorry about the video link not working, I am trying out different free sites because I am a bit of a cheap skate (also this is a temporary account). Does this link work? https://uploadify.net/bda6fd7ca445c1e9/enemy_stuck_inside_wall.mp4
Yes, the video works. Nice catch, I'll fix have it fixed for the next DD.
Told ya. Don't feel bad though, the game is all about dying lots of times until you learn what's effective and what isn't (like you pointed out before.)
Indeed, that's why it has a slower ammo regeneration speed. However, it seems more powerful than it actually is due to the current enemy roster. The game will have all sorts of enemies beside robots, which means that electricity won't arc so neatly between crowds. All it takes is one insulator to stop the lightning chain.
I am stupid, so I will try to complete the first floor on medium difficulty without first completing it on easy difficulty.
After many deaths, I lucked out in the first room and managed to circle-strafe survive in that room which almost only had the triple-laser horrors. I then began experimenting using the pistol with which chemicals would deal good damage against them, and came to the conclusion that fire seemed very strong against them.
I have found out that you can cheese-clear some of the obstacles in a room before entering it. This is a double-edge sword, since those obstacles can also be used for cover, but being able to dash away from exploding enemies and circle-strafing might be more critical to survival than using cover.
Managed to clear a second room in that same run. However, it almost went completely wrong due to running into a box while trying to circle-strafe which was very difficult to see. I failed to experiment against the surviving enemies (their own friendly fire killed a lot of them) to see which mixes were good against what.
Experimented on what can clear boxes like that. Apparently (and logically), fire is really strong against wooden boxes.
Cheesing rooms by first clearing explosive barrels feels very helpful to survival.
Using "alchemical mixing time" for slowing time and getting an overview of what is going on before you explode before being able to react is very helpful, even when it does not feel like that is the intended purpose of the time slowdown.
Died on the third room in that run.
Some of those boxes are really durable, I used 4 shots of 5physical+45fire damage while cheesing the obstacles of a room.
Dying a couple more times.
Found out that enemies can be frozen. Also, freeze seems somewhat effective against the explosive enemies, though not necessarily one-shot territory. Are there two different exploding enemies, a gas variant and a blast variant?
Is right-click ever used for anything?
Having an exploding enemy spawn right next to you when you enter the room does not seem fair. At least you can slow down time and dash, but dashing can bring you near enemies (such as exploding enemies), especially with limited view and the darkness of the rooms.
Acid appears very effective against the small single-laser bugs.
I went into a very small room. It spawned 3 exploding gas enemies and a small single-laser bug.
I am not convinced that it would be possible for anyone to clear that room without dying no matter how good they are. I am therefore not convinced the author actually played the game on medium difficulty. Can you freeze the enemies or something?
Author, please upload a video of you completing a full floor at medium difficulty.I am probably being overly skeptical.Your game came up on the thread so I gave it another try.
A very annoying bug I found is that getting hit by the neurotoxin-causing exploding enemies will give you infinite neurotoxin DoT.
I made it all the way through floor 2 while having to constantly heal and it got removed by the loading screen, but I got it in the very next room and died shortly after.
It seems to become infinite as soon as you get affected but getting affected again will increase intensity because in second floor was only a -4 DoT while on the third I got a -8 DoT
If it weren't for this bug I feel like I was getting the hang of combat, but I still think having to choose 6 different charges is too much, you could probably simplify it down to 3 charges and double the effect of each charge for example, it'd be more or less the same but with less clicking.
Another bug I found is that if you don't have the essence for your selected elements and manually remove charges by right clicking the cursor won't change to the normal one until you fire.
On that note, I suggest that, if the player doesn't have the required elements to infuse his attack, he should still be able to do a normal attack. As is, if the player wants to maintain a constant rate of fire he needs to dump all elements for just two revolver shot and then re-select them.
Either that or a "select previous combination" button would be a nice quality of life thing.
Bottom line is that it got more fun with some practice so I don't think you need to necessarily make it easier, but it could use some streamlining and maybe just an easier first floor so that people aren't one-shot immediately by the exploding guys.
>enter a room with some enemies
>they rush me before I have a chance to react
>they explode, taking away most of my HP
>it takes me a few seconds beyond that to succumb to the damage-per-turn because I don't have (or at least don't know about) a way to heal myself
this seems like a cool game but please do not force me to spend multiple seconds dying to something that I could not possibly have prepared for
Game looks realy cool, love the main char's design and the alchemy mixing aspect is super interesting. Been playing on medium difficulty and it still took me quite a number of tries to get through the first room, and the longest I was able to go is 3.
- Healing sound effect is very intense, sounds more like the character is being hit.
- I noticed that not all elements regenerate at the same rate - fire is faster, while plasma and larva are slower (half rate from what I can tell). I'm not sure if this is intentional, as I couldn't see a reason why it shouldn't be universal.
- Opening the mixing menu right after the level starts makes the cursor invisible and shifts the camera to a dark spot.
- Status effects on the player is really strong, as they last for a very long time and I couldn't find a way to get rid of them. This made me try to stay within the reach of a healing barrel, which is quite small and I ended up getting shot anyway.
- Damage output of the player feels generally very low, even with reagents. Scythe has better damage than the gun but it's way too risky with all the ranged enemies and high damaging explosions. This is especially noticeable with the bombs who can tank a few shots but explode for half your health (and give you a DoT to finish you off) if you're nearby. Most of my victories was done by baiting enemies to exploding barrels and making them kill each other.
- There's generally not much info is given on what each element does (apart from the obvious guesses you can infer), which is fine if you want players to figure it out but in my opinion the game is way too fast paced for that. My mind jumps to Magicka where it has a similar "experiment with elements" system but that game is quite slower and so the player has time to actually do the experimenting without blowing up in seconds.
Still, quite interested in where this game'll go, good work so far!
Hey, thanks for the feedback!
It is intentional. Plasma and larva provide exceptionally powerful utility to the player, with the former allowing you to easily apply a mixture to an entire crowd of enemies and the latter being one of the only ways to heal yourself. The slower regeneration speed is a way to bottleneck that utility.
The status effects are very dangerous but can be easily removed if you use the right chemicals on yourself: water extinguishes burning and purifying wash (water + larva) cures poison. This isn't communicated at all so I don't blame you for not knowing.
That's mostly intentional, the player's base damage being abysmal forces you to exploit the alchemy weakness of the enemies--you can one-shot three of the four enemies in the roster if you use the right chemical combo. However, I think you're right and I could bump the base damage up a tad.
Agreed. The plan is to make logs for chemicals, weapons and enemies which the player can unlock and read.
I love your character design. The transition from the spawn animation to the gameplay camera view is really jarring. I got through a few rooms a couple times but kept crashing seemingly inexplicably.
Yeah, I've had quite a few reports of crashes. I'll get right on that. Thanks for playing!
I do not understand why I can select "nothing" in the loadout screen when starting a game, but I imagine that will become clear later as I play. Or is it just placeholder for now while the game is being developed?
Menu looks nice.
The difficulty selection might not be colorblind-friendly, but the game may already assume that players are not colorblind.
The music is loud when starting the game. Can I change the audio volume in-game?
How do I pause the game? 'P'? 'Esc'?
Is the UI for alchemy slightly buggy? Should the top-most "water" peripheral one-sixth circle-piece bar be present?
I find the game somewhat confusing, at least the alchemy part, but alchemy is frequently about experimentation and discovery, so I would assume that it is up to the player to mix and experiment.
Is there a way to quickly clear all ingredients/reset? (I cannot remember the controls). I died, but I can see that 'Tab' is used. Maybe there was a UI bug before because right-click is rarely used and 'Tab' is usually used to clear the mixture.
I have died twice now in the first room, on medium difficulty, but I am still learning at the moment.
Now I died very quickly to exploding enemies in the first room.
I have died several times in the first room now. But, after I remembered the dash, I almost survived one room with few enemies.
Is it normal for the first room to have 10+ enemies on normal/orange difficulty?
After maybe 20+ deaths, I SURVIVED A ROOM!
I abused alchemy mixing to slow down time, dashed around, hid behind crates, and survived the mass death explosions at the start of the level. And then I popped out of cover once in a while to take potshots with different chemicals at the triple-laser-death-beam robot-beetle.
I do not understand this game. A lot of it seems really polished and nice, but other parts seem only slightly polished or even confounding.
Maybe I should have gone for "easy"/green difficulty first.
Maybe a tutorial would be a good idea?
Being able to pause, and set in-game the audio level(s), would be nice as well.
Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!
Why not? If the player wants to handicap themselves for an extra challenge, so be it.
Sorry, I haven't implemented those things yet.
Yes, that's intentional. What's happening there is that you're mixing water (blue) with larval excretion (green) to produce purifying wash (yellow,) a chemical that can only be produced through this chemical reaction.
Yes. Pressing TAB will dump the entire mixture whereas right-clicking on a chemical will remove one instance of that particular chemical. For example: suppose your tank has 3x water. If you right-click on the water icon, the mixture will be reduced to 2x water; if you press tab, all the water will be immediately disposed of.
An easy way to dispatch of them is to use frigor essence, i.e. the ice chemical. You can very easily freeze the mines, which inhibits their explosion attack.
Apologies for the confusion, I didn't have time to implement tutorials and/or documentation so the game is very difficult to pick up right now. One of my main goals for the next DD is to implement a thorough tutorial to avoid further confusion.
I like elemental system but having to pause and fiddle with different (and limited) quantities of each element during combat is very clunky, it's like magicka but in crampt rooms against generic enemies.
The utility slot item being centered on your character also means that's it's only for heals and water, you could replace it with a medkit-type item and not have to pause the game to fill up your tank with heals every time you want to use it, or allow the player to aim it so it doubles as a grenade.
Needs work, but the concept is solid.
Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback. On the utility slot comment: the final game will provide an upgrade tree per weapon, with each node modifying behavior in some way. The doubling-as-a-grenade concept is already in the works, what you're seeing right now is just the base behavior of the weapon.