Moving around doesn't feel great, I turn by aiming, but I can't strafe left/right at all. The aiming reticle is either not in the right place or projectiles are firing lower than they should be. You should either pause the game while I upgrade my stuff, or stop making it basically require me to take my fingers off the movement keys. Needs some sound.
Just to not be overly negative, I thought the weapon upgrades were alright and the enemy variety was good.
Thank you so much Bicho Regarding the pausing whilst upgrading thing: The game is gonna be multiplayer. Got any ideas to make upgrading less complicated for new players without pausing the game?
Cool, if multiplayer is in mind then, of the top of my head, you can do something like what Evolve game did, when selecting an upgrade you go invulnerable (or shielded) for a few seconds until you select the upgrade or the timer runs out (autoselecting an option),
Ahhh someone else actually remembers to change cursor type on their menus!
I had a lot of fun playing this with all the abilities and vertical movement, some general thoughts
Trying to pick upgrades while dodging doesn’t feel great
I wonder if it’s a good idea to make the first couple of upgrades have a drawback? I think it might cause the player to think too much about their first choices when they’re trying to learn the game.
The fact that you have to stop shooting to charge RMB attacks isn’t very well telegraphed
some crepuscular rays or a Snell’s window effect would go just right here.
Aside from that, I honestly just want to see more.
Shrimpalicious. I like the concept, I think it's coming along nicely. plus it has good meme potential.
I noticed some of the hit boxes were unusually small and it was hard to hit some fish even when it looked like it was making contact. Also, very interested in what kind of underwater shrimpy sounds you'll add to juice things up
Plays good, looks good for being an early demo. Would be nice to have an explanation of what the different elements do, some of them like light I kind of had to keep guessing and spamming them. Feels a little hard to stop in place to get things like powerups or hit the bubble columns, but that might have just been me not being used to the controls. Having to hold tab to access the upgrades feels a little awkward under pressure, wouldn't mind it being a toggle
First time I played, had a lot of fun! I like that there are different characters to choose from, I played shadow and fire. It took me a while to learn how to aim, but once I learned to not panic and take my time to aim, it was smooth sailing.
This might be odd, but I didn't find a good reason to get elevation. It made it harder to aim, manouver around obstacles and pick up upgrades.
Picking up upgrades felt difficult and swapping the weapon I was currently using made it a bit too risky.
I got instakilled by a fish trapping me against a wall. Invulnerability frames would be welcome.
I wanted to adjust mouse sensibility during the run, I'm sure this is on your todo list though.
Once I found a weapon that was my secondary but on low cooldown, it was game over. I recommend you to watch the video, because the run was abandoned after a naty camera bug.
Thanks man. Yeah I need to think of a solution for weapon pickups. I'll definitely add sens options here soon. Elevation will likely be more relevant on other maps and in other fights. It'll be a pvp game, so easy elevation might actually be too good at some point, we'll see. I've never seen that bug before! Crazy
You could try making the pickup collider a cylinder with a lot of height, so people don't need to get too low to pick weapons up. A larger pickup area in general could be nice. You could also make it so that the weapon that is dropped is not the weapon currently equiped. Since there are three weapons and knowing which weapon gets dropped could be confusing, maybe only allowing two weapons per player could simplify things.
Another option would be to have an inventory system like battle royals do, but maybe that would overcomplicate controls.
It plays alright, but there wasn't much to do as enemies didn't pose much challenge so I didn't need to think about the stats, choice of weapons, dodging or stamina management, so those feel like slapped on systems.
There's a lot of inertia and slow acceleration, so movement doesn't feel satisfying and even grabbing a weapon off the floor is hard.
Altitude is really weird although I understand why it would work like that. I instinctively try to maneuver in 3d but instead I'm draining all my stamina without much result. Instead of being a cool, fully 3d shooter it ends up being an extremely floaty arena shooter. Vents are a good way to alleviate that and II wish sponges would have that effect too for a nice risk reward.
Primary weapons are unsatisfying as they are slow and hard to hit with. On the other hand elemental abilities are great and I wish I could mix those in constantly instead of having cooldown timers.
Crosshair is small and blends with the color scheme. Enemy projectiles don't stand out enough.
I wonder what the game would play like at 2x speed or so?
Thanks for feedback. Regarding difficulty and resource management: Try spawning more enemies. But it is a demo after all, not really supposed to be difficult. The main loop will not be a survival / wave based thing like this, this is just demonstrating the movement and some systems.
I wanted to make it feel like you were controlling a ship/submarine in water, and I feel like if there were less drag and stuff, controls it wouldn't feel like that anymore. But I hear you about the weapon pickup stuff
Yeah, this is gonna be a PvP game at the end of the day, so I figure full vertical movement would break a lot of things. I wanted to emulate the feeling of a jetpack or something like that
I hear you about the primary weapons. I'll buff them up.
Yeah, this is gonna be a PvP game at the end of the day
Oooh, ok. That makes a lot of sense why the gameplay is in that state.
If I had to replace swimming up with something it would be a mix of jump and hover that would allow for vertical strafing around enemy.
Try spawning more enemies
I already did but twice is not enough.
I wanted to make it feel like you were controlling a ship/submarine in water
I can see that. While playing I thought that it would fit better if reskinned as large ships or planes combat. Shrimp is not a great match for this kind of movement.
Comments
Moving around doesn't feel great, I turn by aiming, but I can't strafe left/right at all. The aiming reticle is either not in the right place or projectiles are firing lower than they should be. You should either pause the game while I upgrade my stuff, or stop making it basically require me to take my fingers off the movement keys. Needs some sound.
Just to not be overly negative, I thought the weapon upgrades were alright and the enemy variety was good.
Amazing game, been looking forward to this for a while since you first started posting progress. Some feedback:
airwaterThank you so much Bicho
Regarding the pausing whilst upgrading thing:
The game is gonna be multiplayer. Got any ideas to make upgrading less complicated for new players without pausing the game?
Cool, if multiplayer is in mind then, of the top of my head, you can do something like what Evolve game did, when selecting an upgrade you go invulnerable (or shielded) for a few seconds until you select the upgrade or the timer runs out (autoselecting an option),
Ahhh someone else actually remembers to change
cursor typeon their menus!I had a lot of fun playing this with all the abilities and vertical movement, some general thoughts
Damn, thanks for the names of that effect and rays. Will do brother
Shrimpalicious. I like the concept, I think it's coming along nicely. plus it has good meme potential.
I noticed some of the hit boxes were unusually small and it was hard to hit some fish even when it looked like it was making contact. Also, very interested in what kind of underwater shrimpy sounds you'll add to juice things up
Plays good, looks good for being an early demo. Would be nice to have an explanation of what the different elements do, some of them like light I kind of had to keep guessing and spamming them. Feels a little hard to stop in place to get things like powerups or hit the bubble columns, but that might have just been me not being used to the controls. Having to hold tab to access the upgrades feels a little awkward under pressure, wouldn't mind it being a toggle
Thanks Kirk. Good feedback
Not much to test but what's there is really good.
Sometimes the ground spikes can get in front of the camera but aside from that I found no bugs or other issues.
The starting handling feels a little clunky but I guess that's solved as soon as the player upgrades it.
Can't wait to play a proper game mode!
Also those icons look amazing
Thanks GorriDev. I'll make sure to check your project out too!
This is just a demo showing movement and combat and some other systems. The 'loop' won't be a survival/wave game when it's all said and done.
Played two runs.
First time I played, had a lot of fun! I like that there are different characters to choose from, I played shadow and fire. It took me a while to learn how to aim, but once I learned to not panic and take my time to aim, it was smooth sailing.
This might be odd, but I didn't find a good reason to get elevation. It made it harder to aim, manouver around obstacles and pick up upgrades.
Picking up upgrades felt difficult and swapping the weapon I was currently using made it a bit too risky.
I got instakilled by a fish trapping me against a wall. Invulnerability frames would be welcome.
I wanted to adjust mouse sensibility during the run, I'm sure this is on your todo list though.
Once I found a weapon that was my secondary but on low cooldown, it was game over. I recommend you to watch the video, because the run was abandoned after a naty camera bug.
Thanks man. Yeah I need to think of a solution for weapon pickups. I'll definitely add sens options here soon.
Elevation will likely be more relevant on other maps and in other fights. It'll be a pvp game, so easy elevation might actually be too good at some point, we'll see.
I've never seen that bug before! Crazy
Elevation will make a lot more sense with PVP. I can imagine the game will play completely different that way.
For sure.
Got any other thoughts or ideas? Any ideas on how to make pickups easier to pick up, without reducing the drifty-ness?
You could try making the pickup collider a cylinder with a lot of height, so people don't need to get too low to pick weapons up. A larger pickup area in general could be nice. You could also make it so that the weapon that is dropped is not the weapon currently equiped. Since there are three weapons and knowing which weapon gets dropped could be confusing, maybe only allowing two weapons per player could simplify things.
Another option would be to have an inventory system like battle royals do, but maybe that would overcomplicate controls.
It plays alright, but there wasn't much to do as enemies didn't pose much challenge so I didn't need to think about the stats, choice of weapons, dodging or stamina management, so those feel like slapped on systems.
There's a lot of inertia and slow acceleration, so movement doesn't feel satisfying and even grabbing a weapon off the floor is hard.
Altitude is really weird although I understand why it would work like that. I instinctively try to maneuver in 3d but instead I'm draining all my stamina without much result. Instead of being a cool, fully 3d shooter it ends up being an extremely floaty arena shooter. Vents are a good way to alleviate that and II wish sponges would have that effect too for a nice risk reward.
Primary weapons are unsatisfying as they are slow and hard to hit with. On the other hand elemental abilities are great and I wish I could mix those in constantly instead of having cooldown timers.
Crosshair is small and blends with the color scheme. Enemy projectiles don't stand out enough.
I wonder what the game would play like at 2x speed or so?
Thanks for feedback.
Regarding difficulty and resource management: Try spawning more enemies. But it is a demo after all, not really supposed to be difficult. The main loop will not be a survival / wave based thing like this, this is just demonstrating the movement and some systems.
I wanted to make it feel like you were controlling a ship/submarine in water, and I feel like if there were less drag and stuff, controls it wouldn't feel like that anymore. But I hear you about the weapon pickup stuff
Yeah, this is gonna be a PvP game at the end of the day, so I figure full vertical movement would break a lot of things. I wanted to emulate the feeling of a jetpack or something like that
I hear you about the primary weapons. I'll buff them up.
Oooh, ok. That makes a lot of sense why the gameplay is in that state.
If I had to replace swimming up with something it would be a mix of jump and hover that would allow for vertical strafing around enemy.
I already did but twice is not enough.
I can see that. While playing I thought that it would fit better if reskinned as large ships or planes combat. Shrimp is not a great match for this kind of movement.
What about shrimp MECHS?
I'd never say no to a PRAWN suit.
New crap: HUD, better gameplay, particles
Stay tuned for more art, better assets, multiplayer, actual gameplay loop etc