Not a lot to do, but plays surprisingly well and is pretty Fun.
I liked that I could close the Doors again, open the Curtains, push the Mannequin, all the small extra Interactions.
Water didn't seem to refresh, so I ran out after a While.
A Way to drop your Tool would be useful I think, instead of always having to have a single Toolstand for it.
I seem to be able to carry a stack of infinite or at least massive amounts of Things. I think it'd make more Sense to limit it to a few, maybe 8 or so at max. And stack the Sprites overlapping each other to minimize Stackheight on Screen, should still be readable enough.
No Idea where you plan to take this later, but I'd like to find out.
Some of the Graphics could use a little bit of an overhaul, and I think you could maybe make more use of overlapping Tiles. Maybe.
Edit:
After reading some Comments, figured out how to pass Time. Don't know why I didn't think about trying the Bed at all. The watering System with Watermelons giving you max Water and automatically Watering whats there, with you choosing what to and not to water, instead of having to do the watering yourself, is interesting. Takes a lot of Time off, and moves it into more planning, might tie in well with the Rest of the Game, depending on what you're going for.
I think I need a manual to figure out what to do. Would recommend putting all the IJKL actions on the mouse instead. Avant-garde control schemes might seem like a fun idea, but they never really work out.
This is interesting! Tried it for like 40 minutes. Stuff mostly seemed to work, but I couldn't figure out how to get more water. Watermelons didn't help, which kinda feels like a bug?. (later edit: okay I figured out that you can pick water back up, that is some weeeeird shit)
Almost killed myself repeatedly running into walls before I figured out that wasn't a stamina meter.
Kind of weird that cutting down trees doesn't give you any wood.
I hope there's gonna be a timer running to trigger night time in addition to using the bed, and that night time will last longer than it does now (the monsters barely had time to kill me even if I didn't defend myself). But I gotta say that the way you go to bed and pull the covers up is just absolutely adorable.
In fact, a lot of the game is pretty adorable, which may present you with problems because it's kinda the opposite of Darkwood and it'll probably make the night sections hard to take seriously.
I like how the line-of-sight mechanic fog of war mechanic only appears at night. That's a real neat idea.
Having windows only provide visibility with no chance of monsters coming in is gonna make defense a lot easier than in Darkwood. I'm assuming walls and doors won't be as perfect of a defense as they are now, so hopefully you've got something similar planned for the windows.
Speaking of, the window on the south wall should probably be moved a bit.
Oh also there's a bug where axes that aren't loaded look like they're loaded when you put them in a stand.
Anyway after I figured out how to get more water and more rocks I decided to explore the forest a bit, now that I had plenty of rocks.
I noticed a weird white pixel up near the upper left of the map, what's up with that? It's above the fog of war.
Oh, is there no wall at the southern or eastern edge? Interesting. Guess I escaped the mistwood. I didn't find anything else of interest while cutting paths through the trees.
Neat demo! I see the basics of a more complex game here and I dig it, my one complaint is the controls, can't say I know what you have in mind for the future, but I feel like having 4 keys for each direction to interact with the enviroment is a bit overkill.
Its a good start to the game. I can already see how some of the mechanics are coming into play in the future. Not a big fan of the jkli to swing but I do like the animations. Keep it up!
Almost got filtered by the second room. Unironically nice way of teaching the controls though. Didn’t figure about the growing of seeds / tool table until I read the comments here. I still haven’t figured out how to sleep(?) - I think I saw you go to sleep on a webm you posted in the thread.
Most exciting moment I had was when I realized I could delete the trees with the axe, thought I was gonna dig deep into the Forest. Stacking things to carry was also fun.
Controls are kinda nice idea. I mean, the obvious controls would be WASD for moving, Mouse for action and aiming. But the IJKL made me feel like I was learning a new thing? Some satisfaction in hitting the right button?
by this point this is my 3rd or 4th time playing, so i'm used to the controls. i wouldn't really say i'm a huge fan of them, but they're working and they don't fight against my intentions, so i think they're fine. grew some watermelons, some rocks, made an axe and chopped some wood.
i survived for a few nights. the enemies aren't really threatening, i can just be outside and walk away from them. the way darkwood made this work was that you really did not want to leave your hideout or be far away from a light source. an easy solution for your game might be to greatly reduce the light radius (or just make it much more mistier). then, even with their slow speed, an enemy would simply appear before you and damage you, making them threatening. of course, this is me getting ahead of myself - i'm sure you have your own ideas that just weren't implemented yet.
i had a few thoughts and some error reports:
>enemies near (behind?) trees have some z fighting going on. i remembered you mentioned this in the thread and asked for advice. perhaps you can always show them in front of trees? it wont solve all your z fighting issues, but it might be a solid first step. that's the only place i noticed it anyway, since that's where some of them appear.
once (and only once, i tried replicating), there was some delay during the night to day transition.
popup text (namely the "i need to empty my hands to use the crafting bench") should automatically disappear upon player action, instead of me having to manually confirm the popup. it stayed active after i cleared my text and accessed the crafting table, so it's a bit redundant.
i think you should automatically leave the crafting table when you're prompted to place an object
otherwise, the game plays smoothly and i had no other notable issues. keep it up.
You mean the item placement grid, right? That pops up any time you hold an item, and the bench is meant to be used to craft stacks of item at a time. I could turn off the grid while the bench is open.
Neat little demo. Not to much comment on. The IJKL with button up actions feels a bit odd. Also the tool management with racks feels a bit clunky, couldn't you just throw them on the ground?
Could become fun game when there'll be more features so keep up!
Comments
Not a lot to do, but plays surprisingly well and is pretty Fun.
I liked that I could close the Doors again, open the Curtains, push the Mannequin, all the small extra Interactions.
Water didn't seem to refresh, so I ran out after a While.
A Way to drop your Tool would be useful I think, instead of always having to have a single Toolstand for it.
I seem to be able to carry a stack of infinite or at least massive amounts of Things. I think it'd make more Sense to limit it to a few, maybe 8 or so at max. And stack the Sprites overlapping each other to minimize Stackheight on Screen, should still be readable enough.
No Idea where you plan to take this later, but I'd like to find out.
Some of the Graphics could use a little bit of an overhaul, and I think you could maybe make more use of overlapping Tiles. Maybe.
Edit:
After reading some Comments, figured out how to pass Time. Don't know why I didn't think about trying the Bed at all. The watering System with Watermelons giving you max Water and automatically Watering whats there, with you choosing what to and not to water, instead of having to do the watering yourself, is interesting. Takes a lot of Time off, and moves it into more planning, might tie in well with the Rest of the Game, depending on what you're going for.
Pulling up the Sheets really is adorable.
I think I need a manual to figure out what to do. Would recommend putting all the IJKL actions on the mouse instead. Avant-garde control schemes might seem like a fun idea, but they never really work out.
i had a vulcan error running it. but then it worked fine anyway.
i watered the grass but i couldnt figure out how to kill the little emo dude.
This is interesting! Tried it for like 40 minutes.
Stuff mostly seemed to work, but I couldn't figure out how to get more water. Watermelons didn't help, which kinda feels like a bug?. (later edit: okay I figured out that you can pick water back up, that is some weeeeird shit)
Almost killed myself repeatedly running into walls before I figured out that wasn't a stamina meter.
Kind of weird that cutting down trees doesn't give you any wood.
I hope there's gonna be a timer running to trigger night time in addition to using the bed, and that night time will last longer than it does now (the monsters barely had time to kill me even if I didn't defend myself). But I gotta say that the way you go to bed and pull the covers up is just absolutely adorable.
In fact, a lot of the game is pretty adorable, which may present you with problems because it's kinda the opposite of Darkwood and it'll probably make the night sections hard to take seriously.
I like how the line-of-sight mechanic fog of war mechanic only appears at night. That's a real neat idea.
Having windows only provide visibility with no chance of monsters coming in is gonna make defense a lot easier than in Darkwood. I'm assuming walls and doors won't be as perfect of a defense as they are now, so hopefully you've got something similar planned for the windows.
Speaking of, the window on the south wall should probably be moved a bit.
Oh also there's a bug where axes that aren't loaded look like they're loaded when you put them in a stand.
Anyway after I figured out how to get more water and more rocks I decided to explore the forest a bit, now that I had plenty of rocks.
I noticed a weird white pixel up near the upper left of the map, what's up with that? It's above the fog of war.
Oh, is there no wall at the southern or eastern edge? Interesting. Guess I escaped the mistwood. I didn't find anything else of interest while cutting paths through the trees.
Neat demo!
I see the basics of a more complex game here and I dig it, my one complaint is the controls, can't say I know what you have in mind for the future, but I feel like having 4 keys for each direction to interact with the enviroment is a bit overkill.
Its a good start to the game. I can already see how some of the mechanics are coming into play in the future. Not a big fan of the jkli to swing but I do like the animations. Keep it up!
Almost got filtered by the second room. Unironically nice way of teaching the controls though. Didn’t figure about the growing of seeds / tool table until I read the comments here. I still haven’t figured out how to sleep(?) - I think I saw you go to sleep on a webm you posted in the thread.
Most exciting moment I had was when I realized I could delete the trees with the axe, thought I was gonna dig deep into the Forest. Stacking things to carry was also fun.
Controls are kinda nice idea. I mean, the obvious controls would be WASD for moving, Mouse for action and aiming. But the IJKL made me feel like I was learning a new thing? Some satisfaction in hitting the right button?
Footage https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2023378574
by this point this is my 3rd or 4th time playing, so i'm used to the controls. i wouldn't really say i'm a huge fan of them, but they're working and they don't fight against my intentions, so i think they're fine. grew some watermelons, some rocks, made an axe and chopped some wood.
i survived for a few nights. the enemies aren't really threatening, i can just be outside and walk away from them. the way darkwood made this work was that you really did not want to leave your hideout or be far away from a light source. an easy solution for your game might be to greatly reduce the light radius (or just make it much more mistier). then, even with their slow speed, an enemy would simply appear before you and damage you, making them threatening. of course, this is me getting ahead of myself - i'm sure you have your own ideas that just weren't implemented yet.
i had a few thoughts and some error reports:
>enemies near (behind?) trees have some z fighting going on. i remembered you mentioned this in the thread and asked for advice. perhaps you can always show them in front of trees? it wont solve all your z fighting issues, but it might be a solid first step. that's the only place i noticed it anyway, since that's where some of them appear.
once (and only once, i tried replicating), there was some delay during the night to day transition.
popup text (namely the "i need to empty my hands to use the crafting bench") should automatically disappear upon player action, instead of me having to manually confirm the popup. it stayed active after i cleared my text and accessed the crafting table, so it's a bit redundant.
i think you should automatically leave the crafting table when you're prompted to place an object
otherwise, the game plays smoothly and i had no other notable issues. keep it up.
>i think you should automatically leave the crafting table when you're prompted to place an object
When do you mean by that?
choosing an object to craft turns on the placement selection tool, but the crafting table stays open - i would prefer it if it would close
You mean the item placement grid, right? That pops up any time you hold an item, and the bench is meant to be used to craft stacks of item at a time. I could turn off the grid while the bench is open.
i get it. i think you can chalk this one up to "user error" then.
Neat little demo. Not to much comment on. The IJKL with button up actions feels a bit odd. Also the tool management with racks feels a bit clunky, couldn't you just throw them on the ground?
Could become fun game when there'll be more features so keep up!
Sample of proposed farming and combat gameplay loop. All night cycles are the same. Press "Ins" to spawn 100 enemies. As always, feedback appreciated.