This game disguises itself as a sidescrolling shoot-em-up but in reality it plays more like a top-down twinstick shooter, the only difference being the pretty collectibles, the sole evidence of gravity in this game, who's main purpose is to lure me into taking damage from colliding into the floor.
Originally I was going to say that I really didn't like this game, that you have all this nice art and polish but the core gameplay wasn't fun. That was my impression from the tutorial level. And you seemed to be falling into the trap of adding-more-mechanics-to-make-it-fun. I really don't want to learn and have to manage 8 different mechanics to play a 2d indie shooter.
I had a problem with the Robo-Templar game for very similar reasons.
Then I tried out the second level (The prefab test level?)
I sincerely hope you make the entire game like that level. I don't ever want to manage a gun, manage my shield, any of that. I just want to fly around, dodge bullets, and watch the explosions.
I guess it's something like a vampire-survivors-like, with maybe a bit of autobattler? Maybe this was your intention all along, but I went into this thinking I was just going to be playing a regular shmup. In this vein I think it might be worth considering leaning into this more, with larger, more open areas? I see you've been working on this a bit, maybe that's something for a sequel.
Geometry Wars is definitely a huge influence on Amazoom's gameplay (and the planned controller support will mimic that control set).
Gems can be picked up using the shield- but we've received a lot of feedback from people hinting that our pickup range for gems without the magnet is probably too small (it's 3 tiles from ship-center at the moment- a lot of people bonk the nose of their ship on stuff trying to get their center of mass closer to the gems).
The tutorial map is set up to introduce the player to basic navigation, and over the course of the rest of the missions in the first world map you're steadily introduced to different mechanics that help ease the burden of doing everything yourself.
Gunbuddies, autotargeting, autoshielding, and other stuff that unlocks as the game progresses delegate tedium to automation so you can focus on driving, dodging, and exploring- I'm glad that getting a chance to take one of the endgame ships for a spin did a decent job of breaking the ice on that haha
Right now, what we've poured most of our time and effort into as far as levels are concerned are procedurally generated maps for different themed areas. Story missions like the tutorial will have static maps with more areas to explore and lots of incentives to go looking for stuff. One of the big goals for this project is to make sure that there's some replayable elements for players to come back to if they decide to pick the game up again after a break, so we're fine-tuning the procedural bits first and then laying out the story missions. For now, story missions are mostly procgen placeholders with static values for cave length and enemy density.
Thanks for trying out the demo!
We discuss all the comments that show up on the AGDG demos- a lot of optional features like ship highlighting mid-level were added because of feedback. As more stuff gets polished up and finished off with the procedural cave generation and we get more time to focus on the story progression, I'm sure a lot of the stuff you mentioned here will get smoothed out before release.
We appreciate any feedback we can get! Thanks for taking some time to give the demo a try.
Bullet speed is influenced by the total stats of the ship that you're using and the crew members that it's loaded up with.
We'll probably be making tweaks to air travel time with the bullets before final release- there are also other weapon types like lasers that sidestep bullet travel time.
"It's basically a static png" is one of the things that different ships handle in different ways. Some 2D shooter games have animations for the player that make it look like the ship is banking left or right as the player moves up and down- we ended up deciding not to do that with this project, but we totally get why it might feel weird if your experience with this genre is rooted in games where that art choice was made.
Most of the new content for this demo is inside the Thicket biome. Complete the tutorial to unlock a Thicket mission. You can also complete the other remaining story missions to see some other Thicket tests we've been working on.
Comments
This is an interesting one.
This game disguises itself as a sidescrolling shoot-em-up but in reality it plays more like a top-down twinstick shooter, the only difference being the pretty collectibles, the sole evidence of gravity in this game, who's main purpose is to lure me into taking damage from colliding into the floor.
Originally I was going to say that I really didn't like this game, that you have all this nice art and polish but the core gameplay wasn't fun. That was my impression from the tutorial level. And you seemed to be falling into the trap of adding-more-mechanics-to-make-it-fun. I really don't want to learn and have to manage 8 different mechanics to play a 2d indie shooter.
I had a problem with the Robo-Templar game for very similar reasons.
Then I tried out the second level (The prefab test level?)
I sincerely hope you make the entire game like that level. I don't ever want to manage a gun, manage my shield, any of that. I just want to fly around, dodge bullets, and watch the explosions.
I guess it's something like a vampire-survivors-like, with maybe a bit of autobattler? Maybe this was your intention all along, but I went into this thinking I was just going to be playing a regular shmup. In this vein I think it might be worth considering leaning into this more, with larger, more open areas? I see you've been working on this a bit, maybe that's something for a sequel.
Hi!
Geometry Wars is definitely a huge influence on Amazoom's gameplay (and the planned controller support will mimic that control set).
Gems can be picked up using the shield- but we've received a lot of feedback from people hinting that our pickup range for gems without the magnet is probably too small (it's 3 tiles from ship-center at the moment- a lot of people bonk the nose of their ship on stuff trying to get their center of mass closer to the gems).
The tutorial map is set up to introduce the player to basic navigation, and over the course of the rest of the missions in the first world map you're steadily introduced to different mechanics that help ease the burden of doing everything yourself.
Gunbuddies, autotargeting, autoshielding, and other stuff that unlocks as the game progresses delegate tedium to automation so you can focus on driving, dodging, and exploring- I'm glad that getting a chance to take one of the endgame ships for a spin did a decent job of breaking the ice on that haha
Right now, what we've poured most of our time and effort into as far as levels are concerned are procedurally generated maps for different themed areas. Story missions like the tutorial will have static maps with more areas to explore and lots of incentives to go looking for stuff. One of the big goals for this project is to make sure that there's some replayable elements for players to come back to if they decide to pick the game up again after a break, so we're fine-tuning the procedural bits first and then laying out the story missions. For now, story missions are mostly procgen placeholders with static values for cave length and enemy density.
Thanks for trying out the demo!
We discuss all the comments that show up on the AGDG demos- a lot of optional features like ship highlighting mid-level were added because of feedback. As more stuff gets polished up and finished off with the procedural cave generation and we get more time to focus on the story progression, I'm sure a lot of the stuff you mentioned here will get smoothed out before release.
Cheers ♥
the blimp does not really feel satisfying to fly around. it's basically a static png
also, the bullets are too slow. you can easily outrun them while shooting them out, which is not good gamefeel imho
Hey there,
We appreciate any feedback we can get! Thanks for taking some time to give the demo a try.
Bullet speed is influenced by the total stats of the ship that you're using and the crew members that it's loaded up with.
We'll probably be making tweaks to air travel time with the bullets before final release- there are also other weapon types like lasers that sidestep bullet travel time.
"It's basically a static png" is one of the things that different ships handle in different ways. Some 2D shooter games have animations for the player that make it look like the ship is banking left or right as the player moves up and down- we ended up deciding not to do that with this project, but we totally get why it might feel weird if your experience with this genre is rooted in games where that art choice was made.
Thanks again, cheers!
Most of the new content for this demo is inside the Thicket biome.
Complete the tutorial to unlock a Thicket mission.
You can also complete the other remaining story missions to see some other Thicket tests we've been working on.
Patch notes over here: https://pastebin.com/TWrzJrgV