Pretty fun, Rockets + Damage buff + Shot Speed are OP. I really like Geiger-esque enemies.
Felt like the game would be too easy with regenerating HP and a slowduwn, but I was VERY wrong - later levels are pretty tough. Though main enemies were much tougher than the bosses. Again, rockets are OP, so I kinda breezed through, dying only on last levels a couple of times.
Levels felt like they repeat, no idea whether they do and only the HP of the enemies was changing (I don't think TTK for bosses changed).
But I really like your upgrade system, though it feels like some combinations or upgrades are complete trash (like the multishot). Overall feels like a good proof of concept, really cohesive, but needs more content.
Thanks for the review! Levels and weapon/mod interactions are both getting reworked next build, hopefully I'll manage to get more variety in. Multishot mutations have certain setups where I find them really powerful, but they are usually trash when equipped on the turret.
I absolutely suck at bullet hell, so thank you for making this game easy. The Overclock is very nice to learn bosses.
Had a bug at one point, mouse clicks would not shoot anymore. You can see me restarting the stage a few times, when that happens. Eventually I had to restart the game to make shooting work again.
Took me a bit to understand you can swap the weapons. Stages 3+ should be proc-gen’d, but it felt like they were always the same. The seed gets locked in?
Hmm, the seed shouldn't be locked in, but between the limited enemy / wave pattern variety maybe they tend to generate in similar ways? I expect this to be less of a problem once more content gets added in.
I've never seen the weapon bug you mention, I'll try reproducing it.
Thanks for your comments, and especially for streaming the game!
Simple, but very polished. overall great job for a first submission.
i don't wanna sit down a write a megapost on why your shump is bad from a design standpoint, because shmups are super niche, and in my opinion you shouldn't cater to that crowd in general
my question is, who is this game for? if this game is for shmup fans, this game is very VERY bad for multiple reasons.
if this game is a casual experience, or even just a test project to hone your skills, it's very good
if you are not catering to shmups fans, lose the ship as your player design and think something else (for ex, I've chosen knight). Some people did anime girls, cute animals... anything you want is better than a spaceship. Sadly spaceship are boring for the costumer if it's not a shmup fan. I dunno the lore of your game, but since this is a "warmind" an andorid/robot/robomaid waifu of anykind can be a thousand times better for your general appeal.
the main cannon that you aim with your mouse has a reason to exist only if piercing. i will talk more about the gun aiming, it's the only bad design i'll explain:
1 - mouse aiming let's you stand still in a safe spot and shoot down everthing. this can lead to very boring gameplay. This is vary bad, you need to keep the player moving around
2 - if you wanna dev a shmup with a gun that you aim, you should design challenges that use that mechanic. I need to have a reason to have a gun i can manually aim and dosen't just shoot forward. I'm talking about wave design, and enemies/bullets
3 - with this setup a controller is very hard to do well(again who is your player? does he play with a keyboard?). if you wanna go for a twinstick experience, player's aim will be very poor, so your man shoot should be a lot bigger to be useful in combat.
4 - a classic design flaw is to not "give a reason to not push a button". shotgun has a very long cd, so you click it when you need it, its hitbox is very strict, you can go pointblank and oneshot a boss, or go long range for a crowd control. it's a good design. (of course almost all old shmups had a fire button that you held down or rapidfire like raiden. that stuff it's just nostalgia)
random thoughts:
- i like the power setup a lot.
- shotgun is ver very powerful, and fun to use.
- folder and subfolder of your game should have a version, so we can recognize them (dd you used in the main folder is also fine)
- change the color for weapons/subsystems when they are in range of a socket. in general check path of exile/diablo/other arpg to have an idea on how to do your juice
- i like the art (care about ai accusations)
- ui for your slow can/should be a circle around your ship, see crimzon clover for a visual input
You raise a lot of good points I'm also wondering about.
I'm aiming for a wider, casual audience. I'd like the game to appeal to hardcore shmup players, and there'll certainly be ways to flex that skillset, but the overall design will lean towards ARPG mechanics and build customization. So the intention is part exploration in the vein of Star Control 2, part Path of Exile-style ridiculous build minmaxing, part twitch shmup gameplay. As such I'm pulling inspiration from all over the place and I'm not too concerned about genre conventions.
> lose the ship
The ships will be craftable and the player is expected to swap them often. I agree that currently it's not very exciting. Lore-wise, the fact that the forms you use are not human shaped is part of the vibe I'm going for, so I want to see if I can make it work despite the problems you mention.
> mouse & controller aiming
Good point about forcing player movement. I'd like for the offense to be more active, so DPS checks can to an extent be cleared with player skill instead of raw firepower. I've been thinking about directional damage reduction for enemies and/or optimal ranges.
Classic shmups are built the way they are out of necessity, given the controllers available at the time. I'm messing around to see if I can get something interesting by mixing in mechanics from dual stick shooters, survivorlikes etc, but it's possible I'll drop all that and go back to a basic shmup setup, with directional weapons + auto-aiming turrets, perhaps angle-restricted.
Gamepad aiming is a huge issue and I'm unsure where I'm going with this. Ideally I'd like the game to be playable with a dual stick setup, which would require either some kind of aim assist for the turret or, as you said, a wide cone of fire.
> reason not to push a button
The next version will have stronger and more resource-limited weapons, for now I wanted to explore a few basic designs.
I really like the targetable & forward facing weapon setup, but it be nice if the turret weapon was on autofire--especially for autocannon turret since when I tried that out I basically held down LMB the entire time (also the weapon customization system is great). Really great art--this looks like release quality work. The enemy design for the even levels is quite clever, in particular the enemies that rotate & enemies whose bullets return before shooting out again!
I think the difficulty is at a good place for a shmup--they always tend to be challenging. Plus the regenerating health (btw cool damage & recovery effects on the ship) and slow-mo help a lot. I'm looking forward to the rest of the game & I hope you keep up the progress!
Thanks! The weapon setup is something I'm still iterating on, but I'm growing attached to the scrolling shooter / twin stick shooter hybrid design space. Autofire is one route, making the faster weapons stronger but resource limited (e.g. ammo that auto-reloads when not firing) is another.
interesting idea being able to shoot in whatever direction i want, this isn't the standard in shmups
the drawings are high quality, but it's a shame about the lack of sound. you should consider using at the very least some royalty free placeholders for your next demo
also, the bullet hell situation gets WAY too hard. bring it down several notches
Thanks for the review! Yeah, itch had some kind of false positive thing going on, I had to bother them on discord to resolve it. Might be because I'm using an unpopular engine. The bullet hell is all over the place at the moment as the wave procgen is very much work in progress, I think the overall density is okay but the peaks are indeed over the top.
Comments
Pretty fun, Rockets + Damage buff + Shot Speed are OP. I really like Geiger-esque enemies.
Felt like the game would be too easy with regenerating HP and a slowduwn, but I was VERY wrong - later levels are pretty tough. Though main enemies were much tougher than the bosses. Again, rockets are OP, so I kinda breezed through, dying only on last levels a couple of times.
Levels felt like they repeat, no idea whether they do and only the HP of the enemies was changing (I don't think TTK for bosses changed).
But I really like your upgrade system, though it feels like some combinations or upgrades are complete trash (like the multishot). Overall feels like a good proof of concept, really cohesive, but needs more content.
Thanks for the review!
Levels and weapon/mod interactions are both getting reworked next build, hopefully I'll manage to get more variety in. Multishot mutations have certain setups where I find them really powerful, but they are usually trash when equipped on the turret.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2140459678
I absolutely suck at bullet hell, so thank you for making this game easy. The Overclock is very nice to learn bosses.
Had a bug at one point, mouse clicks would not shoot anymore. You can see me restarting the stage a few times, when that happens. Eventually I had to restart the game to make shooting work again.
Took me a bit to understand you can swap the weapons. Stages 3+ should be proc-gen’d, but it felt like they were always the same. The seed gets locked in?
Visuals are awesome!
Hmm, the seed shouldn't be locked in, but between the limited enemy / wave pattern variety maybe they tend to generate in similar ways? I expect this to be less of a problem once more content gets added in.
I've never seen the weapon bug you mention, I'll try reproducing it.
Thanks for your comments, and especially for streaming the game!
Tons of good, tons of bad.
Simple, but very polished. overall great job for a first submission.
i don't wanna sit down a write a megapost on why your shump is bad from a design standpoint, because shmups are super niche, and in my opinion you shouldn't cater to that crowd in general
my question is, who is this game for? if this game is for shmup fans, this game is very VERY bad for multiple reasons.
if this game is a casual experience, or even just a test project to hone your skills, it's very good
if you are not catering to shmups fans, lose the ship as your player design and think something else (for ex, I've chosen knight). Some people did anime girls, cute animals... anything you want is better than a spaceship. Sadly spaceship are boring for the costumer if it's not a shmup fan. I dunno the lore of your game, but since this is a "warmind" an andorid/robot/robomaid waifu of anykind can be a thousand times better for your general appeal.
the main cannon that you aim with your mouse has a reason to exist only if piercing. i will talk more about the gun aiming, it's the only bad design i'll explain:
1 - mouse aiming let's you stand still in a safe spot and shoot down everthing. this can lead to very boring gameplay. This is vary bad, you need to keep the player moving around
2 - if you wanna dev a shmup with a gun that you aim, you should design challenges that use that mechanic. I need to have a reason to have a gun i can manually aim and dosen't just shoot forward. I'm talking about wave design, and enemies/bullets
3 - with this setup a controller is very hard to do well(again who is your player? does he play with a keyboard?). if you wanna go for a twinstick experience, player's aim will be very poor, so your man shoot should be a lot bigger to be useful in combat.
4 - a classic design flaw is to not "give a reason to not push a button". shotgun has a very long cd, so you click it when you need it, its hitbox is very strict, you can go pointblank and oneshot a boss, or go long range for a crowd control. it's a good design. (of course almost all old shmups had a fire button that you held down or rapidfire like raiden. that stuff it's just nostalgia)
random thoughts:
- i like the power setup a lot.
- shotgun is ver very powerful, and fun to use.
- folder and subfolder of your game should have a version, so we can recognize them (dd you used in the main folder is also fine)
- change the color for weapons/subsystems when they are in range of a socket. in general check path of exile/diablo/other arpg to have an idea on how to do your juice
- i like the art (care about ai accusations)
- ui for your slow can/should be a circle around your ship, see crimzon clover for a visual input
Good Job and GL!
You raise a lot of good points I'm also wondering about.
I'm aiming for a wider, casual audience. I'd like the game to appeal to hardcore shmup players, and there'll certainly be ways to flex that skillset, but the overall design will lean towards ARPG mechanics and build customization. So the intention is part exploration in the vein of Star Control 2, part Path of Exile-style ridiculous build minmaxing, part twitch shmup gameplay. As such I'm pulling inspiration from all over the place and I'm not too concerned about genre conventions.
> lose the ship
The ships will be craftable and the player is expected to swap them often. I agree that currently it's not very exciting. Lore-wise, the fact that the forms you use are not human shaped is part of the vibe I'm going for, so I want to see if I can make it work despite the problems you mention.
> mouse & controller aiming
Good point about forcing player movement. I'd like for the offense to be more active, so DPS checks can to an extent be cleared with player skill instead of raw firepower. I've been thinking about directional damage reduction for enemies and/or optimal ranges.
Classic shmups are built the way they are out of necessity, given the controllers available at the time. I'm messing around to see if I can get something interesting by mixing in mechanics from dual stick shooters, survivorlikes etc, but it's possible I'll drop all that and go back to a basic shmup setup, with directional weapons + auto-aiming turrets, perhaps angle-restricted.
Gamepad aiming is a huge issue and I'm unsure where I'm going with this. Ideally I'd like the game to be playable with a dual stick setup, which would require either some kind of aim assist for the turret or, as you said, a wide cone of fire.
> reason not to push a button
The next version will have stronger and more resource-limited weapons, for now I wanted to explore a few basic designs.
Thanks for the in-depth review, I appreciate it!
I really like the targetable & forward facing weapon setup, but it be nice if the turret weapon was on autofire--especially for autocannon turret since when I tried that out I basically held down LMB the entire time (also the weapon customization system is great). Really great art--this looks like release quality work. The enemy design for the even levels is quite clever, in particular the enemies that rotate & enemies whose bullets return before shooting out again!
I think the difficulty is at a good place for a shmup--they always tend to be challenging. Plus the regenerating health (btw cool damage & recovery effects on the ship) and slow-mo help a lot. I'm looking forward to the rest of the game & I hope you keep up the progress!
Thanks! The weapon setup is something I'm still iterating on, but I'm growing attached to the scrolling shooter / twin stick shooter hybrid design space. Autofire is one route, making the faster weapons stronger but resource limited (e.g. ammo that auto-reloads when not firing) is another.
ok i took the plunge and it seems to be safe.
interesting idea being able to shoot in whatever direction i want, this isn't the standard in shmups
the drawings are high quality, but it's a shame about the lack of sound. you should consider using at the very least some royalty free placeholders for your next demo
also, the bullet hell situation gets WAY too hard. bring it down several notches
Thanks for the review! Yeah, itch had some kind of false positive thing going on, I had to bother them on discord to resolve it. Might be because I'm using an unpopular engine.
The bullet hell is all over the place at the moment as the wave procgen is very much work in progress, I think the overall density is okay but the peaks are indeed over the top.