Glad to see this back, though I'm a little disappointed since I like roguelikes more.
-Interesting choice to let you control the boat from anywhere on it. Controls are ok I suppose.
-Instead of boating I jump into the drink, but I seem to breath underwater. Swimming feels odd, and despite not knowing the key I just intuited that pressing E would climb me back onto the boat, which also works on the shore ledge somewhat surprisingly. We now have a way out.
-Nevermind I can actually drown, good to know. And a piece of thought, I notice that it's ctrl to go down in water, space to go up. Though, I wonder if it's better to map up to shift since it then mirrors the boat controls? idk
-Jumped onto a shark thing and shanked it like a proper fisherman, not sure why since I can't do anything with it it seems.
-Beating up Hawaiians is more fun than I imagined. Gun feels alright. Also, it seems like you can stand on the shore angled wall/ledge and walk along it, but can't jump or press E, so you have to be awkward and go into the water to then get back on land. (And one time the E to get on land didn't work and I was teleported onto the shore wall/ledge as described.)
-Having to backtrack to my boat after slaying some guys, I almost wish I could control the boat from land for the heck of it, so I could maneuver it to me faster.
-Your anti slope climbing is too aggressive, I'm going up the mountain and I'm getting stuck on small slopes! See pic, also you can see the inside face of the grass from this low angle.
-I realize the gun is odd, since it takes so many shots to kill, but you can one-shot with melee. Why can't I head shot them like I can head chop? Maybe the bullets aren't going where I think. [later] Yeah it's less accurate than I thought.
-Blowdarts are annoying, but manageable. No rewards for killing them though. Also, I only now realized there's glass in the cabin that prevents shots! Don't make that literally invisible, it's gameplay.
-Died of crabs when getting rifle, but I kept it after respawn. I assume it's so forgiving since it's intended for testing.
-I kind of just played the demo until the end after that point, here's some thoughts.
Blunderbuss only takes one ammo per shot, which seems odd given the ammo icon being 4 pellets. You could group the pellets into a circle of the pellets, which would better get the point across. Though I must say this feels like a really weak shotgun, since most of your shot misses, and when it does hit it isn't the headshot which is so effective it's almost necessary to focus on it to conserve ammo. Though most of my time using it was when I ran out of ammo and had to finish off the stragglers. Not the intended use case!
Combat and by extension the enemy variety is there, but it doesn't feel like much yet. It's your standard strafe and shoot, and the enemies do different attacks but are otherwise very similar to one another. I suppose there are the monkeys, but they're more like natural hazards you 'dodge' by walking in a straight line.
Boss was mediocre, but did the job of soaking up damage. Due to the arena doing nothing special and the boss doing ranged attacks, it wasn't much different to what I had done up to that point.
The boat doesn't seem to really mean much right now, besides as a mean to travel between locations. I would like it more incorporated, like you upgrade it with materials and you now have a mini turret you can supply with darts or whatever to shoot at your enemies. Or being able to find treasure spots in the water with it, maybe boat battles where you can ram the enemy vessel. Something to spice it up. But, if it stayed as is it isn't the end of the world, it just feels like a not so great gimmick to go between FPS arenas.
I still have an Itch for making something turn based so the original HoE is not totally off the plate yet, I named this game after it because I realized that it was basically the same setting and also I didn't want it to be called "Boat game". But yeah I'll be focusing on either this game or tankgame for a while.
The boat doesn't seem to really mean much right now, besides as a mean to travel between locations
Yeah I started making the game 8 days before DD and the level like 10 hours before the deadline so there wasn't any time to make everything proper. My original intention was to have some sort of inventory system so that the player can stash resources on the boat while also having to plan and gear up for expeditions away from the boat. I will have to rework combat completely if I decide to go on a more survivor/resource management sort of thing though. Still weighing my options.
I only now realized there's glass in the cabin that prevents shots!
Whoops, genuine mistake. I noticed I was getting stuck around the front of the boat so I added a collision and didn't realize that it would also collide with bullets, my bad.
Anyway thanks again for the breakdown of your experience and thanks for playing!
Had a chuckle at some of your reactions, especially the spike pit part. I will definitely implement some shader caching technique, usually I have particles and stuff hidden behind the main menu but I ran out of time. If I continue to work on this I'll make sure physics and player movement are top priority, it's honestly a miracle how the boat can be unstuck so consistently but I'm noticing a lot of players are getting stuck on its collision when trying to jump out and momentum transfer rarely works as intended.
Anyway thanks again for the feedback, it's been useful.
I like it. Its somewhat difficult and I almost got killed sometimes. The boat controls are not very intuitive and shift as an accelerator button activates the windows Sticky Key prompt sometimes. I got stuck between the terrain and boat at one point and quit after that.
The graphics remind me of the original Stranded game and I would lean more into that style and how the NPCs looked in that.
It was fun. There was a nice sense of increasing difficulty, although the monkey area was pretty crazy and I hugged a wall to avoid it. I liked the spike jumping part. It seems like the kind of game where you could be separated from the boat to give a feeling that the danger has increased before meeting up with it again.
I played pretty conservatively with ammo but I was still getting low by the end, I think it's because of the high amount of shots to kill and the high movement speed of enemies leading to missed shots.
The game was really forgiving. I'd like it more if respawns didn't save your progress and heal you, and I think it'd be more fun if the boat could take damage from crashing and if it takes too much you lose/have to jump in the water and fix it. I'd also prefer if you had to stay in the cockpit to control the boat so as to be more immersive and make positioning on the boat a factor. I kept pressing CTRL to try to crouch and dodge shots while on the boat.
The SFX and the early PC/PSX graphics were nice but I thought it would be better with 3D enemies instead of billboards.
Whatever direction I decide to take the game towards I'll experiment with 3d enemies for sure, billboards were more of a necessity to try and meet the DD deadline, which is also the reason for ammo balance being a bit off and the game not having a proper save/load system.
the reload time for the rifle seems pretty long considering that it's single shot and doesn't even ohko some enemies
i like the complex vehicles you have in your games and i liked the "far cry" vibe this game had in swimming around with a knife fighting with the locals, but i've personally never been a fan of 3d games with 2d sprites that don't billboard.
maybe make the button to open the barriers a bit more obvious, thought i was stuck for a bit. the sound for the revolver is so bassy it cracked me up, similarly the monkeys seem super loud compared to the rest of the sounds. controlling the boat is fun, takes some practice to get good at. i was hoping for some kind of boat to boat combat as steering the boat and shooting at the same was the most fun. running out of ammo happened alot and makes you pretty powerless. reason i died was mostly because of lack of ammo. maybe put ammo on the boat? the bullet trajectory seems randomized by a bit too much, long range shots were pretty hard because of this
Comments
Glad to see this back, though I'm a little disappointed since I like roguelikes more.
-Interesting choice to let you control the boat from anywhere on it. Controls are ok I suppose.
-Instead of boating I jump into the drink, but I seem to breath underwater. Swimming feels odd, and despite not knowing the key I just intuited that pressing E would climb me back onto the boat, which also works on the shore ledge somewhat surprisingly. We now have a way out.
-Nevermind I can actually drown, good to know. And a piece of thought, I notice that it's ctrl to go down in water, space to go up. Though, I wonder if it's better to map up to shift since it then mirrors the boat controls? idk
-Jumped onto a shark thing and shanked it like a proper fisherman, not sure why since I can't do anything with it it seems.
-Beating up Hawaiians is more fun than I imagined. Gun feels alright. Also, it seems like you can stand on the shore angled wall/ledge and walk along it, but can't jump or press E, so you have to be awkward and go into the water to then get back on land. (And one time the E to get on land didn't work and I was teleported onto the shore wall/ledge as described.)
-Having to backtrack to my boat after slaying some guys, I almost wish I could control the boat from land for the heck of it, so I could maneuver it to me faster.
-Your anti slope climbing is too aggressive, I'm going up the mountain and I'm getting stuck on small slopes! See pic, also you can see the inside face of the grass from this low angle.
-I realize the gun is odd, since it takes so many shots to kill, but you can one-shot with melee. Why can't I head shot them like I can head chop? Maybe the bullets aren't going where I think. [later] Yeah it's less accurate than I thought.
-Blowdarts are annoying, but manageable. No rewards for killing them though. Also, I only now realized there's glass in the cabin that prevents shots! Don't make that literally invisible, it's gameplay.
-Died of crabs when getting rifle, but I kept it after respawn. I assume it's so forgiving since it's intended for testing.
-I kind of just played the demo until the end after that point, here's some thoughts.
Blunderbuss only takes one ammo per shot, which seems odd given the ammo icon being 4 pellets. You could group the pellets into a circle of the pellets, which would better get the point across. Though I must say this feels like a really weak shotgun, since most of your shot misses, and when it does hit it isn't the headshot which is so effective it's almost necessary to focus on it to conserve ammo. Though most of my time using it was when I ran out of ammo and had to finish off the stragglers. Not the intended use case!
Combat and by extension the enemy variety is there, but it doesn't feel like much yet. It's your standard strafe and shoot, and the enemies do different attacks but are otherwise very similar to one another. I suppose there are the monkeys, but they're more like natural hazards you 'dodge' by walking in a straight line.
Boss was mediocre, but did the job of soaking up damage. Due to the arena doing nothing special and the boss doing ranged attacks, it wasn't much different to what I had done up to that point.
The boat doesn't seem to really mean much right now, besides as a mean to travel between locations. I would like it more incorporated, like you upgrade it with materials and you now have a mini turret you can supply with darts or whatever to shoot at your enemies. Or being able to find treasure spots in the water with it, maybe boat battles where you can ram the enemy vessel. Something to spice it up. But, if it stayed as is it isn't the end of the world, it just feels like a not so great gimmick to go between FPS arenas.
Suppose that's it, keep up the good work.
Thanks for the feedback!
I still have an Itch for making something turn based so the original HoE is not totally off the plate yet, I named this game after it because I realized that it was basically the same setting and also I didn't want it to be called "Boat game".
But yeah I'll be focusing on either this game or tankgame for a while.
Yeah I started making the game 8 days before DD and the level like 10 hours before the deadline so there wasn't any time to make everything proper.
My original intention was to have some sort of inventory system so that the player can stash resources on the boat while also having to plan and gear up for expeditions away from the boat. I will have to rework combat completely if I decide to go on a more survivor/resource management sort of thing though. Still weighing my options.
Whoops, genuine mistake. I noticed I was getting stuck around the front of the boat so I added a collision and didn't realize that it would also collide with bullets, my bad.
Anyway thanks again for the breakdown of your experience and thanks for playing!
Video feedback. I enjoyed my time playing the game.
Thanks for the video!
Had a chuckle at some of your reactions, especially the spike pit part.
I will definitely implement some shader caching technique, usually I have particles and stuff hidden behind the main menu but I ran out of time.
If I continue to work on this I'll make sure physics and player movement are top priority, it's honestly a miracle how the boat can be unstuck so consistently but I'm noticing a lot of players are getting stuck on its collision when trying to jump out and momentum transfer rarely works as intended.
Anyway thanks again for the feedback, it's been useful.
I like it. Its somewhat difficult and I almost got killed sometimes. The boat controls are not very intuitive and shift as an accelerator button activates the windows Sticky Key prompt sometimes. I got stuck between the terrain and boat at one point and quit after that.
The graphics remind me of the original Stranded game and I would lean more into that style and how the NPCs looked in that.
Overall a very nice game.
It was fun. There was a nice sense of increasing difficulty, although the monkey area was pretty crazy and I hugged a wall to avoid it. I liked the spike jumping part. It seems like the kind of game where you could be separated from the boat to give a feeling that the danger has increased before meeting up with it again.
I played pretty conservatively with ammo but I was still getting low by the end, I think it's because of the high amount of shots to kill and the high movement speed of enemies leading to missed shots.
The game was really forgiving. I'd like it more if respawns didn't save your progress and heal you, and I think it'd be more fun if the boat could take damage from crashing and if it takes too much you lose/have to jump in the water and fix it. I'd also prefer if you had to stay in the cockpit to control the boat so as to be more immersive and make positioning on the boat a factor. I kept pressing CTRL to try to crouch and dodge shots while on the boat.
The SFX and the early PC/PSX graphics were nice but I thought it would be better with 3D enemies instead of billboards.
Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
Whatever direction I decide to take the game towards I'll experiment with 3d enemies for sure, billboards were more of a necessity to try and meet the DD deadline, which is also the reason for ammo balance being a bit off and the game not having a proper save/load system.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2400212381
Boat gameplay was fun / relaxing.
Thanks for the video!
the range of the blunderbuss seems pretty short.
the reload time for the rifle seems pretty long considering that it's single shot and doesn't even ohko some enemies
i like the complex vehicles you have in your games and i liked the "far cry" vibe this game had in swimming around with a knife fighting with the locals, but i've personally never been a fan of 3d games with 2d sprites that don't billboard.
very immersion breaking imho
Surprisingly really fun. Things I would like to see:
i played trough the whole demo. some thoughts
maybe make the button to open the barriers a bit more obvious, thought i was stuck for a bit.
the sound for the revolver is so bassy it cracked me up, similarly the monkeys seem super loud compared to the rest of the sounds.
controlling the boat is fun, takes some practice to get good at. i was hoping for some kind of boat to boat combat as steering the boat and shooting at the same was the most fun.
running out of ammo happened alot and makes you pretty powerless. reason i died was mostly because of lack of ammo. maybe put ammo on the boat?
the bullet trajectory seems randomized by a bit too much, long range shots were pretty hard because of this
nice demo!
Thanks for playing.
Sorry about the ammo and the volume, I didn't get enough time to playtest so some things slipped through the cracks.