I discovered I can heal in the comments after playing a few times and after that it was too easy. You can just mindlessly go in one direction, sometimes clearing red enemies as a precaution. Discovering healing immediately removed all tension and excitement from the game, which made for a decent experience.
The combination of viewing range, screen panning delay, amount of enemies and lack of direction indicator makes me not want to use any more clever maneuvers.
Laser is too good as it's efficient at erasing red enemies and you can use it to offscreen enemies or detected them like radar. It also always shows current facing direction, which is something that is lacking otherwise to help with precise control.
Visuals are great, I love the background and water speed ripples are something I always wanted to add to my games.
I wish I could dogfight and play chicken with enemies, but the current concept wouldn't be able to handle that.
Had a good time with this game. Loved that the laser reflects on the water surface.
Not sure if I dig the circle thingy as a health indicator. It does the job but does it mean that if I don't take damage for 5 seconds I'm back to full health?
Never played this kind of game, but it looks like Luftrausers. Took me a bit to understand that you could only heal by not shooting, but after that it wasn't too hard to beat the demo. I seemed to have missed the existence of the laser though. The waves were each fun in their own way, the last one felt a bit busy so I was mostly running. The spawning enemies right in your face was annoying. Felt a bit weird that there seemed to be no ceiling or walls to the arena. I was disappointed that the water kills you. The current slow down + preventing HP regen would be more than enough I think. I could complain about a bunch but it's mostly visuals/sounds.
Spawn the player higher up so you don't fall into the water as soon as the game starts.
I feel like the fall speed should change based on your rotation instead of the plane always dropping like a rock.
Hide the cursor.
I don't see any reason to use the gun over the laser.
The gun feels really unsatisfying with the slow, comically oversized, pixelated projectiles.
I assume these sound effects are just placeholders and that you'll replace them with more realistic ones eventually. If not, they sound really bad.
You need to add a frame limit so the game doesn't run at hundreds or thousand of frames per second and cause GPUs to overheat.
The purple enemies can barely hurt you. The first minute before ranged enemies start spawning is just a waste of time.
With how fast enemies are and how small your field of view is, you can't really react to enemies coming from behind. There needs to be a radar or something to help you keep track of the main swarm of enemies. Maybe have enemies only spawn from certain locations. Having them spawn out of thin air just off screen in front of you feels a bit cheap.
Only your survival time matters and there's no incentive to kill enemies; you can beat the demo by just flying in a straight line while waving the laser up and down.
Interesting game, I hope you don't mind the Luftrausers comparisons but I played it a lot so they're inevitable for me:
I'm not the biggest fan of how prevalent melee enemies are, it shifts the gameplay from a cool dogfight to a messy escape where you're punished a bit too much if you ever stop running.
Also I'd prefer if the gravity didn't act so linearly, you can't really do cool stall dodging like you could in Luftrausers. Enemies being able to enter the water without any trouble makes it just an obstacle and the fact that there's no clouds means you can just climb forever.
The gun sounds annoying and it doesn't seem to ever be worth using over the laser.
The moving background reacting to your inputs is a really cool idea and the visuals in general aren't bad.
Pretty good for what it is but you gotta give it something unique if you want the game to stand out form Luftrausers.
Can you explain what you mean by linearly? And what is stall dodging exactly?
Okay I replayed Luftrausers just to make sure I wasn't talking out of my ass and basically I was merging two completely different nitpicks:
Gravity seem to works the same way, what's different is the plane acceleration: it's a little slower in Luftrausers which makes the plane more weighty and also makes it easier to move at slower speed, which to be fair is way more useful in Luftrausers' bullethell dogfight than in your game so it's probably better for what you're going for, By stalling I meant just cutting off the engines while going upwards, you can still do it here but it doesn't help at all against the homing melee enemies while in Luftrausers it's an high risk maneuver that lets you aim better while still messing up the enemy tracking since you're constantly decelerating.
Sorry for the confusion, I was going by memory. Bonus feedback: waves using a timer are kind of dull, a score requirement for advancing would be more fun.
Was able to cheese my way to victory. Flying in one direction constantly or not firing seems to work, as you regenerate health very quickly.
the movement is so fun, I was so caught up in doing fun maneuvers that end up getting me killed
the water splashing effects and laser reflection are really neat
the visual contrast between jet/enemies and the background is great, no problems there
not being able to fly into space was sad
the health indicator looks bad (obviously)
game mechanics work well and were interesting (regenerating by not shooting)
wished for a shock-combo by shooting projectiles with the laser
Didn't encounter any bugs or problems. Very nice.
Edit: One issue I had was, that when descending the water appeared so fast, I'd end up diving and dying. Some "Warning: Pull up" indicator would be nice.
Thanks for playing! Shooting stops health regen. So either A) you were shooting non stop and didn't notice there's regen at all, B) didn't get hit, or C) it's simply not as self-evident as I thought.
>What are you going to do to differentiate your game from luftrausers?
I want a gameplay run session to be longer and have more variety to it, and add more meta-progression like unlocks and achievements to pad out the game time.
I was thinking of adding upgrades like in roguelites, but I don't think "numbers go up" upgrades work really well for this type of game to the point of shooting million bullets per second. But on the other hand too small of a change wouldn't feel satisfying. Jet Lancer and Hyperspace Dogfights already have this and I felt the change to gameplay is too small. To me it feels boring to get these "upgrades" between waves (also you often get pointless upgrades that work for stuff you don't have).
I want to have a some big change that flips the gameplay by 45 degrees and requires player to adjust, like having to switch weapons between waves or changing enemy types to require different movement patter or something.
But who know, I don't really have a precise vission. My dev plan is to first get close to a Luftrausers-like that feels cool to fly and shoot and then deviate from there and experiment looking for stuff that works.
My final goal in my mind looks more like a Hyperspace Dogfights (but better) rather than Luftrausers.
Comments
I hope watching me play with some commentary is going to be useful to you
DD53 feedback videos:
Demo Day 53 videos of games starting with letters from A – J:
https://mega.nz/folder/DdVwTYAK#ZsxVSpsd5L2yvgaqtcvBsA
Demo Day 53 videos of games starting with letters from K – Z:
https://mega.nz/folder/zBIi2A5T#DE3_eooG3HE-K3XTmpnR0g
Reminds me of rocket sword.
I discovered I can heal in the comments after playing a few times and after that it was too easy. You can just mindlessly go in one direction, sometimes clearing red enemies as a precaution. Discovering healing immediately removed all tension and excitement from the game, which made for a decent experience.
The combination of viewing range, screen panning delay, amount of enemies and lack of direction indicator makes me not want to use any more clever maneuvers.
Laser is too good as it's efficient at erasing red enemies and you can use it to offscreen enemies or detected them like radar. It also always shows current facing direction, which is something that is lacking otherwise to help with precise control.
Visuals are great, I love the background and water speed ripples are something I always wanted to add to my games.
I wish I could dogfight and play chicken with enemies, but the current concept wouldn't be able to handle that.
I think this plays pretty well. The gun sounds are unaffected by the volume slider, and they're quite loud.
Video Feedback:
TL:DW. Lazer OPHad a good time with this game. Loved that the laser reflects on the water surface.
Not sure if I dig the circle thingy as a health indicator. It does the job but does it mean that if I don't take damage for 5 seconds I'm back to full health?
Never played this kind of game, but it looks like Luftrausers. Took me a bit to understand that you could only heal by not shooting, but after that it wasn't too hard to beat the demo. I seemed to have missed the existence of the laser though. The waves were each fun in their own way, the last one felt a bit busy so I was mostly running. The spawning enemies right in your face was annoying. Felt a bit weird that there seemed to be no ceiling or walls to the arena. I was disappointed that the water kills you. The current slow down + preventing HP regen would be more than enough I think. I could complain about a bunch but it's mostly visuals/sounds.
Game looks cool, keep it up.
Thanks for playing, feedback and some very good ideas.
>You need to add a frame limit so the game doesn't run at hundreds or thousand of frames per second and cause GPUs to overheat.
Thanks for telling me this because I turned it off because I didn't understand why there's a limit lol.
Interesting game, I hope you don't mind the Luftrausers comparisons but I played it a lot so they're inevitable for me:
I'm not the biggest fan of how prevalent melee enemies are, it shifts the gameplay from a cool dogfight to a messy escape where you're punished a bit too much if you ever stop running.
Also I'd prefer if the gravity didn't act so linearly, you can't really do cool stall dodging like you could in Luftrausers.
Enemies being able to enter the water without any trouble makes it just an obstacle and the fact that there's no clouds means you can just climb forever.
The gun sounds annoying and it doesn't seem to ever be worth using over the laser.
The moving background reacting to your inputs is a really cool idea and the visuals in general aren't bad.
Pretty good for what it is but you gotta give it something unique if you want the game to stand out form Luftrausers.
>Also I'd prefer if the gravity didn't act so linearly, you can't really do cool stall dodging
Can you explain what you mean by linearly? And what is stall dodging exactly? Gliding?
Thanks for playing and feedback.
Okay I replayed Luftrausers just to make sure I wasn't talking out of my ass and basically I was merging two completely different nitpicks:
Gravity seem to works the same way, what's different is the plane acceleration: it's a little slower in Luftrausers which makes the plane more weighty and also makes it easier to move at slower speed, which to be fair is way more useful in Luftrausers' bullethell dogfight than in your game so it's probably better for what you're going for,
By stalling I meant just cutting off the engines while going upwards, you can still do it here but it doesn't help at all against the homing melee enemies while in Luftrausers it's an high risk maneuver that lets you aim better while still messing up the enemy tracking since you're constantly decelerating.
Sorry for the confusion, I was going by memory.
Bonus feedback: waves using a timer are kind of dull, a score requirement for advancing would be more fun.
Really fun!
Didn't encounter any bugs or problems. Very nice.
Edit:
One issue I had was, that when descending the water appeared so fast, I'd end up diving and dying. Some "Warning: Pull up" indicator would be nice.
No commentary video.
Thanks for feedback and gameplay recording.
>One issue I had was, that when descending the water appeared so fast, I'd end up diving and dying. Some "Warning: Pull up" indicator would be nice.
Yeah this is a big problem. I think I'll add some sort of indicator, because I tried to wrangle camera to remedy this, but the effect was bad.
>wished for a shock-combo by shooting projectiles with the laser
This is could be cool, I'll see how that could work.
Nice game! Here's my feedback:
- I like the effect when a bullet hits the water.
- I like the health circle.
- The artstyle lacks cohesiveness. Mix of pixel art, cartoon 2D and low poly 3D is weird.
- The bullet sound effect gets old fast.
- As far as I know there's no reason to not shoot, so why is it not on autofire?
The gameplay has potential. I hope you keep working on your game.
Thanks for playing!
Shooting stops health regen.
So either A) you were shooting non stop and didn't notice there's regen at all, B) didn't get hit, or C) it's simply not as self-evident as I thought.
What are you going to do to differentiate your game from luftrausers?
>Shooting stops health regen.
Ah I see, that should have been obvious.
>What are you going to do to differentiate your game from luftrausers?
I want a gameplay run session to be longer and have more variety to it, and add more meta-progression like unlocks and achievements to pad out the game time.
I was thinking of adding upgrades like in roguelites, but I don't think "numbers go up" upgrades work really well for this type of game to the point of shooting million bullets per second. But on the other hand too small of a change wouldn't feel satisfying.
Jet Lancer and Hyperspace Dogfights already have this and I felt the change to gameplay is too small. To me it feels boring to get these "upgrades" between waves (also you often get pointless upgrades that work for stuff you don't have).
I want to have a some big change that flips the gameplay by 45 degrees and requires player to adjust, like having to switch weapons between waves or changing enemy types to require different movement patter or something.
But who know, I don't really have a precise vission. My dev plan is to first get close to a Luftrausers-like that feels cool to fly and shoot and then deviate from there and experiment looking for stuff that works.
My final goal in my mind looks more like a Hyperspace Dogfights (but better) rather than Luftrausers.