Hi, let's talk about the game. The projectiles need to be more dodgeable, it will make the game much more fun. As it is facing off against 1 or 2 enemies isn't difficult but soon enough my screen fills up with viruses. Are they viruses? And why are the floating men barraging me with them. I know I'm nitpicking but this game doesn't really make sense, there's no correlation between the title and the actual game. But let's move onto something that actually matters. I suppose that the enemies spawn in a fixed manner, which isn't noticeable when the screen is as chaotic as it gets in this game, but variety and unpredictability are always nice. I said that the enemies feel like they're floating, to fix this I recommend making them look at the player, or rather to look in the player's direction. So flip the sprite on the X axis, depending on the player's X position. I also didn't get too far so I don't know if there are more enemies. I also feel like the game is too claustrophobic, which emphasizes the said difficulty problem. The main reason is that the enemies have a high fire rate and the projectiles are also quite big. I also find the grenades to be unusable, since they take a long time to explode and when they do the enemies will have already changed position; I don't know how large the explosion radius is but I don't think it helps in this case. All and all this was a good effort, well done.
Viewing post in Don't Open. COVID Outside jam comments
I mean, I only had like three days to work on this completely alone ahahah Anyway:
- Initially the game map should have been a much bigger city full of diseased, but in the end I didn't have time to work on that. The game should have also worked with waves of enemies and feature some mini bosses, but, again, no time for that either, so we ended up with a little space and generic enemies. In any case, the backstory or whatever is in the game page. But don't worry, you're right, I wanted to add it to the game itself too, but, again, didn't have time. The latest version I made (that I'm waiting for the end of the jam to publish, but you can see the source code on GitLab, the link is on the game page) does actually have a How to Play screen with those details.
- The sprite of the characters are not actually just sprites: they're bodies composed of 5 different sprites, one for the body, two for the arms and two for the legs. That was necessary for the player to be able to follow the mouse with the left arm, and I decided to do the same for the enemies. This means, however, that it's not at all easy to flip the sprite, as I have to make a completely new running animation to make it works. Which is doable, but I actually worked on them like three hours before the deadline, so I had to leave it for the future. (In the end I kinda like how silly they look, so I'm not completely sure if I want to do that, but we'll see on that)
- In the published version, the spawn of the enemies are fixed, yea. If you kill them fast enough you can actually see their pattern. In the latest version I changed it a little bit. I actually changed the code of everything: enemies, loot spawn and enemies spawn, making the game definitely less challenging at first and more and more challenging as the time goes. I would love if you'd also play that version when it comes out to give me a feedback to improve it even more!
- The idea was to actually have different kinds of enemies, but in the end I didn't have time to work on that. Maybe I will do it if I ever decide to work on the wave mode I talked about before.
- I also reworked the grenades, like, completely ahahah They weren't supposed to work like that! If you read the instructions this is pretty clear. I made them and I immediately realized they were like flying around the screen like comets or something. I wanted to take a look on that, but in the end I was way behind schedule and had to give up. In the latest version not only you don't throw them at all, but just drop them on the ground, but they kill every enemy on the screen in literally just a second. Way more useful to have a better control of the field (but they do spawn less frequently).
In any case, thanks very very much for your feedback and your suggestions! I really appreciate them! And, of course, thank you for playing my game!