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Hey! Took me a while to get used to the controls (using both WASD and arrow keys is an unfamiliar experience for me lmao). It would be good to have some key remapping feature to make it more user friendly. But, for an early build, the game is brilliant!

I like how attacks and blocks have to be timed to have an effect, but since my skills in video games are terrible, I learned that I could spam the secondary attack and that would prevent the enemy from attacking you. Might be a bug, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I've put some things down below that you might want to consider, if you aren't already:

  • Some way to have the character heal slowly over time, but only up to a certain point. (75% for example)
  • You could add some scoring system, for every enemy you defeat, which helps the player become invested into getting a better score than they did before.
    • You could gain this score from killing, picking up items. ect
  • A UI/GUI update could be implemented, but that doesn't need to be done for a while yet.

I thought I might as well put some stuff that you've done really well too:

  • The sprites look really nice!
  • Love the parallax background and foreground, adds a sense of depth to the game.
  • The way it swings enemies into the frame instead of just spawning out of frame and walking in is a pleasant touch and adds some relative realism to it.
  • There's much more that I could add, but this comment is too long already!

I really like this game, even in an early build. Much more than I've ever done with a project myself because I distract myself way too often. So, props to you!

(I survived up to wave 2, by the way. Not great but, again, I'm super bad at video games.)

Thank you so much for taking the time to give all this feedback. It's really helpful getting an outside perspective. I'll try to respond to it all with my own thoughts and plans if I have them.

  • WASD + arrow keys. Yeah... bit weird huh! The inputs are nice and easy to change, I'd be interested in your thoughts on a more natural mapping. At this point I don't feel confident in my ability to create a custom mapping solution, but I can always change the mappings.
  • The secondary attack spamming. Yeah, I've noticed that, and I've tried to nerf it a bit by putting a slight delay/recovery on it after you hit a few times. It also doesn't do a lot of damage, so it's only got while facing a single enemy. Once you're being attack from both sides (rolling away to line them up is my current trick lol) then it's not very helpful and doing more damage with the primary seems to work better. 
  • I hadn't planned on a timed healing function. However, this week I've begun work on a health pickup (rum bottles which you will find in smashable barrels). These give you a 75% health boost, but at your own risk: you can't cancel the drink animation, and you're vulnerable while you drink. Also, only one bottle will spawn per wave, so you have to choose when to use it (can't go over 100% health)
  • My thoughts around score were to keep it simple and make the score be what wave you get up to. Obviously right now it's not very easy to get through many waves (my max is 5!), but I  was just thinking that your score would be what wave you survived to, and I could implement a high score record based on that. I need to learn how though! Also, I've got ideas for more challenge and difficulty at later waves, but I need to also not let the project blow up to crazy proportions, it is a first game after all. However, if I get enough encouragement and enough people are asking to see more from the game then of course I'll keep going with new features.

Thanks for your positive notes too, really encouraging to hear.
I'll share a new version of the game in about a month once I've made a few significant changes! I'll look forward to more feedback then :)

Cheers,
Ben

Yeah, I fully understand that some of what I had said may not be possible with devs who are less experienced than others, like me and you (especially me). I mean, I’ve only just found an idea for a small project that I might actually stick to for once lmao.

For controls, I’d maybe swap out primary and secondary attacks to left and right mouse buttons respectively. And the block could be set to the Ctrl key, imo I just find that easier as my left hand is usually where the WASD keys are and my right hand is usually on my mouse.

Like the idea of the health pickup feature, I feel like having to choose when to use it may make the game feel strategic in a way, making choices that may end in the characters death adds to the game a lot. I can also see that the waves may be a good way of the player seeing thier personal progress, and has the same insentive as the scoring system I mentioned.

I’d be hella proud if this was my first game! Sure, it needs some polishing but doing this in a month (give or take) is amazing.

Gonna be poised to try the next released build! :D

Ty