Post by Miles "Chuunibyou" Yalzin in Zordak comments

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I got all the way to the first boss, didn't beat it because it wasn't very fun to fight against.

That being said, the art direction and sound desing are simply phenomenal, you really nailed that Metroid vibe perfectly. And the design of the first boss was really cool! The ambience tracks can feel repetitive, they do the trick of being ambience but they don't hold my attention for very long like Lower Brinstar or Norfair get to do, I would make the actual loops way longer.

I also feel like the initial areas are way too small so it's hard to get a feel and identity for each one, so it ends up feeling more like Metroid Fusion than it's bigger brother Metroid Fusion. The fact that a lot of progression is hidden behind shootable blocks makes me feel like they are there without much rhyme or reason and it kinda defeats the purpose of feeling like a secret when they're so many one after the other.

Also, only 2 rockets at the start? Come on, at least gimme 5, let me have fun blowing stuff up! I know the drop rate of rockets is like crazy high but I still feel like 2 doesn't let me get excited to start blasting stuff around.

Overall I think it shows a lot of promise and it can be polished into a great game if you keep working on it. Again, the art is crazy good and the animations feel nice! But there's much more to a Metroid game than the aesthetics of it, and I just don't get the same feeling of adventure with Zordak.

Please keep up the good work! I'll be looking forwards to more updates.

Apapappa4 years ago

Hey, thanks for trying the demo.

The boss will continue to get improvements over time, for example: currently I think it's still a bit too random and it doesn't always give the player much time to hit it, so those will be improved upon at some point.

All music and most sound will be reworked later so expect these things to change, the current music is just something quick I threw together a long time ago so I understand.

So, I simply can't make everything as big as in Super Metroid so the rooms will be smaller in this game, that being said, there are bigger rooms in the full game than in the demo.

And if you mean areas like full zones and not just rooms, the same answer still applies.

I don't really consider the progression parts as secrets even though they are somewhat hidden, I think of it more like puzzles and this is one of the main mechanics of the game, so this is not really going to stop.

But I get what you mean, things can get a bit repetitive and I'm trying to come up with new things you have to do as the game progresses, not much of that is in the demo after a certain point though unfortunately.

The reason for the low ammo count is that I don't want the player to be able to spam the missiles but rather use them in specific scenarios like tougher enemies, bosses and such.

So this will probably not change, I'm not completely sure though.

Of course there's more than aesthetics to a Metroid game like the music and movement mechanics for example but I'm not making an actual Metroid game here so things will be different.

I'll just say what I always do:

I'm trying to make Super Metroid but not Super Metroid.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback, glad you like the demo overall. :)

Miles "Chuunibyou" Yalzin4 years ago

If it's puzzles what you're going for I think you're going on a good path, I'm not a huge puzzle fan so I can't comment too much on that. Experimenting with that concept can be a lot of fun if you push the puzzle aspect really hard into the game and you could get away with the smaller areas if they're all full of entertaining puzzles. It would really make Zordak stand on it's own if you manage to pull such a thing since it'll be quite unique.

Just wanted to say that because it did feel more like a puzzles overall.

Once again, keep up the good work and looking forwards to more stuff!

Apapappa4 years ago

Yeah, puzzles, exploration and bosses will be the main focus.

General enemy combat is considered more like an "annoyance", most of them are pretty much there to be in your way.

So.. yeah, we'll see how it turns out, thanks again for the feedback. :)

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