Wow, I really appreciate the time you've put into your feedback.
A lot of the issues pointed out and suggestions made in regards to sprites I'll definitely be checking out after making improvements to the game design and some bug fixing (thanks for all the references and tutorials supplied!)
I’d recommend using a pre-made palette from a site like lospec
Actually I ended up using this palette I saw in Asperite: https://lospec.com/palette-list/matriax8c
My goal was to use something with a small selection of colors, as too many options tends to keep me second guessing myself. Plus being color blind, I found that the shades presented helped in distinguishing between the colors. That does NOT excuse me from properly using the colors in my pixel art, and will be something I'll be working on. I did forget to change up the color for the Tetris side and the borders, as both came from a tutorial I relied on for that portion of the game.
It could do with some music since the game is very quiet and has no passive audio (i.e. audio that is played without the player needing to do anything). There’s some aural feedback (when the player shoots and hits something) which is good but I think there could be more. As far as I can tell, there are no sound effects for the copilot (Tetris component). Perhaps something subtle like a SFX when the player rotates a piece or it hits the ground?
Audio was definitely neglected when making this game for the game jam. It was intentionally prioritized last and suffered due to scope creep and time (mis)management. Ironically I find audio cues important in gaming, especially when it comes to applying feedback to the player. Going to learn more on how to properly apply audio in Unity and how to manage it (e.g., volume balancing as you mentioned elsewhere).
I’m assuming this is a bug but sometimes the second wave doesn’t start...
Uff, sucks you encountered a bug with waves not starting. I'll see if I can reproduce those bugs in the waves you experienced them (wave 1 and wave 12). I also got an idea on how to better determine when a wave has been cleared.
Having both shields and health seems a bit unnecessary since they serve virtually the same purpose - giving the player another shot. Since the player isn’t alive (they’re a space ship) I’d recommend removing the health and just keeping the shield to reduce UI clutter
Really good point. Since the hearts can't regenerate, I was actually thinking of moving that in the UI and use lives counter instead tucked into a corner (e.g., player has 8 lives). So now when shield is depleted and the ship gets hit, ship explodes, decrement a life, respawn with a moment of invulnerability, and continue play. I think it would also add to the allusion of classic arcade games.
The Tetris component feels like it should be more important. Since I’m playing solo my first long playthrough was completely as the pilot and I found it easy enough.
Right now I think it's a level and enemy design issue. I need to do more playtesting to tailor the levels for the pilot to really rely on the copilot/Tetris player to provide shield regeneration and power-ups. For enemy design, the grunts (the enemies you see in the first few waves) actually start their shooting interval at a random time, in hopes of introducing some pattern variants for the pilot to deal it. However, as you mentioned elsewhere, that can actually make some of the levels extremely easy since you might not be shot at for a bit, so it's something I'm aiming to remediate (such as shooting more immediately at the start of a wave). Ideally the Wave 12 bugged wouldn't have occurred so you could have seen the later level designs and an introduction to a third enemy type.
I feel like you should think more about what is important to the game. Adding new mechanics that aren’t that important may be forgotten about by the player. For example, my first few runs didn’t involve the laser at all
This is another thing I want to see if better level/enemy design would help mitigate. I think with added pressure, besides relying on the copilot for shield and upgrades, exercising all of their attacking options will be important too, such as the laser and (later on) their special.
I think the Tetris component is too easy and I’m sure it would be even easier if you had a person playing who’s sole job is to do that. What makes Tetris difficult is that it gets faster. But in this game - it doesn’t, since the number of pieces depends on how many the Pilot picks up. And you can also choose which pieces get picked up
I agree with most everything here in regards to making it faster. It didn't have the effect I expected by coupling the speed with the number of pieces picked up by the pilot. That can easily be tweaked to increase the speed gained, but I think I'm going to toy around with tying speed to wave progression (e.g., wave 30 is gonna be a lot faster than wave 1). Ideally with the increased pressure, there would also be more communication on what the pieces the pilot should be picking up next.
When you hit the top of the Tetris grid you are met with a cooldown which I don’t really like. I think it also resets the bonuses gained from the Tetris component which I think is a good punishment. However, I feel like the cooldown doesn’t really serve much of point since it more or less punishes the copilot by just not letting them play
I'm going to think on this, see if there's something I can try out so the copilot wouldn't just staring at their screen. You're correct in that the bonuses can go down in level, but that's tied more to a decay rate that's happening in the background. The cooldown is meant to serve as a penalty by preventing shield regeneration and to let the decay rate run unopposed, as clearing lines is meant to keep bonuses from decaying. (I'm actually considering removing that decay mechanic, but that's another conversation for now).
Overall, it’s quite good! It’s certainly not a masterpiece or anything and it does have a lot of issues but I enjoyed playing it and that’s pretty much the most important thing. The idea of combining two games like this is quite innovative and definitely fits the theme very well in a way I haven’t seen before this jam.
I really appreciate it, this means a lot. I've always wanted to make an asymmetric co-op game, and figured with the theme this was my chance try it out. Plus I now have some references and tutorials I can work on to improve my development beyond my first game.
Again, thanks a ton for putting in the time and effort on providing me your feedback.