Neat little game, really nice hit feedback.
Played it on the stream, in case you wanted to see some gameplay:
Viewing post in The Banisher jam comments
Thank you so much for playing and recording a video, it has been so helpful! I'm glad you like my username also! I'll just go through everything brought up in the video
- Initially when you were having the freezing and input issues, I was wondering if you'd notice in the game's description on screen it has a section about how to fix them. I have noted that I rely too much on the information I put in there. Good to know!
- Regarding fullscreen, I assumed that there would be an option below the game window but sadly it seems that's a feature of unity web players only. The game does actually support full screen, as that's what I used while testing it. If I had provided a downloadable version, you'd have been able to enable fullscreen in that.
- The ground is not meant to be reflective, they are meant to be shadows, perhaps I could have added some kind of texture to make that clearer. I agree it does look kind of shiny!
- Now looking back, I perhaps could have worded the "make a kill every 60 seconds" differently, as you're not really killing them, you're sending them to the portal. Maybe I could have made the portal arrows next to each monster flash a different colour.
- When you mentioned that you thought the black hearts were heart cases, what do you mean? That sounds interesting.
- Currently there is nothing that you can spend gold on, but the idea was to be able to purchase better scythes that were more powerful or could attack different trees to unlock the monsters in those ones.
- I'm really glad to hear that the hit feedback is satisfying, I will have to add some enemies that take damage!
I have given you a follow on twitch! Beyond everything you mentioned in the video, did you have any other feedback? But this has already been so useful to me to see a different perspective.
Would you be interested in testing future versions / projects? Thanks again!
Thank you for such a through breakdown/ reply to the points brought up in the video and thank you for the follow.
In regard to the heart "containers", it was just because the heart colour was black, without even realising it, I automatically assumed that it wasn't my actual health, but more of a "container" for my health, kind of like my max health. I expected them to fill up with red as I gained health. I think this is because I am just used to hearts being red when indicating health, but once I saw that taking damage removed the black hearts, I realised that those were actual heath indicators.
I think other than things mentioned in the stream, the only other thing is that a few times that I got killed by enemies felt like it happened really quickly, I think this is because if you run into an enemy you can get stuck and just take a bunch of damage really quickly with little to no chance of escaping.
I would also like to repeat how good the hit feedback felt :D
I would 100% be interested in checking out future version or projects. I game you a follow on itch, so I should see updates when they pop up, but if not feel free to reach out on twitch or here, if you need someone to play your games, I would be more than happy to do that.
So I assume with all the health cases being empty, you'd be one hit away from death? I did consider making the hearts red but I wanted the enemies to stand out against everything else and if the hearts were also red, they would be competing. I also assume that health could then be purchased?
I agree that taking damage happens very quickly, and definitely needs slowing down. The reason it's so fast is because it's in sync with the demon chomp animation, so in order to slow down the attack speed, I'd have had to make more animation frames which I didn't have the energy to do! If I were to just slow the animation down, that would have required some frames to be faster than others (e.g. the biting down frame would have to be much faster).
I'm really glad to hear that the hit feedback was good, I have taken note and will ensure to carry it through to the next version, whether that be the next release, or an entirely new game using this as a starting point.
Thank you so much, I will definitely be in contact!
Yeah, I think the health color just confused me and in the description it says "you get 1 life every 60 seconds", so I think in my head I automatically assumed you start with no health and then regenerate it every 60 seconds. I don't know I don't think it's bad, it's more just that the colour confused me, that's all.
For the hits, have you considered adding invincibility frames after you get hit, so you can't take too much damage in a burst? or something like that, no idea if that would actually work or be any good
It's a valid concern though, I'm sure there's something that can be done! A colour tweak could be the answer.
Invincibility frames are a good idea, and the only reason something like that is not already implemented is because I never really tested large groups of enemies after I'd implemented the health /dying system so it just got overlooked.