Thank you so much for the great feedback ! Sorry about the wall of text that follows!
I really do like how attacks are physics/collision based. It looks good and feels great. The arcs showing where the sword will swing is super helpful (although one seems to be missing), and the way you may or may not hit depending on exactly where things are positioned keeps it interesting.
I really wanted this to work physics based to some degree and I'm glad you found some of the positive to it, I need to work on this a lot more and polish it up, I think it will work but I'm less certain after the jam, I'll keep trying though. By the way, I think one is NOT missing but its just really small ( the stab) so its hard to see maybe ?
it's kinda hard to hit enemies
Yeah there are a few things that are really working against this prototype here , some of them interestingly might be either way too much physics, or too little in others!
1) An example, the colliders, I just didn't have time to make full body colliders, so its just using a big cylinder in the center as the hit zone... For the Kobolds, this is pretty bad given that they have a sword and shield, so it makes them hard to hit with out hitting either.
2) the sword strikes are driven by animation only and I made them only use upper body (masked) and there is also terrain that changes your bodies rotation... so sword strikes are way off ... I think I need to add some IK to the body to make up for this as in point the spine towards the terrain to some degree and maybe some ik to the arms so that they apply some weight towards the enemy itself, a good example is the stab attack it just goes up like way over their heads ( it only hits because the before mentioned cylinder is usually higher than their heads.
3) there is some physics bugs I'm pretty sure, but not sure exactly what, I haven't looked into it.
On the other hand, hitting the archer goblins is super easy lol
dodging pretty awkward
Hmm... well the dodging is interesting, because I made it relative to character and maybe I made it too small, I had it set to a larger value and changed it towards the end of the jam cause you could dodge yourself away too easily. I think some of this is because I chose to not do "locking" onto enemies, dodge would be easier in that case, but I sorta wanted to go away from a locking style control... Another issue is that the enemies are too simple still and they just charge forward relentlessly. I wanted to add a lot more nuance to the AI, like hesitation time, blocking, feinting , but I just ran out of time. I did however spend plenty of time making sure they could find the player, loose the player and attempt to search the spot you were and be able to path + dynamically steer away from dynamic objects... sadly I think all of that is lost with out proper level design and more polish/details that would have made it cool. (it worked better in my test level with a bunch of boxes, lol)
arrows
Yeah the crossbow / bolts enemy (goblin) is literally the last thing I added to the prototype, so I had no steam left to give the player something to counter it. Technically though its fairly easy to dodge, since the AI is pretty lame. I'll have to think a bit about what could be added for countering... on the other hand its supposed to be somewhat realistic and I feel arrows/bolts are just like that in real life, dangerous and come out of nowhere. Side note: Here is another example where I spent time on thigs that are probably not noticeable, if you pay attention to the animation, you can see the goblin reach back into its quiver and actually take a bolt out and load it onto the crossbow =] .
Damage text/callouts need to be bigger and bolder, because I can't tell who is being damaged or how badly. Movement speed should probably be slower when you have your sword out. A few times I took damage for no discernible reasons, maybe from the weapons of enemies that had already died.
Damage text, yeah I had them in there and calculating some numbers but I ran out of time and just went with a simple 4 hits of anything is a kill. So literally I just ignored the little red damage text... I probably should have hidden them.
Movement speed, I believe it is slower ? I'd need to check, but you definitely cant run in that mode since it uses the dodge instead. I'll keep in mind to check it or nerf it further.
The phantom damage ... yeah probably a bug or is it a jam theme? I need to look into it. Probably add polish like vfx for sword swings and blood when you get hit, etc.
it's good enough to underpin a bigger game.
Ah thanks ! I hope to make it much better, in my head this is really a first pass ... ;) you know which game this is for right ?
It might be worth trying lock-on
yeah, my first instinct is to not use lock-on as I already mentioned, but if I can't get it to work as well as I imagine it in my head, I will probably try it or maybe a more actiony type of combat instead of this "physics" based thing...
it'd also be nice if selecting an attack unsheathed the sword automatically, but that's a pretty minor nitpick.
Good idea, that's an easy one to add = ]
If the full game had graphics at the same level and style, it would be pretty decent.
Hopefully the bigger game will look better, its a different style, less cartoony ...
excessive pop-in.
Ugh yeah, I need to go in and tweak the LOD's they are very visible, I was so worried about performance before I switched to URP that I over did it with the LOD settings. At least for me its running at 60fps pretty solid after the switch, but I never went back to fix it.
it's not really a magical girl game
I totally agree and I'm fine if it gets disqualified by Ran if he ever plays it, although again I still think I'm in the running for the lowest score of the jam, which puts me in the running for your prize! I do have the magic UI hidden in the prototype, its cool I should have thrown a screenshot of it as proof lol.
The audio is functional. The mixing is a bit weird and some effects are oddly chosen.
Would love to get a little more expanded feedback on this. Although of course I agree, I only had time to put what I considered the most essential sounds.
Anyway, yeah its a complete work in progress and so far 3/3 MGGJ's that I have failed to make it to a complete game, but at least this one I submitted, so yeah that's something ? Nonetheless, this is all work towards the bigger game and hopefully with out the jam time constraint it will all end up sweet.
Again thanks for all the feedback, I really appreciate it!