Post by Evil Operative in Foxy Misfortunes comments

Viewing post in Foxy Misfortunes comments

Such a beautiful game! The graphic and sound design + the weapon feedback is extremely well thought-out. On my PC, it felt like I was playing a lite version of the acclaimed mobile game Soul Knight, combined with that one flash game where you go around splatting slimes made back in the day called "Amorphous Plus+" (don't know if you've played that game)

The controls are extremely tight and concise, and the ladies are also beautiful. The small backstory that accompanies the character selection also provides a bit of character depth and detail about the heroines.

Now, only a few suggestions:

It would be nice if you could pause the game and see the screen, so in a pinch you could think out a strategy to get out of crammed situations. If the screen is blocked by design choice, then you can ignore this point.
Maybe different ways in which the characters react on different skins, like covering their body when their clothing is torn, instead of standing completely still and making facial expressions.
This would be very time-consuming but an entire bevy of CG images involving characters being "harassed" by the creatures if you kill enough of one creature as an "Achievement" of sorts to work towards.
The ability to swap different tiles and whatnot according to your own choice, instead of it being random (might as well throw the option to actually have it be random in that selection option too)

Leaving all that out, I found a bug where creatures can touch you through corners (as well as you being able to hit them through corners), once again not sure if this was by design or not.

5 Stars, keep up the good work!

EugeneLoza2 years ago(+1)

Huge thank you for your review! Things like that really help me to keep going on :D

About the pause screen - Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that… but… I just literally don’t have place to put the buttons :D That was the only reason to cover the gameplay field… I would wanted that feature myself, but alas, I’m bad at UI design. Always end up with no free space to put things.

About poses - unfortunately that’s complicated. First of all on the art side (all those poses need to be drawn, and I’m a bad painter, which among other things makes drawing extremely slow). Yes, I definitely want poses in the latest project - Vinculike. But in this game… it’ll just be way too much drawing.

I thought a lot about CGs… At least one for winning the game. But again that bumps into the problem that I can’t properly draw - and among other things it’ll take just enormously lot of time… I even abandoned a whole project just because of “too much art needed” (I’ll polish the prototype a bit and will hopefully release it tomorrow). It’s just much more efficient to me as a programmer to focus on making gameplay-oriented games, than adding (a lot of) art.

Ability to choose map tileset - could be easy. The only problem… there’s literally no place to put a new button :D

The bug with corners - yes, it’s a bug. A bug which eventually “became a feature” :D This game was initially made for Lewdie game jam in 12 hours, therefore the “foundation” below it is quite shaky, it was rushed and not done properly. Reworking the behavior to a better collision system is possible, but will most likely require reworking a great lot of game systems. So for now it looks much more reasonable to invest this time into Vinculike game project where it’s done right from the very beginning (and yet even there glitches occasionally).

And again, huge thank you for your feedback! I wish I could actually fix those issues instead of excusing myself… They all make perfect sense, and clearly show my two biggest weak spots - art and UI design.

Evil Operative2 years ago(+1)

In retrospect, I would like to make another suggestion. Squirrly's dash cooldown bar should be moved to being around her marker in the map itself, so that you don't need to constantly look at the mana bar in order to see when to make a run for it and when to rest.

EugeneLoza2 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

That’s most certainly doable and perfectly reasonable. I’ve created the ticket and will try to fix that in the nearest future.

Evil Operative2 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Thanks for looking into my suggestions. A few final comments:

A thing that has annoyed me a bit is the fact that you can't stack unlocking your rewards, for example, on my first playthrough with Lizzy, I scored 4800 points, which should make me eligible to obtain both of her skins at once, but it's only the first skin that I unlock despite also reaching the unlock goal for the second skin, leading me to try and obtain a score of 4000 points yet again.
The crown picture on the right or left score tab as your current highest score is a bit intrusive on the playing field. I couldn't see what was under the crown picture and have also lost a few games because of that fact. I think the crown could either be made smaller or turned transparent and thrown inside the box itself.

Best character for me was Deery, because the buildup of the pressure with this character felt organic and also felt fun to play as. The ripping magic is a nice touch on a character that gets progressively hectic and I feel like she is the one who requires the most amount of skill to play properly. Squirrly has to be the most frustrating to play because her base movement speed is so slow and she gets a dash out of nowhere if you stop for a moment to catch your breath, leading you to rocket towards your desired direction at triple the speed.

I noticed that there was a unique set of music playing for Lizzy, was there other sets of music planned for all the different characters at one point? I also feel like different skins could have different coloured attack sprites for an extra amount of variety, since their in-game sprite gets changed already. Also I wish there was a way to go "Hardcore Mode" with everything spawning at once from the beginning while playing with Lizzy, but with all the other characters.

EugeneLoza2 years ago(+1)

Thanks a lot!

you can’t stack unlocking your rewards

Originally I’ve made this way for the same reason - there was no place on screen for multiple rewards. But I think I understood where I can put more now - I’ll try to fix it soon.

The crown picture on the right or left score tab

Good idea! Fixed! I’ll make a build soon. Most likely with some of other fixes (and hopefully tomorrow :D)

About Deery and Squirrly - yeah, I feel exactly the same. Deery is the most fun character to play. And squirrly was an experiment that eventually kinda failed. In the beginning it’s fun to 1-2-3-move-1-2-3-stop-1-2-3-move-1-2-3-stop but it gets frustrating soon. Maybe softening the difference between dashing and moving would benefit - I’ll try that tomorrow (too sleepy already to make proper test if it works well or not).

was there other sets of music planned for all the different characters at one point?

Well, I personally love when the game has a lot of soundtracks. But it was rather hard to find fitting music for this game and I barely managed to get 3 good-sounding tracks. In the meanwhile I’ve found 3 good tracks, but which didn’t match the first 3, so using them for a “unique character” was kinda reasonable. Of course, having unique tracks for all characters would be cool, but I think I went through all related tracks at OpenGameArt and there wasn’t anything more of good quality and consistent with the current style.

different skins could have different coloured attack sprites

Yes, this is possible. The issue here is that currently we’re using 1024x1024 texture for all objects on the map, and it’s packed up completely. It’s not a big deal to increase it to 1024x2048 size, but will need some time to. I’ll try to look into it soon.

Also I wish there was a way to go “Hardcore Mode”

Should be easy to add - I’ve been using this manually to record some videoclips, we only need to add a UI for the Player to change the settings. I guess I’ll just put this button into Options together with “Tileset” choice.

itch.io

Viewing post in Foxy Misfortunes comments