I am just finished testing.
Musings:
- I love the humourous tone (the Grim Reaper’s dialogue) and general style (graphics, font, music, animation, scenario)! :) I would describe it as ‘funny-cute’. It feels very personal, including the fact that there is a clear background story.
- The concept is somewhat classic (an injection of randomness), although I think the themed story is more original.
- As for gameplay: thank God for layout-independent key bindings, coming from an AZERTY guy. XD The game does work on my keyboard.
- The game is rather hard!! Those Death henchmen know no respite! There are several abilities you can use, which is a good thing, but it takes some time getting used to the variety, and the somewhat close-range combat leaves little room for thinking up a decision (although it went better as I had more tries on the counter). Those gun-handling cronies seem to spray the area with gunfire: not easy evading them.
- I have a hard time using the bladed weapon bone: its range seem very short compared to the speed and range of the enemies (including the large white fist-of-iron goons). It also happened to me several times that wielding it would not harm the enemies; I am guessing its contact detection works through some hotspot when activated, rather than its visual.
- The throwable casino chips also sometimes seemed not to affect the enemies; I am unsure if this was caused by terrain collision or the enemy’s collision box.
- I had a very hard time checking whether the rhombus/diamonds (‘Parry’) can actually harm an enemy with a deflected projectile, and it turns out it can! A really good idea, but in practice, the projectiles are quite tiny, so you almost have to be at close range to hit (which is what happened to me).
- The enemy’s movement is also surprising, with some kind of strong inertia, that makes them hard to shake off or dodge.
- I notice the game over line can vary, too. :) (And since I got crushed several times, I could be treated with them. XD)
- The terrain seems partly random.
- What is or is not a boundary in the setting is not always clear, I think; you would need a way to distinguish between mere drawing boundaries and collision boundaries. Once I understood you cannot cross the inner and outer circles, it was clearer, but not at first.
I like your game! :) I think the biggest problem in its current state is how some parameters and details make it so hard (especially the collision problems for our own weapons, except the exploding slot machine), but if this was fixed, it would be even more pleasant to play.
(I am wondering whether I should take those collision imprecisions into account or not, because I know how the game would feel without these small roughnesses.)
I managed to reach a score of 700 (out of the necessary 1,000), so I did not see the end… Would you mind telling how it goes? :)