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SecretPocketCat1 year ago

I had a blast. I really liked having to decide between placing towers while making the platforming harder. I actually think this covers the theme - the side-effect of defense is worse mobility.
The controls felt great (was using a pad). The pitch reminds me of Aegis Defenders which I'm yet to play.

Here's a list of nitpicks and/or wishes in no particular order (and some if not most are probably just due to time constraints):

  • pick-up colliders are a bit wonky/small
  • players should be able to remove towers and place down/throw away pick-ups
  • the initial period after placing the 1st tower is kinda boring, esp. when the player slaps right next to the spawn area and then waiting 30 s for the next one
  • after filling the map with enough towers, the tower pickup is kinda useless - might be cool if it could be used to upgrade towers
  • the music loop is short and while nice, it got on my nerves quite quickly
  • it's possible to fall of the map just by placing a tower (nothing is lost but still)
  • it's hard to know what the enemies are actually doing - in my hard run I thought I was doing fine and then lost 2 HP 'out of nowhere' - a minimap might be nice
  • the towers felt weak - I reckon spawning way more weaker enemies and making the towers shoot faster (so bigger ammo packs) might feel nicer

In most cases I don't think jam games are worth post-jam version let alone an actual release, but I'd love to see this go further.

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euclidean-whale1 year ago

Thank you for the detailed feedback!

You're right that a lot of these issues were on my mind during the jam, but it was down the the wire and corners had to be cut! But there's some good stuff in here.

I wanted players to be able to stash ammo, but until there were multiple ammo types, it didn't seem as important to figure out. I'm still not totally sure how to let players do that without ruining the platforming. Maybe items should not be physics objects?

Preventing players from placing towers on the tile they're standing on is an easy win. I also want to respawn the tower kit if the player falls with it because that can totally ruin the first wave for new players.

I had thought about letting players zoom out to see what's going on, but a very simple minimap might be better. Cool idea. I'll have to think about that some more.

I had to make the time-to-first-wave way longer than feels good to accommodate first-time players and slower PCs. I plan on adding a small tutorial level and preloading pipelines to prevent the potentially huge stutter when the level starts. That should help, but I'll keep "sending the next wave immediately" in mind. I think players should have some time to explore the level before things get going too.

I agree about the towers feeling kinda week. But I think that SFX and an actual laser effect would help a lot with that.

I do plan on some post-jam updates. I've already fixed a small issue with the item colliders -- they are balls and the probe was too high.

Also I am truly sorry for the music. At least it turned out better than Bevy Jam 1. I'm going to find someone who can help me out with that.

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SecretPocketCat1 year ago
Maybe items should not be physics objects?

Oh, yeah - I wanted to mention that - riding up an ammo pack/jumping on it felt a bit janky too. I'd def prefer them to be just pickups, not collidable items.

 I also want to respawn the tower kit if the player falls with it because that can totally ruin the first wave for new players.

I actually quite like the fact the player has to be careful when carrying an item - I thought it was clever that falling down wasn't a game over but still had a cost.

Also low hanging fruit - multiple items can be carried but at the cost of reduced mobility.
Sorry for the back-seat-design - I tend to do that when I really like some idea 😁

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euclidean-whale1 year ago (1 edit)
Oh, yeah - I wanted to mention that - riding up an ammo pack/jumping on it felt a bit janky too. I'd def prefer them to be just pickups, not collidable items.

Yeah, I think that makes sense as long as I add colliders to the spawn points.

I actually quite like the fact the player has to be careful when carrying an item - I thought it was clever that falling down wasn't a game over but still had a cost.

That's totally fair. I think maybe falling far from the tower kit spawn is plenty painful already though. I also had vague plans of a sort of "mario kart lakitu" style animation that happens when you fall off that eats a few more seconds of time though.

I sort of paused that thought when playing through the endgame a bit where it was quite fun to have to do suicide jumps to refill towers.

Sorry for the back-seat-design - I tend to do that when I really like some idea 😁 

Not at all -- very happy to be able to talk through some of this stuff with someone. That's a pretty intriguing idea. Just visually I love the idea of the droid carrying a big ol vertical stack of items.

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