This is a pretty good game, it felt surprisingly good to play, My only complaint is that is was kinda hard for me to get a high score (skill issue lmao). I think this game could have benefited from 2 things, some kinda health pickup or life steal or something, and a mini-map. Half the time I got punched from behind without me knowing it, the hit indication is fine, but does not really prepare you, only notify you after the fact, I feel like a mini-map showing where everyone is would have been really helpful.
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Thanks for playing!
To address your feedback points:
There is an indicator, the flames along the screen that indicates an enemy close by out of sight. Could be that it almost always is lit up though, then it doesn't help much I guess 😀
There's a hidden heal if you want to give it another shot: slam them into a wall, grab and kick them into a train. That gives lots of healing!
Your feedback is still totally valid though, because even if these concerns were addressed, they were not well enough communicated to the player.
Any ideas of how that could be done? I guess when an enemy gets close enough to trigger the warning system, those flames could perhaps get quite big and bright for just a 100ms or something. As for healing from grab, when sending a grabbed enemy into a train and getting healing, a text could perhaps pop up saying "grab healing bonus: +100hp" or something... Hmm! Thanks for input!
well explaining to players that they even can heal is probably something you could do (unless I missed that explanation) and like I said maybe implement some sort of mini-map or have an intensity in your indications, and have them be smaller, like right now iirc the whole side of the screen lights up, which is fine, but I feel like could have been done better with smaller indicators and maybe clearer sounds if you actually do get hit, like if they are close or like very close.
Here's a few design hindsight. It's not to devalue your feedback at all, it's just that I thought it was interesting to share, and may give you another perspective on what we tried to do with the game.
I feel like getting punched from behind isn't that much of an issue because you can heal a lot. Our combat design was inspired by doom eternal, where you can't really dodge damage but you also heal a lot when glory killing and stuff.
So for this reason I chose to not dedicate too much time to give players ways to avoid damage. Because I wanted to create tense moments when you lose all your life and have to run for it, until you find an opportunity to heal (which requires agression, so there's tension between dodging and attacking)).
With that said I can understand that it may feel bad to get hit without any way to know about it. There are a few things we've identified that could help with that (namely, lack of sound to tell you when an enemy is about to hit / when you get hit, and enemies spawning instantly and often too close to the player). Sometimes you take damage and there was nothing you could've done, it's pretty frustrating. There's a middle point we couldn't find yet.
Also, you're absolutely correct that we could've communicated better on a lot of the mechanics. That's a lesson I've taken from this jam : tutorialize and explain everything, the fun is playing the game anyway.
Your feedback is greatly appreciated, thanks again for sharing.