Post by JD Nation in Neon Blackout jam comments

Metroidvania Month 21 » Entries » Neon Blackout

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Very cool visual style. Certainly lives up to it's name.

The impact and game-feel of the attack is very satisfying.

The movement is a bit sluggish. Here's a rundown of what I gleaned. Sorry if I'm off-base with any of it, and it's just my own skittishness.

Holding left/right doesn't persist between rooms.
It's a small thing but it did bother me.
There's quite a big windup on starting to move. Maybe it's a nice flourish for the character revving up, but it felt a little awkward, especially in a game where you need good reaction time. It's not super annoying, but it's just enough to throw you off in the heat of gameplay.
You direction isn't locked during a dash.
I think the game queues up dash, and given the somewhat sluggish response, I would sometimes double dash when I didn't intend too, mainly when fighting the final Boss.
Assuming I'm right about the queuing, the game locks your direction when attacking so you can strafe, but I don't think it lets dash over-write your direction if it's queued up, meaning I sometimes dashed in the wrong direction.

The enemies were good, and it was fun to work around their interlocking attack behaviours, but given I couldn't find a value for those collectable blue cards, I spent most of the game just dodging them.

Actually, I have no clue what those gold capsules did either.

Really enjoyed the final Boss. (Thanks for that Checkpoint in the upper room; it made retrying not too much of a hassle.) Though, I can't tell if I beat it yet or not. It seems to explode for a few frames then the game restarts. So either I beat it, and that's just what the game does, or it has a death attack that keeps wiping me out. XD

I've got some gameplay to upload. Just know I did get a little turned around. That was partly because there weren't a lot unique things around to orient me (maybe add some Neon Signs if that doesn't muddy up the clean art-style too much) but also I was stopping and starting a lot between records so that probably contributed.

EDIT: Going up - MM21 - Neon Blackout 1/5

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pigeonbubblebee1 year ago(+1)

Hi! thank you so much for the in depth review! sorry for the unituitive mechanics. For the windup, the acceleration should be instant, but it might be a bug. You're right about the dash buffering, but unfortunately, we didn't have much time to tweak the timing of the dash.

The cards upgrade your cards, and equipping those will give you bonus effects. When you open your inventory, you should see your unlocked cards with their rarity, which starts at "RUINED." picking up a card will add one to that cards count, and collecting enough will upgrade your effect (e.g. the muscle card gives you +1 damage but collecting three blue cards dropped by the goblins will give you +2 instead).

The gold capsules are collectable items, which can be traded in to an NPC for bonus money/a new card.

For the boss, I think I know what you're talking about. The boss (if it was the first one you faced) has an attack when reaching a low amount of health where it will slam into the ground. You can dodge it if you look at its mouth and dash when it turns red (requires good reaction time, but we probably should've added more telegraphing). Defeating that boss will drop a weapon that lets you explore the second area.

For the neon signs, we wanted to add those but didn't have time (we also wanted to add lots of other things to the environment to help guide the player)

itch.io

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