Thank you for laying out such detailed feedback, GravelBlock. I have to admit to you that I have the same criticisms myself. Many of the issues are inherently due to the fact that this game was built for a LowRez gamejam (has to be 64x64). I had the idea separate from the Jam and really just used it as an excuse to make a prototype of the concept. I started on the game 1/2 way though the jam so that left me with a little over a week to get this prototype done. Not leaving much time for presenting a clear vision of the game mechanics. The whole thing was just a big experiment to see if I could make the concept "fun" and other people could enjoy it to some degree.
- I agree. One of my problems was that when I was spriting I wasn't sure how unity would translate over the small resolution and ended up kinda rigging something that made the pixels be "pixel perfect" but messed up their alignment on the screen. If I continue development one of the first things I'd want to do is remake the art at a normal resolution of some sort. I may not even use pixel art honestly.
- - See below.
- This sounds silly but normally I make my own color pallet. This time I wanted to try and use one a found online. About 3/4 of the way through the jam I was running out of time so I just started to use my own shading technique. It kinda broke things.
- I built the game and I can barely tell what the hell the text is saying lol.
- The color points were the biggest criticism and one of my biggest mistakes not taking the time to develop more. I kinda just threw em on there. Obviously that was a hug mistake considering those few pixels are the core mechanic of the game 🙄
- The text is almost useless because you don't have enough space to describe anything all that well. I had to kinda "Cave-man" the language to make it fit on the screen. Hence vague and incomplete statements like the one you pointed out.
- (Yes there is critical hits and nice job figuring that out) A lot of the "juice" I'd normally use to give the player feedback was unavailable to me at this low resolution. This left many of the actions in the game kinda vague. Taking damage, critical hits, enemy cast types, etc. I'd probably need to put each enemy cast/action in a short que and let each one have a second to play out. Then the player could watch events unfold rather than having it all be mashed together in one single jumble.
- I'm really glad you picked up on this. Personally, I found the game to actually have a lot of depth once you got past the messy presentation. The randomness you mention is partially due to it being a "rogue-lite" but I feel most of it stems from not being able to display information to the player clearly. I'd need to a lot more work on the game to deal with the balance issues.
I can't thank you enough for taking the time to leave such a detailed post. I will take all of your feedback to heart and hopefully someday you'll be able to see a more "clean" version of the game. Cheers! 🍻