Thank you so much for playing my game!
"the less straight forward combat actually added something"
Would you mind expounding on that? I want to know what I did right haha.
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Haha no problem! My gut thought when I saw how your combat worked was that I would hate it. Typically in a top down game like that (such as the one I made) you aim and fire an attack on input. Having more control over the attack makes it less frustrating etc. So I figured not having control of frequency or aim would be annoying.
But I think why it worked well for me with your game was how fast you made the attacks fire off. Usually not having control over it means that there is some amount of 'down time' where you are waiting for the game to do something and just hoping you'll live long enough. I really didn't get that with your game. Because the attack switches directions so quickly and executes fast, pretty much all my time was spent trying to correctly position to take advantage of that. So instead of having frustrating down time, the usual gameplay loop of aim-and-fire was replaced perfectly with carefully positioning. Sorry, rambling a bit there but trying to figure out exactly how to phrase what I mean. I hope that helps!
I think you explained yourself really well. You got it just right! Although I wish I had time to warn the player (such as a character select screen, explaining starting powers) that's just the effect we were going for! The 3rd weapon was going to give the player more control: Ice Shotgun, which shoots in whichever direction the player is pointing