“I do not know who I am, I don’t know why I’m here, All I know is that I must kill.” is the perfect quote to describe this game, in my opinion.
I normally choose to say what I like about the game first.
To begin, the number of bosses is refreshing and enjoyable. You seemed to shift a lot of effort into that, and it shows. You did a lot of giving a great diversity of not only bosses but also weapons! It’s never dull moment with how much I have to get used to all at once. You really kept me on my toes.
The boss’s attacks, arenas, and colorful art style really fit together like pieces of a constructed puzzle. For screenshots, it is perfect. I, especially, like the boss fights that did not have a cluttered and moving background. The final bosses, primarily, had mostly black backgrounds, which worked the best.
And please allow me to praise the art once more. The character portate you have at the corner, also, really added to the experience. Maybe you could consider doing more with that?
Now, please allow me to say a few criticisms. I don’t wish to be disrespectful, but I do wish to help you grow as a game designer. Simply put, I see an extremely large amount of potential in your work here (A LOT OF POTENTIAL even), but…it all feels wasted. Cluttered. Maybe even lost.
Please take what I say with a grin of salt too. I’m no expert, after all, and I thank you for putting out a game in the first place. This is leagues better than about 99% of all humans can hope to make (I’m serious about that. I can see how much effort you put into this as a solo dev. In a month no less! Seriously amazing.).
For one, visual and sound clutter is a serious problem here. I had no clue what was happening, where it was happening, why it is happening, or ANYTHING really. …and that is a very consistent theme by the way. It was my first few attempts where I decided to just forget learning any of the bosses’ attacks and, just, well, button mash…
I got to the final boss in hardcode mode with just button mashing, by the way. It was not very engaging gameplay.
I disliked how, in hardcore mode, your gun picks are randomized (since it felt less like an exchange). I even more disliked that I could not even test my weapons beforehand to see how they worked. I had no clue what anything did, or what damage it did. Randomized guns made that problem worse.
It was not fun to spend seven entire minutes spamming the shoot button to kill a snake boss with a peon gun (I still don’t really know that boss’s attack pattern, despite spending so long on it). Speaking of which, I recommend allowing players to hold the shoot button instead of requiring continuous presses. Arthritis, am I right?
Obviously, the boss transitions feel discontented, but that’s not really that big of a deal, honestly. The visual effect you put for the bosses made a lot of headway in that regard. I just wished you were less over the top on them and did more particle effects instead. Moving background can be disorienting, and there was no “color language” presented to the player. No one color is bad. No one color is good. No one color contrast can be used by the player to differentiate what they need to pay attention to. The background is overly colorful, while the projectiles are dull and hidden, while sometimes it is the exact opposite. This isn’t really a good idea for most bullet hell games.
Since a lot of bullets are coming the player’s way, bullet hells tend to try their best to have it obvious what is a projectile and what isn’t. This is done for a reason, but that was not present in this game.
For example, in the worm boss, I can see you were trying to make the foreground black, while the background all colorful. That’s a very good cinematic effect for cutscenes, but not so much for moving boss fights. Not unless you give the player an extra handicap or visual information, I mean. Though, admittedly, it was a cool effect.
I really liked the fights, closer to the end of hardcore, for that reason. The background is dark, the attacks are clear, and the boss patterns are actually learnable. It was amazing! I loved it!
Except when the final, final boss started and I got the Lazor cannon weapon…
The Lazor cannon does 20 damage…attacking like once per 1.0 seconds (I don’t know the exact cooldown, but it is around that ballpark. Probably closer 2.5)…and the boss had 5000 HP…
The game expected me to shoot the boss (5000 / 20) = 250 times consecutively! Now, (1.0s * 250) = 250s. That’s 4 entire minutes and 10 seconds of continuous shooting, assuming you don’t miss and don’t need to heal at all…AND assuming you don’t die!
Maybe that was just bad RNG on my part, but if you are randomizing the guns, there should probably be something in the code to balance them a bit. No offense.
OH, also, I really dislike how your energy drains as time goes on. It punishes the player for being good. I couldn’t stay back, learn the bosses’ attacks, and dodge them. No, I had to charge head-first into the boss to survive at all. This mechanic actually made the final, final boss impossible to complete too (the one that would take 4 mins. Yeah, I was actually willing to go through that, since I like 100% completing games, but quickly realized that it was impossible without some trick…or maybe I just have no clue how to play the game? Both are equally likely.).
For some reason, in later bosses of hardcore mode, your energy recovers slower. I don’t know why this is. Maybe I was experiencing a bug, but yeah…it was impossible because of that. I really tried too, and I normally like hard boss battles. Still, even if I spent 100% of my time just getting energy (no shooting at all), I still died from lack of energy! Sad face…
Speaking of, it might benefit the game more if you had more solid bonders for the arenas. Currently, if the player falls out of the map, the entire room resets. That…is a bit annoying. This is especially so when the arena’s limits are not clearly presented. For example, in that boss with square bonders, I moved toward a wall (expecting to be blocked), but the entire boss completely reset!
Sad face times 2…
Oh, also, the final, final boss of Hardcord for some reason didn’t have these out-of-bound barriers…and the boss could leave the screen because of it…
…
Also, as I mentioned before, I had no clue what was happening or anything at the start. Honestly, in my opinion, if you don’t have a tutorial, it may be best to rely on more self-explanatory mechanics. That text in the first boss of classic mode was good…if I didn’t start with hardcore mode first.
Okay, maybe that one was my fault. Still, Energy typically is used for extra powers and abilities. It is a bit confusing if you use “Energy” as a replacement for the common term “Health” so suddenly. Though, honestly speaking, this criticism is more of a nitpick than anything. You can ignore it if you want.
Anyway…
…I’m sorry. I know I sound like a Negative Nacy here. I really do mean it when I said that I see potential here, and that you did something that 99% of all humans can’t even hope to do. But, as it is, I just didn’t find the game very fun.
I can, however, admire all the effects you put into the game. As a programmer myself, I know how difficult some of that stuff can really be. Good job. Truly.
Thank you for sharing. Well done.