Post by Filmstars in The Gun is Good - DEMO jam comments

Your sprites are super awesome!

Gameplay is good. Idk, it felt a little hollow, but maybe I wasn’t in the mood. Compared to Nuclear Throne, the special ability cooldowns are so long, it makes the game feel way slower and more tactical in a way. Throws me off, I was just wanna shootan. Same when picking the upgrades, I am quite impatient, the music stopping does not help, I wanna go on and shoot more and have banger soundtrack playing again, instead I am prompted to figure out if any of my weapons is an Assault Rifle so it would benefit from option 1 of 3.

I did not initially understand that I need runes to buy upgrades, I thought they just came for free after finishing a level. The runes are another thing making this game feel very tactical. It’s not enough to beat the enemies, it must be done so that runes are picked up. Paired with the over-the-top guns, this actually makes the game appear more like an ore mining (or lawn mowing, if you will) game than an enemy fighting game. This is a neutral statement.

All that being said, this is ofc. very much "a game," and a fun one at that, and I appreciated all the little details like items drops flying towards the portal on level finish. I gotta unlock more of the characters, usually in games like this there are 1-2 I really love, and it’s not the starting ones.

Last thing - I tried to play on Linux at first, but the game just hang without ever painting anything and needed to be SIGKILL’d. I can send you an strace or stackdump if you care, but since it’s Unity I guess you don’t have much control/insight. (I had no problems with other Unity games though.)

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SPECXHT325 days ago (2 edits)

Thank you for playing, and streaming it. Helps a lot just seeing people play.

I think the beginning is a, I don't know if hollow is the best word but sure, and it gets better later. But I need to strike a good balance of having the start being easy enough for new players and also somewhat interesting to replay again and again. I don't think its good right now and it seems most players get caught off-guard by it suddenly getting harder.

The characters ability cooldowns aren't set in stone, I do want the starter character to have a moderate long one though because people get overwhelmed as it is. And the Items have long ones because many are mean to be "oh shit" buttons, or supplement you in some way, so not really be anything you absolutely have to use.

The stopping and resting part is very intentional though, its something I quite like in games. Kind of like going back to town in Diablo to sell stuff and stock back up. The later levels can be a bit long too so I think its pretty nice to recover a bit. You kind of do it in Nuclear Throne too, choosing what gun to take with you (unless the portal sucks you in) and then choosing an upgrade.
I should really have some sort of ambient sound at least, have been thinking about an option to enable for constant music too.

Right now there is only one character to unlock, but there will be more! They have some unique upgrades too, I should really add a way to see that...

It's possible that it's something with Vulkan for it not working on Linux. I do not have much knowledge about Linux unfortunately, but send me what you can and I'll look at it. Also, the Player.log would be nice to have too, for Linux it should be at: ~/.config/unity3d/Northwood Gameworks/The Gun is Good/Player.log

Thanks again.

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