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Wow, well certainly the scale on this game was impressive! The multiple planets with the different mechanics was cool, and the madness had some fun effects.

I also liked the little details like the optional weapon, using a photo of a cat to restore sanity, the moving star field outside the window, etc.

I found it interesting how it had the kinda cutesy pixel graphics at first, and then got creepier and more lovecraftian as it progressed. It got real eerie with some areas!

I do however have some issues with the game.

The most obvious to me, but is also the most subjective, is the controls. Having Q and E be strafe and A and D be turn messed me up the entire game. I know for a number of dungeon crawler fans that can be eprfectly fine, but as someone who has WASD basically hardwired into their brain I never fully adjusted to it.

The FOV for the camera I found a bit too claustrophobic. I don't think it needs to have half the tile underneath the player visible like some dungeon crawlers, but I think being able to see where the floor starts would be better for orientation. It made it hard to tell which square I was on sometimes. And combined with the fact that some interactions could be done from more than one tile away (while convenient) made it more confusing.

A recommendation I have for the game to avoid confusion though would be to have the player automatically return to ship after beating the boss enemy, or add a popup recommending the "return to ship" button. I wondered around for about 30 seconds thinking it wasn't dead yet or there was going to be a second phase until I remembered the return to ship button. So maybe add that for the slow people like me lol.

Also like other comments have mentioned, the combat is a bit odd. The rotating towards the enemy you're attacking can be disorienting, especially in the final boss fight I found. And the fact that enemies don't always face the player can sometimes make them hard to aim at.

Overall though I was very impressed with the game, you managed to stuff a LOT into it!

Great work!

(1 edit) (+1)

Thanks for the feedback. You actually touched on a number of issues I ran into that I wasn't able to fully address. 

-The FOV was one thing I struggled with, either the camera felt too low or it got a weird fisheye lens effect when I messed around. I tried to find a happy medium but it fell short for some. 

-I'm not sure if you are in discord but it came up -  I didn't even think twice about the strafe, it was so far off my radar I didn't even think to change it. It was as easy as flipping a switch in the engine lol.

- The enemies turning sideways was due to some bug I couldn't figure out, originally they were billboard sprites but for whatever reason collision was broken when I had them set to billboards and the flat 'cardboard' models the collision worked, so it was the only way to make combat actually possible. The bug even persists on the 'cardoard' models when you have a bit of madness and rest in the ship, a zombie spawns and the laser goes right through, yet fixes itself when you load out and load back in the map.

-That's a good point on the return to ship thing. I just thought it would be obvious, but it's obvious to me when I built it that way lol.

-the pointing to shoot is something I need do look into, at least getting it to snap back after a second or something, if not just change it to you have to face the enemy to shoot.

Not excuses but listing these out I can actually reference the comment later. I'm glad you had fun and thanks for the detailed response!

(+1)

Ah no worries, I also like to provide detailed responses to feedback, and I had a number of known issues too.

Regarding the collision I did notice it on the spaceship zombies, didn’t mention it as I thought it was intentional (I had high madness and my vision had the VHS filter on so I thought it was scripted lol).

I am in the discord but since so much conversation happens on there while I’m either asleep or at work I missed it entirely lol. It’s definitely more a preference thing, so maybe for next year if you submit have it as a toggle option? There’s at least one other entry that has the same scheme in the jam, so different strokes for different folks I guess!

haha the zombie not being hit....definitely madness and not a bug!