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https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2138210703

Game idea seems cool to me. I like the movement and feeling in general a lot! I like the idea of credits counting down with every action you take. Maybe it can be extended to shields as well? Was a bit frustrating to have them run out in the boss fight. Maybe it could be so that missions can be replayed and credits reclaimed by beating them faster? Kind of a reverse take on "go back to older missions to farm resources."

May be specific to this demo: I just wanted to PLAY, but I kept getting like 10 seconds of play and then 30 seconds of dialogue. The dialogue also was hard to follow for me, in terms of what is going on - I got the gist, but that gist could have been compressed into 20% of the voice lines, too. I mean, I wasn’t paying full attention… but then again, neither are most players, I guess.

The graphics have great flair, but the resolution/pixelation made the game rather hard to comprehend!! You’re obviously going for a very specific retro look, which is fine (I love the look itself), but I suspect that an actual game from that era, in actually that low resolution, would have pulled this look off while retaining more visual clarity.

I believe I got a game crash in the end. Crash screen is cute, but it was not so clear that it’s -finito- and you gotta alt+f4 your way out, bye. Bye!

Hi! I'm still catching up on demo day stuff but I wanted to reply to this feedback and clarify things for posterity!

Credits are indirectly tied to shields- if you pick up additional fuel that you can't carry, you receive credits instead. To prevent permanent invincibility, gems aren't used to power the shield directly. The green fuel bars also represent how much boost (or cloak) you can use, so there is a tradeoff between moving quickly and playing defensively.

Going back and replaying missions that you've finished is a feature that is partially implemented. Our plan is to make story missions replayable once you finish a chapter, in the same way boss fights are replayable after they are finished. The cheat code for this is AIRCRACKNGROOFTOPCANTENNA.

The team is in unanimous agreement that there is way too much reading between missions and it screws up the pacing a lot. We'll compress a lot of that text as we get around to it- hasn't been on the prio list, is all.

Visual clarity is an interesting topic for this project in general, and it's something we've been steadily improving on over the last several demo days. Adding F1 to highlight the ship in this build is one of those steps, and we're likely going to be adding some dynamic enemy highlights too (suggested from DD55 feedback, if I recall correctly) - I need to rewrite the highlighter to support that, though.

A lot of our enemy designs in the current build rely on their small size and coloration to blend in with their surroundings, and we've received a lot of mixed feedback on that decision. Part of what we are trying to accomplish with enemy designs is creating believable adversaries that look like they actually belong in their environment, and part of what we're going for involves using bright colors + motion to make enemies visible when they are dangerous. 

Other clarity steps we are considering include some changes to gems on screen (automatically fade/hide when enemies or bullets are nearby), some changes to bullet graphics, and adjusting background colors to make certain moving items easier to see. 

As for the crash screen, when I saw you arrive at that on your recorded video I was kicking myself for keeping that placeholder mission on map 2. My intent was for players to try out the red-difficulty missions on map 1 after completing the Garbage Worm fight. Those red missions showcase the other biomes available for procedurally generated missions, along with their different music tracks and etc.

Thanks again for the detailed feedback and we'll probably see you guys next demo day \o/