itch.io

Nitpick: On Forest-3, for the ladder in the starting area, it is not possible to go up some way and then down all the way.

A player with little or no lag lost health when dashing into a blue enemy at:

https://youtu.be/rG0p96yY1_I?t=7905

I don't know whether that is a bug specific to that enemy or with Bokube-and-enemy collisions.

What... what did I even just play...

I...

What?...

Is one or both of these games meant to be commercial games?

The survival guide is amazing.

I am making a new top-level comment, since the game is a lot of fun and I did not run it in a proper environment before. The game is very good and very large!

I am playing it at proper speed. I retract my previous comment on fast travel, the player character walks fairly quickly. (EDIT: Later on, I am wondering whether I should re-retract my comment, since I did resort to dashing to travel more quickly - but the design of the game makes it not that important, since not all progress in levels (buttons, etc.) is lost when respawning, making fast-travel less of a problem).

I like that enemies can end up poisoning themselves.

I saw you added a cooldown indicator in the most recent update, nice :) .

In the indoors room with 4 poison-shooters, the crossbow caused one of them to fall down, but then it got stuck falling down repeatedly, eventually dying. I would guess that is a bug if the intention is that enemies also reappear at the last known location with 10 health lost, though enemies and the player character may have different desired handling.

There is maybe a 1 second delay when pressing and holding '1' or '2' to get the radial menu, which can be significant in combat. Though, is it because '1' and '2' can also be tapped quickly to tap through items? If so, the current approach may be good.

I am not certain, but I think some enemies that I did not defeat despawned after I died. Is that intentional? Or are enemies spawning randomly upon the player character dying and respawning?

Wait, is it on purpose that while in the menu accessed with 'Esc', the game is not paused, and you can die? Is that for multiplayer? For singleplayer, that seems a bit annoying.

I only found 3 armor items before finding the map in the lava indoor area. I never found an outdoors map. I did find an MP3 player at some point.

I sometimes messed up dodging, which caused lava deaths. You must press and release space quickly, correct?

At one point, I used multiple healing "potions" in a row, but I did not get healed further apart from the first one. I was on fire at the time, though even after the fire status effect had ended, chugging another healing "potion" did not help. I was at about 60% health.

In the room with a lever that is "defended" by a rotating trap with fireballs, I multiple times tried to pull the lever, but failed, and ended up burning to death. I do not know whether I was too far away from the lever to pull it. Wait, is it only possible to change the direction while water is flowing through the pipe? Would it make sense to add a "declined"/"rejected" sound when attempting to change the direction of a pipe using a lever that has no water, such that the player knows that the player did interact correctly, but that the action is not available?

I got very far, but I ended up with a GameMaker GML error, seen below, where I could not ignore it, and only "abort". And since the game does not save anything after shutting down, I lost all progress, and I did not get to the boss, even though I only needed to reroute the final pipes to the boss room. I imagine that you have saving on your TODO-list, but with such a large and good game, I think you should prioritize getting a save system up and running, such that the game can be continued after closing it down (for instance due to a crash or the player quitting and wanting to play later).

Error message pop-up:

___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of  Step Event0
for object obj_off_crossbow: 
DoSub :1: undefined value
at gml_Object_obj_off_crossbow_Step_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_obj_off_crossbow_Step_0 (line -1)

I had acquired the water gun, and was busy attempting to switch to the shield by quickly tapping '1' multiple times.

Desert-3 rescuee still has a cage even after you move 3 yellow key blocks into place. Though you can still move into the rescuee and go to the next level.

That must be a regression bug, I think there are three ghosts instead of two (two of the ghosts must be on top of each other), and the third ghost is not killed by the death of the third enemy).

There are also an awful lot of enemies in Easter-2, more than I would have thought.

 I am a little bit confused by the chest and equipment UI.

 Believe it or not, it used to be a lot worse. Can you elaborate on what exactly confused you about it?

I think it was mainly the part where when you press 'E' at a chest, you get into one UI window. And then, after that, when you press  (I think) 'Esc', you do not exit that UI window, but you enter another UI window, after which you can press 'Esc' again to exit.

I do not know what a better alternative would be. From what I know of GameMaker, one of its weaknesses is likely UI elements. But I have no knowledge of GMS and what features it offers.

I dislike that enemies can be effectively invisible when behind trees. The lock-on helps, though. Have you considered mitigating this somehow, like maybe using a shader to show an outline when an enemy is behind a tree? Or, if enemies are meant to be able to hide, only do it for enemies that the player has "seen"/"discovered"?

I'm planning on having trees vanish when a dangerous creature is hidden beyond them in the future. It's on the to do list.

I wonder whether that would work if you want enemies to be hidden, but I imagine you have thought about those parts since it is on your TODO-list.

I cannot open the chest with "E" if I am standing diagonally from it.

Hmmm, if it's awkward feeling, I can fix that.

I think it's not necessary if a pop-up is added when you can interact with an object using 'E', but if you do not add that or a different method, then I think it would be more ergonomic for players. 

I can discover hidden enemies by clicking "X" repeatedly with the cursor over trees.

How much did that happen? Were there ever enemies who seemed stuck in the trees?

I can only recall of one instance, I think it is when  you are introduced the first time to shooting enemies. Like, a shooting enemy is standing in one place, and then another enemy attacks from behind when you get too close to the shooting enemy. I do not think that enemy was stuck, more hiding. In general, the enemies seemed like they had really good pathfinding.

While the test crossbow is obvious, is there any way to survive the first castle room if you do not pick it up and equip it? Though this may be good, to ensure that the player does know how to pick up and equip items. I just wonder if it may be a source of frustration. I did pick it up and equip it on the first time, though, just speculation on my part. 

Technically it's possible to get through that room without the crossbow, but there's no way for you to know it, because it uses the completely unexplained magic system. The intent was to force the player to both use the crossbow, and probably use kukui juice (antidote) to survive.

I think you could use some playtesting on that. While I would guess that just about no one would forget the crossbow, some may forget to equip it or choose not to, and I would hope that the player would die quickly, such that the player does not have to endure a slow and impossible-to-win-or-escape fight to the death. However, I really like the aspect of ensuring that the player knows how to equip and use items, since it is a core mechanic.

In general, I had fun. I do think my (over-)cautious approach of running the game in a virtual machine and thus the game being rather slower than normal hindered my fun. I think I might have had great fun playing the game if running the game outside of a virtual machine.

I really liked the game, though I have a special setup (running the game in a virtual machine, no viruses or bitcoin miners for me), which the game runs slowly on.

Most of the following are nits.

Music has cracking noises, but that may be my setup.

Menu UI is not pretty, but works, and can be fixed later.

Which engine do you use?

When I was bleeding at the beginning of the game, I thought I was bleeding to death, and that I had to do something before dying. So I was relieved that I did not die off, but that it was just a status effect.

 Why am I murdering all these poor people? Some of them I attack first.

I am a little bit confused by the chest and equipment UI.

What is the purpose of the day-night time cycle?

Could it make sense to have a prompt come up when an interactable object is nearby? Though, that may be noisy, and it may be better as it currently is.

I can see that the sword swing is blocked by trees, but I am confused about what the collision shapes of the trees are. Is it pixel-perfect for the tree shape? I find that a bit unintuitive.

I dislike that enemies can be effectively invisible when behind trees. The lock-on helps, though. Have you considered mitigating this somehow, like maybe using a shader to show an outline when an enemy is behind a tree? Or, if enemies are meant to be able to hide, only do it for enemies that the player has "seen"/"discovered"?

I cannot open the chest with "E" if I am standing diagonally from it.

I can discover hidden enemies by clicking "X" repeatedly with the cursor over trees.

I think my character executed an attack once going on land which I "queued" several seconds before when I was in the water.

Why did my character's maximum stamina bar go down? Damage or poison? Though it is restored when sleeping or respawning. Or does it goes down upon stamina usage? Would that discourage travelling quickly outside of combat?

I had a much easier time scaring the shooting enemies into the water and having them drown than killing them, on the long horizontal beach.

While the test crossbow is obvious, is there any way to survive the first castle room if you do not pick it up and equip it? Though this may be good, to ensure that the player does know how to pick up and equip items. I just wonder if it may be a source of frustration. I did pick it up and equip it on the first time, though, just speculation on my part.

I did not know you could access the menu and inventory by clicking "Esc".

It would be really nice once you implement Options while playing, at least being able to turn down or shut off music.

For some weapons, like the crossbow, a "cooldown" indication might be nice. Maybe on top of the icon.

Would it make sense to describe consuming a ration as restoring not "stamina", but "current maximum stamina"?

There is a long distance between the checkpoints in the "river castle", though my setup is also lagging. I did not complete the game, but did get a fairly long distance into the "river castle". I experimented a bit too much with stamina, blocking with the shield and a "claws enemy", and ended up dying.