itch.io

Hey,

For this version I liked the ship UI changes you guys implemented. I think it makes a lot of sense. I think the biggest issue I saw was that the monster would start spinning when it targeted me. With the new ship UI its actually slower to move than in the last playtest as there is a delay when switching view, and as such I'd recommend making the monster a bit easier to deal with. I think the hide feature is a really cool feature, it allows me to avoid 1-3 encounters with the monster in a playthrough, but if it started tracking onto me it would still bash into me and depending on the encounter one-shot me. I also noticed that I would take damage from it when it was spinning even if it didn't touch me. A fun feature now with the hide is that if you repair your screen with the power off the screen will turn on, same with anything else that was repaired. 

The new map was interesting, I think the game play is pretty similar to what how the old one played and don't really have a preference. I think it would be very cool if you could select which ship to salvage. I did find that there's a wall at the very start that's not displayed on the map. Additionally, after collecting the last item, the goal to return to the start was weird as I didn't actually have to go to the start. I did find that as I improved with the control and understanding of the monster's spin it got easier to play and became beatable. The speed change from roaming to targeting is very confusing.

I look forward to see what you next iteration will look like.

Hi, this game has improved in concept The idea is there but the execution needs improvement. Your art assets are good but the actual game is lacking. I liked the big differentiation between the visuals of each level, but finding the fragments means something different in each level0 The abilities gave nothing to the player. Learning the AOE attack was useless since no other level needed it, and even the level that could have used it didn't need it any more. The AOE was nicer than the basic attack because of whatever weird hitbox/double hit things are going on with the basic attack. The climb ability only works on those blocks in your memory so the player didn't even gain anything they just travel to the teleport maze differently. I was confused why there was no fragment after the teleport maze, but I'm assuming there just isn't another level. There was no clear end to the game. 

I played for ~1hr, it was not enjoyable. My first encounter with the game was opening it, getting greeted with your letter and then quitting the game because I found the exit menu before the enter key. I further wanted to quit after the first thing I interacted with was the outhouse. I only played that long because I wanted to see everything your game had and to experiment with some mechanics, otherwise I would have quit after within 5 minutes. The fragments were easy to get as it was mostly just walking to where ever the fragment was. This game needs more planning and execution. This game feels very random and distasteful. The player jump and movement still feels really bad. There are a lot of things that need to be fixed but a short list would be :add your own colliders, add invisible walls, add kill-planes if you're going to let the player walk off the edge, and make the player movement feel good, especially since that's the mechanic the player is always using.

Hey guys this comment is for playtest 2, 

I really enjoyed your game and solving all the puzzles. None of them were too complicated or too simple. I did find that allowing only one valid check extended game play quite  bit. It took me around 40 minutes to solve all the puzzles and figure out your game, and another 30 to run through all the scenarios. Those first 40 minutes were quite enjoyable, I really love what you've done with the game, the art is very fitting, the puzzles slide right in. I think you should keep all the puzzle constructs the same for the final playtest but change the numbers. I think it would be completely insane if you guys completely reworked all of your puzzles for the last playtest.

[Quality of Life improvements]

it would have been nice if there was any way to restart the game without dying or solving everything. A "pause" menu would be a great addition as it would let the player quit or restart. It doesn't actually have to pause the game just allow the player the freedoms. Additionally, actually saving and showing players what endings they've gotten and which they are missing would be really cool.
One thing in particular that bugged me was the controls for interacting with the panel were a bit painful, as I would assume enter submits/check the code instead of exiting the terminal. Allowing more options to exit the terminal like esc/backspace would be helpful. I did like how you guys showed what controls were useable when, but the door controls still showed up even when you couldn't do anything more with the door.

[Bugs]

I did find quite a few bugs  during this playtest and did enjoy seeing the bugs that I found in the last playtest to all be fixed. Here is a list talking about all of them in order of most game breaking.

- If you drop the fire extinguisher while holding spray you will be permanently spraying and don't care about the extinguisher any more. 

- Fire doesn't stop crackling after the fire has been extinguised, leading to a short state of confusion.

- Doors in NAVIGATION don't work from nav side at all, even if you input a code in.

- Taking the door from DOCK to POD doesn't show the starter fire till you leave and comeback. You're in the "FIRE!!" state the entire time and drain fast on a fire you can't see or fight.

- Sun code shows invalid but is an actual destination 

- More fires don't increase the speed at which O2 drains. (almost irrelevant)

- You can throw the fire extinguisher into the opened escape pod door losing the ability to fight fires without completing the game :D (completely irrelevant)

Overall, the game worked pretty great. A lot of issues with the doors and fires may be fixed by simply removing the fire/code locks you have on the doors and just let the player go through and use their energy. Really enjoyed your game and I'm excited to see how it looks at the end of the semester.

Hello,

I had a lot of trouble with this game. There were a lot of thing going wrong. A lot of it has to do with the movement of the player and free asset colliders.  The camera jittered quite a bit, probably because the script controlling it was not set under LateUpdate(). The camera positioning and aiming a quite good otherwise. The clipping into objects with the camera was pretty annoying, and may be fixed by transitioning to a first person view whenever a raycast from the camera to the player fails. On the other hand the jump mechanic felt really bad, and inconsistent. I would recommend making your own simpler colliders for the materials to allow for smoother gameplay. A bunch of these colliders made simply walk really painful. The high detail colliders and inconsistent jump made the first level unplayable.

In the tutorial there were quite a few things I found uncomfortable. First thing that stood out for me was that the punch action had the character preform a "ready" animation. Additionally, the punch hitbox felt poorly placed, almost as if it was at his feet. When playing the tutorial, the fact that not every crate or barrel broke was very confusing and frustrating as the hitbox for punching is already frustrating.  The barrel puzzle is a silly mechanic built that wastes the player's time, and completely deviates from your game's objectives.

I think it would be wise to head back to the greybox where you guys had a nice simple level with consistant movement and enemies existed. It made a lot of sense and allowed for a lot of openness compared to the current one dimensional gameplay. A player cannot get a sense of being a "God" when every little thing interrupts gameplay or forces them down a pixel perfect path. 

As the god aspect with endless options appeared to be one of your objectives, I think making your world more open could help a lot. Allowing the player chose to follow the intended path instead of forcing them gives a player the freedom of a god. I think enemies that can be blocked by one of the player's abilities such as spawning a dirt wall. There are a lot of options you can pursue. Good Luck.

Hey,

This game was very stable. and cute. I think the major issue with the game is the balancing of the game. Implementing more towers will definitly change how you'll want to balance the game later on, however you'll still need to do balancing. This Saturn tower is way too strong for the current wave system. At one level up and with some good placement you can get to level 23 without moving a muscle while astral gems just pile up. You reach this state within 3 waves, giving you have a solid 20 waves of gems to collect.

I think the waves are very well designed and really good for balancing a game. The waves have a good variety of tanky and slow, squishy and fast, and even in-between enemies.
The Saturn(1+) tower is overpowered for a variety of reasons. It has a very large radius which means that any enemy fast or slow will stay in its range for a very long time. It has multi-targeting which makes it really good against all enemies. Multi-target makes the amount of enemies irrelevent since they all take damage the same. Multi-target can only be countered by different enemy types. Typically really fast  or really tanky enemies would be a counter for this, but the large range counters the fast and squishy enemy types. I would recommend cutting the tower's damage a lot and possibly not increasing the range, or only increasing it with another damage cut.
After some testing the  the base tower looks pretty balanced
The general movement and feel of the games core mechanics were really good and spot on. I particularly loved the ice and the gem pickup/toss mechanic. I loved stacking up gems and then pointing in a desired location and spamming E.

A label when hoving over the storage, shop, or blackhole would improve first time understanding of the game.

This game is very nice and relaxing, I've enjoyed playing it and testing it quite a bit.  I think the game will get more hectic with more towers and better balancing. I think a solo-target push back tower like a Jupiter tornado or the winds of Neptune (700mph average).  Another tower could be  single target projectile like the dart monkey in bts would really help in finding a good balance for things. I think the ability to craft the gems into a higher worth gem (yellow gems) can greatly help the gameplay. I do like how the towers are stationary during a wave, but I think a system that can induce more hecticness is to allow the player a certain amount of tower moves per wave.

Overall, very high potential game with a really solid grounding.

Hi yall,

I really like the art style of your posters and your terminal its very nice. I did think that the puzzle was very simple. I was a bit dissappointed when all the alternatives endings we're the same as bad input "you collided with the sun". 

Through my playthough I found a number of strange little issues with you game. The fire extinguisher jets did go through the body of the space craft( only noticable through the windows). Additionally the big thing that got me was that you guys didn't clamp() the upward rotation of the camera. I know you guys we're going for a zero gravity effect and it feels pretty nice, but the inverted controls after doing a flip takes away from the mood. Additionally, while inverted if you go against a wall you can look through the roof and the floor. I also noticed that there were a lot of portions of the map that were constantly z-fighting, the floor was particularly weird with the lighting.

I would really like to see a UI that lets you replay the game, instead of instantly quiting even if its a plain button.

I'm super excited to see your next playtest, I would really love to see the different ending and puzzles. I want play finish them all. Good Luck!

Hi, I like how you guys have setup your game. It looks really nice, and I really enjoyed the Beauing pun. The controls were really easy to figure out. Idk if it was intended but, you can press and hold a movement key followed by A or D to look at the map while moving. I think its nice how that plays out.

Each component had its own perks and down falls. The map did not feel like it lined up properly with the ship nor with the wall components. At times I would just really far from the map element and it was a bit confusing. The repair module needs some sort of limiting factor/punishment for clicking wrong. I would just smash every button on that panel for the slightest repairs. I think the window feels pretty well balanced.  A touch more accuracy on the maps and its no longer required for play but is a nice cute feature. I did feel like the actual map didn't match the paper one, which is ok, especially if the map looks very similar from overhard, but its a bit confusing.

The monster was intersting. The monster doesn't feel particularly strong but the chase mechanic can catch you in a bad spot. I did get soft locked by the monster when collecting the second target. Because I could fit into a space the monster couldn't, but it never lost track of me and just trapped me. If you moved out if its way you also tend to "avoid" damage. At some point the monster just "soft locked" itself in the center of the ship.

I think adding a bit of slowness to the screen swap can make the game play feel nicer and less disorienting.

Overall, I really like your game and where you were heading. After a few tweaks it should feel really good.

This game has great concept however the implementation of certain features hold the game back. One of the simpliest fixes I think you guys can implement would be to swap the mouse buttons so that shoot is left click and grapple is right click. As many people are very accustomed to left click being the shoot button. Additionally, setting space to at least be ungrapple would make the game very understandable. If a jump was added after it would feel quite a bit nicer. I highly recommend seeking a better wall climbing mechanism as the current one is quite unstable and extremely hard to use. 

In terms of other features I think the fog is really nice, there are some spots you can hide from the fog but it seems well balanced for the current difficulty of the game. However most of the difficulty comes from the wall jump being inconsistent and the keybindings being awkward. I would suggest increasing fog speed after fixing those up.

Health is an interesting concept in your game as some of the obstacles where you have health its a touch nice to be given that leeway, but in most cases you insta-die anyways. 

I found the rapid shotgun quite entertaining to use. It may be cool to have portions of the map where you're  given the shotgun for a brief instant to pass a section. I think enemies might be a distraction as the fog is the major concern enemies would probably be rapidly dodged rather than defeated.

The level design is very nice and I really like the uniqueness of the obstacles you guys have implemented.

This game was quite interesting. I really liked seeing your retextured assets. I got to level 21. The hitboxes feel pretty chunky as the entire character is considered in the hitbox. These chunky hitboxes made a lot of the spacebar feel quite required as you needed to change the hitbox to avoid getting blocked. Additionally, it was quite hard to tell which portions of the map were passable and which were not, especially with the big hitbox as you may be hitting either side with it. I would like to see blue potions implemented. At ~level 18 i got 2 red potions and had nowhere near enough to escape further. I really liked your horde animations. I would much appreciate a start menu and a restart button as my first run it took me a while to realize that it was the horde :D.

This game is very beautiful and stable, however it gets dry very fast. One thing I noticed was that you could stop biking and stay off the screen for quite an extended amount of time with no penalty. I did also find the lack of difficulty change in the game made it quite dry as only the positions of objects change. There is no penalty for missing a house and actually a reward for landing the paper poorly. As you can throw as many papers as you want with no cost per paper or no cooldown the game feels like it emphasizes just spamming paper and slightly dodging obstacles to increase the score.

Fun and Very Creative Game.

Dying when falling off the edge of the screen is quite unfortunate, I would recommend setting a minimum boat speed when the player reaches the border instead of killing them off. Additionally, I think it would be better to have all the dialog boxes go together rather than giving the player 2 seconds of control between dialog boxes. It's quite annoying to get disconnected and reconnected from the controls so rapidly. Bullets are only rare at the start as you can constantly fire an never runout after the first barrel. I think the boats, serpents and sharks are a well spread and make the game quite fun. The crab boss is quite challenging as its pretty impossible to dodge. I do find it funny that you can spawn two of them. Beat the game with 1 hp after destroying ~2 fishing boats max. Stamina bar wasn't super useful but makes fighting the crabs a bit easier.