itch.io

Didn’t try tarmac. On weight transfer, I don’t think I could manage to do a scandinavian flick. I think the benchmark would be if you’re able to flick into an almost reverse entry into a hairpin without using the handbrake. Maybe weight transfer is fine and it’s the way power oversteers (don’t?) work.

Didn’t think much about it but some I would try are bubbles inside of him (think hair gel) and particles/debris/objects sticking to him and sometimes flinging off.

Enemies didn’t pose much of a threat (on Normal+). The pistol is definitely OP. It’s fun to use but I’d see it as a max upgraded weapon, not a starter pistol.

Gotta be honest, didn’t read much past the first few screens. Still not sure what’s with the green aliens and if I’m supposed to keep them alive.

Was about to praise how accurate the shield enemies hitboxes are but turns out they’re just higher HP and shooting around the shield doesn’t matter. Would be pretty cool if it was as I thought.

The rifle being worse than the pistol and no ADS (or at least I couldn’t figure it out) is kinda funny.

Wish the wide dark gray doors showed if they’re openable or not. And the green/broken screen ones could be a bit more visible.

There’s a bug where you can’t switch weapons without firing once first. Also some weirdness with being able to shoot before the animations finish sometimes/anim desync?. Pistol disappears while reloading. Guardrail texture has a pixel-width edge line. Saw some long corridors which were dead ends, bit frustrating.

Made it halfway through “Apply directly to the forehead” without taking any damage (the whole run), restarting to check max difficulty. Not sure but now the enemies seem to react from further, maybe the homing projectile tracks more tightly? Seems like it’d be about as easy.

Lone gunner CQB-ing his way through a feverdream mazelike humongous hijacked ship has potential for world class ludo, just gotta do it justice. I personally envision something like System Shock remake but a bit more casualised/linear/combat oriented.

Nice tutorial and UI. Appreciate the low damage because I wouldn’t have made it with how much I crashed and took fire. Couldn’t deal with the shielded things. By the time I managed to get behind them and actually aim they’ve already turned around just enough that hits bounce off. Not sure but it also felt like the shield collision is larger than its visuals.

Trying to come in from further away didn’t seem possible because the weapon ranges are really short. Limited range rockets I’d understand but the main projectiles just fizzling away is frustrating. No way some insane plane like this would have that kind of limitation.

I’d be curious if a version of the shield things that are depletable but can fire bullets/lasers would be more fun.

I cheesed them by hovering close enough for bullets to spawn past the shield to see if there’s anything next but seems that’s it for now.

I’m not familiar with any other games like this but it’s an intriguing concept. Also, don’t know if the visuals are placeholder but I really wouldn’t mind if they don’t get much more detailed. I think killer sound and VFX design would take it much further than AAA assets.

>WindowsIconUpdater.exe
>completely absent mindedly click it thinking it's the game
>desktop icons flash
>realise this thing probably did some explorer.exe voodoo or something

Turns out it’s fine (I think/hope) and the slipup is on me but I don’t think that’s supposed to be there.

Why not submit a .7z instead of 3 separate files?

Mouse sensitivity setting doesn’t seem to work, also it goes to negative values.

I appreciate the first tutorial. Stumbled my way through 2 but 3 feels overwhelming. I think it would be better to have a more linear level there. Maybe there’s some sort of surfmap architectural language you can instantly read but I feel like I’m fumbling around through disjointed areas.

Jumped to 4 and even though it’s practically linear it still feels confusing. Part of it is the distant shadows cutting off making things look flat and hard to read.

Not sure what’s jank and what’s intentional/a reference. Never been into surfing so I guess not really the target audience either.

Movement is jittery on a 144Hz display.

I really like the concept, could go extremely far and I hope you end up doing it justice. The one idea I would personally like to see is noita-ish interplay of elements and physics objects.

The thing I’d focus on next is the combat (damage feedback, some non-beeline AI) and getting some sounds in.

Music is a certified schizocore banger and would go harder with a mute button.

Is the framerate capped somehow? I get only 67 FPS. Also I think the (game green thing) cursor should always be visible.

Brakes feel too ineffective and the car is extremely understeery.

Steer assist off still seems to intervene and corrects away too much of any oversteer I manage to achieve. Also refuses to turn the wheel at points (low speed under braking for example).

Weight transfer influence feels very weak to the point I’m not sure if there’s any at all.

Also whenever I’d expect wheelspin the engine seems to bog down instead.

First used keyboard steering, mouse doesn’t capture and sensitivity seems speed dependent which I couldn’t get used to.

Also tried gamepad, and with it the steer assist finally stays off. Much better when it’s not completely fighting my inputs but my complaints about brakes, understeer and weight transfer remain.

Could also use a hold to restart key and remembering the camera choice. Pace notes seem solid.

I like the direction indicator. Controls need some casual lenience, like if holding block before an attack finishes, start blocking after; Still attack if clicking attack too early etc.

Feels like the slashes have inconsistent range but it may be the fault of the arc of the swing which looks awkward to me. Also it seems that they have unequal range which also throws me off. Possibly movement also influences it.

Movement looks juddery at 144 FPS.

I go all in on promising pre-flops, “the pot has been discarded” (???) it gets me to -50 money then I lose?

I think what it could best use right now is animating things happenning sequentially and feedback on what’s happening. Text and animation. Show the name/value of hands, show the chip values being changed and what’s changing them. Even an RPG style “combat” log could do for now.

Also it tries talking to some cloudfront server.

Setting AlternateSyncMethod=1 moves the cap to 144 but also speeds everything up to the point it’s unplayable. Lowest dip I saw is ~75 when getting really hectic. It matches the refresh rate, so switching to 60Hz caps to 60. So my workaround is keeping 144Hz and using RTSS to cap to 60.

Clicks seem to register fine at 144 FPS but capped at 60 with RTSS I can pretty consistently make it fail. Try tapping single shots yourself, maybe my mouse is failing or RTSS cap is not ideal still. Oh, I see the cursor changing when clicking but the shot isn’t fired. Autocannon not rotary.

With AlternateSyncMethod=0, tried single monitor, 50-60-72-120-144Hz, all cap at 45. Maybe a Game Maker quirk, I don’t use it or I’d have run into it.

Gish and Bounce (Nokia) had a “kid”? Nice

Can’t manage to fullscreen it. The slime feels a bit unpredictable and I think part of it is not being able to see its rotation that well.

Can’t quite get used to the way momentum (gaining) works. I can make it work but I don’t feel fully in control (yet?). Didn’t really get how the W key works either.

Got to level 9, gave up on the first ice jumps. Probably need to use the wall towards the left to somehow gain momentum but the spikes underneath feel like a guaranteed death and the frustration of getting there again.

What the hell I didn’t know Game Maker could be made to do things like this. Doesn’t go past 44 FPS for me though, I’ll blame that for me not beating level 1 (edit, I beat it, was focusing too much on keeping the city a city). Wait, I fiddled with the .ini and uncapped it. Game speed is tied to framerate, no bueno. I’d try my hardest to fix that while it’s early.

Sounds are fantastic, wonder if a bit of directionality would make it better. The rotary cannon sounds cool but it seems to have a white noise element that’s too harsh to my ears.

Also have trouble with visibility and it doesn’t feel right to be overly reliant on the radar. If it gets to that might as well have some kind of onscreen target identifiers.

Think it needs better feedback for when you take damage. I get through a fight thinking I did well then I peep the HP and half is gone. Also, some form of healing for the casuals?

Single (fire) clicks don’t register sometimes.

Add some screenshots on the jam page because not everyone checks the main game page.

Simcade tank game sounds appealing to me even though tanks aren’t my thing. Dropping the boring parts, amping up the juicy stuff? Yeah, this could go really well.

Reverse steering is reversed, I see why it happens (AD seems purely a rotation control) but if it’s intentional/makes sense with a tank make it a toggle for us wheeled vehicle plebs.

This is really solid. I’m sure you have a thousand ideas so I’ll try to keep mine to a minimum. I had big performance issues with the last build, much better now, usually 144 but dips to 90 in action, no stutters.

The visual hitmarker is great, straight up q3 hitsounds is something I’d love. I get hitmarkers on dead cars, I assume unintended. Could also use typical “no ammo” chk- sounds.

Default volume seems to be 50% which I think is non-ideal due to some audiophile voodoo I’m not qualified to talk about.

Arenas are big enough for distant sounds to be completely faded out. I’d at least keep distant explosions audible with a low-pass filter to keep direction+distance of fights/kills always available to the player.

Heard a few high pitched squeaks which I think are caused by Unity’s audio doppler thing and fast-moving sources.

Had a handful of weirdly positioned spawns on the rock arcs. I think it’s fine to spawn on them but some were at almost vertical angles.

Boost seems way too high capacity. Maybe it’s my old Rocket League habits but I barely use it, and when I do it takes dedication to deplete it.

I’d like aim to be toggleable, I stay in aim mode 99% of the time anyway.

What makes the aiming too hard until you know about it is that steering causes the ship to lean, influencing the height of the shot a lot. Steer into the shot = low, steer away = high. I initially blamed it on the wave heights being hard to see, but I’d still like to see that improved.

I’d also try faint(er than the shots) smoke trails for projectile paths. Argee with the rest about hit effects/confirmation (both player and enemies’). Hit sounds at minimum, and on the deep end War Thunder hitcams would be fun(ny).

I’d try slightly lower sun angles and making the water receive shadows. Would be an extra thing to help keep your bearings if you spin around a lot.

Is there no positional audio or am I going insane or is my setup busted? Noticed the same thing on Shanghai Gold.

The upgrades, weapons etc. will be guaranteed fun but it needs the shooting mechanic dialed in before being able to enjoy those.

I like the new HUD, and the overall lighting/post-processing looks better, more cohesive. Performance seems the same, 90 FPS on 1 and 144-40 on 2, still wish it was better, but the lower enemy damage kept me alive through the low FPS on level 2.

Not sure if I noticed this before but there doesn’t seem to be any kind of positional audio?

The pistol has a limited range, so past a certain distance there aren’t even bullet holes. I find it frustrating because when hits don’t seem to land I can’t know for sure if it’s my aim, the spread or the range. I’d try capping the damage to a minimum value past the “max” range instead.

Level 2, the first restaurant (?) with green brick walls, the enemy pathfinding avoids the lower level outside stairs.

Some stairs don’t have the ramp sort of collision or are missing it on the last step. Bit of z-fighting on a wall in the one large yard.

Not a fan of how the viewmodel’s lighting/brightness doesn’t change much between a pitch black alleyway and right under a streetlamp.

I’d try making distant enemies return (some) fire if shot at.

The window to window jump, I missed it first then only found it because an enemy shot at me from the other building. I’d ensure that enemy stays there and/or add some alternate way(s) to get there.

Red key door was underwhelming but I guess boarded up door means you’re working on it. Didn’t find the tram key or a way into the blue light vent and gave up there.

sovl

The intro art is nice and the gameplay art deserves to be on the same level. Its biggest need right now is lighting. If it was my call I’d first experiment with dynamic lighting (maybe 3D level so you can use conventional lights and shadowcasters and keep the top down orthogonal cam).

Thought I was about to juke an enemy but still got attacked with a gap slightly longer than the enemy’s arms.

I eventually died and the restart took me all the way back to the start of the intro. Didn’t like that.

Gave it another go. The bucket I initially thought is a plate armor chest, lol.

When I couldn’t pick up the knife in the kitchen I had the first thought to check for an inventory and for some reason I had a better starter loadout than doomguy. Took 6 shells to find the cake, screw the other girls, are they even in there somewhere?

Not my genre nor am that familiar with planes, so make of these what you will.

Seems you can take off with very little runway, if realistic, that’s cool.

The beeps are annoying at first but got used to it, volume slider still welcome. I really like the wheEOWww (closest description is metal detector) sound when… not sure what causes it (missile lock?) but it felt authentic.

I think I passed through an enemy in what should have been a head-first collision but not absolutely sure about it.

The tracers’ look (green glowing quads) made me think they’re bugged for a minute. Actually still not sure because the flamey impacts look much more deliberate/realistic in contrast.

I would try a detail texture for terrain, thinking of the type that becomes visible when closer, right now it’s hard to gauge altitude and speed when flying low (no, I never look at the numbers). I found myself cluelessly getting close to the ground and even crashing, also because of the plane drifting down you mentioned elsewhere.

Hit sounds are nice but I’d also try out impact VFX, it’s sometimes hard to visually tell when/where hits land, especially in the dark and while I played muted for a bit.

Subjective but I don’t like when locking onto a far enemy that the camera moves forward, partially hiding the player.

Also subjective but I prefer the character to strafe relative to the (free) camera than turning to move.

Is VSync on (if so, let me turn it off) or do you have a mandatory framerate limiter (if so, how’d you implement one that precise in Unity? I had tried 3-4 methods a while ago and all were jittery)

I’m sure you’re well aware of bugs/jank like the apparent sinking after jumping (and staying sunk on the platform/walls), also managed to get myself stuck in a ready-to-kick animation once but couldn’t replicate it.

Edit: About rain, my personal favorite to this day is a 2007 demo by Nvidia, have a look https://developer.download.nvidia.com/SDK/10/direct3d/screenshots/samples/Rain.html

Still feels unsurpassed, I’d love to try and replicate it for my game(s) one day. It’s pretty wild, they use actual photographs of individual raindrops lit from multiple angles, it’s in the whitepaper.

Here are some random notes written as I’m playing. I think this can go far, looking forward to updates.

• Could use a textbox with the controls in the (pause) menu at least for demos.

• Movement feels too twitchy initially. Another thing that’s off to me, it seems that starting to run is relatively instant, but stopping has some inertia. It’s near impossible to make small adjustments to your position.

• The sword attack making you move forward is an odd choice and it’s throwing me off, I’m trying to cancel it out by moving back. I could see it make sense for a charged attack but not the most basic one.

• When the sword enemies attack they remain in place (why can’t the player?). Also their range being bigger than the player’s feels unfair and unintuitive.

• Attacks (at least the bow) need auto fire. I hate having to spam click in general but especially when I can get the timing off and click before the cooldown.

• Not sure what the third item bottom left is supposed to mean. Not sure what WP is (saw an item description later and my current guess is willpower). Oh, pressing Enter (?!?!) activates WP and only for one attack that didn’t seem that helpful.

• There need to be more hints about your attacks landing. It’s hard to tell when/if you’re doing damage and hard to track which enemies are lower HP. I can see how no HP bars follows the skill-based philosophy but enemies overlap so often you cannot really keep track of who’s who. I discovered the damage numbers option later and I find it much better like this.

• I discovered space to jump quite late, I think you should also be able to jump on the spot even if it’s useless (maybe it could have an use). Also discovered parrying quite late (would be fun if you could parry arrows). Sometimes I think I still take damage even though I hear the parry sound.

• I don’t like the slimes as they are now. Too spammy to deal with and the instant untelegraphed damage feels annoying. Don’t get knocked back either. The melee pushing me into them resulting in taking damage is also annoying.

• Coins sometimes bug out and hover near the player without being collected.

• Not entirely sure about this but sometimes it feels that collisions are inexact. Either hits that should land don’t and attacks that don’t visually touch the player cause damage.

Besides what others have said, I’m pretty sure the name won’t be allowed on mobile stores, and Apple might even be picky about the poop particles if you’re unlucky.

Also, could take it visually further and swap out the standard Unity shader for something else. I think even normies have learned to spot that classic Unity sheen without really knowing what it is.

Plus other little things I’m sure you’ve thought about, particles on impact, contact blob shadow. Poop stain decals would be fun but won’t fly on mobile, make it a DD/PC exclusive.

I had a 90 FPS cap (using RTSS) before my first comment, took it down to 60 and it’s still 40-50% usage. The GPU clocks stay at full frequency, so it’s a percentage of that and not idle clocks. Wattage is up, fan RPM gets high.

Tested it on W10, a 2700X and an RX580, off NVMe, plenty of RAM. Nothing heavy running in the background.

Disabled vsync (ingame and outside), FPS stay at 200 just looking around at the start and dip to 40 exactly when bullets start flying then pretty much hovers around 50 with occasional bigger spikes.

I like the responsiveness/snappiness of controls/attacks. This would be the main thing I’d try to retain as animations get improved.

I like the way enemies behave but they seem too shy when charged towards. Could cheese them pretty much every time with lock on, sprint forward and spam punch.

Really fun bones, I’m sure you have tons of ideas but what I think would suit this greatly is environmental involvement - obstacles, hazards, things to throw and other stuff to make you constantly think about your positioning. Or maybe I need to reinstall Dark Messiah.

Why is my GPU usage at 60% for a text-only game?

Well it’s not called “Touch the Flag” so I won.

You have something real tight going on, however for me the framerate dips the more bullets are being fired+in the air. It makes it almost unplayable.

GPU usage stays under 30% so just guessing but maybe there’s no object pooling? Or some ugly inefficiency in the projectile/ballistics code.

My guess is whatever you’re doing that makes ships rock back-forth (for example when the main menu ship drops on the water) needs some (extra?) dampening.

Opens and stays on a black screen in Sandboxie. Would try it directly but I’ll pass because of the other comment about it opening Steam, sorry.

• Movement needs to be interpolated or updated every frame, it seems to be at the default 50Hz and is a jittery mess at 144Hz.
• Walking diagonally is faster. I get that slow walking is better for muh ’mersion but I only moved around by attempting to strafe jump.
• Cursor locks at center when UI is opened for me (can be unlocked by alt tab and I think the bug is also triggered by it)
• When the path splits into three, whichever way you go a map shows and can’t do anything but close it and walk back.
• Found the sign, mentioned the place to the other guy, he says there’s nothing to say about it and that’s where I give up.

Feels like I’m either missing something obvious or something’s bugged.

Maybe “Wait a minute that card” was made for me all along.

Edit: Gave it another go, found some other thing (yeah nobody would expect you could go there), figured out where I am and where the signs go but still stuck. Consider me filtered and out of patience.

• Waves need more readable graphics, both for telling your motion better and also height.
• I assume shots’ range depends on you shooting from higher up on a wave but it was hard to do due to the previous point.
• Sometimes ships (including the main menu one) do a weird front-back wobble turning into violent glitchy shake (framerate dependent?).

You’ve thought of the AAAAA joke too, but I did legitimately have more fun here than with the last AAAA game I’ve tried.

Plenty of fun directions this could be taken to. Could also keep it light enough for a mobile release.

It’s early and you’re probably aware of most of these but here’s my mixed bag of notes:

• Need more satisfying bullet impacts, I’d also do gun smoke and consider tracers (more toned down than enemies’).
• I’d try toned down enemy tracers, they’re so glowy while also not even casting light.
• Pistol is too bad, I’d at least give it first shot full accuracy and/or spread should only increase when rapid firing.
• Pistol shoots as fast as you can click, and talking about clicks, hold-to-fire would save a lot of unnecessary burning through mice microswitch endurances.
• Headshots should do higher damage (or they already do? couldn’t tell).
• Tommygun firing sound when empty.
• 1.5 GB unzipped seems high, duplicate/unused content? something uncompressed/ too high res/q? Check the build log.
• Performance shouldn’t be this “low”. I am getting 70-90 FPS on my toaster but with the way it looks it should be 144 locked easy; Is any of the lighting baked? I saw some (all?) of the lights had dynamic shadows, understandable this early but I wouldn’t stick with that and if I did I’d look into taking more advantage of it. Post processing quality settings probably set too high without noticeable benefit (vs lower) too.
• Movie 📸
• Scaling of buildings/objects is way off at times but I guess this is intentional?
• Second level chugs down to 40 when looking towards the bulk of it, need occlusion+distance culling
• Skybox and moonlight don’t match (intentional?)
• Second level looked inviting and promising but between the bad framerate and being stuck with the crappy pistol after having aggroed too many enemies I had to cut it short.
• I died intentionally just to see what happens, the message is nice but I’d take a restart level button before assuming I’m about to quit and shown the exit, lol

Some of the points I had were already said by the others commenting.

I admit I hadn’t clicked on the full size screenshots before downloading because the thumbnails and description were enough to get me.

“Knee deep in casings exaggerated demigod mech minigun action”, hell yeah, I thought.

I can’t describe specifically why but my thoughts went to Abuse (DOS, 1996), MDK, Quake 1+2 in software mode, Cortex Command, Hammerfight. I expected gritty, crunchy, rusty, brassy.

But it looks painterly, soft (filtered textures, AA, DoF, bloom), stretchy, squishy. Hope you understand my point of view and disappointment. I don’t mean I’d like it to be straight up boomer shooter or PSX rendering but it’s too close to the other end in my opinion.

Very nice menu backgrounds, the rest of the UI needs to be on the same level. The font and rectangle elements are absolutely no-go.

Everything else is solid and promising for this early, looking forward to future versions.

Mixed bag of notes from first time playing. Unfortunately I haven’t played long enough to have serious thoughts about balance. I had fun, I like the visuals, the name is (really) good and I would like to play more but I want to get through more demos.

• This genre is dopamine-heavy and players’ receptors are all fried. I feel that this game’s hits could be stronger, I’d start by making juicier, shinier coin pickups with that silly pitch increase effect (or is it a Shepard tone?)
• I can’t get used to critical info being all the way into the corners, game can be fast paced enough that time spent on the ocular round-trip affects your play and gets fatiguing.
• Stereo not fully utilised, an explosion just left of the character sounds “as left” as one at the edge of the screen. If you can even work in some up/down spatialization it would be primo. A storm of bullets tearing through a fullscreen crowd of zombies should(!) sound crazy good and satisfying, use that as a test case to work on audio.
• Have you tried falling casings sounds? Curious if it gets annoying or is too similar to coin pickups. Maybe only play them while not picking coins or change the coin sounds.
• Not an expert on this so I won’t comment further but I would only pick 2-3 text sizes and 2 fonts and completely stick to them.
• Map screen, the rune icons on lower levels keep flashing even though (I think?) there’s no action I could take about them.
• Enemies should have names (not necessarily during gameplay but at least a compendium maybe) to facilitate players’ discussions. I think they’re unique enough to generate strategy discussions and fun anecdotes.
• It’s “can hardly wait”, unless I’m grammar nazi-ing a pun in which case keep it, it’s a crumb that will drive at least 50 online engagements down the line.

Discovered that 9 and 0 control the zoom while trying to find an auto-fire key. Agree on the immediate death intro, thought it was just me being distracted for a second.