itch.io

Ah yeah, that AoE does blend in with the floor a lot, guess I just missed it.

There's not a ton to comment on right now because it's clearly an early test demo, but please next time make the tutorial dialogue skippable and don't make it so esc just boots you to the main menu without a prompt or anything.

Controls are weird, if I understood it correctly you're basically placing a rally point for a particular control group and then units will move towards their corresponding waypoint and that's why unassigned units can't move?
I don't mind it but if you're going to keep it this way you may want to group units by squads like the MoW games do, but, regardless of how you set it up, only being able to issue orders to control groups instead of individuals units is weird: if you need one specific guy to scout ahead, dodge a grenade, hang back to wait for heals or kite the enemy, you need to assign him to a new control group before moving him, it's clunky and in my opinion you should allow for individual unit control.
It's doubly clunky because this system won't allow you to queue commands either.
Also in modern RTS games you usually control units with right click not left click.

For some positives, the game runs smoothly and the hyena model is cool, I love the idea of a goofy African warfare setting, I don't know what causes your troops to play the guitar but seeing several of my guys playing music until a grenade launched them in the air was funny.

I'll totally check this game out in future DDs if you keep working on it, RTS games are cool.

Nice, I remember a previous version of this.

 introducing the player to one element at a time is good to encourage experimentation so that was a good decision.

I saw that there's upgrades for player speed but the base speed is atrocious, I spent the whole game with either the shadow-water dash or the water-fire dash combos just because it was much faster.
Arena nodes didn't do anything.
Changing your selected elements is a bit clunky, it would be easier to combo different spells if it were faster.

This is starting to get really fun.

I made it to the skeleton mage boss, my team got wiped by the AoE attack, it should probably have a ring around the caster to show its range.

Last time I played there was no level timer, trying to find the exit in time is a lot more engaging than wandering around clearing skeletons endlessly.
Managing the party's aggro and helping them step away form AoE attacks works well for bossfights, but maybe you could add a "prioritize target" button just so that you don't need to move your whole party to kill one of cromwell's servants or other priority targets and risk the boss aggroing on an archer or mage.

There should be a backdrop behind the team's list UI because if your cursor is over the ability icons instead of the healthbar you can accidentally target a model through the UI. 
Are the crossed scimitars crit chance? The rest of the stat icons are clear but tooltips naming them would be nice.

Regarding progression, I think that for the demo the inn should start already upgraded or at least be much cheaper just so it's easier to test different characters and composition.
Also the way spell unlocking is implemented can be a double edged sword: if you have a certain combo in mind diluting the spell pool with spells you don't want is not a good thing. Maybe some sort of limited selection mechanic could help? For example the player could select 20 or so spells that show up on levelup, then save the selection as a grimoire to choose when entering the dungeon.

Good progress since the last time I tested this, I'm going to play some more and try beating the mage boss too.

If it's not working, then it's another thing I need to fix

Yeah only B was doing anything

I love the pixelart and the music for sure, the idea is solid for an action game.
There's a couple of frustrating things like the character getting stuck around the map's hitboxes and enemies being fragged by the spin move.

The warrior felt much weaker than the wizard mostly because attacking forces you to stand still for so long.

Also I pressed T to see what it did and I NUKED a single bat with a giant meteor for 300 damage, good times.

Very nice. 

The tutorial does its job and the railgun feels great to use, although the hotkey for it didn't work and I could only select it with the scroll wheel.

I wish the spike has a bigger hitbox, it says it does more damage while moving but it's not easy to land reliably unless you're running straight at the enemy.

Hoping for more levels soon, I want more chances to mow people down with the autoshotty

Great as always, I'll list my thoughts on the new content:

The scattergun is okay, but I think it should be able to one-shot the smaller mechs up close.
The railgun is amazing. It's a bit overpowered because enemies can't really do anything when you one-shot them from behind cover, but damn is it satisfying.
Grenades are also fun and satisfying to land, their damage is appropriate and I really like the aiming visuals.
The new level looks great and I like that the new enemies have a mobility edge on the player, but with all the weapons and ammo you have no lone enemy is ever going to feel threatening.
I'd consider pulling a uno-reverse on the player and adding an indirect enemy that fires at you from behind cover.

The hovercraft is so much louder than anything else.

Fun!

The visual effects are a bit too much in my opinion, but the physics are satisfying.

I kind of wish the bat simply pointed at the cursor instead of following mouse movement, it would feel more natural to me, the "relative melee" button in the pause menu didn't seem to change anything.

I like the tutorial, it does its job without being too intrusive and it's good to get a little bit of lore.

While you're reworking levels, maybe you could also fix the perspective on some of the giant-sized rooms

The akimbo powerup is fun, firing the akimbo tommy guns lagged my game and picking up the shotgun while the akimbo was active lagged by brain, it's so unexpected to see 4 mirrored hands picking up two shotguns at once, it got a laugh out of me.

I didn't replay the other two levels since I think they're still the same.

I got stuck on this spot:

Then I restarted the game and spammed E at the guy, it opened multiple instances of the dialogue and the game crashed.

Restarted and played for a while, after dying to a monster and restarting this happened:

I restarted to see if I could get the E spambug to happen again, instead after talking to the guy, I had two mouse pointers and couldn't move or do anything, I'm guess the game didn't register the dialogue window closing since that has two pointers as well.
Restarted again, the captive mouse broke and my cursor kept going on my second monitor.

Sometimes when you turn off the engine the car keeps moving, I think it has something to do with accelerating after you press R.
Took me forever to find the axe in the shed, it's blends with the wall.
Got ending 3.

I think the idea of traveling dangerous places with a vehicle that breaks down is a really good concept for a horror game, but combat is more awkward than scary and the bugs didn't help immersion.

Nice, I got immediate From Dream flashbacks.

It wasn't clear to me that you needed a bullet to heal and I died at the second monster, it respawned me in front of the brainserver and the game broke, it played the brainserver introduction again despite the first enemy being dead, then every time I loaded in the previous area it kept respawning the rope, resetting the computer and the combat encounter.

Restarted and killed the second enemy, this time the game remembered I took the hook rope and that the computer's cipher was solved. Interacting with the computer again makes the second enemy visible but it doesn't reset the combat encounter like in the first playthrough. 

Spamming E in the bunny dialogue makes the text appear slightly before the textbox, which isn't a problem but it is odd that they aren't parented.

I still have no idea how to solve a cipher, I just stared at the letters until I kinda spotted a word and guessed it right both times. It's not your fault because it's a hard thing to understand without a clear step by step example but maybe you could replace it with a more easily understandable puzzle.

It's a fun demo, I liked the atmosphere and I'd play more just to see where the story goes.

Nice.

The window's reflection is weird at certain angles:

I thought the idea of bringing trash all the way to the bin instead of simply carrying the the bag around was to setup a jumpscare, so the anticipation and the creepy music put me on edge, but then carrying a trashbag in front of my face while shining a light on it or being surrounded by almost total darkness was too blinding, it kind of had the opposite effect. Bunnyhopping away from the giant waddling grey alien got a laugh out of me, the moon jump in general is not good for a horror game, but hey at least it was funny.

Also the first thing I did after reading the note was going after the promised pizza and I got the surprise bad ending lmao.

I played the 0.13 version:

I'm not good at bullet hell games so level two was already too hard for me.
The readme says that you switch angle by pressing the triggers but it was the shoulder buttons on my Xbox controller.
The first time I finished level 1 the game didn't continue to the next stage, here's a screenshot:

I only really used the homing sword attack so I wish you could hold the button down for that too instead of having to spam A to keep attacking.
If you want people to actually read the dialogue you need to add a button to continue the dialogue instead of just skipping it. 

Thanks for playing and thanks for the video.

Sorry for the poor performance, it seemed to run without a hitch for me but I guess all the various light sources and shadows can be a problem on some hardware.

Thanks for the feedback, glad you found the game spooky.

Thanks for playing, I know the game didn't turn out great, unfortunately.

As is you can run pretty fast but you're punished for not taking things slow by more easily running into enemies. It shouldn't be too hard other than that, I gave the player what I think is a good amount of health especially in the later levels and kept it hidden hoping to keep things suspenseful, but I get that it's going to just be frustrating for most people.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Hey thanks for the feedback, I implemented tank recoil and lowered the chaingun volume in the version I just uploaded.

Bullets can penetrate thin armor already, this is most evident by enemy infantrymen being able to kill the player if you show them side armor up close. Also there's no randomness involved in calculating penetration at the moment, it's just a pen vs armor check influenced by the angle of impact.

Hey thanks for playing again!

You're right that I should focus on making the game fun by leaning on the arcady side, I'll try not to worry about guns being overpowered.
I do want to add some story content but I want to try making 3D cutscenes and that's just not something I can focus on this early when performance and some core mechanics still need improvement. 

Thanks again for the feedback.

Gotten around watching this, it's been extremely helpful.

Some things will take time and deliberation to tweak but there's also a lot of immediate things I can improve right away so I'll get to it.
Thanks again for taking the time to record this.

Hey thanks for the video, I'll watch it as soon as I can!

It's a simple game but I like the effort you put in the menus and the presentation in general.

The ball felt a little floaty to me but I understand that it might be intentional to make the game harder.
I don't think there's any reason to use Q and E to turn the camera around by 90 degrees when the mouse or the second analog stick on a controller could move it more organically.
Also it wasn't obvious to me that the blast attack was something that you had to charge by picking up the collectables, it seems a bit strict imo, you only get one shot to deal with enemies.
Sometimes two platforms are not levelled perfectly and the ball goes flying when rolling on the slightly higher platform, if it's intentional it could be more obvious.

Other than that, it was a fun demo.

I was having a God run until the game spawned a boss out of bounds and softlocked me.

Also I kept backpedaling into exit portals by accident, maybe they could be louder?
tbh I think tiny rooms like the ones in the screenshot should stop spawning after a cycle or two, it's a very small space to cram 3 bosses in.

Other than that it's pretty fun, I love how overboard you went with the content.

The controls do not suit mouse and keyboard at all, it's awkward to try and position your character using WASD and then attack in the right direction, the attacks should face the cursor imo.

It played better with a controller but then I ran into a bug where I couldn't purchase items, probably something to do with the mouse being disabled if it detects a controller.

The ranged character was much stronger than the melee ones, I think it's to do with the melee animations having too much backswing and that the melee hitbox are a bit too tiny for an attack that stops all your momentum.
I beat the game with the ranged character and getting the melee boss.

Hey, thanks for playing.

There is automatic UI scaling now so glad that's working, same with the optimization.

The 90mm now has some vertical aiming making it viable, the railgun will need some buffs aside from making the thing aim correctly.

Turns out that it goes into a separate secondary weapon slot that you are not introduced to in the tutorial

Oh yeah I forgot to explain it, whoops.
You can also select the weapon by pressing 2 like it says on the UI but it's small and tucked in on the bottom left so I can see how that'd be easy to miss.

I find it a little lame that you still have access to the sci-fi repair minigame with them but I understand why you made it that way.

I could remove the particles if that helps with immersion, but the ability to play as the enemy tanks is more of an easter egg than anything serious.

But yeah, thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for playing.

perhaps make a proceudral scenario generator

There are some elements of procedural generation in the missions regarding how things are placed, in theory a completely procedural mission is already possible so maybe I can add that as a "side" mission from the regular campaign. I'll put it on the to-do list.

red alert apocalypse tank build?

Perhaps in the future.

That is, when you take damage, some percentage of that damage takes away from your maximum health. For example, if you take 40 damage and half of it is hard damage, your maximum health would lower to 80

It can work as long as all enemies stay fair, but honestly the game didn't feel too easy, it's just that those telegraphed beam attacks are very easy to avoid when there's only a handful of them, it's okay to have enemies which are more dangerous in a group imo.

Thanks for the play-by-play feedback.

You're right that the game should have more feedback and screenshake when being hit especially, I'll try to remedy it.
There's an option for reverse steering, and the QTE must have bugged out somehow because it's not timed.

I could speed up the turret rotation, it's currently depending on what turret/weapon is equipped, the starting 20mm is a bit weak so it should probably turn much faster than everything else, I'll buff it, eventually.

Thanks for playing!

Took me a fair few tries to beat it this time:

The new system works and it's easier to combine certain elements, but it's also very easy to accidentally add an element you don't want by trying to move too early, I lost a couple of run to accidental electricity added to scythe attacks.
Forcing you to stand still while mixing elements makes things harder which I assume it's intentional but it also makes it harder to go for bigger combinations.
I don't mind it but it is less immediate, I can see how people could find it clunky.

I'm not sure if the super effective damage is better or simply more evident, but I was able to break my reliance on steam+electricity this time and two-tap the exploding enemies with the correct damage, although It took me forever to realize that poison exploders are weak to fire. 
I still lost the majority of runs to getting swarmed by exploding enemies, the rest rarely deal enough damage to kill you when you can chug healing like nobody's business.

Upgrades are interesting, the scythe damage one is great, but I spent all the other points on the alchemical tank ones since they're always useful and the rest seem situational.

I had a lot of fun beating this, hope to play more!

Thanks for playing, I'm leaning towards making this specifically a "light tank" game but this is far from the final version so there will be room for experimentation.
The crosshair could use some transparency, you're right.
Also thanks for the addon suggestion, I'll check it out.

Thanks again for the feedback

Pathfinding needs some work, when moving large groups of units the ones in the back tend to move away from the ones in the front rather than trailing behind.

Other than that I'm confused about the design.
You start in your base and the available units are predetermined, you have little choice over the composition and you get a full army in a couple of minutes, then move your army around and chip away at nearby enemy concentrations but it seems like even a full army isn't enough to make significant progress before it gets wiped.
So you kinda want to bring your king to fights, but also he needs to be back at the coven to remass your army quicker?  Are you supposed to wait for a bunch of support buildings to buff up your coven before being able to do significant progress?
Other than fighting whatever's closest with your mass, you can micro your envoy a little bit to scout and pickup trinkets but that's it.

I don't get this game, I have the feeling I'm playing it wrong or something because it feels like all you do is mass a weak army, attack-move towards the closest enemies and repeat after they all die.

Hey, thanks for playing.

maybe tank drifting, even?

This was a thing in the previous demo, but there really wasn't any reason to use it. Lots of people suggested making the tank more weighty so I'll experiment in that direction for sure.

Perhaps if you have a friction setting you could turn it down so it kind of slides when you ease off the gas

Good idea. Will test this.

I kind of wish you could also sort of slam into enemy tanks to damage them

I uploaded a new build a few minutes before you posted this and in that build trucks die when rammed hard enough.
I might add ways to damage treads via ramming later on, or maybe a crew shock effect.

As for the sound design those are good ideas, I'll put them on the to-do list.

Thanks again for the feedback!

Thanks for playing!

The sensitivity and 3rd person jankiness will be fixed asap, currently looking into it.

I also had a hard time going up some slopes with the tank

Yeah I should make it so those 45 degrees slopes are always climbable no matter what.

Thanks for the feedback and thanks for the meme!

Can I ask, what do you mean by inputs not registering if Lea is doing an animation?

For example, if you want to use magic or dodge right after you reload you're forced to spam the button because pressing it while the animation is playing does nothing.
Same thing for trying to reload or open the magic menu while dodging

Sorry I can't tell, it's not easy to replicate
Most of the time it happened after liftoff, but a couple of times it happened while I was flying around normally.

About unreliability do you mean the strange bend position?

I was mostly referring to the mech sometimes turning into ground mode while still airborne.

I tried playing with with a keyboard first but the analog stick camera-oriented movement is so much better. 

The story demo was okay, the challenges took a while to do, got contender in the first two and rookie in the last one. I would not have guessed that either of the female characters in the demo were female btw.

It didn't seem to me that there's much reason to dodge when sprinting away gets you farther away faster and without stunning you.
Also wasn't a fan of the little victory animation that plays whenever you complete an encounter.
If you aim at a charging enemy sometimes the tracking stops.
Your inputs won't register if Lea is doing an animation, some input buffering would be nice.

I'm wondering how you'll ramp up the complexity while being limited by the slow movement but what's there is fun, cool demo.

I actually went back and played the last version to check the differences in detail.

This new control scheme is much more immediate to grasp and the third person camera is good too, it helps orienting the mech like you want to while keeping an eye on terrain.

The automatic ground mode is not reliable, sometimes you take damage trying to land and sometimes the mech switched to ground mode mid-air.

You are trying to nail down movement and controls so enemies should really not be this tanky and deadly. I suspect part of that tankiness is because the aimer isn't perfect and the autocannon doesn't have much AoE.

As the game works right now there's 3 possible way to engage enemies.
First is form the ground: this doesn't work for obvious reasons, but I can see it being viable with some cover and as a way to safely destroy AA missile launchers or something like that
Second is strafing the target as a plane: this also doesn't work well because the autocannon is inaccurate, but the movement to achieve this is present so it's possible.
Third is while hovering and knowing mechs, this should be the game's strongpoint: zoom in, start hovering, unload your gun, zoom out if there's any danger. But this also does not work. Hover mode takes forever to kill horizonal movement even when you're orienting the mech so that the engine is pointing towards your previous direction (which you don't want to be doing too much if there's targets to aim at)
Then, when you need to get going it takes forever to accelerate away from danger
Hover mode is THE way for players to reorient their vehicles without needing to do a wide circle in flight mode, but this breaks massively at high speeds as it takes you way too long to decelerate.

If you want this game to be the mech equivalent of a flight simulator then I guess it would make sense to force the player to learn the vehicle's limits and keep the speed low before attempting an hover drive-by, but if you want to make something more arcady it doesn't make sense to punish the player for going as fast as possible.

Minor bug: the autocannon ammo count starts as "text blo"

I'm looking forward to see where you take the game from here.

Hey, thanks for playing the game.

You need to make the glowing parts on the tank to show the energy level, the thing in the corner is too small

There's a UI scale option but changing the glowing intensity is actually a great idea, I'll look into it after I'm done fixing the various bugs that popped up.

90mm cannon MUST be movable at least a little

Will do! 

Also I broke module menu somehow

If you can replicate that and get me a screenshot it would be much appreciated.

Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for playing!

I'll try to adjust the default settings to be more convenient.

Please make the UI scale with screen size

There is a UI scale slider but it only scales on-screen UI and not the minigame panels so that's an oversight, I'll correct that and also I guess it'd be a good idea to scale with higher screen sizes by default.

am I supposed to be speeding around or taking calculated shots?
It feels to me like you've yet to nail down what your game is supposed to be

At the moment the levels are little more than a playground for blowing stuff up so you're definitely right.
I'm myself not sure about how much I want to force players to play in a certain way and how much I want to accommodate different playstyles. I'm going to keep weighing my options while I try nailing down performance, physics and controls first.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback!