itch.io

I think part of the thing I have with auras is there are already a lot of seeds in the game that purely add to the noise and need some balance. Aura's feel like they are just adding more noise to the background of things I don't really care much about. A normal run for me goes like this:

I try to stay around 10 crystals

I try to stay around 5 thorns

I grab any shield type seeds and keep them active

I plant maybe 1 checkpoint per zone when I remember

I stay on hearts otherwise and get as many as possible

All other seeds etc I ignore as they are not as valuable in most situations, and are actively bad in many.

All the shields in general I think are very very powerful, they greatly impact the distance of a run. They are just automatic takes and I always hope to see them instead of anything else.

For all weapons, homing enemies render them somewhat useless. Once the enemies are thick enough to justify using weapons in the first place instead of going around them, you have to keep moving all of the time to avoid the homing types. Moving into your own weapon fire is bad, moving away from weapons that need to be aimed is bad. Thorns take care of enemies in a way that protects you more in general, and is not possibly harmful to yourself.

So to summarize again, right now the starting seeds are all incredibly important, but after that I only care about shields, which make a huge impact, and any other pickups seeds/auras are mostly noise.

Maybe there are some types (especially of auras) or combos I haven't seen yet, but if they are that rare to get then I would say the vast majority of players will never see them.

Maybe the problem is thorns, hearts and shield are too powerful?

Like if there was a limit to 1 thorn, and a limit to 3 hearts, and the shields were only very very small areas and cost a ton, like 10-15, I would probably care about the other weapons a whole lot more.

Ah cool yeah that all makes sense. I guess the problem is non-linear difficulty of multiple homing enemies. 3x pink spiders is more than 3x as difficult as 1, but it is any homing enemy that effects this not just individual types. An exponential weight multiplier would probably do something. Also that they will persist and follow from the previous zones. Tracking homing enemies close to the player and including it in the new zones spawn weight to reduce it etc. Give you a hope of running away when under pressure from them with a slightly easier zone.

So I am not sure how I feel about aura's, after a bunch of runs they are not adding enjoyment for me. They feel like in most cases they are diminishing the strength/reason to care about many types of seeds, duplicating them, or could be implemented more cleanly as seeds rather than auras. That if the goal is to expand the value of tactical choice there is lots of opportunity to make what seed you are playing at the time more valuable with the same end impact that auras have.

I can understand wanting to explore ways to add more layers of resource management, but I think the game probably doesn't need it? I think there is a strong set of systems in place without auras, that depth can be achieved through additions and balance within those systems instead of though adding new systems, at least in this case.

Hope I don't come off as too negative, is just one opinion :)

So one suggestion for game play I have is to even out the difficulty variance, and to have it ramp more at the low end. In the forest having an easier first couple hundred feet/meters seems like it would make it more approachable to new players, but overall the variance over the entire game is very high. I feel like a huge amount of the current difficulty variance (seed luck aside, which is a separate thing) is a result of homing enemies.

The spawning algorithm does not seem to take this into account, so sometimes you make have 3 homing enemies (pink spiders and large pink fly's) spawn at once early on and follow, which is very demanding so early for new players, or you may only have 1 per screen or less at higher levels which makes it fairly simple for experienced players. Right now a runs difficulty curve can be all over the place and sometimes decrease as time goes on.

Something that could maybe be done is to spawn homing vs non-homing enemies independently so they are not over or under concentrated on spawn. Also possibly tracking the total number of homing enemies on screen and limiting it based on progression seems like it would help even out the enemy variance.

Had a couple people over playing last night and they liked it a lot.

Not sure if this was mentioned somewhere, but we found if you quit on purpose to restart a run, you keep thorns and other items like that from the last run. We also had the seed spawn at the location of the quit rather than the beginning although that didn't happen when I tried it again with 0.5 just now but the thorns did. We could move the bar up to meet it past the gate as well if that help diagnose.

The spike sound effect plays even if it is off screen which can be confusing. It also plays on the title screen if you quit out of a game while they are in sound range.

Also big thing, we wanted an SFX and especially music volume badly

I agree they are really difficult (talking about the 'bomb' ones right?). I find that if they happen to be generated for your run is make or break for me, as in just not having them spawn makes the game waaaay easier. They probably are too powerful? Maybe if they had a very large turning radius or something?

Not sure if it helps, but I had an orange teleport bubble with me and had just started a run having just teleported up to that camp. There were certainly other orphaned orange bubbles strewn about though. Not sure how I got hurt there, I guess if it had to do with dangling references or something all bets are off.

Not sure what you mean by the flying seed ghost – are you referring to the flying seed after you get knocked up in the air?

Yeah after getting hurt. There are times when you can get killed in weird places and almost forced to catch the seed over a hole or enemy as you try to move the start away. Also spikes kill enemies while you are in the air which feels odd.

Cool the quests sound interesting!

Was thinking something that might be fun in the starting camp is a shorter very difficult challenge/practice area that does not change like the current challenges do, and has no impact on the real game. More of an ICB machine analogue. 20+ with a good run is a bit long to play competitively with friends on the couch passing the controller around. Different RNG means they are hard to compare and the score doesn't really account for that right now. Just a thought!

Thanks for the detailed response. Everything sounds good! Having a ton of fun.

So had a hang. Not sure exactly what happened, I had just teleported up on a new run. I got hurt somehow on the right most part of the orange teleport bubble trail? I don't remember seeing any enemy there. The trail started being displayed and it hung in the middle where there is the gap for like 5-10 seconds. Then it started animating again for a second until it got to the left most part where it hung for good and did not clear after maybe 2 minutes. The music/sfx was not affected.

Ah! Poked around this morning and saw there is a log file that luckily I didn't clear. Relevant parts:

(Filename: /Users/benedictfritz/games/TumbleSeed/Assets/Scripts/VerticalWorld/VerticalWorldState.cs Line: 534)
Warning, trying to get spawn data for a biome that doesn't have any: PostJungleCamp
UnityEngine.DebugLogHandler:Internal_Log(LogType, String, Object)
UnityEngine.DebugLogHandler:LogFormat(LogType, Object, String, Object[])
UnityEngine.Logger:Log(LogType, Object, Object)
UnityEngine.Debug:LogWarning(Object, Object)
WorldSpawner:GetBiomeSpawnData(Biome) (at /Users/benedictfritz/games/TumbleSeed/Assets/Scripts/NewSpawning/WorldSpawner.cs:788)
VerticalWorldState:CurrentContentParent() (at /Users/benedictfritz/games/TumbleSeed/Assets/Scripts/VerticalWorld/VerticalWorldState.cs:534)
AuraManager:DropCurrentAura() (at /Users/benedictfritz/games/TumbleSeed/Assets/Scripts/Auras/AuraManager.cs:161)
AuraManager:PickUpAuraOfType(AuraType) (at /Users/benedictfritz/games/TumbleSeed/Assets/Scripts/Auras/AuraManager.cs:85)
AuraPickup:PickUp() (at /Users/benedictfritz/games/TumbleSeed/Assets/Scripts/Auras/AuraPickup.cs:41)
Pickup:OnTriggerEnter2D(Collider2D) (at /Users/benedictfritz/games/TumbleSeed/Assets/Scripts/Pickups/Pickup.cs:16)

(Filename: /Users/benedictfritz/games/TumbleSeed/Assets/Scripts/NewSpawning/WorldSpawner.cs Line: 788)
NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
 at VerticalWorldState.CurrentContentParent () [0x0002b] in /Users/benedictfritz/games/TumbleSeed/Assets/Scripts/VerticalWorld/VerticalWorldState.cs:534 
 at AuraManager.DropCurrentAura () [0x0005c] in /Users/benedictfritz/games/TumbleSeed/Assets/Scripts/Auras/AuraManager.cs:161 
 at AuraManager.PickUpAuraOfType (AuraType auraType) [0x00011] in /Users/benedictfritz/games/TumbleSeed/Assets/Scripts/Auras/AuraManager.cs:85 
 at AuraPickup.PickUp () [0x00000] in /Users/benedictfritz/games/TumbleSeed/Assets/Scripts/Auras/AuraPickup.cs:41 
 at Pickup.OnTriggerEnter2D (UnityEngine.Collider2D other) [0x00030] in /Users/benedictfritz/games/TumbleSeed/Assets/Scripts/Pickups/Pickup.cs:16

Those 2 error were repeated many many times. Sending full log in email.

I have played a bunch more now, starting to get used to it. I was thinking about it and I guess a good amount depends on how horizontal/vertical the background is supposed to be? I was coming at it from a vertical background approach, but maybe that doesn't make sense? Also realized I should have said perpendicular to the bar instead of straight down/straight up etc.

I am into the fire level so far. Some thoughts after playing a bit:

• Crystals sometimes land over holes and float or out of bounds.
• Teleportation bubbles blend in a whole lot with the background, lots of them all over the map when doing the run, even if you haven't died? Was a bit confused about that not sure if intended.
• Flying seed ghost can land on bar even if immediate death is result/over hole, doesn't feel good when it happens accidentally.
• Would like to have "shoulder" buttons change seed type 1 slot and pause, unpause 1 second or so after the last shoulder button pressed. Died a few times due to changing seed type when too close to enemy and having to have finger on A button instead of a stick to unpause.
• Feels like there should be a bigger reward for reaching the 1/4 map friendly zones? Maybe a heal to 3 hearts? Or having the special seed type unlock zones appear there if you didn't teleport up instead of mid level? They are such a big reward that having them used that way would make sense.
• Loosing multiple hearts when falling in a hole was very unintuitive. I didn't understand it until I read how it worked on here. 1 heart is probably enough with the pain of having to go up again still making checkpoints worth placing nearly the same as they are now.
• If you die from falling in a hole, would like that to happen right away maybe?
• The "last heart" warning noise kinda gets in the way and don't think it made me care any more about my health level.
• I didn't understand (and maybe still don't?) the antidote seed. But seems like it should only appear if you already have the mushroom seed?
• When ending run where you teleported, path on the map maybe should start at the zone you teleported too? Actually the whole teleporting thing I am not sure how I feel about. It might make the higher levels more special if it just didn't exist?
• I kind of wanted to have the bar move faster, seems like there would be some problems with leaderboard etc if the user could choose speed though. I haven't beaten the game yet so don't know what happens (working on it) but maybe a hard/pro mode or something where the bar is faster? It seems like it might actually make the game easier if there aren't other differences as well though, more holes etc.
• The score seems based only on distance, not sure? Having it be a factor of speed, enemies killed, seeds planted, crystals/gold picked up, lack of deaths, would give more competitiveness. See the leader-board thing, maybe some of that is already planned?
• Would like to be able to skip the loading/splash screen on click if it is just a visual.
• Enemies that jump from off-screen killing you is a bit frustrating. The black slug things that rotate and jump from below, the ones that create and pop out of holes from above.

Game is amazing!

Having a ton of fun! Some bugs and thoughts.

• The yellow shield persists after single death.
• The blue shield persists after all deaths and starting an entirely new game, only cleared after restarting TS.
• Horizontal flying, vertical shooting, hammer looking enemy spawned 2 on top of each other facing opposite directions and were stuck and flashing.
• Resolution size text partially hidden behind window showing graphic.
• Bombbud appeared as only eye and fuse in selection zone.
• Jungle rain is not visible most of the time, only saw it once?

Love the game! It is really really good.

This itch.io feature is pretty great!

Having played a lot of the ICB arcade machine, one difference I noticed right away with the physics is that you fall in holes much more easily in TumbleSeed.

It looks like TS checks if the center of the seed is over a hole, and if so you fall in. This means you could fall in a hole that is smaller than the seed itself, or more relevantly a gap between the bar and the edge of a hole smaller than the seed. You also roll into holes you would roll in front of in ICB.

To be more like the physics of the ICB machine checking a point straight down from the center, maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of the radius from the edge, and a point 1/3 or 1/4 the radius above the top of the seed when rolling along a bottom edge of a hole. And the top and bottom points on the seed for the top edge of a hole. Then if either of those 2 situations is true fall in.

Not sure if that would mess up game balance or not having not gotten too far yet. But just thought I would mention it.

Love the game so far!