only realised this game got updated yesterday, quickly did a 100% run (SPOILERS AHEAD)
the first time i walked outside and all the people disappeared was actually pretty creepy, thats as far as i got without checking the guide aha, never wouldve figured anything out on my own. got stuck in the labyrinth for a long time too XD. i enjoyed the direction this went in a lot, very cool to re-contextualize the game i played first in this way.
yea it looks pretty, except the FOV is so low it made me nauseous. right now i feel like im gonna puke i think i need to go for a walk and rest my eyes i only played for like 5 minutes but yea. is the fov set to like 70 or something? i think it should be at least 90
okay, thanks for replying. a cheat that allows the player to cancel reload animations by weapon switching would be cool, im very interested in seeing how the game feels with that
Disallowing weapon switching instead of reloading is a shame because it makes the game feel a lot more slow and clunky, and disincentivizes players from using a variety of weapons (especially since most ammo types are abundant enough that a thorough player can use one weapon only and never run out). The game would be more fluid and dynamic if switching between weapons in combat was actually beneficial. A player might think to use the flamethrower alt-fire to lay flames on the ground under a boss for extra damage while using another weapon as the main source of damage, but that combo is made pointless when the flamethrower has to be reloaded before another weapon can be used. It feels like the game's mechanics are working against each other, and against a player who tries to be creative with how they play.
If the worry is that players will end up cycling through their weapons in a fight and then having to wait around and reload them all (which is as detrimental to the gameplay flowas forcing the player to reload every time they exhaust the ammo clip), a possible solution is backpack reloading, where weapons automatically reload after not being used for x length of time, or after getting x amount of kills with another weapon, or with pickups spread around the levels, or when collecting ammo for the weapon while it isn't being used, etc. Regardless of the implementation, or even without backpack reloading, it must surely be more fun than using nothing but the machine gun/grenade launcher and having to reload when the player wants to be shooting (shooting is fun).
Also it's already possible to just leave 1 ammo in the clip and then switch weapons to avoid reloading, and it's possible to have run out of ammo in multiple weapons and then have to reload multiple weapons before being able to use them, so it's not as if such sitations have been entirly avoided anyway. And there's no implementation of allowing players to switch instead of reloading that stops players from choosing to reload their weapon before switching if that's what they want to do. Allowing more choice in gameplay just seems better overall, especially in a game of this genre.
The visuals are very pleasing, altho at times with lots of enemies and explosions at close range i cant see my character and cant see how many and what kind of enemies are in the crowd
The movement feels very satisfying, and fluid, but it feels like im missing a double jump or some form of extra vertical movement. Some of the flying and ceiling enemies can be really annoying to get to. Also, the player really sticks to walls. Even if im not holding towards the wall, and my character switches to the normal fall animation + speed, i tap the direction away from the wall and the character doesnt move. I have to hold it down and then its impossible to make slight movements away from a wall, leading both to me moving way further than i intended and hitting enemies, and also just failing to get away from the wall at all and falling into projectiles or something. This is really annoying and feels awful even when it doesnt result in me getting hit.
The weapons are currently extremely imbalanced. The bazooka is the best for everything, given its high burst damage + huge projectile + area of effect, and it also seems to do more dps to the boss than the machine gun. Refining it to be good at just a couple things and weaker at others would be good i think. The flamethrower and shotgun and laser gun all feel really weak or unfun to use, to the point where id rather just use the starting weapon. I cant tell if the bouncer does less damage but i havent been picking it up just in case it does lol (the bouncing projectiles seems a pretty negligible upside). I like the machine gun :)
The icons for the weapons are pretty unclear and its hard to tell at a glance which weapon is which, and while thats not a huge problem i think a change as simple as giving each a different background colour would improve it a lot. The other items are similar, but i didnt find myself using them anyway.
While a lot of this post is focussing on negative aspects of my experience, overall i had a TON of fun playing this over and over. I just thought itd be more useful to post about the things i think should be changed. Anything i didnt mention was either fine or great. I'm really looking forward to seeing where this project goes from here, and will be stoked to have runs that take more than 60 seconds :p
i think that removing or at least lessening the slow motion is a good idea. the skulls arent very fun in this demo because they arent being used for anything, i imagine theyd be fine in a different context
hello i enjoyed this a lot, the movement feels very fun, the flipping in the air is insane and made me naeseous lol. i would love to see an actual game that uses this. having bigger targets than the lanterns to hit would be nice too, so that i wouldnt have to spend so long lining up the shot, which detracts from the otherwise fluid mechanics.
also! i think you should change the sky from being a single colour to maybe having some like planets and stars in it so that its easier to track my orientation while im flipping around :)
