Thanks! Being slow was kind of the point, the character has terrible speed and jump height so they can't do much on their own without enemies to latch on to.
Raymoclaus
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The camera knockback effect seemed great for feedback at first, and then it got really annoying as I started noticing it more and then my eyes got used to it and stop noticing it. I don't think I'd use that kind of effect myself, I think maybe having the gun itself shake would have been less-effective but more sensible choice.
The maps eventually got very hard to navigate and find enemies. Having arrows that point towards enemies that are off-screen and sit on the edge of the screen would be a great addition to counter that issue.
Other than those 2 minor issues, I really enjoyed the game.
Thanks, the algorithm definitely took a fair amount of time to get something that worked well. The pickup items didn't really have any AI for where they were placed, as long as it was in an empty slot and not close to the snake's head so sometimes apples spawn near garbage, but it's not like garbage causes a failure state, just a minor setback so I didn't think much of it at the time.
I really enjoyed how you implemented the theme, it's not exactly endless but it's still a cycle and that's more than what I can say for other games. It should be more than a simple restart button on your game and you've gone a bit beyond and actually required the player to start from the beginning after each life time to make progress in certain areas.
One slight thing that irked me a bit was the level design in some places didn't allow backtracking to a doorway because I missed a jump. There were a couple of times where I would have to sit and wait from 50-90 years old because there's nothing I can do in the area I was stuck in.
It looks amazing, but it doesn't play well. The first thing you do is combat and even that feels clunky. The game hides my cursor so clicking the Play button at the start was more difficult than it should have been. The Replay button in the death screen didn't work so I had to close out and restart again. A lot of work has gone into the visual fidelity (although the fire effects on enemies are a bit too extreme) but not enough into whatever the core experience is supposed to be. The core experience should be your focus, everything else is an afterthought.
The control scheme made some levels very tricky to complete, especially with rotating your fish. Had you used the mouse position it could have helped a lot. There was also no feedback to tell me when releasing the Space could for whether I would do a regular short dash or a very long one. That's important because sometimes I was overshooting or undershooting the fish and it gets you killed.
Solid gameplay idea but fighting against the controls made this hard to enjoy.
I haven't played Doom or Wolfenstein so I can't comment on how well you've recreated those experiences.
- The atmosphere is on point due to the audio and the dark fog that hides distant objects. You have a run option but there doesn't appear to be any real reason to walk so I would have the player use a single speed.
- It took me a while to figure out how to switch weapons; I tried mouse scroll, Q/R keys and eventually found that you need the number keys. I think having multiple controls that do similar things is a good way to help the player figure out the controls which is especially important for keyboards.
- What killed me in the end was multiple enemies hitting me all at the same time. It would be good if there was an invulnerability period after taking a hit and a speed boost to gain some distance. This suggestion has two uses; as feedback for taking a hit which is something you could have improved here, and giving the player more opportunities to learn from their mistakes.
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I actually wrote an algorithm that generates these mazes so I didn't actually hand-make any of the levels, they are endless. The small levels worked out well for teaching the mechanic without text because it doesn't take long before you are forced to eat your own tail. A level counter was definitely something I forgot about until just after the submission deadline. There is actually no failure state, so even if you pick up all the good and bad pickups, you will end up getting gradually long enough to beat the level. The bad pickups just slow down your progress really. Thanks for the feedback.
At some points I fell through the ground/walls entirely, not just the tail but the head too, and kept falling until death. Sometimes clicking wasn't stretching my snake, I thought that was a bug but I read your description and I guess I was sometimes not clicking on the blue boxes and instead just clicking in any direction I wanted to move to.
I tried to do more communication with visual and game design so I didn't rely too much on text. The game's design forces you to eventually eat your own tail so even if you didn't figure that out at first, you will if you try to make a long snake. Yes the garbage pickups make you shorter, but there are never enough garbage pickups to make you short enough to start from the beginning so it doesn't matter if you don't figure out what they do.
This was a ton of fun to play through. A couple of things I had trouble with was:
- Feedback when hitting enemies. Sure there's a sound effect when you hit them, but nothing visual and I definitely don't know how much health they have. It seems important to know when an enemy is almost dead because you seem to regain health when killing one.
- Sometimes enemies get stacked together very tightly and it's tough to tell whether an enemy is actually 1 or 20 enemies since none of them animate and all follow the same path.
- I couldn't quite see how the theme was being used here.
- Drawing the camera away because I reached a certain level, while in the middle of a group of enemies is a bit distracting and breaks the flow a bit. I think it should wait until nearby enemies have been cleared.
Some things that were great about your game however;
- Graphics: the pixel art was clean and things were easy to read (except spiders, they seem to be a similar colour to the background)
- Music: I particularly like how you sped the music up for more intense situations.
- Atmosphere: It looks like a lot of work was put into making the game look a feel dramatically haunting with an Egyptian vibe.
The mechanics are solid and the game plays well, I do have a few bits of feedback though.
- Visibility is an issue. You can't see too far ahead, so implementing something that moves the camera to look ahead in the direction of your cursor would be great.
- Enemies can spawn very close to you. It's especially a problem with the "fire flies" that can spawn nearby and immediately shoot a fast projectile. You can lose hp in unpredictable ways because of this.
- Sound effects were a bit lacking. They were being played when they should be, but they were quiet and barely provided feedback for your actions. In particular, I'm referring to the sound that plays when an arrow hits an enemy. It's important because your arrows can hit things that aren't in view and the only thing that can tell you when you landed a hit is the sound.
- The theme hasn't really been implemented here. I understand that the dungeon is endless, but the Ouroboros is more of a symbol for a cycle or a loop.. Each time you complete a cycle, you should end up right back where you started. But here I don't see that cycle or loop, just an endless line of enemy waves. I chose to at least give you something for the theme rating because in the end it is about your interpretation and not a constraint.
I definitely didn't expect to see a rhythm game so this was a nice surprise. It mildly fits the theme because of the animation but otherwise not really. One thing that was disappointing was that the music was short despite it being a rhythm game so it lacks polish considering the minimal nature of the game. I got a good laugh out of the animation that plays when you go too fast though. Thanks.
This was fun to play around with but it was a little confusing to understand what I needed to do outside of avoiding the snake. It wasn't immediately clear what certain pickups did so there could be improvements with visual feedback. It didn't really implement the theme. I would usually accept a literal interpretation of a snake/dragon eating its tail or a metaphorical one of an endless cycle, but the only thing related to the theme here was that it had a snake. Nice music though.
Overall, it was pretty solid. A literal take on the Ouroboros theme symbolism. It could have been just me but it looked like there were only a few different layouts because I kept seeing similar snake layouts several times in a row. If a little bit more time was spent on generating unique layouts it could have bumped a few of the scores up a bit more but I'll be generous with the "Overall" rating. I enjoyed the cutscenes, a little bit of humor is always appreciated.
Nice screensaver
Ok, serious feedback. It's too bad it's not finished enough to experience the core game but I'll go by what your description describes. I like the idea of the turrets never being entirely destroyed but you benefit from disabling them. Your description doesn't mention what happens if you fail to defend the core and I think that could have been a good opportunity to implement the "death brings life" part of the theme in a new way.