itch.io

First of all, love this game. Second of all, I'm encountering a bug that triggers a crash whenever I try to use a Rosetta from the inventory; the bug report is below.

Error

Moonring v0.0.890:

state_game.lua:12530: attempt to index field 'game' (a nil value)

Traceback

[love "callbacks.lua"]:228: in function 'handler'

state_game.lua:12530: in function 'beginIdentificationWithObject'

actions.lua:6310: in function 'func'

actor_manager.lua:2948: in function 'performActionWithActor'

state_game.lua:12116: in function 'useItemWithInventoryIndex'

inventory_panel.lua:1265: in function 'useInventoryObject'

inventory_panel.lua:429: in function 'equipObject'

inventory_panel.lua:209: in function 'selectItemUnderCursor'

inventory_panel.lua:295: in function 'processKeyPresses'

state_game.lua:3010: in function 'getUIInput'

state_game.lua:3577: in function 'getPlayerInput'

state_game.lua:8052: in function 'fixedUpdate'

state_game.lua:2844: in function 'update'

main.lua:1324: in function 'gameUpdate'

main.lua:1344: in function 'update'

[love "callbacks.lua"]:162: in function <[love "callbacks.lua"]:144>

[C]: in function 'xpcall'

Anyone else experience this?

Hey! This is super impressive for a first game, both at at polish level and at a game design level! I had a lot of fun playing it. I'll list some feedback below, starting with some bugs/technical things and then moving onto some more subjective thoughts about design.

1) The collision detection for picking up drops is a little finicky -- specifically, when you walk so that a drop is entirely obscured by the character's head, it feels like you should pick it up even when you don't.

2) Both you and enemies can get stuck on certain wall corners. Not sure what exactly triggers this, but it happened a lot to the energy gun boss (which was actually useful for beating it).

3) More generally, many of the free-standing walls in the laboratory section have some weird stuff with collision, I think due to the fact that they're portrayed in pseudo-perspective and it's hard to tell where the boundaries are. Specifically, the energy gun boss could shoot "through" the front of the pillars in that room (and I could shoot back) in a way that was confusing, and being able to end up "behind" the pillars in that room as well as the servers in the server room was also confusing at times.

Now moving onto more subjective stuff:

1) I think that the enemy AI could be made a little more interesting -- the fact that they mostly run straight towards you while shooting is a little repetitive. At one point, I encountered a "glitch" where two of them ran away while shooting rather than towards me, and it was actually quite fun to have to chase them down while dodging shots. Maybe enemies could do a bit of strafing or try to maintain a certain distance.

2) I think that the shotgun might be better balanced if its shots had a maximum range, i.e. if they disappeared after going a certain distance. I say this because it's a bit frustrating that there's effectively no way to avoid taking damage from shotgun-wielding enemies and it would seem to make sense if you could out-range them. However, I only used the shotgun in the server room, so I don't know -- maybe this would make it underpowered.

3) It feels a bit unfair that enemies can easily hit you from off-screen when you can't see them. Maybe their accuracy could go down when they're outside visual range.

4) The energy gun boss is so much more difficult than the rest of the game that it feels a bit out of place, and the disappearing/teleporting mechanic was a bit confusing. It also doesn't feel like it rewards the sneaking/careful approach style of gameplay as much as the rest of the game does. Maybe it could lose track of you when you flashbang it, so that you can sneak up on it and get some free damage in afterwards.

5) Not sure if this suggestion makes sense, but maybe the different enemy types could be scattered throughout the levels and drop their weapons so that you can switch weapons more freely instead of only at set points in the game. That way, the player would get to choose which weapon makes the most sense for which situation.

Apologies for the long comment and again, great job! The game is super fun as is and I think the development from feeling like it's difficult to beat even one enemy to being able to take out whole groups is really satisfying and a really cleverly done arc.