This was really cool. My only recommendation: the scroll bar (under Juice and Settings) moved really slowly when using the scroll wheel.
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I’m on Windows 10. It works on my Windows 7 VM, but I don’t want to play at 1fps, so I opted for the web player. The term “huge dungeon” made me want to play the download version for reliable saving, but the browser player does work for me.
Some feedback:
Please add Unity's default fullscreen toggle button or map fullscreen to F10. The windowed view is the wrong aspect ratio, so I have to play in fullscreen, and there’s no way to get fullscreen back if I hit escape at some point.
Wall jumping is really awkward. Most games have you continue press into the wall, press jump to jump off the wall, then the game ignores your left/right inputs for a few frames to give you a chance to press the new direction you want to move while it automatically moves you in your jump direction away from the wall.
Jumping in general is a little weird. You seem to have spaced out platforms so that double jumping is almost always necessary which mostly just makes every jump feel like 2. I would recommend structuring the levels so most jumps can be made without the double jump, then make the second jump not as high as the first to balance things a little better.
It’s really awkward that leaving your house doesn’t put you in front of the door you just left through.
Sometimes when I left click it doesn’t do an attack.
I’m not sure why Trist’s description is written in third person when you could have just had her explain her own abilities. Then you could have established a personality for her in the same dialogue box. Also, it’s just really awkwardly written. Why does the last dialogue box have continue, then when you press continue it switches to the Yes/No options it’s supposed to have?
Why is there a delay for loading the item description when I hover over it? The description doesn’t cover anything important, so there’s no reason I wouldn’t want to see it.
You should probably add a “player controlled” boolean to each character so signs don’t pop up their dialogue box when my secondary character walks past them.
I liked the world art. It definitely has a unique style.
Aeon Nightmares is a pretty good title. More fitting though might be Land of Locked Doors.
Also, this took me 2 1/2 hours to clear, not 1. I did stop to write 3 pages of notes (after editing, it’s now 4.5), but that did not add 1 ½ hours to my play time. I would say 2 hours next time.
Non-Suspicious .exe in a zip file. I forgot GameMaker exports like this. I was a little apprehensive to run it until I found another place you made this same post where somebody played it without complaint. On that note, looks like you finally found the right subreddit.
Graphics:
Playing at resolution x3, the text doesn’t look very good. I there a way to improve this in GameMaker? I don’t remember it having a lot of settings for things like this, so maybe you’re just stuck with this. It’s not too distracting.
The red screen flash when you shoot the eye is really intense. Maybe tone it down a bit.
I don’t know why enemies display damage values when hit. It’s nice to know the rocket launcher deals about 40% more damage than the shotgun, but most enemies die in 1 or 2 hits, so it’s just unnecessary and is the only thing in the game that seems to not actually be there “in world”. It’s an aesthetic 4th wall break.
“You feel power emanating from the corpse” Is the art of the thing on the table a placeholder? It looks very MS Paint compared to everything else. Also, the walk to and from that building is 36 seconds. That’s entirely too long for me to be holding left with absolutely nothing happening. I appreciate that you are trying to build atmosphere. 2 Screens is all that takes. 1 screen of almost nothing, 1 screen with the gas station on the left. This is excessive and just wastes my time.
Anyway, the graphics generally look nice if a bit repetitive, and the lighting really adds something to it.
Writing:
This is definitely the strongest point of the game, and far better than Cave Story (haven’t player LISA or Yume Nikki)
“Our place on the Last Plane is on top of The Pillar” You do a good job of this vague world building. It’s the thing that kept me playing. Giving out little puzzle pieces of information that may one day make a full picture/some semblance of sense. You really are good at making the little pieces feel like they are all important. It’s a little contrived that Gun won’t tell you anything. I knew your writing was on point when I got to Ms. Exposition at the top of the tower, and I already kind of knew half of what she said, but I had also picked up a lot of details she didn’t tell me, so it wasn’t like in many games where you spend the whole game trying to piece things together only to have someone put all the pieces together right in front of you anyway.
“You’re going to need a pass. Good luck with that.” This line actually made me laugh.
I do have some complaints and suggestions though.
I appreciate how the save points have a little exposition with each, like in Under Tale but more informative… Okay, you stopped doing that… And it comes back near the end of the demo. I only used most save points once, so this is a valid place for text. It would be nice if all of them had some. Just don’t add more than 3 lines since save points are functional.
Speaking of which, please add a skip dialogue button (Z) for when I accidentally read a 6 line sign again.
And while we are on implementation, the Yes/No menus should be selectable with C and X. It’s unintuitive to open the menu with C and Select with X, especially when dialogue is progressed with C. Also, these menus don’t look very good. Is this placeholder art?
A couple specific problem lines:
“My head. Where am I?” I think I have played a few games that start with those exact words. I realize headaches end up being an important thing later, but this is really cliché and not a strong start.
“Punished for my arrogance, I was locked here forever.” This is exposition. No one talks like this.
“You shot in the air?” I’m not sure why he is confused by this. He is clearly standing right there. This line is just unnecessary since it’s clear we didn’t shoot him. I assume he closed his eyes, so it could make sense, but the line made me stop to think about the contrivance of him narrating to cover for the screen going black so we can’t see what happened, which is never good.
Boletus “Impossible. How did you…” You have such clever wiring when it’s a monologue (welcome signs, notes, the city entrance clerk, drink menus) then when you get to dialogue where the other character (not Gun or Protag) is the main one talking, it’s either exposition or clichés like this. Please decide on a personality for these characters so they don’t exist just to be prompts for Gun’s next line.
“Damn” You like using that word. It’s more of a personal preference kind of word, but I think 4 characters use it. Cut it down to 1, otherwise it’s distracting, and it shows that all of those characters were written by the same writer. I’ve seen this mistake before and it’s always distracting.
“Drunk Girl added to your inventory.” Another line I thought was pretty good. I did not expect you to keep using Gun’s inventory in the story. Most writers would just forget about that kind of mechanic.
Sound:
Good use of sound in the opening. Reminds me a lot of DeltaRune with the ominous, oppressive drone. It loses something when the ominous glowing triangle thing producing an ominous noise turns out to just be a save point – literally the safest thing in a game. Also, it was an interesting touch to make the sound speed up once you hit the checkpoint.
I really liked the music. It really matches the tone of the game. Not much more to say about it, but it really was pretty good. I’m going to have their sound cloud pages open for a while.
Slow:
This game is slow. 20+ seconds of walking down a featureless hallway happens way too often in this game. I realize the slow walking speed is to make us take advantage of the shotgun/rocket jumping, but I found that mechanic inconsistent and not much fun to use. I see you managed to get some decent speed in the gif above, but how many tries did that take? I never amassed that kind of speed for any distance, and the somewhat small field of view incentivized me not to try because I might fly past something. I made a habit of pointing the shotgun down when I jumped and firing it the same time I jumped. About a third of the time it gave me extra height. Most of the time I did a regular jump, and about 5% of the time I went flying about 2.5 jumps high. I never got the physics in any of my Game Maker games as good as you have, but I think you pushed it a little too far. It’s not like you built a precision platformer with loose controls; it’s playable. It’s just really slow and the only way to speed up movement is a system I couldn’t get to work consistently with 2 hours of trying.
Also, remember, not everyone’s a speedrunner. Some people will just walk. Design the game for these people. Don’t make them suffer, make the people who master your movement system feel like pros who are exploiting your game’s systems. Make them feel like they are cheating for mastering your game, instead of making me feel like the game’s way too spaced out because I didn’t.
Also, the locked doors. You have quite a few of them, at the end of long hallways, where the only thing to do when you reach them is turn around, and then you have to walk all that way later when you have unlocked it. Related to this, the old “pick a path, find a locked door, backtrack to the other path” is not a design style anyone should still be using (this was mostly an issue in the wing training area). If you want the player to explore, make sure their reward is more than gaining the knowledge that they have to come back later.
Gameplay:
You seem to have put a lot more effort into the writing and art parts of this game than the game parts of the game.
Your game has a general lack of ‘things.’ There’s nothing to do, nothing to find (except the ammo upgrade), nothing worth fighting, just, no real reason to explore. The only rewards are getting more dialogue/signs. I like the flavor text, but there generally isn’t much of it in the dungeons,,, where exploration is actually somewhat impeded by enemies instead of just wandering around a town.
Before the next section, I want to make it clear, I think your game is lacking a strong core mechanic. That mechanic does not have to be combat.
Combat:
None of the enemies in this game pose much of a threat. Enemies with non-interactive AI work when they are blocking something. For example, an eye was bouncing up and down above a small platform I needed to land on. I shot it to get it out of my way. It wasn’t a challenge, but I needed it gone. But most enemies I don’t need gone. I can jump past them uninterrupted. In fact, it’s usually easier to do that, and since you never get anything other than the rare health drop from killing enemies, there is rarely a reason to engage with them at all. I have a triple jump. Even without shotgun propulsion, I can fly past most enemies.
Your boss AI could use some work. I would recommend playing some 2D Castlevania games, or just look up Castlevania Fighter on YouTube. It’s a boss rush of the entire series. Lots of good ideas there.
If anyone’s stuck on the Boletus fight, the best technique I found it to jump over the slow moving projectiles, then when he fires the mortars, just stand there and shoot him. It’s not great when half a boss fight is spent standing in one spot just wailing on the boss.
The painter fight was decent. She actually killed me. The second time though, I just camped in a corner firing rockets at her and won easily. She never touches the walls and is standing on the ground for 90% of the fight.
The first two bosses would be regular enemies in a Castlevania game. They have only ?2? attacks and are easily dodged, but can hit you if you aren’t paying attention.
Your regular enemies, mechanically, would work well in a Mario game. Not in a game where you have a triple jump and a shotgun that fires halfway across the screen. Your enemies don’t counter the player in any way. They are more like moving, damaging obstacles than intelligent opponents. I know programming AI in Game Maker can’t be fun, but this is detrimentally bad. I hate to say it, but you might want to copy some of the general AI behaviors from some Castlevania enemies. Symphony of the Night has pretty much every enemy type from a 2d game, so it’s basically a library of AI options.
Odd note, but most of your enemies are the same size. This won’t fix their unresponsive AI, but larger enemies would at least add some real mechanical variety.
My point with all of this is, you don’t really have a core mechanic.
You have moving with shotgun blasts. I already gave my opinion on that.
You have platforming which is generally pretty easy; made even easier if I could get the shotgun movement working consistently.
You have shooting stuff which is unrewarding and optional aside from the boss fights.
You have 1 puzzle in the game, which is another option for a core mechanic. Sadly, the direction “puzzle” with the answer right next to the door was pointless and confusing. You did a good job of not introducing and immediately forgetting about mechanics for the rest of the game. If you’re going to have these puzzles (please don’t) have several of them, or it’s going to feel like you build something and just threw it in the game.
So that’s the main 3 Core Mechanics games generally have:
Combat – Need more interesting enemies.
Puzzles – You didn’t go with puzzles. That’s fine.
Exploration – Need things worth finding.
Bugs/Issues:
Alt tab-ing out of the game caused a lockup in the intro. (the screen was black except for the player’s light and I couldn’t do anything)
In the tutorial, it says “Press c to interact with object.” This is presented to the player right before they reach a candle with a framed picture of the letter C above it. Pressing C on the candle does nothing. When you explicitly tell the player to do something, reward them for doing the thing.
Walking out of the reception area, you drop down in the next room instead of spawning at ground level. Walking back, I start off screen and can’t leave the room until I walk back on screen, then off again. This happens again in the room in wing training with the eye and several other locations in the game. In the eye room, you actually seem to spawn out of the level in the void and have to walk about 1.5 tiles to get in bounds again.
In the wing training area a sign has a typo. athrophy -> atrophy.
It’s hard to tell, but I think text only scrolls faster if you release, then press and hold C on each text box.
Does Boletus wake up when you press C or does the game actually freeze you for 3 seconds before he speaks? I thought the game had bugged out.
The insta-kill laser walls kind-of blend in with the red background tiles. Not that I walked straight into one, just an observation.
Why is the laser gate switch a switch from Doom? Why is the rocket wall disappearing sound an effect from Doom? Are these placeholders?
If you get hit and fall in the green pool, the i-frames will let you jump out again. Not sure if that was intended.
If demons get demoted when they die, why did Boletus turn into rocket ammo? Is this a thing Gun can do? It’s just a little weird the demon hierarchy goes from angry vending machine to ammo.
Overall, I would say you built an interesting world for players to explore in a rather uninteresting way.
Note: It’s 1am and I started playing at 9. If any of this doesn’t make sense, that’s probably on me. Feel free to ask. Hope this is useful.
This is an interesting puzzle mechanic, but all the actual puzzles seem to just be "shoot whatever's closest to you." I feel like there was a lot of room for some creative level designs you could explore with this core mechanic, but everything's just really straightforward.
There's nothing really wrong with the game. It looks very nice and controls well. There's just a lot of missed potential when it comes to level design. I did have fun with what the game is now. I just know it could be better though.
This is a very interesting take on a classic game. It is very forgiving on what constitutes a complete row which makes the game more enjoyable as I can spend my time panicking over the newest piece rather than shifting old ones to be perfectly aligned.
I'm not sure why you made the walls holding in the pieces slowly drop. That's a very interesting mechanic, but as it is now, it's pretty much an instant loss once they drop below a certain height. I am guessing the lenient row removal let the game go on for way too long so you needed a new lose condition. That's fine, but I feel like it could have been more forgiving. Maybe replace the walls with a force field that kind of pushes blocks back but not enough that you can just freely fling them without worry. That way the game kind of enters hardcore mode after a time but is still playable.
Just a suggestion. I had fun with the game in it's current state, so nothing really needs to be changed. Thanks for submitting it!
This was certainly an interesting idea. I like the art style, but the spike blocks look like pickups because of that aura around them, so that was confusing on my first run.
I feel like the camera should have been zoomed a bit further out. As it is, I can't tell what's coming up early enough to dodge it. And sometimes the game spawns things too late for me to dodge them. If that was changed, I think your game would be a fun challenge, having to bounce the player character up the tower rather than directly controlling them.
That problem aside, thank you for submitting a unique idea. I'm glad I got to play it.
(edit): I was was wrong. Didn't pay enough attention in my first play-through. Pretty good game. Thanks for making it!
I like the game, but I feel like the game's design isn't really focused on it's core mechanic.
The core mechanic being setting up traps and activating them. That's the main unique mechanic, it's in every level, and that's what the boss fight is testing you on. However, your score in the levels is judged by how many treasure chests you find, a task that can be completed without killing anything. Also, until the final boss, you only ever have to kill the game's first enemy with traps. In every other scenario, you can just sprint to the chests, then run to the exit avoiding everyone. The safest, fastest, and generally most effective approach is one that completely avoids using the game's main system.
Sneaking past everyone is the main goal in Metal Gear, and the game is built around it. In your game, it's the main goal, but the core mechanic is centered around dispatching enemies.
I like your game; it was fun and very well put together. It's just that your inspiration (MGS) and your unique ideas (Laser traps) didn't really line up with each other.
You have a very interesting mechanic here and an even more interesting art style. The levels not totally resetting on death felt like a bug but seems to be a required mechanic for the level with the key activated death pit. It's strange when resetting manually is usually required after resetting by death but not always. It's an interesting decision asking the player if they want their death to just teleport them or reset the level, and it's one I don't think I have seen a game ask before. Strangely enough, I think that is your game's most interesting mechanic; running through a level, dieing, then running through again with your previous life's changes still in effect. I know that's not what your game is focused on, but it's what I felt was most compelling about it.
Anyway, thanks for an intriguing game with an unsettling art style. I'm glad I played it.
That was an interesting idea. Certainly very atmospheric, and the art is really nice. The swinging lamp is a nice mechanic, but the time limit stopped me from taking the time to maneuver the lamp to viewing the ground in front of me. Instead, I kind of just ran for it after the first couple deaths in the last room. I think you could make better use of this core mechanic if the player felt less rushed and the levels were somewhat randomly generated so I can't just memorize them (I know randomization is beyond what's possible in a 48 hour jam).
The stairs were a little annoying, but the rest of the game played pretty well. Overall, this was an interesting game. Thanks for making it!
You explain the rules on your game page, but since the game makes little sense without reading them (I had no idea what was going on in my first play through) you should really include those in the game itself.
I think you need to give better feedback on what action I have taken and what effect it will have. Your combat system takes the action of the first button I press, but with no animation showing me I have locked in a move, it can be confusing when I change my mind and press another key and it still does my first action. I would change the currently chosen action's icon's color to indicate what the player has selected. You may also want to add an animation to the health bar to draw attention to the fact that someone is losing health.
The game being turn based, I'm not sure why you included the timer. Although, I don't really get why normal 1v1 fighters have a timer, so there's that.
Once I read how to play, I did enjoy the game. The art looks pretty good, and I like that you gave your two characters unique abilities instead of just being two people in a fist fight. Thanks for joining the Jam!
I like the game's concept, flinging swords to solve all your daily problems. My only real problem is with the controls.
I would have preferred instead of switching states with L1, R1, and L2, those buttons just threw the swords. Making it a 2 step process limits how quickly you can expect a player to pick up and throw swords which limits the complexity of your level design. Actually throwing swords works well except when standing close to wall and throwing swords too far into the wall to stand on.
The normal movement controls work well and seem to be rather forgiving. Riding on a thrown sword is awesome in any context, and I like that in the level they are introduced, you are required to not only ride it, but jump off and grab it at the same time to land on another sword.
I think there is a lot of potential in making a full game out of this with a whole arsenal of blade types to build puzzles around. I just think the controls need to be a little more streamlined. Great game otherwise!
Why do only the games with good music offer to mute the soundtrack?
That's a pretty interesting core mechanic, and the twist added with flying enemies was pretty neat. Also, the whole game is very well presented. Shame you didn't have time to make more levels.
I must admit, it took me until the room where you spawn on the morning star to realize only the spike ball actually hurts you. I was making things much harder on myself by dodging the chain too.
I think you could base a full game off these mechanics. It would certainly be neat to see what new mechanics you would come up with to make every level a unique challenge.
You made the controls really loose. I know that's how the original asteroids was, but in that game you didn't really need to go anywhere in particular. If you want the game to be more fun by requiring less precise movement, I would dampened all movement and rotation so if you stop turning or pulling space, your ship will come to a stop on it's own.
I know it's part of the challenge having the ship conserve momentum, but it's just not very fun that way.
Sorry most of this is just my opinion on game design. The game does look quite nice, looking somewhat like the next generation of the original graphics. And I like the mechanic where you have to pick up the core functions of your ship. It could be an interesting dilemma if I knew what all of them were going into each level and had to choose which was most important to get first.
Anyway, interesting game. Thanks for entering the jam!
That second level is absolute madness.
I really like the idea and it is executed very well. The levels are a good size to make use of the core mechanics and I like how there are only a few bodies of water in each level, so they can be used to help find your starting location.
The text cues are nice, but I feel their existence is why you didn't play a water sound every time we moved in water instead of just when you land in it. This was a little confusing as I didn't realize I was wandering around a puddle until I randomly decided to jump. I guess this just adds to the challenge, but I think we have enough of that as it is.
It's a good idea that's well presented. I just didn't have the will to make it through the second level. I won't say the game's too difficult, because the level size and complexity are about where they need to be. It's just too difficult for me given my limited motivation to beat the game.
This is an interesting concept. I feel like it could work well as a single unit in a Fire Emblem type game where one class just attracts AOE attacks. They could sprint behind enemy lines with other units piling on buffs so they can survive when the spells hit.
Your game could have been more interesting if we could face more than 4 opponents, but as it is, I like it as a proof of concept. Thanks for submitting it!
Hookshot games are always awesome, but I think yours is a little on the tough side. The genre is usually about gleefully flinging yourself through the air and that's what your adventurace preface made me think the game would be. Instead, it's a Super Meat Boy level precision platformer. I can't fault you for not making the game I expected. This is just a lengthy excuse for why I didn't finish your game.
On the game design side, since you can't do anything while hanging from the wall, it would be nice if left clicking detached you from the wall and fired the next anchor point. Quickly hitting RMB then LMB is just unnecessary complexity when there is only one thing I could possibly want to do when clicking LMB.
As for the hookshot mechanics, they actually work fairly well: giving a decent amount of swing while still taking you where you want to go. My only problem is that the level design generally seems to favor a Legend of Zelda style (straight to the target) style hookshot rather than the Spider Man style swinging one actually in the game. This leads to the aforementioned difficulty where spikes tend to be in the way of your swing when approaching your destination.
Thanks for making this game. It is pretty good. This is just kind of my pet genre, so I'm a little more critical of hookshot-centric games.
It took me a second to figure out what I was looking at in that thumbnail, but I burst out laughing when I read the title and it finally clicked.
I couldn't get blue lasers to fire, only red. The game was still fairly playable though.
I like how the core mechanic is pretty much just aggressively asking people to get out of your way.
Overall it was a pretty fun game, if not somewhat simplistic, and I enjoyed playing it.
Well that was strange. I died twice. Both times from being too boring.
Good concept. I'm not sure how it would go playing a full RPG like this. It would certainly be a grind-free game if you did make it so that would be nice.
The music fit pretty well and some of the options were humorous. Overall I enjoyed playing. Thanks for making this!
GenericName Corp's Smart Shoe Testing Factory jam comments · Posted in GenericName Corp's Smart Shoe Testing Factory jam comments
Well that was surprisingly good! People will, as I just did, judge you for that default blue background. Always change the background color. That blue is a dead giveaway that you're new to Unity. And it's a shame no one else has played your game yet because it's hilarious and pretty challenging while still being fair.
The bits where you had to jump up multiple platforms that were directly above each other and jumping off Matt were pretty fun. The last level especially was really well designed. I must admit Matt is a little unpredictable and unfair sometimes, but the rest of the level seems to have been very concisely designed with every jump perfectly possible but just barely so.
GOD mode was a nice addition though I didn't beat it.
As for the humor, I can see some influence from Portal. I think *DOOR SLAM* was my favorite line, but mostly because it was unexpected.[Sorry everyone reading this before playing]
Overall, you have made a very nice game, and I hope other people play it.
Unity Note: You can fix the fuzzy text by setting the "Font Size" to something like 60, then just change "Character Size" to actually scale the text.
You must rename "GolfGuy_Data" to "WedgeOfJustice_Data" to play.
I feel like the game would have been challenging enough without the spikes.
The game's concept is interesting, but the ball being replaced by a sleeping dude doesn't seem to effect gameplay at all. It would be annoying if he got up and walked around while you're trying to play, but I was expecting him to do something a ball wouldn't, like grabbing onto ledges or trying to stop himself from sliding. There's a lot of humor to be had in just animating a distraught little golfer being knocked around. I know animation might be a little much for a 48 hour game, but as it is, it's just a sideways golf game where the ball looks like a person.
I liked playing your game. I just feel like you could have done a bit more with the core idea.
"Do not shoot the enemies in this shooter. Find instead another way to kill them."
I tried playing without reading that first and couldn't figure out how to dodge them all.
This game gets pretty frantic once you're spawning groups of 2, and it's the only game I can think of where the correct answer to getting swarmed is to frantically look for the right colored wall.
I actually really like the crisp, colorful art style you went with. It certainly serves the gameplay, but also just looks nice.
In all, this was a very interesting idea for a game, and I'm glad you made it. Thanks!
[GMTK Jam 2018] Knife To A Gun Fight jam comments · Posted in [GMTK Jam 2018] Knife To A Gun Fight jam comments
Nicely made! My only issue is with it's brevity and not noticing shotgun guys took multiple hits to kill.
There's honestly not a lot to say about your game. You seem to have known exactly what you wanted to make, then made exactly that. It controls well. It was a good level of challenge (though maybe setting me to 3 health at the start of every fight would have been better than 5 health that caries between levels). The art was exactly what was needed to tell the enemies apart. The music fit the visuals, and overall, it was just really well executed.
It was a fun game. Thanks for making it!
Well that was certainly interesting. It's definitely more strategic than a standard racing game: forcing you to only apply the gas at certain points rather than holding it down for 95% of the race. I must admit, I was never good at top down racing games, so I can't really judge how well this one controls.
I like that you can park in front of another racer and they will just push you.
Anyway, thanks for submitting it. I haven't played an entry in this genre in years, so it was nice to have a reason to play one.
I have never before played a game where the edge of my screen is my main opponent. Perhaps dragging in the direction I want it to move rather than the opposite could have solved this.
This is certainly an interesting idea for a game. I like that the character stops falling when you start lining up your next shot, but starts sliding again, so you can't just aim forever.
I was hoping there would be some more challenging levels near the end, but otherwise the game is a good length for the mechanics it is showing.
Overall, I enjoyed playing your game. Thanks for participating in the jam.
Passive Aggressive Fighting Game jam comments · Posted in Passive Aggressive Fighting Game jam comments
This is a pretty interesting game and I really like it. I didn't really find anything wrong with the game, but I do have some suggestions.
I think it would be more fun if the player character was a little more responsive. Maybe a dash move mapped to right click and a larger hitbox for the sword. Or maybe just give a little more space to work with, so I'm not constantly surrounded by enemies. You can always increase difficulty by spawning more or tougher enemies. I just feel like games are generally more fun when the difficulty comes from the enemy's power or numbers rather than my character's limitations.
Regardless of my game design advice, you should really implement a timescale slider when you're testing this kind of game. When I made a twin-stick shooter, I found it really helpful to play the game at 10% speed to see exactly what timing I was requiring of the player and how much room I was giving them to execute moves.
Anyway, really nice game. I just feel like it would be more fun if it had that bullet-hell feel of barely squeezing past a wall of projectiles. Some of those give you a 1 pixel hitbox and they're still really tough.
Buy 25+ food every turn. Are you guys trying to break my mouse?
This is an interesting idea, an RTS where the only threat is the rise of the proletariat, but when it's this simple, it's really easy to never have any problems at all. Then it's just a game about a perfectly functional society. Your end screen tells me I am the Best, but After buying 250 food with 8 days left, I went to go microwave my dinner because there was nothing that could stop me from winning at that point.
It's a nice enough game. I just think you chose a concept that needed more time to flesh out than you actually had available. There's just not enough going on for this to be an interesting game.
Also, the turns are really slow. There are not a lot of decisions to make each turn. Certainly not 45 seconds worth. A minor problem that is partly my fault is that it took me 2 turns of random clicking to find the market.
I really like the game's concept. It could add a lot to a game like Anno (which I haven't played). I just don't think the game's core mechanic stands well in isolation.
This may have been mostly complaints, but I did enjoy playing the game. It has a nice art style, and I liked gaming the market: buying up crazy amounts of food when it was only 1 money each.