itch.io

Gameplay feedback:

• Jump feels quite low for side scrollers.
• Not sure how to appropriately fight enemies. They shoot projectiles, you shoot projectiles. You can basically only jump or duck to avoid them. You also have to jump in order to shoot them back, but if you jump you are commited and might not be able to react in time to them shooting. With some work this could be an engaging fight system.
  • Attacks from different directions coming from enemies (lobbed shots).
  • Enemy animation warnings before attacks.
  • Hit-stop / hit-stun on hitting enemies.
  • Lower health on enemies.
• Definitely prototype further before commiting more resources to art. Consider lowing the scope to a Smash Bros stage and making that fun to engage with before commiting to a larger level.

Art feedback:

• Your individual sprites look decent (be careful of pillow shading).
• The default resolution of the game does not suit the art (too zoomed out / small detail is lost).
• Your pixels are all different sizes.
• You've got a mix of detail levels that make it feel like some very granularly detailed assets sitting in an open blurry world.
• How to fix?
  • Double-down and make detailed background assets (not recommended, yet)
  • Change art style to less individually detailed sprites.
  • Lower the scope to only one level (because I think you'll kill yourself trying to make a whole game at that art level).

Hi, I tried on Insane mode based on Evilous' comment.

• Felt like my own character's attack quickly reached maximum potency (too early) where I was just wiping out the early screens before anyone could shoot.
• Defeating enemies and striking the bosses is unsatisfying with no hit-stop; flashing upon receiving damage; sound-effects (from what I could tell)
• Seems like your hitbox is smaller than the graphic? The crow's attacks are too narrow I presumed, unless all I have to do is make sure my soul dot doesn't touch the bad dots.
• Control wise, doesn't feel satisfying to move. Its fast but I had a hard time with precise movements. Thumbsticks with gradual levels of movement speed might be a solution; hoping you can think about a way to solve that problem on a keyboard.

Good foundation for whatever in mind you plan to lay ontop. I would suggest introducing aspects like a bullet hell; where parts of the map become hostile to the player to occupy (stampede, airstrike, etc) to force the player to dodge an obstacle that can't be attacked.

Similar to other comments:

1. First I was using the mouse and it was too hard. I started presuming it was for touch screens. Thought dragging the mouse to parry the swords was the aim.
2. Then I saw you can hold A or D to rotate; that makes the game feel not engaging until the mace comes in and then I sort of flail back and forth and hope for the best since the daggers are so fast I just have to trust that I'll whack them. 

Highest score 24; which I acknowledge doesn't feel very high.

Hey HEDGEWIZARDS, was worried this was some troll version of the game. Some of the collision on the moving blocks was feeling a bit off; once I got to the below part I definitey had times where the pogo doesn't collide correctly with the blocks. Often if the bounce was too shallow, the rising block went inside the bottom of the pogo and caused a crash instead of pushing the pogo up. Below is as far as I got.

Update: Child saw the temple level and gave this off the cuff feedback: "Is that Miiiiiinecraft? And something that isn't Miiiiiincraft ontop?"

Amazing polish and great concept. My arcade score 44450.

Thanks, I noticed that the Ctrl key was playing up last night too. I've changed it to Left Shift.

Thanks for the feedback.  It's a half-stealth game I had in mind, except I only implemented the clunky out-of-combat / methodical opening strike attack. I also jacked up the AI's vision and aggression sensitivity for the prototype higher than what I was usually testing with since I haven't implemented animations yet to convey the more nuanced behaviour. (shock at seeing player, stance changes based of alertness, drawing their weapon, turning their heads in search etc)

I also don't expect the type of fast-moving rush-down enemies to remain in the game.

I've got to strike a better balance with clarity of the aiming grid, perhaps highlight enemies and the blast area, make the through-walls effect less noticable. 

Thanks for checking it out! The fuses not respecting the time-slow stuff is definitely not intentional.

Recently I attached a time-keeper to all my entitites basically that allows for localised time slowdown or speedup. Not every script is properly respecting the time-keepers at the moment, there are a few I created that base themselves off timestamps rather than an elapsed perception of time that I need to convert.

Yeah I hadn't noticed that extra wall suddenly appearing in my level until I tested it out on the WebGL version. I can see my editor right now and it isn't present so I'm not quite sure what the heck was going on there; potentially line-endings on the plain-text level file being interpreted into tile-height characters that are interpreted by the builder! Fancy that.

Ahhh!

Based on Demo Day feedback have uploaded a version with a few really quick fixes:

• Camera is pulled way back so you can actually see!
• 16:9 instead of 4:3.
• A few minor gameplay and prototype level adjustments.

That is an absolutely above and beyond bit of feedback, thanks very much. Your dedication to beat that level despite the tight camera with that clunky-ass bomb throw is excruciating! I was working in 16:9+ so I kind of rushed the export down to 4:3 for the browser without thinking about how that wrecks the view.

I might consider how I might allow the character to pivot direction while aiming to make it less awkward; tip of the jank iceberg.

Yes! Improved camera controls on the to-do list for sure. I'm trying a few different camera angles at once to see what best suits the gameplay.

No diagonals, made with cardinal directions in mind only to keep the scope of work down. Thanks for your feedback!

• I've updated the game to use Mouse buttons instead of Ctrl which naturally was causing problems with the browser.
• Obviously a lot of work still to go, but I've noticed egregiously that the camera isn't cooperating as well as intended, the new placeholder enemies I created for Demo Day are not recognized as objects of interest so there is no camera panning to keep them in frame.
• The range on the bomb throw isn't tuned very well for the size of the level, camera and encounters I put together!

Ah yeah good point. I'll re-upload with a different button.

Sorry, I haven't updated the game since the #LOWREZJAM so no doubt the pre-requisites needed to get it working may be less commonly available. It required a specific XNA Redistributable library, from memory; but I never used the Itch.io launcher.

Gave this one a shot, nice for a few minutes. :)

I really enjoyed this game, nice job.

I was thinking that the Authenticity category could be dropped from the entry marking criteria next year. To me, it seems better suited to a binary option - they either followed the rules of the Jam or they didn't.

• Rather than let the anonymous masses decide which games followed the rules - I'd be up for letting the game float on the existing categories and presume that rule-breaker entries receive less positive attention in general.
• As it sits now, any user giving less than full marks for this category knocks that entry back a couple of pages.

Congratulations on everyone submitting their entries. Sound off if you'd like to lend your agreement, or disagreement so this can be considered next year.

Thanks Jack for getting everything organized this year. Good luck in the jam.

Excellent work!

This game is perfect.

I managed to beat the first level using only the doors since my browser didn't support the mouse actions. The enemies just explode when they touch them!

It is pretty hard, but everything is polished and crunchy! I pressed the reset game button R on accident because it is was next to interact E.

On that note, are you a giant letter E with a gun? That is fine if it is, E is the second most badass letter. I'd love to see some high rez concept art of our heroes.

Damn, I didn't expect it to be as scary as it is. The sounds put me on edge and the scary shadow thing is unsettling. I haven't got past the first shadow, I assume there are more obsticales.

Very nicely put together. I hope you come back and add some of those brewing mechanics you mentioned, there are lots of places you can take this. I like the tune very much.

My highscore is 7:48 and 1020 Points. Mid-way I was thinking it was too easy, but then it snuck up on me all of a sudden. I'd like some of that difficulty sooner, balancing wiping out blocks with making the match-fours.

Thanks heaps Fissurefury, I'm glad you took the time to complete it!

Until I pack my game with the proper instructions, know that you are the blue guys and you are fighting typically red and green guys.

• Pressing down will show your current hand of blue Outlaw cards, one of which (typically the leftmost) will be active, although it is a little tricky to tell at this point.
• The numbers below cards are how many draws from your roulette deck it takes to Fight (red, green cards) or Rescue (Blue cards).
• Failing either result in your current Outlaw getting popped into the encounter as a hostage needed rescuing.

Hi Jack, I haven't tried. I used the default output of Visual Studio 2015 but I'll look into it.

Unfortunately I suspect my game needs to bundle the Microsoft XNA Framework Redistributable 4.0 Refresh program to work, which is bundled in the installer.

And thanks for the feedback, I'll definitely take the time to flesh out the experience. And yes, you won it!

Thanks for the feedback Shortee, completely understandable since I didn't include the rules!

To win this game, start by defeating all the enemies you can in the play area, called an encounter. There is a stealth mechanic that gives you a one-time bonus to the first move in each encounter. When all are defeated, you'll be prompted to choose a map card which will determine the size of the next encounter, how many map cards will be drawn next time, and wether those map cards grant stars.

Prioritise map cards with arrows pointing up, as these directions will award stars. Seven stars wins you the game!

Further note, not explained anywhere, but failing to defeat an enemy causes your current blue outlaw card to become a hostage, and there is a limit of one hostage in the encounter at a time.

Aww, I though I was close to winning when the buttons down the bottom glitched out. My money stopped coming in, I spent what I had left on troops that didn't arrive and after nothing happened I found out that the sharingan Naruto looking thing in the corner closes the game.

Wow this is pretty hard! I didn't get what was going on at first, but I like the idea. I got to 41 seconds, that is my highscore. Is that pathetic or good? I got swarmed by five black things at once in a forest while the controls switched at the same time.

Ok, so at first I though - there is no way you could collect all this mail. Then the mail started to flow through me. I was a package collecting fiend. 33820 is my high score, but I got bombed. Internally what is your high score?

Hey, this game is really nice and I want to solve it! Art is great.

I ran into a bug, after dying the next play-through had every book's text empty, set to o. Wasn't sure if it was part of the game at first, with all the going crazy from eldritch horror theme. I also didn't realise I could switch pages until I'd read a few books already.

I made it to two keys, very nice. I went to your page to see a screenshot and found myself playing the game without even meaning to!

Hey Michael, love the starting, love the sound.

Mushroom sounds weird (is that you?).

The first time I saw the mushroom man I tried to jump on his head (I had no weapon yet), since it seems like the platformer intuitive thing to do and his head is so inviting.

If I haddn't already seen you can jump on the pipes on the house I might not have tried.

The key only appearing after speaking to the NPC is a bit upsetting for me and I feel it would be better to gate the sword off by having the mayor yell at your or something. It also wasn't intuitive that chests need keys.

Overall, enjoyed this very much and will buy the final release for sure!

Congratulations on getting some wide notice!