The base game is incredibly poslished and eye candy. Esp compared to my programmer art.
Only thing missing is perhaps some more interesting enemy types. maybe there are some that were there but i didnt notice, or just have some cool boss rounds. (or both)
I'm working on an arena rougelike as well, and I have trains that run you over. Which, ironically is the most adrenaline rushing part of my game. You can only dodge (not damage) them, as compared to the normal enemies which you can ofc obliterate to your heart's content.
I agree, it is part of the design but even I got a bit frustrated with it. My goal with the day/night cycle I am adding is to add variation to the gameplay by placing paint landmines to knock away racoons trying to steal your plants. This would add the much needed break from planting to give the player a break from the repetition.
I realized I needed to make the main mechanic of the game more clear. I had falsely assumed that being a torpedo confronted with boats would be intuitive. After the jam end I realized I needed to make the submerge mechanic clear in the game, and that the left click animated icon on the "oxygen" bar was not clear enough.
- Easy to see what I need to do to win, and what I need to run from
- Colors are done well to make it easy to know what is what
- Once I figured out how to move it was fun to run from the scary lady
Cons:
- A bee obtaining meat seems abit off, perhaps It would make more sense to have a different bug and goal, like a fruit fly and fruit, but regardless having the bee makes it easy to see so for the game's purposes it works fine.
- I never understood the breathing mechanic and was able to play and win without bothering with it
- The movement is very difficult to control. I am unable to avoid collisions and do fine tuned adjustments to collect the meat. If the deceleration rate was at least twice as fast I think it would make controlling the player feel better.
- It was unclear to me that I needed to ascend in order to move, so I was stuck on the ground until I realized I could not move around like an RC car, silly me but it is a player instinct you have to account for.
Future Additions:
- Perhaps you could work the breathing mechanic into something that is more intuitive for the player to use / be clearly integrated into the game
- Perhaps you could add some environmental hazards. like a bug zapping lamp or other things in addition to tighter player movement to make maneuvering the house more interesting.
float threshold = "Assign this from player set value with a good default";
void FixedUpdate(){
bool overThreshold = mic.volume > threshold;
if(wasAboveLastUpdate != overThreshold ){
wasAboveLastUpdate = overThreshold;
SwitchLanes();
}
}
This would let the player be able to just make any noise that causes the mic's input volume to go over a threshold to switch lanes, and would require the player to stop making noise / go under the threshold, and then make a noise again over the threshold to switch again.
So it would not keep switching over and over, instead it would just switch every time you make a noise over the threshold, after being quiet and it going under for at least one update.
- Game has no bugs or unplayable design. (That I know)
- It is clear what is danger and what is reward
- Background parallax is done well
- Voice movement is janky, but it is funny, and made up for by allowing me to turn it off
- Mutiple level backgrounds was cool to switch and fly in.
- Sound fits the game and is unintrusive.
Cons:
- Art could be more animated, We are under a time constraint yes, but if you had the time it would be nice to have animated fireballs and reward animations
Future Additions and suggestions to think of for the future:
Not much variation in what the player is supposed to do, yes it is a simple game and you are under a time constraint, but it would be an interesting addition to have stuff that affects the gameplay like perhaps speedboosts to make it more difficult but give the player more rewards during the speedboost. Perhaps also adding a score based on speed and let the player hold a button to accelerate, the game is more difficult when you are going faster, but they could be rewarded with a better time perhaps.
Thank you for taking my recommendations well. Some people view them as orders because I am very direct, but I genuinely like to see and play fun games, I don't like to waste my time trying to sugarcoat what I say, I like to be honest.
Understandable, hey your game works and is playable and complete as a game, I didnt get stuck somewhere with no clear way to progress or run into something infuriating (in a bad annoying way, not in a well planned well designed difficulty spike). Most in the jam cannot say the same.
Right its not about running, (understandable) but that doesn't mean I should feel like nothing is happening most of the time, I did not know you could use the toilets to move around, I never saw any toilets in the game, perhaps you should make that more clear to the player that it exists in the game.
Do not rely on a video tutorial to play your game, it should be designed well in game in the first place.
The inventory equip was not made clear to me, I don't know if its the case, but using E should be contextual rather then inventory based as there is really not much variation as to what a player can do at any given location.
Example: If i click E near a blob it shoots it, if I click E and it would need to use something from my inventory to do that action, it should do that action. I was given no in game clues as to that there even was a system to set my active inventory Item.
- Player movement is almost designed to get me hit by the spikes
For example: if a spike is high I have to inflate and jump high, but this makes me slow down horizontally so I land on the spike perfectly, as if it were designed for me to die on it.
On the other hand, if I keep high horizontal movement but low vertical movement, I don't get high enough to go over the lower spikes.
From this design it is like the game wants me to just die and struggle.
- Controls are unintuitive, I cannot breath/exhale while moving using WASD, and no i will not use the arrow keys after years of WASD muscle memory.
Also using the sword consumes the HP, (not sure what the other meter is) and I die when it is empty, which happens often as I need to wack the red dudes.
- THE WATER WAVE WHEN YOU SURFACE 3.14159 / amazing
- Music and Sounds
- Text Animations
CONS:
- Player Movement is abit funky, it is good but it feels off somehow. could have a dash ability perhaps
- The shooty hook is abit slow, if it could go faster and go further and (im sure sure it does or doesnt because it doesnt go very far) be able to hook multiple fish at a time.
- The random fish spawning is easy code wise and works fine, but could be improved to instead encourage more exploration. I found it most intuitive (maybe not the best) to just stay in the same area and shoot the same respawns (spawn kill them)
- The trees tend to block my view, I wish the camera was closer to the player like, yes i'm going to say it, fortnite
- Eventually camera just cuts to a rock and there is no way to exit this cutscene. But the rock isn't all bad, it has some grass and a grey panel on it or something.
- I thought the mines were pickup coins since there was no sound and kept dying every time, I had to read the comments to realize they were mines and that I had to duck under them.
- Basically geometry dash but with bad level design and large hard to control player.
WHAT COULD BE CHANGED:
- have the player constantly moving forward so I only have to worry about going up or down
- add more variation to the level design in height so that the player could have changes in environment
- reduce the players size
- make it clear what the controls are
- add sounds to make it clear what is going on
- perhaps replace the mines with just hanging spikes so that I know it is supposed to be a danger and not a buff
- Art and Atmosphere are very horror driven and done well.
- Funny premise and beginning scene
- Game feel is on point, colors and sounds work together well.
CONS:
- Game design issues, unclear where to go, but it is horror so having some ambiguity and unknowns is the point and makes it scary. However with too little indication it just becomes frustrating and annoying to find the path.
- Due to the game design I am forced into running into the "unstable" black blobs as it is the only way forward, and since the player is so slow I will die every time to the larger ones, If there is something I am missing it is unclear to me what that would be.
- I picked up the "sharp object" and assumed I could use it to kill the stationary blobs at least, that was not the case even though I got the "E" prompt, so it was just confusing.
- Forcing the player into the damaging blobs seems counterintuitive, it would make more sense to be able to use it as an oppurtunity to teach the player to use the sharp object to kill them or something.
- Slow player movement combined with the large enemies always being faster.
Plant movement is fine, just initial placement is abit goofy. I am on desktop.
Also a big plus would be a boost in contrast in colors, the plants looks the same color as their environment. If instead they were more, or grew more saturated as the game progresses to emphasize the cleansing and growth of the environment, as well as mixed with a post processing that starts off less, and grows more contrasted or saturated (whichever looks better) to really sell the growth, that would add additional cherry on top.
Also the UI seems abit small in comparison to the actual game, if this is because it does not scale with resolution (as I am on 1440) you should consider making your UI scale with screen size. If it does scale with screen size, perhaps consider making it larger, because it is puny for me.
Additionally, it would be cool to see the plants not position themselves on top of each other by default, because once it gets to cookie clicker mode you just get a few hundred plants stacked on top of each other. It would require some coding but I know it is doable to perform checks and recursively move the placed plant outside of boundaries until the distance check on it is happy.
For multiple orders, to save screen space and let player focus, you could have the "inactive" orders smaller but still visible, and allow the player to switch which is the active order by dragging them, perhaps something like a carousel wheel, vertical or horizontal (whichever has more room)
Or you could have the orders instead be in a stack, and let the player pick one off the top and place it wherever they want on screen, this would allow the player to drag as many or as little orders as they want out at a time, and put it where they want, allowing more player freedom. They would obviously animate out once completed, and whenever you make a burger it just either automatically detects which order it belongs to and completes it, OR you could have the player drag the burger to the order receipt like a game of charades (not sure if that works gameplay wise and could be too complex for the player but interesting idea)
I personally like the second Idea because it gives the player control and makes the experience more interactive and they can still play at their own pace, whether it be slow or fast.
The assets are just on point for this game, the game as a game is very game, very complete and well designed game.
"haha very funny game. The type of game I would play when I was a kid and tell my friends.
the objectives are a bit to much hidden, and the breath and brain oxygen mechanics could be better explained. I got dead by the brain gauge the most times.." - chimbicator
- Assets are on POINT, sound, art, anims, responsiveness all on point
- game assets work together well
CONS:
- Controls are clunky
- Game does not do anything after tutorial
- Some loading screens seem bugged even if they arent because of how slow they are in combination with having no content during the screen that indicates that it isnt bugged.
