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Beta Testing!

A topic by Mantis-Eye Labs created Aug 26, 2017 Views: 613 Replies: 8
Viewing posts 1 to 4
Developer

If you're testing any feedback is appreciated. Just post your thought here. If you don't want to post anything you can also email me directly via Mike dot Watson at gmail. I really appreciate it! Thanks!

(1 edit) (+1)

Hello! Grabbed the game an hour ago. Some notes:

  • Tutorial: good!
  • I'd like some kind of indication that no more monsters will spawn in a level? (If that's even ever 100% true.)
  • First time I ever got to the Ghost King, it froze just as I got him down to 1 HP.  This is on OSX (see image below)
  • It took me dying ~20 times as the ghost before finally getting the "rhythm" of the game, at which point I blazed a trail straight to the last level
    • That said, I have played several of these "make sure you know whether monsters are an even or odd number of square away from you" type roguelikes, so I'm coming to this primed for what I'm seeing (there's the monster that takes 2 moves, there's the monster that gets pushed back, etc)
  • Is it possible for any monster to spawn on any level? Feels like it, and that makes the levels feel less special, or less like a progression.
  • Playing this felt impossibly hard the first dozen times, followed by "huh, I'm starting to see patterns" the next dozen times, followed by "I got this"
  • Excited to figure out some of the secrets like the lake level and whatever the key is for
  • Also excited to try non-ghost characters
  • Would be nice to know what killed me and how
  • Would be nice to have some sort of understanding of priority order for events (are bombs resolved before or after enemy attacks, etc -- some of this I've figured out but games like Hoplite telegraph it with animation order)

Developer(+1)

Oh wow, this is awesome feedback, thanks! I like that you already managed to get to the end (aside: I am very bad at my own game). The levels not feeling "special" actually came up with someone else and it's something I never thought about. The other tester mentioned that it didn't seem like there was much different between levels besides the colors/etc and that's (mostly) true. I think it was just me making a video game (ice level! water level!) without really thinking about it. There's not really supposed to be a ton of variation between levels but I might try and do something a little more involved. There are small limits on enemy spawning (no exploding enemies in the first two or three levels) but I might go further thanks to these suggestions.

I will have to see if I can figure out what caused that freeze. Not good :(

The biggest takeaway I've gotten is I need to provide more feedback to the player as to what is actually going on in the game. It's super hard for me to evaluate the game in that way, which is why getting fresh eyes on it is amazing. I've already got some ideas and I'll need to make a bunch of (hopefully not huge) changes that will hopefully make it feel better. Thanks a ton for taking the time and playing and writing all this down. I super appreciate it! I'm excited to put some more work into this thing.

(+1)

I've played through more then a few times.  Definitely agree with @Darius' comments re: getting the feel for the game.  I do not come from that rouge-like background so it's taking me a while to get the hang of it, but I keep coming back and getting a little further!

Also, I would also say I'm confused on some move resolution issues re: bomb vs bad guys.  I've been killed a couple times by someone that I thought my bomb would take out first.  Maybe just something to get used to.  The daily challenges are fun, right now it's the only time I play other characters, still trying to get the hang of the ghost, when to use bomb, when to use special powers, etc.  But like I said, enjoying it overall.

Developer

Woo! Thanks for playing!

I think the resolution issues are the most pressing thing for me now, since it seems like it's confuse everyone but I've internalized that system so much that I can't see the issue myself. I guess my main question is, since everyone has been playing as Ghost, does the confusion stem from planting bombs while doing his special? His special grants any two actions per turn, so you can move two spaces, plant and move, attack and plant, move and attack etc. In conjunction with bombs that can get a little weird since you can take three steps before it explodes if you plant right after activating it. It might be worth denoting how many actions you can perform or something... in some way.

Also if the confusion just comes from general play regardless of his special ability that's also something I need to address but that seems like more of a fundamental flaw.

(+1)

When I play through later today, I'll see if I can record what I'm doing and comment on when it feels weird.

I'll see if I can get my kids to play through too, they'll be able to give "first time" comments and an age difference.

Developer

That would be awesome, thanks!

I downloaded the build that was updated yesterday. Haven't played it much but I ended up in a situation where I was hanging out in a choke point and there was a regular-moving enemy in front of me and a bat behind it. The bat moved through the enemy and onto my square so we were actually occupying the same square. That was weird!

Developer

Ah crap I thought I fixed that. I need to just build a test map where I can quickly generate scenarios like that. Thanks!