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Global Mutation

A lewd survival game in a side-scroller like way · By Rolanda

Some ideas about 0.0.7

A topic by EugeneLoza created Jan 14, 2024 Views: 1,005 Replies: 14
Viewing posts 1 to 4

Great job, nice’n’fun game :) After playing several versions, including 0.0.7 I might offer some IMHO suggestions. Just a bunch of ideas that might improve game’s overall feel, of course very subjective and up to you to decide.

  1. Random names for world and player. It gets tedious to input them all the time, and seems like confuses the new players :) In my experience constructing those of a few word parts yields good results, e.g. names can be Marta(mar-ta), Flora(flo-ra), Annie(an-nie) -> this way generated names could be Marnie(mar+nie) or Flota(flo+ta).

  2. Game over state. Not necessarily “game over” but instead of a soft-locked loop the character can just “wake up” near home, with all items lost. Adds meaning to defeat, plus protects from softlocks when an opponent can grab before the character can land a hit.

  3. Farming mechanics seems to be completely unbalanced, but that’s ok. Doesn’t seem like seeds can be discovered in the world though.

  4. Overabundant resources. The game has amazing survival potential, but one run in the clothing store is enough to stack up on clothes for the entirety of the game. I personally prefer to have “clothes” not as a boring micromanagement element, but as an interesting mechanics (including constant shortage of clothes - which can be amplified by elements such as unavoidable clothing damage (e.g. by going through thorns) or disrobing events, like enemies/traps who steal clothes or ability to enter some location only nude (e.g. water)). Also items are found in perfect condition, it might be a good idea to make it random, so finding something good is a luck.

  5. Damage sponges. Combat unfortunately currently doesn’t offer anything fun (and I don’t tell it should) but the enemies are “damage sponges”. E.g. to take down a goatman player character literally needs to rest for some time - just not enough stamina to deplete the healthbar. Results in kinda-boring/trivial loop hit-step back-hit-step back without any creativity involved. This kind of behavior can either work when enemies are quick to kill so player doesn’t get bored, or in case there are many enemies and maneuvering between them becomes a non-trivial task (quantity becomes quality). Of course extending combat system into something more complex could solve the issue from the other side (by forcing player to think before taking actions, e.g. hitting an enemy who is blocking staggers the heroine, or some attacks require quick repositioning/dodging as cannot be simply avoided by sidestepping) - but it’s much harder than tweaking enemy numbers and hit-points :) Now “avoiding fight” altogether is often the preferred strategy especially against enemies in the streets.

  6. (related to previous) Most weapons are absolutely useless. The damage scales from 1 to 24+ - this way it takes 24 times longer to kill enemy with bare hands than with a hammer - and they are very slow to kill with a hammer, making using any weapon with damage below 14 literally unusable. 10 damage of knife will take several minutes to chop down the goatman, it’s not hard it’s super boring :D

  7. (very minor) Time slow is sometimes not appropriate, player is far out of reach of enemy and still gets the prompt to press space. Not sure if this mechanics is a good idea at all.

  8. Slow movement. The only way to move faster is to run, which in turn drains stamina - which in turn makes combat super slow if one comes there without full stamina bar. Especially hurts town location, where distances are large and empty and sometimes require backtracking. The classic solution “no stamina drain outside of combat” doesn’t seem to be possible in this game as there is no specific “combat mode”. Not sure how to fix that. Making locations more crowded with events has other unwelcome consequences. Making running free may open exploits in combat. Making it extremely depending on how much player carries can be a good “Strategic factor” - going into combat full nude and run as much as you like. Equip armor and carry a lot of stuff - running has a price. Also doesn’t seem like a good solution, unless there will be combat-only missions where player can balance between those, usually player will need to drag loot back to base. Another idea: “quick way to recover stamina” right now it recovers independently if player moves or stands. E.g. make “crouch” regenerate stamina much faster.

  9. Quick-loot, quick-put. Might be a good idea for a button “loot all” and button/key combination to put everything into the storage, without dragging individual items.

  10. Search and stealth. Currently enemies do not react to player moving around. Slimes always see the player when in range. Goatmen usually look away from player and one can search shelves behind their backs at point-blank range. Maybe make them patrol the location. Also may be make stealth subsystem, when the amount of clothes player is wearing + current action determines how much noise is made = enemies can hear and go investigate. Can also be “alarm traps” that will attract monsters from the locations. Maybe also give a stealth-attack bonus on unsuspecting enemies debuffing them or just dealing bonus damage.

  11. There seems to be a bug with stacking items (they don’t seem to stack in containers, they sometimes stack in the inventory if dragged above other, and they usually stack properly when item is put into container and then taken). Just noting here, nothing critical.

  12. Some intermediate goal for the game might be welcome. E.g. collecting money or some other stuff. Not just walk around aimlessly. But Get 25 bucks to “be cool”.

  13. Pause doesn’t really pause the game, neither locks controls.

  14. Tools stores seem to be very rare. I’ve found only a couple - and only got 3 of 4 planks to craft a bench.

  15. It’s hard to pick which item is interacted with. Maybe hovering mouse over it can be a better guide than player character’s position and facing?

  16. Dash-rolling through goatmen makes them lose their target and just continue walking in same direction. Also going out of location (through the door) seems to confuse them in a similar way - they’ll just go into a wall)

  17. Significant storage limitations may be not a good idea - there are a lot of resources in the game (which is great) - but sorting them at the base is really complicated (which is boring). Maybe at least increasing capacity of storage or make ability to craft large storage containers could be a good idea.

  18. No health/stamina is visible during sleeping. Which makes sense to know because sleep-to-recover :)

  19. When the enemies had enough fun they may just leave the heroine alone. Would avoid stun-locks ending in an infinite loop. Also makes sense from logic point of view :) Maybe will leave her in a debuffed state so that player can’t immediately fight back after getting up. Maybe stealing items (or damaging them during forced undressing). Maybe teleporting away instead of just walking to first make some safe time for the player to recover, second prevent from killing the attacker right away after they turn back on the character.

  20. When in crafting or building menus it might be good to highlight what is lacking for the receipt.

Developer(+1)

Hello there, thanks a lot for the very detailed opinions and suggestions!
I have read through all of them and get quite many ideas from it or issues in the current game.
Here are some of my thinking or method that may used to enhance the gaming experience in the later version.

Some of the setting would definitely make game more convenience, like a randomize button for quick assigning the world properties and player properties.
Would implement these kind of function at later version.

Game over state is also a thing that lacking in the game, wake up around the house  with item loss is a good idea. Other than that, maybe there are also probability that wake up at some sort of nest in other case and player have to find a way out.

For the combat part in game, enemy only switch between walking toward player and single attack action.
It keep repeating and lack of variation so i guess it's one of the point that making combat boring. I am working on the AI for next version and hope it can bring more joy in the combat.

The current damage calculation method is using player's damage value to minus the target defense value, so some weapon become very inefficient against high-defense enemy. Perhaps i can change it to percentage related method to solve this problem.

There also other people reflect to me about the stamina consumption. To enhance the current stamina system, i will probably add some stamina refill items and allowing the player to recover stamina faster when they are idle (Either standing or crouching). In addition, i may reduce the current running stamina cost, but increase the cost when player carrying too much weight.

The stealth mechanism sounds interesting, would add the stealth-attack bonus to the game.  I also like the alarm traps idea as it give the player more tension feelings. It may take some time to make the audio tracking though.

Giving the player some intermediate goal would be good, i still thinking what kind of reward can be given to player.

Other suggestions are good either and i need more time to think about them.
I will also check some mentioned bugs, and hope to fixed them as soon as possible.

Thanks again for playing the game and putting the time to make those suggestions!

Just tried 0.0.8, it’s super cool! :D Fixes a huge lot of issues I’ve had with 0.0.7.

(Don’t forget the announcement post ;)

Developer(+1)

Thank you! I am sure to make an announcement post very soon :)

Oh, and below I’ve posted playtest result of 0.0.8 I did on weekends, but now I’m almost sure you don’t get notifications for posts that aren’t a reply to your messages :) but I didn’t want to spawn a new topic either.

Developer(+1)

Yeah i only get notification from new topic or reply so, some time i might miss some posts.

Will sure to spend some time read through them!

(1 edit)

Ok, so this is much, much more fun than it was :D The comment will be very minor, mostly bugreports.

I love the “least loot” and “weakest entities” settings. I might even slightly suggest “even less loot option” :D Though, as per notes below - I guess globally reducing the amount of loot might not be a good idea, just some kinds of. But I must admit that “barely having enough clothes” (especially thanks to yellow slime) is a game changer and I love it :D

Those below are rather minor, and as usually purely IMHO - just potential ideas, so up to you if you want to address those or have a better idea.

  1. Seems like green slimes often don’t react to player at all. Can walk through them, jump on them, stand in them. Seems like “in heat” state doesn’t change that much either, the “bell” bar starts growing slightly in this case.
  2. Thick fishnet glitches on character.
  3. Foods don’t seem to make sense. Hunger bar is usually always full thanks to fruits, it’s the thirst bar that lags behind, requiring to get some water. I guess consumables that restore both hunger and thirst are unbalanced for now relative to their spawn quantity. Especially as some need to be cooked first.
  4. Green slime jumps up the ceiling and it doesn’t look good.
  5. Purple slime is often transparent - it’s actually good, just slightly feels like it’s not supposed to be so.
  6. There is some loose pixel or several on chefknife. Check texture bleeding. Especially visible during search animation.
  7. Shopping street is very hard to navigate. I often end up going in loops, and there is no way to discern if some area was visited already - just go into a shop, check some container, if “searching…” pops up, this is a new place, if not - been here before.
  8. In cafeteria shop (the one with the fancy tables) in the kitchen area (first floor to the end right) the first container overlaps with the open door.
  9. It’s extremely hard to fight opponents (slimes in the first place) in the doorway. They aren’t visible, but can hit player character pretty well, while landing a hit is problematic.
  10. Obstacles (such as tables, “under construction”) seem to glitch player jumping behavior, especially if close enough to them. Maybe it’s better not to use them until they are fixed.
  11. “The switch seems to be broken” emits such a low-pitched sound that some utensils on my table ring :D I didn’t even know my 15-20 years old speakers can go that deep. I guess it’s not all that bad :D
  12. Being over-encumbered cuts down stamina regeneration and movement speed, and it’s ok. But it was unexpected for me as a player, I thought the game glitched out in some slow-mo event at first. I guess in some future “blinking status effect icon” or simply red encumbrance bar at right of the screen could be clearer as for the reasons.
  13. I’m still not sure that having a separate key to “stand up” (V) is a good idea. Especially as it’s very close to “build” key (B). Maybe just pressing “up” (or maybe even any directional key) or “jump” would be a better option?
  14. Also while we’re at the keys - why “F” to interact? It’s usually “E”. Not a big deal, just a notice.
  15. It happened a few times that goatman went “unsuspecting” during the fight. Twice so far: character started searching nearby, goatman woke up, kicked and immediately lied down to sleep. Second time: rammed player character (I love this!) and stopped, after hitting - received backstab (2x?) damage.
  16. Twice ram attack by goatman ended up with him stuck in the EXIT (where Player can leave the interior area), just standing there, not attacking and not attackable. Second time was playing “Walking” not “idle” animation under the same conditions.
  17. Cleaver and chefnkife have equal 14 damage - I strongly believe it’s not the only pair. It might be a fun idea to have items with a bit more random sats - just for the sake of diversity.
  18. Sometimes interactive objects don’t show “searching” delay, even though those have clearly never been searched before. I couldn’t find any reliable reproduction steps - maybe if this kind of shop was already looted before then some of the containers can occasionally not reset properly - but this is just a wild guess based that this happens after quite some time of exploring the shopping streets.
  19. I absolutely love how enemies footsteps, opening-closing of the door is heard. However it seems like the sound volume-panning doesn’t depend on physical sound position?
  20. I guess general problem of this kind of games - but sooner or later needs something to be done about it. When the character gets taken advantage of the first time it’s ok. But after 3-4 times it gets rather tedious to wait for 10-20 seconds until the controls reset back. I guess “skip to end” button might be a good start? At least not to wait until the bar fills up. Maybe even add ability to struggle in downed state too, making sure it remembers “history” so character can’t escape each and ever time and needs to stop resiting to get to the end (as in many other games).
  21. I have a suspicion that goatmen confuse night and just being dark inside of the buildings. Because they sleep too often.
  22. May be a good idea to block player input during fade-in-outs (and overall set game to pause (Time.timeScale = 0 and do the fade in Time.unscaledTime), I expect really weird behavior if a monster knocks-out heroine or something similar happens).
  23. Green slime spawned inside rubble in the tools store.
  24. Planks are still super rare to find. Ok, I’m playing on the “lowest loot quantity” setting, but compared to other loot they’re still too little. After a few hours of game finally a single tools store spawned, and it had only one plank inside :) I’m not building workbench at this rate :D
  25. Just noticed that eating berries reduces health? Oh, that was unexpected.
  26. It seems like just standing for 3 seconds also triggers stamina regen acceleration, no need to crouch (I don’t complain :D)

EDIT: version 0.0.8, Win 10x64

Developer(+1)

Thanks for giving the compliment and some comment or suggestions on the current game!
I spent some time reading them and fixing some of the mentioned bugs.
Here's my thoughts on some of the comments.

The green will only enter aggressive state when its bar is filled over specific ratio.
The bar can be filled by being triggered to fall down from ceiling or being touch.
Also the bar filling speed will change based on the player exposure level.
So player is safer with full cloth and low desire, and more danger when naked (Make them faster in aggressive).

When first designing the food consumption effect, i let some food like fruits to be able to reduce thirsty as well
since i though it would feel more realistic.
The different between hungry speed and thirsty speed is also based on similar thoughts.
Maybe it still need some more adjustments to balance the setting.

To make the exploration journey in the shopping street less troublesome, I have come up an idea.
Once you have entered a building, the front door of it will change to the open state if looking from outside.

There are no particular reason using extra key to let player stand up.
It is some key assigned during testing in the very early version says v0.0.1.
After that the button setting has remain till now.
I agree that using existing button like jump button would be less confuse.

The reason I choose F as the main interact button is mostly affected by a meme "Press F to pay respect" : D

I would like to add a skipping option on some animations too.

Yeah, both standing and crouching can triggers stamina recover acceleration.
So player just need to idle to get buff without further input.

(2 edits)

Thank you! :D

So player is safer with full cloth and low desire, and more danger when naked

Hmmmm… I must admit the character was in heat and the alertness bar barely moved (but moved nonetheless :)) - maybe I confuse “heat” and “desire” bars? I must admit I didn’t figure out what was that needle near it showing, always was around the middle. I didn’t check depending on the clothes (most likely character was always at least partially dressed), will try asap :)

(3 edits)

Tested: Nope, standing nude right in the slime barely alerts it. Played for several in-game days walking around without clothes (socks+boots+glasses) and slimes still barely react unless fall from the ceiling.

.27. It takes quite some time between pressing “Continue” and showing the main menu. Feels like the game frozen. It’s ok to take time to load stuff :) But showing “Loading” screen might be more user-frienly :)

.28. Wolf in the park now became pretty weak opponent, doesn’t seem to attack unless character is in heat. Otherwise just need to stand back to it for some time until it decides to jump.

.29. When wolf is hiding in the bushes its eyes are shining through character model.

.30. It seems like you’ve got the same cursed bug of Unity’s AudioMixer - the first frame of the game the settings aren’t loaded, which results that if you have music off or on low volume - it’ll play 100% at first 1/50th of a second and then dim down. I remember I’ve had to do some trick to get it work right, but don’t remember which one - I’m almost sure it was a “standard solution” Unity forums know about. [EDIT: Remembered what I did: set initial volume to zero in Mixer’s settings, and then applied proper volume when settings are loaded]

.31. Somehow lost all collected silver coins. Copper ones and paper money stayed, no sliver ones, though I definitely remember picking some. Tried to reproduce (suspected they don’t get saved in a savegame) didn’t manage to. Could they somehow turn into copper coins when reached 20? Because I don’t remember collecting 40 copper coins, should be roughly 20+20 copper and silver.

.32. Sometimes (after searching some object?) can’t enter pause menu by pressing ESC - need to press it twice (most likely “once to cancel some state which ended but not graciously, second time to open pause).

.33. This run I often see “points” floating around the screen at random places, where they don’t make sense. E.g. hitting a goatman, but damage jumps on the other side of the screen (if goatman goes beyond the screen?), or a slime swallowed and ate some object and +10 healing popped up on the screen (together with sound) but no slime is visible.

Screenshot of bug with table behind the door (#8 from previous post)

Screenshot of bug with slime stuck under the rubble (#23 from previous post - this time purple slime)

Developer(+1)

Thanks!
I have fixed some of the bugs you mentioned like the door at #8 and the wolf eye lighting at #29.
Also really thanks for the help on the Audio Mixer issue, it already confuse me for quite a long time and i finally fixed the bug.
I will also make some adjustment to the slime and wolf to make them more balanced in general circumstance.
For the last one, one of the slime spawn points is set under that obstacle on purpose, as a little joke :D

Ping about new feedback below :)

(2 edits)

Some more things in 0.0.8b. Overall: much better. Wolves are still too easy, but at least they now try to attack. Now with the damage rebalance the “weakest enemies” are a bit to weak, often go down in 1-2 hits (especially wolves). Loot: better! Or maybe just random was more fun :) There is only one critical issue: #45, can’t build anything now.

.34. After “take all” it might be meaningful to close the container, especially if all items have been removed from the container by the command.

.35. Taking all doesn’t “cancel” the individual item menu (didn’t check it it crashes if tried to interact with)

.36. Splitting items stack could be useful. Now when there are 20 bottles in one slot and you need only 1-2 it seems to be impossible to take less than all. Maybe shift+click? Or additional menu option “take one”, but then also “take half” would make sense and it will make stuff overcrowded.

.37. Still some items overlap:

.38. Now it’s behind the door, but it’s still interactable (why not remove it altogether?)

.39. Goatman tries to walk from adjacent room through the wall between those

.40. When goatman tries to walk into an obstacle, the item in hands can start flying around randomly. This is the case that happened in 39, but also with the openable counter in one of the locations.

.41. Goatman immediately “went to sleep” after struggling minigame. Maybe some aggressiveness/horniness state should prevent him from going idle? Happened a few times they disengaged almost immediately after getting hit.

.42. Now player can attack almost non-stop, stun-locking the enemies and taking an easy win even barefist. It was more fun before unless I simply didn’t notice this exploit earlier :)

.43. Cape doesn’t fit on the head

.44. Goatman had some item in hand, and it was heavily misaligned, but I believe this has already been reported in “bugs” topic recently.

.45. [CRITICAL] building no longer works at all. Always says “should be on the ground” - tried in the building, outside of the building and in the forest location. Note: I didn’t try it in 0.0.8, only collected the ingredients and left them for better times.

.46. “Flip” checkbox doesn’t seem to do anything. Neither I’m sure what “Snap” does, but therefore can’t say if it does it correctly :)

Developer(+1)

Some of the mentioned bugs are recorded and will be fixed later.

For the container UI, i prefer the UI stayed after the "Take all" or "Put all" buttons are pressed.
So player still can move back some unwanted items if there are such needs. The container UI will auto-close when player move out the container range so it won't be main issue.


There are an existing function to split items, that you can press left-shift before dragging the items to other slot to split it in half.
But i didn't mention this in game, so i guess not much people know about the function.

The building system is workable, just need left click to adjust the blueprint position first.

I will keep improving the rest of the mention content, thanks for the suggestions!
(+1)

Played a few more times, not much new to report, so will mention only one thing that I’ve thought might (or may not) be useful:

.47. Hunger/thirst notification (like grumbling stomach), got into building and lost all health unnoticed. Maybe also visual effect for low health/food/thirst as for horniness. (Maybe also in-heat noises?)

Ok, while was writing decided that adding a few more notes might be useful

.48. At least once I’ve ended shopping street looping without an exit. The area went like:

entrance -> middle of the next street

Next street:

(left -> right) –– middle –– (right -> left)

this way the second street loops on itself with the only way out “middle” - back to the entrance area. Note that it was yesterday, so I may have already forgotten that there was one more streets segment, like (street2-left) –– street1 (+middle: to entrance) –– (street2-right) : (street1-right) –– street2 –– (street1-left)

.49. There’s a “white fog” on the left side of the home base which usually tells about place to leave the area, but nothing happens when you walk close to it.

.50. I wonder if it’s possible to somehow optimize “returning home” part? First of all, I guess autosaving on returning home makes sense (if it doesn’t happen now :)). Second, it takes opening 3 doors and lots of walking before one can embark on adventure again (e.g. if I hunt for wolves teeth, I might want to visit the forest 3-4 times a night). So, what needs to happen ideally: player returns home, drops loot and ready to go back - without much additional hassle. Potentially can simply be that pressing “M” not only shows map but also allows travel when at home.

.51. When triggering an interaction with an object by pressing F the character is still moving and sometimes (especially if running before) will get out of interaction range canceling the interaction. Not sure what would be the good solution here. Maybe triggering an interaction should insta-stop the movement (may not look good). Maybe not stop interaction if it wasn’t canceled by input (but that may conflict with monster canceling the interaction). Or maybe disallow interaction until the player character fully stops (which might be counterintuitive).

.52. It is possible to build stuff in respawning locations, like forest. Just tested: indeed that makes re-entering location cause built stuff disappear. Which, given high value of some buildables, may be very bad experience. I guess simply forbidding to build in respawning locations would be a good idea. Another option, of course, is to make objects built persist even in case the location resets, but this may be tricky to implement and may still not give the desired result “I’ve built a fire but where?”. So, like in Skyrim, just marking locations “safe and unsafe” and disallowing/warning about building there could be the easiest solution.

.53. Related to #52: there is no warning that items discarded without a container disappear. Loot is usually easy to get, but might turn unexpected for the players.

Apart from that - yeah, pressing the mouse button indeed helps with building, I wonder if some hint for players could be useful (or is it already there and I just missed it? :D). “Flip” and “Snap” now also make sense and work as expected.

Didn’t find any reproduction for #31 (losing silver coins) - now looking at how rare they are in my current playthrough, maybe it was a false memory from previous playthroughs and I was just unlucky enough not to get any silver coins?

Paid special attention to #21 (goatmen sleeping during the day inside of the buildings) - and it also seems not the issue, they are asleep/awake correctly in all situations.

Also #19 seems to be working fine now. Not sure if it’s a new fix, or maybe I confused something in my previous post.