Nice game, I enjoyed it. I would only say that:
- 2nd boss, 2nd phase, fireball explosions. They have kinda loud sfx cuz they explode at the same time;
- "E" attack seemed a bit weak, because dps was similar to autoattacks and it didn't generate a lot of stun. At its laser-immune feature is kinda meh, because it is much more profitable to just get dodge counter attacks to stun the boss.
6. I forgot to mention, after peaceful fight with the old man I was just basically spamming Enter, so his encounter was always first in the list, maybe it will help to debug it.
12. No worries, same goes for my game :D, but we need to start somewhere.
Otherwise, no problem, was glad to help. Maybe, someday, you will show me your game again, when it is finished.🙂
So, I tried this game 2 times.
First time I didn't quite understand the mechanics from the tutorial, partly because their peculiar names. I managed to defeat one boss, but then was bored by counteless defeats by overall seeming randomness.
But somehow I wanted to give this game a second chance, I guess because I felt a bit bad, that I didn't try to enjoy it fully. And here is my feedback:
1. So, on second time I got how basic mechanics work, though some abbreveations weren't introduced, like DP, SP, 3DI (3DI thing meaning I've only got while was writting this review), so some mechanics were still a mystery; where bug with incorrect text for using GRR makes it even worse, like it should increase your flow by 10 and 3DI by 5, but instead game says that it increases your flow by 5 and 3DI by 0 after you've used it.
2. You can outheal your max hp https://ibb.co/PnB136S with resting for example, dunno if it is intended.
3. My first encounter was with "a friend" https://ibb.co/d4pCxcp6, but game counts it as a battle, which is kinda strange. Another moment, I would say it is a bit inconsistent, how we don't know the enemy encounter and mark it with "????", but we know for sure we will meet "a friend" on another path though we are going there for the first time. Shouldn't it be the same like with the enemies? So if after rewind I see the house there, now I know who lives there and know it is not an enemy and etc, but for the first time I can't know that. Then instead of "a friend" perhaps could use another words, like "a house", "a stranger" so player can make better decisions.
4. In some places Rectangle is mispelled https://ibb.co/dJjtW22D
5. So after house my next encounter was vampire driller, I've lost and strange things started to happen. On back home I got this message POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT (dunno if it is actually counts as a spoiler, and if it is that heavy spoiler, I can remove link if you want), so like game decided, that I've actually completed the game, instead of losing a battle :D.
6. After the rewind everything was as usual, until I met him - the bald old guy. So I peacefully defeated him and after that my game was cursed. On next encounter I met him again, but after I charged my drill, encounter instantly abrupted and I got usual rest screen after battle. Then on next encounter I met him again and again and again, and each time I had the same battle skip; until I think I got to the last Inferno layer where, I'm assuming i've met one of the winged semi-final bosses, but again, instead of actual fighting after drill charging I got message, that I reached the center of the planet with tree. (I can send you screenshot if you want, I've though perhaps it is a bit too spoiler-ish to post it here). So after that, i'm assuming, instead of final boss battle I was able to just continue go deeper in Inferno as usual and all battles were like "I use drill charge" - "Battle instantly abrupts in the next screen and rest screen with rock is shown". So game was in general heavily broken, like also sometimes when I encountered some enemies, on their turn they turned in other bosses. And etc, so text and images were desynced, except candy-meetings and resting.
7. Vampire-driller iirc doesn't have any fight introduction, and some other fights don't have proper introduction as well. This felt a bit strange, like we just fight with everything we see without any purpose for it, except "friends". So would be nice to know what was the cause, since we don't fight with some brainless slimes, but with other humans (?). But dunno if it is somehow was explained in boss lore books (?), because I didn't manage to read them.
8. I would remove annoying spiral thing completely. Iirc it doesn't have any explanation lore-wise (like we don't ask the Keydrill about it after the first fight, so it could explain what this thing is and how it works; but just accept things as they are). And what is more importantly it adds many frustration with "lemme set your 2000 RPM to 500", which is happens quite often. And that's kind of random is kinda frustrating, because you can't really heal and you need to waste your turns to accumulate RPM again, so it is kinda a run killer, which you never wanna use.
9. Poison boss. Dunno if it is intended, but they can't kill you, because no matter the poison rate, poison damage depends on your current hp, so when I gave up and wanted to just die to him to reset the run, he dealt to me 0 damage, when I had 1 hp. And I couldn't kill him either, because my charging was super debuffed and was like 37 RPM for charge iirc. So it was kinda super troll fight, were we both couldn't kill each other. (well, in theory I guess I could win but it would take very long time because of low charging rate)
10. In general fights felt a bit too random-ish, like again, with poison boss I missed like 5 times in a row iirc and like I can't do anything with that, cuz I don't have some kind of accuracy buff. Or when you can block enemy attack, but suddenly another enemy attack becomes unblockable and you should've used dodge or parry, but you couldn't know that. Like yeah, for some bosses I think you can use some consistent strategy, but not for all, unless you learn all their attack patterns, which can be a bit time-consuming.
11. Resting and candy-meetings scenes felt kinda repetative after some time. But dunno what really can be done here, like it was particularly annoying to skip candy-boy lines, because you always want to take candy, from what've understood, so you like have to manually skip them everytime.
12. Art looks cute, but style seemed to me a bit inconsistent, like if you compare candy boy and man with a big drill from your screenshots. But maybe I have that feeling cuz of a bit different dithering. Also perhaps fights could look more engaging with OMORI-like battle animations.
Overall, good job on your game; in addition to default art, music and game logic you, I assume, had to spend a lot of time on writing, which may be quite hard to polish, and you still managed to finish it to playable state. But there is still room to improvement. 🙂
Okay, I beat it in normal mode. So my issues were:
- I guess I missed from the tutorial, that the min speed = number of chips + 1;
- Spinner speed is considerably increased on Hearts. Which I would say is the one of the main things that can be confusing, because game teaches you only that speed depends on your chips and max speed indicator, but then game decides to increase speed limits just because of higher difficulty boss. So if on the first boss I was kinda fine being on the max speed, then from 2nd boss and onwards I have to spam speed decrease, which I didn't do when I first time played it. So perhaps spinner speed on first boss could be the same, like on second one, so you learn how to play properly from the beginning and on the easier boss:
- In general, I think Hearts is the hardest boss, because not only you have the spinner speed spike, but also you need to play carefully and wait until she places black slices (which I would say a bit boring, because you just sit in stop until she does that) and also has dangerous old maid cards, which also inforce you to use table flip skills, so like there is so many stuff you have to learn on this boss to be able to defeat it.
Other small issues I noticed:
- On first boss can't see the slice value behind the coin, when you are supposed to, from what I understood, make his low value slices yours. So you can't really calculate if it is worth to take the slice with the coin on it, cuz it can be like 5 damage slice and you can take big damage. But I guess that's a feature, because you can always flip the table;
- 3rd and 4th boss were way too easy compare to 2nd one. Cuz of slice modifiers you can basically defeat 3rd boss in a few hits, because there will be pretty many slices of your color. Similar goes to 4th boss, though he is a bit more tricky;
- UI for player's skills looks a bit confusing I think. For example, perhaps, it could be changed to something like this: https://ibb.co/LFSb7T5. So one thing is that table flip skills look more like table will just rotate in one direction on 1 slice and that was what I have initially thought in first playthrough but then eventually I got it in the second one. And then speed change skills seems to be a bit confusing imo, I would make so arrow would be in one place, but looked in different directions. Not a big deal, but I think it should be a bit easier for understanding.
Nevertheless, was quite a nice polished game.
P.S. Yeah, video tutorial is a bad idea, unless it is built-in game.
Solid game.
I would only say 2nd boss tail thing felt a bit unfair, because you can't predict where it will dig out, so if it digs out right under you, then you are garanteed to take damage.
Also boss transitions felt a bit too long, cuz tbh at first I was also thinking that maybe something was bugged or I have to do something specifically to proceed. Perhaps could slowly fill boss hp bar to full, while transition phase is happening, so player would know they didn't stuck and something is happening. As bonus, player will know for how long they need to survive till phase 2.
Also had WebGL out of memory error (Chrome), cuz of which had to restart the game, but when I tried to not use fullscreen it seems to fix itself.
Cool concept and implementation. My only concern was that markers for thingies of 2nd boss were showing incorrect direction, from what I've experienced. Like I tried to go to in the direction of marker position on the screen or direction, where marker's arrow was pointing, but both mislead me to the map border.
Game has some interesting vibes, which art style and music are creating and I kinda liked it.
I managed to beat the game and here is some feedback:
- It felt like character was moving too fast, so it was a bit hard to control it precisely, but maybe it is just me;
- First boss becomes a bit too extreme in the end in terms of spawning stuff;
- Second boss has cool new mechanics, but instead of increasing difficulty along the fight, like the first boss; they decreasing it. I mean like medusa heads are not parriable at the beginning, but in the end they are and you basically can just parry everything and boss quickly dies. Perhaps it should've been vice versa?
Good game, it was nice to see how it grew with each feedback stream.🙂
My main feedback would be (I was playing on web):
- 2nd boss fight felt a bit messy: like this https://ibb.co/qMHVVY9J, when some parts became invisible, but still tail somehow was moving with the main body; or this https://ibb.co/5hFLWhwF when boss had strange rotation angles and even was going in the hole he was coming from, dunno if it was a feature. :D Also perhaps boss shouldn't be able to target holes, which are next to each other, cuz then boss and player can't really interact with each other.
- 3rd boss fight. I would say it was kinda repetative and in some way similar to first boss fight. Like perhaps each sub-boss could have some more interesting mechanic, than just a bit changed shooting pattern.
Cool game, looks quite polished on all departments. Concept with throwing weapons, when each one has its own trajectory is also very nice. But there were 2 main issues for me, which were killing the fun:
1. You have 5 weapons. You have to configure each one separately. First boss moves relatively often and likes to throw 3 projectiles at you. Also weapons don't have too much durability, so you need swap them relatively often, and if your weapon type in your slot changes, you need to fix trajectory again. So all of it makes it so you need to fix all your weapons trajectories far too often, which is a bit too stressful for my taste to enjoy the game.
I think some QoL, for example: if you change trajectory of a weapon, then it changes trajectories of all weapons of such type - could greatly improve experience, because then you need to do less manual monotonous work and you have more time to actually enjoy the game.
2. It seemed like boss had too much hp. So first one has 1000 hp, axe iirc deals 12 damage, and I'm considering it has the highest dps, (but maybe i'm wrong), so I need to throw 83 axes at the boss, without considering, that I also need to kill their projectiles and constantly spend time on rolling weapons. Dunno if there are stronger weapons, which makes it is easier. (i've seen only stone, axe and popcorn)
So in general it felt like I need to spend too much time to kill even the first boss, but maybe it was skill issue on my side and I missed some mechanic. 🙂
Thank you for the review!
Yeah, perhaps I should have introduce some difficulty settings, but sadly didn't have too much time to do that.
In general in this case it can be a bit hard to balance, because when you get how everything works, then 3 or even 2 lives can make it too easy. So I decided to leave only 1 live (and then don't need to make system for lives :D), which may not be the best strat for game jam.
For magnets, spinning direction depends on the angle you came in the magnet orbit. So you can change direction if you bounce off the wall into magnet orbit with the angle you need.
That was an interesting experience. I liked the tutorial as well, good introduction to the game, though perhaps it could have also teach you how to deal with boss attacks, because that's the only thing I didn't get right away.
But yeah, concept with 2 planets can be easily abused, for example I just set max speed for inner planet and then was just controlling outer planet speed to match with the inner one, so didn't need to switch orbits at all. Though yeah, after defeating the boss I didn't have too much of hp left, so if you would increase boss damage a bit more, you could get rid of this cheesy strat. 🙂
I was pressing random buttons and somehow managed to beat it.😎
But overall, nice art style and music. Movement system with different arenas was interesting too.
But game heavily lacks sfx, I think even if you wanted to make sfx yourself, you could still put some free open sfx to the game as a placeholder, otherwise there is not much satisfying impact when you bump yourself against the enemy or the arena.
Also as I said, at the beginning was a bit hard to get the controls and gameplay UI and how are you supposed to play properly. like what different meters mean and etc. Though yeah, eventually I got most of it.
Perhaps, though I think depends on what this story moment is. Like if it is some humorous moment - sure, why not.
I liked the boss's patterns, there are quite bunch of different attacks. I would add, that some attacks could have a bit better readabilitiy, like for example boss's close burst attack, which almost one shots you, so you would know when you should move away from the boss. Also iirc attack, with the balls rolling in a row, has some balls you can parry, but it seemed like even if you parry it, side balls will still hit you, because your hitbox is big and you can't stay safely between 2 balls on sides. So like game baits you in the unwinnable situation. But maybe I should've position myself better.
Fun game!
Initially I haven't thought I could beat the game, because controls felt a bit weird and I didn't really get what the left mouse click do and how to use it properly, but when I get how to use the right mouse click it became not that hard and I managed to complete it. Though I would say sometimes it felt like boss showed their weak spot, even when they weren't in the drawn circle, but maybe it is just me.
Great art and music. And in general it was quite fun.
My main feedback would be, that wheelspin felt a bit weird kind of mechanic in such type of game, because player can't influence it, and game is not a roguelike, when you can just reset (well, yeah, technically you can) the bad run cuz of bad luck, so you have to fight the boss with buffs/debuffs you've got, which in theory can be frustrating, if for example you've got only boss buffs and you have no way to revert it. Perhaps you could have 1 spin re-roll, after you've lost to the boss, then I think it can be much better, because then you aren't stuck with the buffs you've got, but can try your luck again.
But well, game isn't that long, so in the end it didn't matter that much.
You did great job as a team, game looks very polished (almost), especially the art. Also I liked 2nd boss music theme.
And now about "almost" part :D
- Sadly I got the best misunderstood feature in the game, if you know what I mean; :D
- Bosses could have death animation, they just disappearing on death a bit ruins the general mood, because you gave them some personality and then on death they are just deleted. Like they could say some last words and then explode or something;
- Some music on the initial cutscene (with the frog island face) would be nice, cuz initially i have thought that the game has no music at all;
- Weapons felt a bit too similar. Like iirc 90% of weapons use the same bullet sprite, just number of bullets and their damage that varies. Like for example shotgun would be defintely nice addition, cuz it is actually changes your playstyle, that you need to come closer to the boss to deal more damage, but then higher chance that you get into one of the boss attacks;
- Small thing, but still. Wheel of fortune's bomb attack is too weak, like you dodge it by just running. But you run all the time anyway, so it makes this attack non-existent. So this attack could get some kind of buff;
I understand, that you, perhaps, didn't have enough to fix all the stuff, so I just wanted to list some things you may want to consider to fix in the next version.
But nevertheless, again, it was nice experience.
Great work on art and general atmosphere.
I'm another WASD enjoyer, so I guess I don't need to say anything about the controls :D But well, game isn't that hard and pretty beatable with the mouse, just a bit more difficult.
I wish there would be more attack patterns for bosses, like some homing projectiles or some bosses could be oriented on melee combat, otherwise some bosses are a bit too similar to others.
P.S. For controls, you can check V-Rising. This one is great example how controls can be, if you are using non-target system to fight, and in some sense it is similar to your game, cuz there many boss fight too in bullet hell-ish style.
Reminds me Titan Souls in some way, that you need to wait for boss to open to hit his weak spot, which is nice mechanic. But I think there are 2 main issues:
1. Camera. It is very zoomed in and makes a bit hard to dodge asteroids. Perhaps camera could shift a bit towards the cursor? So you could check if there are any asteroids behind you and if it is not, you can attack the boss. Fullscreen could also solve this issue, but actually there is another problem - you have itch.io fullscreen button, but it doesn't work for your game (at least not for me on Chrome), like it makes game fullscreen, but it doesn't actually stretch.
2. Map bounds. You can't see them which makes it a bit hard to navigate. Like boss can stuck at the bottom of the map and it looks like you can go under him to hit his weak spot, but you actually can't and you need to lure it to position above, when again, it is hard to tell if you lured boss enough. So perhaps something like asteroid belt would be nice to see as marker for map boundaries which also could complement flying asteroids. Or well, can just increase map size to like 2x, it should be enough.
Great game!
I tried it before and rage quitted on Mimi, because it was a bit too hard. But now it is quite doable and I managed to beat all bosses on normal difficulty. Music is nice and I love Mimi theme, though it feels like it abrupts a bit rough, when looping. Some other things I noticed:
- Text for some spells doesn't fit in text box, for example description of the spore spell;
- In the tutorial I by accident skipped one of the tutorial lines by pressing on of WASD keys, so perhaps not all keys should skip the dialog;
- Tea boss has phase, when it dashing in your direction, but it does nothing, like you don't get hit, even if you just stay on one place. Perhaps it is a bug?
- Chess boss somehow has super low hp, like it died maybe in 15 seconds, unless there is some mechanic, when some spells deal extra damage to bosses, but I still doubt boss should've fallen so fast;
- Some boss's cards felt a bit weak, I tried rainbow shot and bomb and rainbow shot definitely need a buff. In the end I lost faith in boss cards and was just using spore-necromancy-sparkle, which deal pretty good damage to everything.
Not bad, I liked the music in the main menu the most I think. Some of my feedback:
- Blue screen joke was a bit overused. Yeah, it was funny the first time, but then - not much. So I would show it only one time, and then some kind of default game over screen. Because, imo, getting blue flash each time you die becomes kinda annoying. Also I think it kinda ruins some of the initial drama build up after the initial cutscene;
- Main character attack can be abused. Seems like it attacks much faster, if you spam left and right direction keys;
- https://ibb.co/hx6SN5tb - got the bug, when boss was outside of arena and wasn't casting anything, dunno exactly why it happen.
Overall game felt a bit hard, but I guess because I wasn't used to not having any i-frames, so you kinda need to play very carefully.
Oh man, my right hand hates you, if you know what I mean. And where is my Cthulhu boss?
But nevertheless, good job, it was pleasant experience. On feedback streams I have thought that throw mechanic was a bit too clunky, but it actually feels fine and I beat the game 2nd try, though almost died on 2nd boss 2nd phase on the reeling phase, like I think that was the hardest part in the game and perhaps you made it a bit too hard, cuz it felt like reel power descended too fast and you had to constantly move at the same time, so it was hard to reel properly.
That was interesting, but definitely lacks tutorial, because it is a bit confusing, how abilities work.
Sadly, got a bug on the second boss, when I couldn't act at all. I think it happened when I have used left rewind and tried to move at the same time. Also I didn't get, how to return to the game from pause menu :D But well, after I restarted the game and tried "Exit" button, it actually unpauses the game, which feels a bit weird, cuz I have thought this is the button to exit the game. So could use better wording there, like "Resume" for example.
