Hi, I've got a few hours of gameplay under my belt and I feel like sharing my experience to help out in making of this game.
First, let's start with a huge compliment. I love games that have a playable hub as a main menu. It is a feature I feel should be a norm, but most games, even those AAA, have those boring click-fests instead of something interesting. Immersion, game pacing and all other stuff benefits from this. It also helps in not overdoing the between-level upgrade sessions. Top stuff.
However, this is where the first complaint comes. There is too much information at first. The hub is not big, but overwhelming at first. I just wanna play the second level, not explore for 15min. Yes, I could jump right into the second, but I might lose some advantage I might get if I explore. This is a mentality of a gamer. People will optimize fun out of the game - quote by someone. A solution I'd suggest is opening each sector of the house each lever, or even few levels, if the game becomes that long.
The levels themselves are interesting. The player, fighting a monster, can choose what part if it to prioritize, choice is good, people like choice. The visuals are on point and audio fits the gameplay.
I wanted to make a charged-shot build. Unfortunately, it's hard to notice in the middle of the battle when the shot is charged fully. Shooting either too early or too late causes me to lose dps and the game is too short right now to get the feel for the timing. I'd suggest adding a sound effect to the charging, it'd let the player focus more on the dodging. Maybe some screen shake or knockback, that's what I'd do, but you have other stuff to focus on right now. Though it'd really up the feeling for the players, even sacrificing some core development for later, it might be worth it.
The throwing mechanic is not something to write home about. Honestly, at this point, I feel like there would be no negative impact on the game if it was removed. The thrown cats don't deal enough damage for how much effort it takes to catch and throw them, it is just faster and easier to shoot. Throwing a waifu is a no-go, it sacrifices too much dps; I'd go as far as to ask why is it a feature in the first place. But the boxes require the throwing, right? I don't think so. There is no thinking required, no physics to think of. Later in my gameplay I'd fly to the box, and since it's already near the ground, press the button and immediately get all the loot. Maybe you could add a specific drop zone for them, or make players throw those boxes at the monsters, calculate the damage by how fast it moved relative to the hit part.
I'm not done bashing that mechanic. Oh why, in god's good graces, are the 'throw' button and 'switch thrown item' button next to each other? Why is the most used button, the throw [T], a key that is so far from gamers' usual hand position? The whole stock key layout needs to change, it's a job for 20min and it helps new players get into the gaming faster.
Another feature, that I never used, was the boost. I get that it's supposed to be the invincible dash, but the condition that it can only be used by a wall makes it completely unreliable. It takes a skill, reaction/timing, to pull those moves in other games, but here I'd need to sit on the ground and wait for the monster to do the first move, that way it makes it a reactive defensive ability, rather than offensive, as most people would probably prefer.
Speaking of positioning, is the game supposed to be a fast paced shooter? I didn't get that impression since the best strategy I could find was sitting at the edge of my shooting range and chip away slowly at the tentacles. This strat is less exciting and dopamine-rewarding than getting up close and personal, but at this point there are no weapons or abilities that reward for that gameplay. There is also no overall timer, where you need to destroy the beast quickly or something bad happens. My suggestions: a shotgun-like weapon; damage falloff over distance; timer-based loot; a 'bravery' boost gained by proximity. It'd also help people getting distracted with getting all the loo on the map before the fight finishes. I feel like there is a very delicate balance in this mechanic, both too short or too long timers could harm the 'fun' more than benefit it.
Now, damage feedback, the numbers that show when you hit something. There should be more difference in appearance between 1 and 111. The zeros aren't that bad, with the gray color. I suggest either making the highier damage numbers larger, like for charged shots, or changing a color by a red-to-gray gradient, where huge damage shows in red. Or use both. One little bit I want to add here, outlines. When you rapid-fire into the monster the numbers become a red smudge. Alternatively, make a settings-toggle where you can choose to stack the damage, to show it in a single long-lasting number that updates with every hit.
For the future, I'd love to see the difficulty settings to change more than some numbers. Right now, extreme settings mean a lot of slow grinding with less reward and long-drawn, boring battles. I adore games that add abilities to enemies based on difficulty. Yes, that's hell-of-a-lot work; I'm spewing suggestions. Even something as simple as a 1.25 timescale multiplayer. It makes the game harder, faster-paced for those hardcore gamers, bored with the normal speed, but most of all it speeds up the progress for those who actually manage it. It's a win-win. I can only hope that your engine can do that and not have any artifacts going rogue. I can easily see this game getting a speedrunning community in the future, especially with the timescale setting.
I don't want to go on a long tangent of player health mechanics in games, I just gotta ask, are the 'bonus health' and 'more healing' systems fitting in this type of game? I don't think so. Feels like it's here just to be another stat to be had. There is no advantage of going a tank build here. I'd really like to see you make it a viable alternative to ranged. Maybe melee with life leech?
What about splitting the perk slots into offensive, defensive and utility. I ran full utility, since it was more rewarding time-wise than blasting through with full damage. What if, if you wanted an additional utility item, you could place that in one of the other slots, but it would be half as effective? This was completely spontaneous, unlike the other planned points, it just came to me and I wrote it. I wonder if anyone is going to to read all of that nonsense I've written.
Yes, the tooltips need more clarity, you know that, moving on.
Now, a few bugs, glitches, whatever you call those.
The box on the roof of the main hub, the one to the left of the ceiling exit. Destroying it, always opens a console with a following message: "NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object"
I am able to surpass the stardust limit on the equipped equipment, as in go into negative stardust. Let's say I have 100SD and 2x equipment that each requires 60SD. I put one of them in a slot, and am at 40SD. Now if I take the second item and swap it with the first one, the other slots light up green. Then I can put that swapped equipment into the green-lit slot and go into -20SD. If that explanation wasn't sufficient, ask. I might not answer quicky, though.
Sometimes the tentacles go underground, making it very hard and annoying to kill the eye they are attached to. I have to chip away at it for minutes with charged shots, due to the damage reduction the tentacle gives it.
I also had 2 occurrences of going underground myself. Once, I was slapped under the surface by a tentacle. Second, I was flying fast towards a box and opened it immediately, ended up underground. Was it some kind of update suppression on the collision check? With all the: picking up the box; throwing it; the game registering it hitting the ground; spewing out items and me picking them up all at the same time.
Oh, and I forgot to mention how the movement feels too robotic for something as physic-based as flying. Maybe have a movement overhaul somewhere far in the future.
In conclusion, I really liked the game. I see the potential it has and want to help with feedback. Yes, I am sounding very demanding. I just wanted to share most of my suggestions, even those that require a lot of work. I hope my rambling wasn't too boring and unreadable. Good luck with your project guys! If I didn't mention something, that means that I liked it.
I just read the feedback. It's awesome. You are point on with the things you have said. You are right and there is not much I can add. So, thank you for helping recognizing issues.
Let's talk about your question about fast paced game: We are not aiming for a fast paced shooter. We are aiming for a shooter, which feels more like R-Type or Gradius from the 90s. We want to prevent a bullet hell (which needs a lot of adjustment in later levels). Instead the goal is that the player finds the best way to defeat the monster. Level 1 an 2 are very easy to win the way you described: By sitting at the edge and chip away the monster. Later this strategy is still valid but more difficult to execute due to bullets, tiny monsters and monster movement. And since you found the boost mechanic very underwhelming, it is surely a good idea to take a look at both these things together.
One thing we want to do with the difficulty is that on higher difficulty levels the monsters are bigger. But since this takes a lot of effort and good tools to assist us with this, this important difficulty feature is not in yet. It is an intimidating part of the road map but we must add it eventually. You also mentioned that the high difficult comes with a lot of grinding, which is also an inherent problem with the crafting system. We already planned a big improvement for the crafting system and the spreadsheets for new crafting recipes are actually written these days.
Your questions about the health systems - no clue ^^ I never examined this until you mentioned it. One spontaneous idea: You surely noticed that the main character eats meat to heal. So maybe to also boost the Boost mechanic we will talk about life leech, because Poneh could bite a Stückli of squid sushi out of the monster when Boost is used on it.
About the controls: Base keyboard layout needs more improvements. The game plays much better with a controller and analog sticks right now, but keyboard and mouse have to work good too. I may be afraid that I won't do much about the keyboard movement, because I want the player to have maximum control and precision with the movement to dodge bullets and tentacle attacks. This leads to the robotic movement. I can surely add options to add some acceleration and deceleration and maybe that helps without taking away too much precision.
You also mentioned many issues with the game feedback to the player. It looks like that the damage feedback has to better point out how tentacles and body parts protect the parent part. I assume the tentacle-in-ground issue was level 4 with the red monster. There I screwed up the monster design, which leads extremely often to that situation. And better damage feedback should make that mechanic clearer.
Let me know if the points I talked about help to show where the game is going. I will also talk with the others about your feedback (including the points I didn't mention here). It's a really valuable post for us and it shows how we could make sure that different aspects of the game could work together to improve the game. I'm kinda hyped to try a boost life leech.
Hi - Yes, I want to have a Spanish localization for the game. I planned to do the loca very late in development, because I haven't wrote all the English texts yet. And there is a lot of text to come and the current text will change massively - even in the demo.
I have to think how to get loca early on without creating that "I changed a line of text, now the loca must be updated"-problem. When I know that, I can contact you ^^ Otherwise I need to wait until... the game is almost done.
It was a breeze until level 5, where boss really had me stumped, at which point I realized that there is loot, and I can get it by throwing boxes (oops).
I'm really liking the loot system here. With managing risk and reward by choosing more damage or more loot+strength to open crates or having more loot-quality items.
I've spent probably 6 hours grinding everything there is in the demo ^^;;
Got 100 loot-quality (5items +20 each), and 18k stardust.
Feedback: There is probably needs to be a system for dumping all these stardust, as I didn't really had to worry about item's cost-to-wear stat. Example systems: enchanting (minecraft), gambling (diablo) or enchanting-with-chance-of-item-destruction (MMOs). Something where it is possible to dump stardust indefinitely.
Thanks for the nice words. You are right - the tutorial is lacking a clear indication that you throw crates. That is likely something that can properly addressed much later in the development. The plan is that the Waifus have tiny little quests for Poneh, which show the game mechanics. So one quest is to throw a container for the Confectionary Waifu to create whipped cream.
Stardust has a funny dynamic right now. At the first levels it's a bit low. You have enough during mid-game and may lack a bit during late-game. The Stardust is also one of the potential grind mechanics. Some people love grinding and some hate it. That's why there is at stardust factor setting so everybody can finely adjust the difficulty.
But the game still needs a money sink. The most likely time to get one implemented properly is when overhauling the crafting system. It's a bit bland right now and doesn't make good use of stardust and materials. It won't be the needed money sink, but it could make stardust more relevant without introducing too much grind.
I am... in absolute awe. The idea of poneh saving poneh in this game is so cute.
There is a problem with the crosshair order. I'm unsure if you saw this already or not but when I press the right button and try to loop around it goes from:
Off -> [Yellow -> Blue -> Red]
It goes from Off to loop the primary colors. Then when I go press the left button:
Green <- Orange <- Purple <- Off <- Yellow
It loops around the secondary colors but the Off and Yellow are included too.
← Return to game
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Hi, I've got a few hours of gameplay under my belt and I feel like sharing my experience to help out in making of this game.
First, let's start with a huge compliment. I love games that have a playable hub as a main menu. It is a feature I feel should be a norm, but most games, even those AAA, have those boring click-fests instead of something interesting. Immersion, game pacing and all other stuff benefits from this. It also helps in not overdoing the between-level upgrade sessions. Top stuff.
However, this is where the first complaint comes. There is too much information at first. The hub is not big, but overwhelming at first. I just wanna play the second level, not explore for 15min. Yes, I could jump right into the second, but I might lose some advantage I might get if I explore. This is a mentality of a gamer. People will optimize fun out of the game - quote by someone. A solution I'd suggest is opening each sector of the house each lever, or even few levels, if the game becomes that long.
The levels themselves are interesting. The player, fighting a monster, can choose what part if it to prioritize, choice is good, people like choice. The visuals are on point and audio fits the gameplay.
I wanted to make a charged-shot build. Unfortunately, it's hard to notice in the middle of the battle when the shot is charged fully. Shooting either too early or too late causes me to lose dps and the game is too short right now to get the feel for the timing. I'd suggest adding a sound effect to the charging, it'd let the player focus more on the dodging. Maybe some screen shake or knockback, that's what I'd do, but you have other stuff to focus on right now. Though it'd really up the feeling for the players, even sacrificing some core development for later, it might be worth it.
The throwing mechanic is not something to write home about. Honestly, at this point, I feel like there would be no negative impact on the game if it was removed. The thrown cats don't deal enough damage for how much effort it takes to catch and throw them, it is just faster and easier to shoot. Throwing a waifu is a no-go, it sacrifices too much dps; I'd go as far as to ask why is it a feature in the first place. But the boxes require the throwing, right? I don't think so. There is no thinking required, no physics to think of. Later in my gameplay I'd fly to the box, and since it's already near the ground, press the button and immediately get all the loot. Maybe you could add a specific drop zone for them, or make players throw those boxes at the monsters, calculate the damage by how fast it moved relative to the hit part.
I'm not done bashing that mechanic. Oh why, in god's good graces, are the 'throw' button and 'switch thrown item' button next to each other? Why is the most used button, the throw [T], a key that is so far from gamers' usual hand position? The whole stock key layout needs to change, it's a job for 20min and it helps new players get into the gaming faster.
Another feature, that I never used, was the boost. I get that it's supposed to be the invincible dash, but the condition that it can only be used by a wall makes it completely unreliable. It takes a skill, reaction/timing, to pull those moves in other games, but here I'd need to sit on the ground and wait for the monster to do the first move, that way it makes it a reactive defensive ability, rather than offensive, as most people would probably prefer.
Speaking of positioning, is the game supposed to be a fast paced shooter? I didn't get that impression since the best strategy I could find was sitting at the edge of my shooting range and chip away slowly at the tentacles. This strat is less exciting and dopamine-rewarding than getting up close and personal, but at this point there are no weapons or abilities that reward for that gameplay. There is also no overall timer, where you need to destroy the beast quickly or something bad happens. My suggestions: a shotgun-like weapon; damage falloff over distance; timer-based loot; a 'bravery' boost gained by proximity. It'd also help people getting distracted with getting all the loo on the map before the fight finishes. I feel like there is a very delicate balance in this mechanic, both too short or too long timers could harm the 'fun' more than benefit it.
Now, damage feedback, the numbers that show when you hit something. There should be more difference in appearance between 1 and 111. The zeros aren't that bad, with the gray color. I suggest either making the highier damage numbers larger, like for charged shots, or changing a color by a red-to-gray gradient, where huge damage shows in red. Or use both. One little bit I want to add here, outlines. When you rapid-fire into the monster the numbers become a red smudge. Alternatively, make a settings-toggle where you can choose to stack the damage, to show it in a single long-lasting number that updates with every hit.
For the future, I'd love to see the difficulty settings to change more than some numbers. Right now, extreme settings mean a lot of slow grinding with less reward and long-drawn, boring battles. I adore games that add abilities to enemies based on difficulty. Yes, that's hell-of-a-lot work; I'm spewing suggestions. Even something as simple as a 1.25 timescale multiplayer. It makes the game harder, faster-paced for those hardcore gamers, bored with the normal speed, but most of all it speeds up the progress for those who actually manage it. It's a win-win. I can only hope that your engine can do that and not have any artifacts going rogue. I can easily see this game getting a speedrunning community in the future, especially with the timescale setting.
I don't want to go on a long tangent of player health mechanics in games, I just gotta ask, are the 'bonus health' and 'more healing' systems fitting in this type of game? I don't think so. Feels like it's here just to be another stat to be had. There is no advantage of going a tank build here. I'd really like to see you make it a viable alternative to ranged. Maybe melee with life leech?
What about splitting the perk slots into offensive, defensive and utility. I ran full utility, since it was more rewarding time-wise than blasting through with full damage. What if, if you wanted an additional utility item, you could place that in one of the other slots, but it would be half as effective? This was completely spontaneous, unlike the other planned points, it just came to me and I wrote it. I wonder if anyone is going to to read all of that nonsense I've written.
Yes, the tooltips need more clarity, you know that, moving on.
Now, a few bugs, glitches, whatever you call those.
The box on the roof of the main hub, the one to the left of the ceiling exit. Destroying it, always opens a console with a following message: "NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object"
I am able to surpass the stardust limit on the equipped equipment, as in go into negative stardust. Let's say I have 100SD and 2x equipment that each requires 60SD. I put one of them in a slot, and am at 40SD. Now if I take the second item and swap it with the first one, the other slots light up green. Then I can put that swapped equipment into the green-lit slot and go into -20SD. If that explanation wasn't sufficient, ask. I might not answer quicky, though.
Sometimes the tentacles go underground, making it very hard and annoying to kill the eye they are attached to. I have to chip away at it for minutes with charged shots, due to the damage reduction the tentacle gives it.
I also had 2 occurrences of going underground myself. Once, I was slapped under the surface by a tentacle. Second, I was flying fast towards a box and opened it immediately, ended up underground. Was it some kind of update suppression on the collision check? With all the: picking up the box; throwing it; the game registering it hitting the ground; spewing out items and me picking them up all at the same time.
Oh, and I forgot to mention how the movement feels too robotic for something as physic-based as flying. Maybe have a movement overhaul somewhere far in the future.
In conclusion, I really liked the game. I see the potential it has and want to help with feedback. Yes, I am sounding very demanding. I just wanted to share most of my suggestions, even those that require a lot of work. I hope my rambling wasn't too boring and unreadable. Good luck with your project guys! If I didn't mention something, that means that I liked it.
Hi ^^
I just read the feedback. It's awesome. You are point on with the things you have said. You are right and there is not much I can add. So, thank you for helping recognizing issues.
Let's talk about your question about fast paced game: We are not aiming for a fast paced shooter. We are aiming for a shooter, which feels more like R-Type or Gradius from the 90s. We want to prevent a bullet hell (which needs a lot of adjustment in later levels). Instead the goal is that the player finds the best way to defeat the monster. Level 1 an 2 are very easy to win the way you described: By sitting at the edge and chip away the monster. Later this strategy is still valid but more difficult to execute due to bullets, tiny monsters and monster movement. And since you found the boost mechanic very underwhelming, it is surely a good idea to take a look at both these things together.
One thing we want to do with the difficulty is that on higher difficulty levels the monsters are bigger. But since this takes a lot of effort and good tools to assist us with this, this important difficulty feature is not in yet. It is an intimidating part of the road map but we must add it eventually. You also mentioned that the high difficult comes with a lot of grinding, which is also an inherent problem with the crafting system. We already planned a big improvement for the crafting system and the spreadsheets for new crafting recipes are actually written these days.
Your questions about the health systems - no clue ^^ I never examined this until you mentioned it. One spontaneous idea: You surely noticed that the main character eats meat to heal. So maybe to also boost the Boost mechanic we will talk about life leech, because Poneh could bite a Stückli of squid sushi out of the monster when Boost is used on it.
About the controls: Base keyboard layout needs more improvements. The game plays much better with a controller and analog sticks right now, but keyboard and mouse have to work good too. I may be afraid that I won't do much about the keyboard movement, because I want the player to have maximum control and precision with the movement to dodge bullets and tentacle attacks. This leads to the robotic movement. I can surely add options to add some acceleration and deceleration and maybe that helps without taking away too much precision.
You also mentioned many issues with the game feedback to the player. It looks like that the damage feedback has to better point out how tentacles and body parts protect the parent part. I assume the tentacle-in-ground issue was level 4 with the red monster. There I screwed up the monster design, which leads extremely often to that situation. And better damage feedback should make that mechanic clearer.
Let me know if the points I talked about help to show where the game is going. I will also talk with the others about your feedback (including the points I didn't mention here). It's a really valuable post for us and it shows how we could make sure that different aspects of the game could work together to improve the game. I'm kinda hyped to try a boost life leech.
Okay - Enjoy your Sunday and thank you very much.
Now I get what you are aiming for. It's not what I had earlier in mind, so now some things are much clearer.
Yes, the monster on lever 4 had the issue.
Have fun improving the game, I can see this project going really far.
By any chance, do you want the game to be translated into Spanish?
If yes, PM me.
Hi - Yes, I want to have a Spanish localization for the game. I planned to do the loca very late in development, because I haven't wrote all the English texts yet. And there is a lot of text to come and the current text will change massively - even in the demo.
I have to think how to get loca early on without creating that "I changed a line of text, now the loca must be updated"-problem. When I know that, I can contact you ^^ Otherwise I need to wait until... the game is almost done.
Alright, then I leave you my Discord: erickking#8918
It was a breeze until level 5, where boss really had me stumped, at which point I realized that there is loot, and I can get it by throwing boxes (oops).
I'm really liking the loot system here. With managing risk and reward by choosing more damage or more loot+strength to open crates or having more loot-quality items.
I've spent probably 6 hours grinding everything there is in the demo ^^;;
Got 100 loot-quality (5items +20 each), and 18k stardust.
Feedback: There is probably needs to be a system for dumping all these stardust, as I didn't really had to worry about item's cost-to-wear stat.
Example systems: enchanting (minecraft), gambling (diablo) or enchanting-with-chance-of-item-destruction (MMOs). Something where it is possible to dump stardust indefinitely.
Dev Here ^^
Thanks for the nice words. You are right - the tutorial is lacking a clear indication that you throw crates. That is likely something that can properly addressed much later in the development. The plan is that the Waifus have tiny little quests for Poneh, which show the game mechanics. So one quest is to throw a container for the Confectionary Waifu to create whipped cream.
Stardust has a funny dynamic right now. At the first levels it's a bit low. You have enough during mid-game and may lack a bit during late-game. The Stardust is also one of the potential grind mechanics. Some people love grinding and some hate it. That's why there is at stardust factor setting so everybody can finely adjust the difficulty.
But the game still needs a money sink. The most likely time to get one implemented properly is when overhauling the crafting system. It's a bit bland right now and doesn't make good use of stardust and materials. It won't be the needed money sink, but it could make stardust more relevant without introducing too much grind.
Windows only :(
I am... in absolute awe.
The idea of poneh saving poneh in this game is so cute.
There is a problem with the crosshair order. I'm unsure if you saw this already or not but when I press the right button and try to loop around it goes from:
Off -> [Yellow -> Blue -> Red]
It goes from Off to loop the primary colors. Then when I go press the left button:
Green <- Orange <- Purple <- Off <- Yellow
It loops around the secondary colors but the Off and Yellow are included too.
Yep - that one is new to me. I wrote it into the tasklist for Troubleshoot Thursdays.
Thank you very much for reporting and it's great to hear that you enjoy the game.