Thanks for playing, man. There'll definitely be more of this game in the future. I'm working on a remake of the current level so hopefully I'll have that done for next Demo Day.
I was interested in this but it turned into a slideshow on my shitbox (which ran most demos just fine) and there were no options I could access to try to make it run better.
I really like this, it has tons of great potential. Dodging bullets is really fun and enjoyable, likely because of the slow moving projectiles that everyone fires. The flying guys in particular I really like. They felt like a really interesting challenge that was genuinely fun to beat. The placement of enemies was pretty good as well, some of the encounters, like the flying enemy on the last part by the elevator, and various parts where you hide enemies where the player isn't looking were pretty cool. There's only two weapon pickups, and five different weapon combinations, this part of the game feels like it has the most potential, so I hope you think long and hard about each new weapon you add in as this project progresses.
There are only two enemies in this short demo, and the main difference between the two is that one can fly, and the other can't. Other than that, both of them fire slow-moving projectiles at you, I feel like if one thing besides the weapons are going to make this game shine, it's gonna be the enemies. I suggest you have at least one or two enemies that deal little damage, but perhaps use hitscan weapons, this forces the player to think about the combat situation they are currently in a lot more, since they now have to figure out which enemies are more dangerous than others, and which ones they should kill first. Also, having enemies that might initially be on the ground, but maybe start flying and swapping tactic to really try and get behind you when they're on low health would also be very interesting to see.
Nice progress, good luck with the game going forward.
Thanks heaps man, that's really encouraging to hear. I completely agree about the game needing much more weapon and enemy variety to really shine. I'll try to get some more of the gimmicky weapons out for the next demo so hopefully that will give a better idea of the direction. Enemies that change to different combat styles sounds interesting to fight against and hitscan enemies could shake things up but unavoidable damage might go against the style of the game. I'm thinking enemies like hitscan snipers who lock onto you and blast you after a 3 second charge time or something. They'd have a limited turn speed so up close they can be dodged but far away it'd be undodgeable which would force the player to take cover.
I guess I'll have to try hard to get into the next demo day to test more weapons and enemies.
I feel like you should embrace taking damage. One thing I really loved in the new DOOM is that managing your health is part of the combat. It disincentivised going behind cover. I think having some health management, would be really great with this game, and would also allow you to put in instant damage enemies without the player feeling like it's unfair. If you still don't feel like that's enough though, you can do like Bioshock did and make the first shot from enemies always miss.
Thanks heaps for this, man. I appreciate you going through all the weapons and being thorough in talking about the mechanics and lack of mechanics. Got a lot of notes out of it. I'm really cautious about movement being too strong because I want the enemies to always be threatening, but I was able to add jump cancelling for the dash. It just lowers your velocity when you jump so you can't fly around being untouchable. Wall jumps sound good, though. They'll give me more material to work with for platforming sections. I'll be working on those missing basic functions like dropping weapons. Completely went over my head how important those things are.
Glad it was useful. :) Of course increasing movement would make you stronger vs enemies, but then you could just as easily make enemies more dangerous. It's more a matter of how intense you want the game to be. If you're interested at all in experimenting with it let me know as I have a more or less complete idea in my head of how it could play, and it probably wouldn't take much work. It would involve a dash meter that would deplete with use so you can't just keep dashing infinitely.
Anyways I'm excited for your game. I really did the concept and I think your art style fits it perfectly. Lots of potential!
I'm not a fan of the random spread you have going on here and it affects rockets the most being one of the most useless combos in game due to them flailing wildly before locking on which by that time they've either hit a wall or the ground instead of an enemy centered on the crosshair. Difficulty doesn't seem to be of any issue(I'd like it to be harder, infact but don't make it a bullet sponge and instead improve the AI in ways as to be rushed down by a 2-3 robot team covering/shooting my exit routes) other than the sole fact that your weapons themselves are the difficulty that you the player need to go against. I wasted more time trying to use rockets and the machine gun than the grenade launcher(which is perfect except when shooting it versus airborne enemies given it has a poor height restriction and if it felt more alike the demoman's TF2 GL it'd be great). Movement's alright, level 'design' seems randomly generated with randomly added jump pads disguise the garbage round stairwells that you cannot properly climb at times without the use of a jump. On the weapons again other than the random spread issue, certain weapon combos may rend you slightly helpless against airborne enemies like the laser strike as it has the AoE of a grenade despite having a delay of 1(?) or more seconds making it feel much weaker in comparison to what I am able to accomplish with this
in which this seems to be outright the best weapon combo as it deals very good damage despite also being tied to random spread, locks on and deals multiple quick hits. When destroying an enemy spawn point, weapon modification pickups are blown away skyhigh with the cylinder and will fall outside the map. Those same pickups are hard to recognize as it spins too fast wasting my time trying to decipher the image and it's not instantly recognizable in the model you use. I'm also aware you can hover your crosshair over it and it feeds you a lackluster text description, but a player should be able to instantly recognize a pickup from the get-go.
Consider adding something to standout too, I'd personally like the ability to go fast just by canceling my dash/dodge midway with a jump to go fast. Lastly, to outright avoid these weapon balance issues you can instead add a secondary weapon slot with either a single weapon mod slot or two to avoid issues where I'm able to waste over 1 minute in trying to kill those flying pink gundams with rockets or the laser strike(possibly more here). Good luck.
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This was really fun, I hope to see more from you one day!
Thanks for playing, man. There'll definitely be more of this game in the future. I'm working on a remake of the current level so hopefully I'll have that done for next Demo Day.
Looking forward to it!
rip?
I was interested in this but it turned into a slideshow on my shitbox (which ran most demos just fine) and there were no options I could access to try to make it run better.
Argh. Sorry man, I'll be sure to have graphics options available for the next demo.
I really like this, it has tons of great potential. Dodging bullets is really fun and enjoyable, likely because of the slow moving projectiles that everyone fires. The flying guys in particular I really like. They felt like a really interesting challenge that was genuinely fun to beat. The placement of enemies was pretty good as well, some of the encounters, like the flying enemy on the last part by the elevator, and various parts where you hide enemies where the player isn't looking were pretty cool. There's only two weapon pickups, and five different weapon combinations, this part of the game feels like it has the most potential, so I hope you think long and hard about each new weapon you add in as this project progresses.
There are only two enemies in this short demo, and the main difference between the two is that one can fly, and the other can't. Other than that, both of them fire slow-moving projectiles at you, I feel like if one thing besides the weapons are going to make this game shine, it's gonna be the enemies. I suggest you have at least one or two enemies that deal little damage, but perhaps use hitscan weapons, this forces the player to think about the combat situation they are currently in a lot more, since they now have to figure out which enemies are more dangerous than others, and which ones they should kill first. Also, having enemies that might initially be on the ground, but maybe start flying and swapping tactic to really try and get behind you when they're on low health would also be very interesting to see.
Nice progress, good luck with the game going forward.
Thanks heaps man, that's really encouraging to hear.
I completely agree about the game needing much more weapon and enemy variety to really shine. I'll try to get some more of the gimmicky weapons out for the next demo so hopefully that will give a better idea of the direction.
Enemies that change to different combat styles sounds interesting to fight against and hitscan enemies could shake things up but unavoidable damage might go against the style of the game. I'm thinking enemies like hitscan snipers who lock onto you and blast you after a 3 second charge time or something. They'd have a limited turn speed so up close they can be dodged but far away it'd be undodgeable which would force the player to take cover.
I guess I'll have to try hard to get into the next demo day to test more weapons and enemies.
I feel like you should embrace taking damage. One thing I really loved in the new DOOM is that managing your health is part of the combat. It disincentivised going behind cover. I think having some health management, would be really great with this game, and would also allow you to put in instant damage enemies without the player feeling like it's unfair. If you still don't feel like that's enough though, you can do like Bioshock did and make the first shot from enemies always miss.
Thanks heaps for this, man. I appreciate you going through all the weapons and being thorough in talking about the mechanics and lack of mechanics. Got a lot of notes out of it.
I'm really cautious about movement being too strong because I want the enemies to always be threatening, but I was able to add jump cancelling for the dash. It just lowers your velocity when you jump so you can't fly around being untouchable.
Wall jumps sound good, though. They'll give me more material to work with for platforming sections.
I'll be working on those missing basic functions like dropping weapons. Completely went over my head how important those things are.
Glad it was useful. :) Of course increasing movement would make you stronger vs enemies, but then you could just as easily make enemies more dangerous. It's more a matter of how intense you want the game to be. If you're interested at all in experimenting with it let me know as I have a more or less complete idea in my head of how it could play, and it probably wouldn't take much work. It would involve a dash meter that would deplete with use so you can't just keep dashing infinitely.
Anyways I'm excited for your game. I really did the concept and I think your art style fits it perfectly. Lots of potential!
I'm not a fan of the random spread you have going on here and it affects rockets the most being one of the most useless combos in game due to them flailing wildly before locking on which by that time they've either hit a wall or the ground instead of an enemy centered on the crosshair. Difficulty doesn't seem to be of any issue(I'd like it to be harder, infact but don't make it a bullet sponge and instead improve the AI in ways as to be rushed down by a 2-3 robot team covering/shooting my exit routes) other than the sole fact that your weapons themselves are the difficulty that you the player need to go against. I wasted more time trying to use rockets and the machine gun than the grenade launcher(which is perfect except when shooting it versus airborne enemies given it has a poor height restriction and if it felt more alike the demoman's TF2 GL it'd be great). Movement's alright, level 'design' seems randomly generated with randomly added jump pads disguise the garbage round stairwells that you cannot properly climb at times without the use of a jump. On the weapons again other than the random spread issue, certain weapon combos may rend you slightly helpless against airborne enemies like the laser strike as it has the AoE of a grenade despite having a delay of 1(?) or more seconds making it feel much weaker in comparison to what I am able to accomplish with this
in which this seems to be outright the best weapon combo as it deals very good damage despite also being tied to random spread, locks on and deals multiple quick hits. When destroying an enemy spawn point, weapon modification pickups are blown away skyhigh with the cylinder and will fall outside the map. Those same pickups are hard to recognize as it spins too fast wasting my time trying to decipher the image and it's not instantly recognizable in the model you use. I'm also aware you can hover your crosshair over it and it feeds you a lackluster text description, but a player should be able to instantly recognize a pickup from the get-go.
Consider adding something to standout too, I'd personally like the ability to go fast just by canceling my dash/dodge midway with a jump to go fast. Lastly, to outright avoid these weapon balance issues you can instead add a secondary weapon slot with either a single weapon mod slot or two to avoid issues where I'm able to waste over 1 minute in trying to kill those flying pink gundams with rockets or the laser strike(possibly more here). Good luck.