I really enjoyed the intro sequence, amazing way to introduce mechanics as well as the story! I enjoyed the combat, I liked the variety in enemies and their attack patterns but hope more depth is added to it via upgrades or different guns.  The cooking portion I felt wasn't extensive enough for me to really give an opinion on it.

I read the steam page but I'm still struggling to picture where the game is headed and how the cooking will be part of the gameplay loop, I assume you'll get some sort of currency or upgrades from doing it or maybe unlock areas?

Overall the game looked gorgeous and shows potential for a great adventure, I look forward to seeing it develop!


Time Stamped YT VOD

You ever seen Cobra Code, I have a feeling you watched some of his content.

The graphics of the game are immaculate, and I see a lot of potential for worldbuilding and mechanics, though it sometimes felt clunky in combat. My main gripes were with the jumping, the enemy projectiles feeling unintuitive, and the terrain sometimes being unclear because it feels like I can scale some slopes but can't, or walk on slopes I feel like are walls.

The cooking mechanics were honestly the worst since it came out of nowhere and I had no idea what to do, so I had to restart (and if wasn't bad enough, restart put me in the beginning of the combat phase)

Game has a lot of potential though, and with some tweaks I'm excited to see what can do in the future. As a fellow Unreal Dev, I appreciate what you can pull off with the engine.

This game is really cool and has massive potential! Big fan of the gameplay loop, games where you can switch colors and actively uses it as a mechanic are always really cool. Just a few notes:

Pressing 1 and 2 at or around the same time causes a very loud feedback loop of the sfx used for switching colors. it actually stops the background music!

On controllers, the horizontal and vertical axis's are flipped, so holding up goes to the right, holding right goes up, and vice versa. also, there's no deadzones set for the left stick on controllers so even with no inputs, you'll still move in a direction as if an input is down. I had to use only keyboard + mouse to play. 

During the section where you go north and the screen moves, the jumps you have to do always feel a bit too wide and it's tough to avoid taking damage from not making the jump.

I'll echo the sentiment that I'd prefer not having the timed sections, this is best for a special level or challenge mode instead of usual gameplay since bullet hells are already pretty hectic. Especially for such an early level too.

At the restaurant, since the game is getting pretty switched up it's probably best to keep it really straightforward, with no way to mess up. I forgot what ingredient i needed to make the hearty broth everyone wanted and just got kinda confused cuz I didn't get a chance to read what the instructions said. Could have the player make 1 dish with no time limit first, then start to serve other people after they get a hang of it. it also could just be me being a dork so keep that in mind!

Shift + R to reset the level seems to only work once in a while or for very specific levels of the build.

oh also to add to what Hythrain said, best to buff the ammo gain when you get low on ammo I felt like I was constantly running out of ammo after just a bit of shooting, i don't mind the collecting of ammo it just seemed too often. I'd personally not include the ammo overcollection penalty, I think it just slows things down a bit and doesn't quite fit cohesively with the gameplay.

To help optimize Unreal, there's a few things you can do, try using FXAA or even MXAA (if you're using forward rendering, which makes sense with the amazing artstyle) for anti-aliasing, switch from direct-x 11 to 9, and disable v-sync to keep lag down. if an object does not need to use tick for anything you can set them to have Start with Tick Enabled as false (even if they don't use the Tick node they can still eat up CPU!). Unreal is hard to optimize since it unfortunately is pretty heavy but there are things us Unreal devs can do!

This game is already very impressive, hyped to see how it comes along!

Oooh the core gameplay here is SUCH a cool concept! I'm really interested in seeing how that could evolve mechanically as the game is developed.

Needing to collect ammo but not hold too much is a unique approach that I like! I almost wish there was a way to "burst" and deal area damage to spend an amount of ammo to keep from overloading, but also force the player to risk using too much.

The character design is wonderful! Even just peeks at others from the cooking segment was wonderful. I think the cooking segment would benefit from having some kind of parallel to combat, whether that color coordinating actions or something similar. Rough concept but they currently feel like very separate segments.

But I am absolutely on board with the concept, wishlisted and best wishes on production!

VOD (from 02:11:47 to 02:29:23)
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2561690458

This is a great start!  I love the art, the characters, and the core gameplay.  The combat sections were really good and the sound design for the most part is very well done.  

The cooking part seems ok.  I'd like to see it more fleshed out before I make any real judgements on it, but the basic concepts seem pretty straightforward. With the parts that have already been showed, I can see that you have a pretty in depth system already planned, and I look forward to seeing how it pans out.

Some things I noticed while playing:

1. The initial tutorial stage could use text to tell you that you can change colors.  Would make it a little easier to onboard new players.  Bringing more of the controls knowledge to the forefront during the initial tutorial would be good, allowing you to build more as you introduce new concepts later on.  Most of it is fairly intuitive, but any reduction in friction let's a new player get deeper into the fantasy of the game.
2. The level design is fine, but it's a little hard to follow where the player should be going next.  A subtle use of highlights and lowlights can lead the players eyes to the next section. A little environmental storytelling or landmarking can also lead a player's curiosity to the next area. ie:
   1. In the initial snowfield area if the pit in the middle was darker, it would attact the eyes to the ramp leading up to the bean bush on the cliff.  Similar to how it's done in the next section where there's a fight in the pit, and the ramp up to the next section is brighter.
   2. After receiving the gun, the player is required to jump off the cliff, but it's not very clear as to where.  Looking back, there's an obvious straight edge to do it at, but as a new player, there's alot more noise going on.  It doesn't have to be a heavy handed yellow stripe like some games have been doing recently, but something more to let the player know to jump there would be good.  Or have an enemy run off it as the player approaches would give them that idea as well.
3. The combat section where there's a chasm, it's possible to jump to the upper and lower edges of the map, which is handled by teleporting the player to a reset point on that side of the chasm.  Resetting the player is fine (though I would really prefer just an invisible wall to slide against), but it would really help if there was an audio cue, a very small time gap, then a small amount of invulnerability along with something to draw the eye to the new player position (a bit of flashing, a drop in animation, puff of smoke, etc.).  As it stands, it's rather jarring and disorienting even when you've realized that's how it behaves.
4. I encountered an some odd behavior during cooking, by trying to retrieve the cooked dish while holding prepared ingredients.  The prepped ingredients were consumed, I received the cooked dish, but a new dish wasn't being cooked.  I'm not sure how it should have behaved otherwise, and I realize that part is still pretty young.  Just wanted to make sure it was mentioned.

VOD is available at the link below, and it will be available for 60 days.  If needed for longer, please reach out, and a highlight can be created.  I apologize for the volume levels, I checked it in the intro then forgot to check it again once the game started.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2556818774?t=0h56m59s

Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 8! My name's Hythrain, a co-host and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!

So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.

My gosh, was I thrown for a loop when this went from a bullet hell to a cooking game. XD I was all ready for an action packed adventure, doing some really silly voices that were meant to have a bit of a southern accent (and by southern, I mean southern US, but maybe it could also be midwest, I don't know), and then bam! I'm cookin' soup for some hungry folk!

I liked the gameplay a lot. It felt satisfying to run around and shoot stuff, and the mechanic of switching between two colours to be able to shoot different enemies and block their attacks is fun. All of this was also accented by the phenomenal artwork presented. That said, there are definitely some points where I felt things could be improved.

The mechanic for jumping over cliffs feels clunky, due to the fact that it's not something where you'll land where you end the dash. I imagine you have it this way for prototype/alpha phases, but as time goes on you're going to want to clean that up. One way I think will help is that you make dashes longer. That way, the player is far more into the place they'll end up, avoiding any potential collision issues.

I'll also admit that I wasn't a fan of the time limit that was introduced in the second shooting section. Bullet hells can be rough as it and often require taking time, and the ammo system you have going on especially enforces this. A time limit just adds unnecessary pressure. Another thing I wasn't a fan of was needing to use two different buttons to switch colours. If you plan to add additional colours down the road then it makes sense, but if not I think it might be better to make it a single button for switching back and forth.

While I'm not as worried about how the ammo system works, I do agree with another comment I saw while writing this that talked about waiting to gain ammo (another reason I'm not a fan of the timer). I think an easy fix for this is to make ammo gains much larger when you have very low ammo. So say you're below 40% ammo; all your ammo gains are doubled until you get over 40%. This would speed things up on the low end but keep things normal on the high end.

Because you're making this in Unreal Engine, there's one thing I'm going to say now to keep in mind during development: optimize the crap out of everything. I know UE is difficult to optimize for, but UE is also rough for people with weaker PCs. Despite the hand drawn nature of the graphics in this game, there was enough lag that was it was negatively affecting my tuber model and killing its framerate. Keeping optimization in mind from the beginning will make your lives easier in the future, even if it may slow things down a bit now.

I'm really looking forward to more of this game. Also, I now really want a copy of that song during the prologue stage because that was such a cool song!

I love the art and atmosphere, and the gun play feels great. Its definitely satisfying to kill enemies and see the score text pop up.

I struggled with the ammo acquisition though. I think the issue is that in most games I have enough ammo most of the time and acquiring it is easy, but instead here there's additional friction to acquiring ammo. I think I spent the majority of the time waiting to get more ammo, more so than actually fighting, and when I'm immune to bullets gathering ammo there isn't any tension because I'm fully immune.

I never figured out why having too much ammo was bad, or why that should be a bad thing? 

I like the idea of using blue/red to avoid bullets and fight blue/red enemies, but I wish the ammo acquisition was more streamlined so I could get back to the fun part more easily. I think it is a fun game, its just a bit too much friction for me at the moment.

This game is SO insanely pretty and nice to look at. I also feel like this gameplay loop could be really addicting in a full release. There's a WHOLE lot of promise here!

I think maybe the cooking section could be a bit more clear with what exactly needs to be interacted with. I think there was a moment where I was meant to hold a button to prepare food but the "hold button" sign didn't show up until I was already holding the button? I might be misremembering though, and I realize that this part of the game is in it's early stages. Once it's fleshed out I think this game will be SO awesome!

The combat is also really fun, I think the balancing act of collecting ammo, but not TOO much ammo, is a fun brain exercise. 

I played the demo on stream here around 2:13:50

the Art and Sound and Worldbuiling is amazing. Except for the combat and enemies, it almost feels like two different games mashed up. One with this wonderful art, characters and story, and then the bullet hell with this innovative, interesting, but completely unrelated mechanic of blue and red.
I enjoyed the combat and the atmosphere, but it still seems a bit wacky. I also didnt find a way to exit the game without having to windows out and close the app.

Keep it up!

I love the artstyle so much. I wish I was better at bullet hell and slidescrollers because I feel so bad when loveable cowboy dog gets hit due to my ineptitude! I made a video of my reaction. reminds me how bad i was at ikaruga...