Hi, I'm a streamer from Feedback Quest 8!

I played By Your Own on my stream tonight via the Steam playtest.  The music started a bit loud, even though I don't have my volume at super high levels. Overall, I enjoyed playing this one, it very much reminded me of some mobile match games, but with the looting and basically base defense/inventory management added to it.  I love that each weapon had it's own range, and the electric trap is a nice touch.  The sounds the character makes when hungry and thirsty freaked me out at first, I thought it was monsters LOL 

I wouldn't have minded more story or some goal post to hit beyond just surviving, though maybe I missed it somewhere?  I hope the full game includes character customization (and I'm not saying a chainsaw would be fun, but yes, a chainsaw would be awesome because chainsaws :D).  

I did experience a crash when I changed the settings (lowered audio and capped framerate to 60), though it saved the settings and was fine when I reloaded.  It also wasn't immediately clear that I could turn the boards - once I figured that out, I was gravy :D 

Is there any way to split the stacks?  S,o if I have 5 bandages, but only want to take two with me to loot?

A few grammatical things:

• When I tried to change the batteries in the lights, I clicked on the generator and it said "you can do that now" - I think that was supposed to be can't?
• "You trip for one day" - should be you travelled or you drove
• "I have to reach for the items and they get into the backpack." - I have to reach the items to put them in the backpack?

I'll update this with a link to my VOD once I'm done with the stream! :)

VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2556703658?t=02h52m14s

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.

Wave based auto defense (a bit like a tower defense) with Bejewled-style puzzles for finding resources and Resident Evil style inventory management, all while you play as Not-Luigi. It's certainly not a combination I would've expected, yet here it is in all its glory.

The visuals have a huge range to them, from simplistic to quirky to holy-crap-that's-a-nightmare-hellscape-this-dude-lives-in! I had a lot of fun with this, to the point where I lost track of time!

That said, there are a lot of things I found could use work in this game. For starters, the rate of finding guns; in the time it took me to find one shotgun, I found at least 8 packs of ammo for said shotgun. On one hand, it's great to get a lot of ammo. On the other hand, it can get really frustrating when all you want is a gun and the ammo keeps coming up again and again and again. In my first runs, I had a similar issue with water, where I kept getting tons of food but so little water.

I also had an issue where I had what looked like a fair bit of water (at least 5%, likely closer to 10% according to the bar), yet when I noticed it and went to get a drink I suddenly died from thirst. I noticed that there's a somewhat-subtle sound that plays when you get low water and hunger, but I feel like there should be a bit more of a notification than that, particularly for people who are hard of hearing. Perhaps having the notification bar flash when it hits certain thresholds?

I also found some typos that I just wanted to point out so you can get them covered. First, if you go into your options and look at Frame Limit, the top option is "Unlimmited" with two Ms. Another typo is when the game is explaining how you can drop items during scavenging, with it saying "I can drop some think on the floor..." This should be "something, " all one word and with a G instead of a K. Lastly, this one is just a personal pet peeve of mine but when Not-Luigi is remarking about the first big wave the player deals with, he says "The moment is approaching. It's been almost 10 days and a big wave is approaching." I'm just not a fan of reusing big, stand-out words like this in follow-up sentences.  I'd say change the second use of "approaching" to the word "coming" to make the two sentences flow a little better.

Ok, so with the "issues" out of the way, I want to give feedback on things where I think the gameplay could be expanded. For starters, I'd love it if there was more to do when defending waves. The primary active element of wave defending is to activate the electric trap and to reload your weapon. I'd like for there to be more to do. I also think that there should be a gain to be doing the big wave defense, as I realized that I could skip it if I timed my trips to coincide right when it showed up. Perhaps where the last slime in the big wave can drop a bunch of supplies. Not enough to just ride out to the next big wave, but just something to make it worth the time.

Speaking of time, that's one other thing I'd like to request: for time to not pass the same way when at your base as it is when you're scavenging. Perhaps, instead, it operates on a "every time you make a choice" basis. So every time you make your puzzle move or when you attack an enemy or reload a weapon. That way, the player can take their time with thinking the puzzle through. Oh, shoot, that reminds me. I had a weird issue where I'd try and do certain moves but the game just wouldn't let me. This included both killing enemies and trying to remove blocks. I usually have to turn or make alternate plays to fix the problem, and I don't know what was causing it. The only thing I can think of is perhaps code that prevent the player from making a move that puts two items side by side as I noticed this would happen the last time I observed it, but I'm pretty sure I've had items side by side anyway.

That's all from me! Keep up the great work and I hope to see more!

This is a fun combination of ideas! The looting mechanic is satisfyingly strategic (the rotation adds so much, and works great on controller) and I can see how it makes building up an inventory that can support a defense interesting. Unfortunately I died of thirst on my first attempt, so these are only my initial impressions before I try again this weekend.

It would be nice if dragging was the primary way to interact (with the current options there for accessibility), it would make it feel more like a toy. There was also a typo where it told me “you can do that now” when I tried to do something during the tutorial that I could not do. I thought the tutorial was pretty good at explaining what was going on, though you probably don’t have to explain the floor or bin.

I accidentally spent a long time waiting for the next wave after the tutorial ended and got hungry. I thought the hungry noises were attacking monsters at first, some highlighting on the low bar would help.

I don’t know how much art is placeholder, but the mix of vector with wasteland was interesting and made me laugh. Really made the truck feel out of place in the wasteland 😆

It would be nice if the backpack auto-selected when opening on controller, it would make item management much faster.

Overall this was really fun, and I’m excited to play as our hero Luigi again!