The hat is a fun idea. Makes the game less punishing since you can take 2 hits and the hat can be picked up again after dropping it.
The portrait does the "you have huge guts" meme pose. Classy.
The game feels quite polished already. I like how the circle around the crosshair represents how many bullets you've got left.
The sound design is good but I think that sometimes the bat will do a metallic sound when breaking something that's apparently not made out of metal and I'm not sure why.
Parrying projectiles with the bat is pretty cool but melee combat feels very chaotic.
On that note, the later levels get very messy. I take it that's the point but I fear what will happen later on.
First time playing it. Some of my deaths just happen too fast and suddenly that I don't even understand what happened. It took me a while to start noticing the vending machines and drones exploding out of nowhere.
It can be hard sometimes to locate the hat. Slow-mo focus on enemies dying always feels weird, because it's also used when I get hit, so it just feels like I messed up if I'm seeing it.
I found the UI to be really small on my screen, probably needs some scaling. The in-game HUD was fine, though.
-New menu is nice, basically production ready. I just noticed that the purple to the beat part of the button animation seems to be missing/muted on the main Play button. Not sure if intended or if the layering got messed up.
-I'll be using Tribunal III, not sure why but it sounds fun(it was).
-I see the in game visuals are a lot better too, I'll just say it this once then that it really complements the style, especially the jenny portrait interactions with what you do.
-I died from a falling light near the start of level 2, it did a zoom while an enemy portrait was talking. I pressed retry and it immediately exited the game after restarting for some reason.
-In level 3, it's really not obvious that the ball of fire you can hit around won't hurt you on contact, like most other things. Also, maybe give it a firm outline you know the hit box better? Correction: it does hurt you but it has to be moving, I guess.
-At the end of the ghost level, I shot all the objects from a ghost area but he didn't immediately do the last ditch phase, I walked around a bit and he entered another object elsewhere where then I beat him normally with just the bat. Not sure if normal or something weird happened.
-It's convenient that you can easily go to the next level right after the previous, but you miss out on the title reveal. Would be nice if it was displayed the first time you load in. It could also be displayed in the pause menu.
-Logging bootcamp had a fun bug. I idled at spawn so the fish and chainsaw guys went to me. When the next wave spawned (I was at the doors) it looked like they all spawned at once, died, and their guns were uncollectable. I went forward for a bit, then went back down to look at stuff. Then I went too far down and all the supposedly dead enemies sprang to life at once and killed me, kind of spooky. I'm assuming issues from not touching a trigger or somethin.
-Also, it looks like the open door particles only spawn when in view, so you have this disconnect where you kill the entire wave but they go poof all of a sudden as if opened just then.
-Jenny stood back up after dying. I think from getting hit with an explosive, or being knocked into an equipable.
-Having some trouble with these last two levels, it's so chaotic I barely have an idea of what's happening(including dying with seemingly no one near me). Could be cool to have an optional instant replay after death, perhaps. Or even just a 'killed by ___' message.
Getting tired so I'll leave it there. Game feels better than ever, occasional physics spasm aside. The part I liked the most was that section with no weapon and you have to juke the laser walkers. Keep up the good work.
I had to stop early since the swaying was going to give me motion sickness. I think that the way you swing the bat is going to cause problems for people who play this for a long time. Otherwise I think you should make the main menu not cause when you go into options and the options background need to be darker for contrast.
Very stylish and action packed, but I couldn't beat the first level. Wasn't sure what I could be doing different. I realized you could knock bullet away with your bat, but are you supposed to try to? It was hard to tell what is visual flair and what is meaningful game state in the UI.
After reading some of the other comments it seems you can pick your hat back up for another hit, I never figured this out.
Art and music direction are flawless. hat mechanic is good, encourages you to take a leap of faith when you're vulnerable. I love the trains. Shooting feels and works well, if there's one mechanic I'd love to see, it'd be a dash.
I've had two instances where I've been killed during on-kill slowdown. If the camera doesn't push far enough it's possible to dodge incoming projectiles, but on those occasions I didn't see the projectile due to closeup.
Every now and then too much is happening on the screen, number of enemies shooting at you, something exploding, and a close-up. I think the latter should only be applied on smaller percent of kills.
Pretty fun and action packed, I wasn't too big a fan of the amount of explosions. and that 3rd level with the guy with the machine gun was grueling. I was getting some weird lag when i first started and when I entered the level with that big robot tentacle guy? Also the next mission buttons stopped working when i got to the latter levels.
Items flying everywhere all the time, and how the hat is an item and also your armor, leaving you chasing after it as explosions happen every second and everything scatters everywhere, works SO WELL. All the distracting elements like the camera zoom-ins and the overtweaked juices feel intentional and not just a stylistic flair, because it's making it harder for the player to read the screen and retrieve your hat.
I wonder if there's more room to push this feeling even further. And what can be pulled back? Which choices reinforce this feeling and which of them get in the way? My intuition is that some of the environmental pieces can have their visual hierarchy reinforced and tweaked - having a clear separation between items, set pieces, background, characters, through contrast and saturation tweaks might make things clearer where it matters while retaining the vision of the game.
the zoom in is very jaring, sometimes it zooms in on an enemy i killed offscreen and i have closer enemies around me. you should hard code to pick that it should only happen on screen.
also maybe tween camera to it instead of jumping to it
i could do without the zooming on the player
i had to go all the way back to the beginning to find a loose enemy, maybe have an indicator when theres one left
enemies shooting offscreeen feels unfair
bullets wish had more contrast in the outline to quicker read them, wouldnt hurt slowing them down too
also if i have an empty gun, would be nice if it auto changed if i ran over another gun or atleaast threw it away. theree doesnt seem to be any benefit to keeping it in the hands
hitting corpses is fun but maybe limit to only 1-2 times to avoid them shooting everywhere when you are trying to dodge bullets
i cant tell where i can go sometimes, like the pillars after the subway level
great level effects and general juicy, fun enemies too, readability was the issue for me.
New levels: Logging Bootcamp and Cloudy with a Chance of Knockouts New enemies: WeatherBot and BoxingBot, they are just acquaintances New weapons: Lightning Rod and uuh I forgot the other one. Flechettes are buffed though Main Menu: Bloody Portrait UI: Overhauled Jenny's portrait with animations, an anger/heat system and hat animations, recoil effects and blood splatters Enemy Portraits: Enemies can now talk, taunt, spit and cry, with all sorts of triggers and unique dialogue (more enemies to come) UI Options: Vsync and fullscreen toggles in the Esc menu
Core Refactoring
ModStack system: For handling number changes in characters, buffs and other systems which should hopefully be a lot faster Projectile Overhaul: Replaced all projectiles with simpler, cleaner systems which should hopefully be a lot faster Melee Detection Improvements: Hopefully no more duds and misses, not hopefully faster, it's slower actually! Chainsaw Bot Improvements: They shouldn't stunlock and/or kill you instantly anymore
Other Stuff
Hat unstucking: Hat gets unstuck when in most unreachable areas too much to remember asdfadfsd
Comments
First time trying the game.
The hat is a fun idea. Makes the game less punishing since you can take 2 hits and the hat can be picked up again after dropping it.
The portrait does the "you have huge guts" meme pose. Classy.
The game feels quite polished already. I like how the circle around the crosshair represents how many bullets you've got left.
The sound design is good but I think that sometimes the bat will do a metallic sound when breaking something that's apparently not made out of metal and I'm not sure why.
Parrying projectiles with the bat is pretty cool but melee combat feels very chaotic.
On that note, the later levels get very messy. I take it that's the point but I fear what will happen later on.
Keep up the good work.
First time playing it. Some of my deaths just happen too fast and suddenly that I don't even understand what happened. It took me a while to start noticing the vending machines and drones exploding out of nowhere.
It can be hard sometimes to locate the hat. Slow-mo focus on enemies dying always feels weird, because it's also used when I get hit, so it just feels like I messed up if I'm seeing it.
I found the UI to be really small on my screen, probably needs some scaling. The in-game HUD was fine, though.
-New menu is nice, basically production ready. I just noticed that the purple to the beat part of the button animation seems to be missing/muted on the main Play button. Not sure if intended or if the layering got messed up.
-I'll be using Tribunal III, not sure why but it sounds fun(it was).
-I see the in game visuals are a lot better too, I'll just say it this once then that it really complements the style, especially the jenny portrait interactions with what you do.
-I died from a falling light near the start of level 2, it did a zoom while an enemy portrait was talking. I pressed retry and it immediately exited the game after restarting for some reason.
-In level 3, it's really not obvious that the ball of fire you can hit around won't hurt you on contact, like most other things. Also, maybe give it a firm outline you know the hit box better? Correction: it does hurt you but it has to be moving, I guess.
-At the end of the ghost level, I shot all the objects from a ghost area but he didn't immediately do the last ditch phase, I walked around a bit and he entered another object elsewhere where then I beat him normally with just the bat. Not sure if normal or something weird happened.
-It's convenient that you can easily go to the next level right after the previous, but you miss out on the title reveal. Would be nice if it was displayed the first time you load in. It could also be displayed in the pause menu.
-Logging bootcamp had a fun bug. I idled at spawn so the fish and chainsaw guys went to me. When the next wave spawned (I was at the doors) it looked like they all spawned at once, died, and their guns were uncollectable. I went forward for a bit, then went back down to look at stuff. Then I went too far down and all the supposedly dead enemies sprang to life at once and killed me, kind of spooky. I'm assuming issues from not touching a trigger or somethin.
-Also, it looks like the open door particles only spawn when in view, so you have this disconnect where you kill the entire wave but they go poof all of a sudden as if opened just then.
-Jenny stood back up after dying. I think from getting hit with an explosive, or being knocked into an equipable.
-Having some trouble with these last two levels, it's so chaotic I barely have an idea of what's happening(including dying with seemingly no one near me). Could be cool to have an optional instant replay after death, perhaps. Or even just a 'killed by ___' message.
Getting tired so I'll leave it there. Game feels better than ever, occasional physics spasm aside. The part I liked the most was that section with no weapon and you have to juke the laser walkers. Keep up the good work.
Video Feedback
I had to stop early since the swaying was going to give me motion sickness.
I think that the way you swing the bat is going to cause problems for people who play this for a long time. Otherwise I think you should make the main menu not cause when you go into options and the options background need to be darker for contrast.
Love Jenny, Can't wait for the full game!
Very stylish and action packed, but I couldn't beat the first level. Wasn't sure what I could be doing different. I realized you could knock bullet away with your bat, but are you supposed to try to? It was hard to tell what is visual flair and what is meaningful game state in the UI.
After reading some of the other comments it seems you can pick your hat back up for another hit, I never figured this out.
Art and music direction are flawless. hat mechanic is good, encourages you to take a leap of faith when you're vulnerable. I love the trains. Shooting feels and works well, if there's one mechanic I'd love to see, it'd be a dash.
I've had two instances where I've been killed during on-kill slowdown. If the camera doesn't push far enough it's possible to dodge incoming projectiles, but on those occasions I didn't see the projectile due to closeup.
Every now and then too much is happening on the screen, number of enemies shooting at you, something exploding, and a close-up. I think the latter should only be applied on smaller percent of kills.
Extremely strong game, in spite of few flaws.
Pretty fun and action packed, I wasn't too big a fan of the amount of explosions. and that 3rd level with the guy with the machine gun was grueling. I was getting some weird lag when i first started and when I entered the level with that big robot tentacle guy? Also the next mission buttons stopped working when i got to the latter levels.
Items flying everywhere all the time, and how the hat is an item and also your armor, leaving you chasing after it as explosions happen every second and everything scatters everywhere, works SO WELL. All the distracting elements like the camera zoom-ins and the overtweaked juices feel intentional and not just a stylistic flair, because it's making it harder for the player to read the screen and retrieve your hat.
I wonder if there's more room to push this feeling even further. And what can be pulled back? Which choices reinforce this feeling and which of them get in the way? My intuition is that some of the environmental pieces can have their visual hierarchy reinforced and tweaked - having a clear separation between items, set pieces, background, characters, through contrast and saturation tweaks might make things clearer where it matters while retaining the vision of the game.
Great job! some loose thoughts on the action
great level effects and general juicy, fun enemies too, readability was the issue for me.
Hugboxing:
Crabbing:
Great game overall, can tell you and your team have put in a lot of work!
Changes since DD64
Features
New levels: Logging Bootcamp and Cloudy with a Chance of Knockouts
New enemies: WeatherBot and BoxingBot, they are just acquaintances
New weapons: Lightning Rod and uuh I forgot the other one. Flechettes are buffed though
Main Menu: Bloody
Portrait UI: Overhauled Jenny's portrait with animations, an anger/heat system and hat animations, recoil effects and blood splatters
Enemy Portraits: Enemies can now talk, taunt, spit and cry, with all sorts of triggers and unique dialogue (more enemies to come)
UI Options: Vsync and fullscreen toggles in the Esc menu
Core Refactoring
ModStack system: For handling number changes in characters, buffs and other systems which should hopefully be a lot faster
Projectile Overhaul: Replaced all projectiles with simpler, cleaner systems which should hopefully be a lot faster
Melee Detection Improvements: Hopefully no more duds and misses, not hopefully faster, it's slower actually!
Chainsaw Bot Improvements: They shouldn't stunlock and/or kill you instantly anymore
Other Stuff
Hat unstucking: Hat gets unstuck when in most unreachable areas
too much to remember asdfadfsd