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A jam submission

ObliviumView game page

A fast-paced, violent spellcasting action roguelike inspired by Dante's Inferno.
Submitted by xChimp — 2 days, 20 hours before the deadline
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Oblivium's itch.io page

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Comments

Submitted

This is rad I love his running animations. The execute mechanic is also excellent.

I'd like if the abilities had larger AOE, I think it would make them feel a lot more powerful. Especially the fireball and the cone of water. Massive fireballs and tidal waves would look cool.  I'd also like to be able to heal somehow because i'm not skilled.

Here's a vod that will disappear in a few days: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2718294505?t=1h3m38s

Submitted

-The push F tips lacks clarity.

-Maybe a way to heal

otherwise great esthetic, great gameplay so so music

It's neat, completed the demo 2 times. There's a lot interesting going on, but it's hard to experiment because of lack of healing (outside of that one crit perk) and lots of pressure from layer 2.

The spells were meh for the most part and it felt like a damage supplement rather than significant option for combat. That might be due to little feedback and how much is going on while I'm trying to not lose precious hp (while fireball feels good to use with its knockback, eventually it devolves into fire and forget just because it's an effiicient use of the timer and mental focus). The passive perks are great though, especially the random elemental effect scaling with combo since it gives an incentive to tighten your playstyle (even if it might not practical).

The finisher is definitely a great idea. It's easy to abuse by greedy spamming, but since it can be used strategically it's not even a big deal. Love the visuals on combos.

I can't read that one font, so it was hard to decipher how to do the special.

The room transitions give me DMC3 vibes for some reason.

(2 edits)

Pretty good. Attaching gameplay recording at the bottom.

Supposedly there are elemental combinations, but I know this only because I read your Steam page. Of course I noticed element icons on enemies and I assumed, each element has some special effect, but nothing I saw during gameplay looked like elements interacting with each other.
To clarify, element interactions were not self-evident to me. In fact I thought the opposite, I only ever saw 1 element icon at a time on enemies and I though elemental effects override each other. Due to this on my 2nd playthrough initially I tried to have fire only spells, because I thought it's better to have 1 element instead of flipping between many with each skill.

I saw there is guide, but because game seemed simple enough I decided not to read it thinking stuff would come up on it's own. Now after playing I read it and I see there tons of stuff I'd never stumble upon on accident like parrying, melee stance or mana. I quickly checked them out and they make huge difference to gameplay. There will probably be tutorial for this in later versions, but I think there should be some in your face indicator for these things, even if it's temporary for the sake of testing.

04:41 Bottom walls are hard to distinguish from the floor on this level.

The wind attack at mouse spell effect looks very weak. I know it deals damage, but it doesn't feel like it.

Cooldown indicator is sometimes hard to read on some maps with many enemies. Also cooldown displayed as a disappearing icon feels counter intuitive.

5:50 enemy stuck in the wall

When moving with keyboard I think dodging should go in the direction of mouse or last movement direction, when not currently walking.

Font is sometimes hard to read, especially when I got ultimate ability, barely understood that it's used with Y key.

Fighting requires you to constantly spam basic attack, so having to click it feels kinda pointless. Basically is there any reason to not shoot?

Control rebind applies only after going to another level.

Having 4 skills can be pretty overwhelming. I guess long cooldowns are annoying, but too short cooldowns mean you have to constantly press something. Maybe it's a build issue, and I should just pick more skills with longer cooldowns

Basic distance attack animation could be sharper. Current one's looks like the guy is reaching for salt at the dinner table. On the other hand melee attack animations look very cool.

The music overpowers all other sounds, but I like that. Though it feels like monster don't make any sound sometimes.

Very solid art style for levels, characters and effects. Feels like pre-rendered environments in Infinity Engine games. Particle effects at starting map look really nice. Really enjoyed how this game looks and sounds.

Developer

Thanks for the great feedback and for posting a video

Elemental reactions trigger when you use 2 different element attacks. So for example if you hit an enemy with water which has electric applied, you would do a shock reaction. The element icon you see is the element currently applied and from that you can trigger it with whichever other ability. If you see some additional vfx happen after your attack, it was probably a reaction.

I will make it so you can hold LMB to shoot and see how that feels but I'm not sure about forcing them to auto fire all the time just because sometimes I don't want to apply wind from the ranged basics. Idk will try stuff out.

Generally spells have short cooldowns, because I think it can be quite fun when you chain them together with the empowered versions by using mana while you also have reactions triggering and the autos are more just there for when everything is on cooldown. The game is most fun when you're parrying all the time (and the timing is pretty generous i would say) and you use all those mechanics which are not explained at all :D.
More than anything it seems I need a tutorial, to nudge the player to play in the most fun way and just have it overall not be confusing.

(3 edits)

I played again today and I retract what I said about auto-attacking and cooldowns. With melee and parry combat was much better.

What hit me at 32:20 after boss is already dead? Is there some poison effect or something?

Developer

Yeah, the projectiles from that boss linger for a bit. I know it's a bit jank. Just haven't bothered to work on it

Developer

Also, just saying, those jumping attacks in layer 2 with the circle indicator are an ez parry. You can assume everything is parriable

(1 edit)

I see. AOE warning made me assume you can't parry that.

Submitted (1 edit)

Amazing game. I dig the aesthetic and the fast flow.

Some findings:

  • WSAD move is way more preferable to me than Mouse move, because the special attacks are not homing and the cursor needs to be both on the enemy and away from the enemy at the same time
  • I don't see an option to change the control preset later, needed to restart my VM to try both
  • in the palace/hotel level enemies would regularly get stuck on spawn
  • desert level blocking ledges a bit too samey with the floor, a tad confusing in the heat of battle
  • initally I thought the music will be too intense, but once I got into the battle trance it was perfect
  • credits window hard to scroll
  • the boss (I've seen a charging one with some sort of axe) was way beyond my skill, but that doesn't mean much, as I don't usually play this genre


Anyways great stuff!!

Submitted

A screenshot of an enemy getting stuck:

Developer(+1)

Thank you!

  • You can change the control preset through Settings > Controls in a dropdown on the right side.
  • Overall the levels in the first region need improvement. Besides that level with the steam, cogwheels etc. which i think came out pretty nice and thanks for telling me about the spawn points.
  • The boss is kinda BS tbh, mostly because it's still a bit buggy. Sometimes the attacks will get canceled by another attack immediately and there's one attack which needs more windup on the animation.
Submitted (1 edit)

Didn't know how to start the game for a while.
WASD is the superior control as you need to walk away from where you're aiming alot.

Kinda hard to see where is walkable and where isn't. the "earth" spells look greyed out when they're actually ready to use.

All the spells feel kinda  samey.

Developer

Thanks for playing
The basic attacks automatically aim at the enemy and the hitbox of the spells I think is generous, so you don't have to aim them all that well,  but when you start using more of the mechanics, you use more of the keys on the keyboard, so at that point MOBA controls work better imo, but anyway.
My bad for not having a tutorial, but it was sad to see you not use any of the mechanics xd. Like all the abilities have enhanced versions if you press shift + ability key by consuming 25% mana, parrying, and you can execute low hp enemies when the shift + lmb prompt shows up by pressing that.

I'll make it more clear you need to go over to the portal and press F to start, instead of just showing the letter F.
Not sure what you mean about it being hard to see where is walkable. In some areas, I agree the contrast between player and background should be better and there may be ways to go out of bounds i havent fixed.
You're right about the earth spells and I'll make them a different color. 
Spells need more variety and for there to be more of them for sure, but they all have different effects when using the enhanced with mana version (besides the 3 point and click spells which i copy pasted for now)

Submitted
  • Cool, but really hard to tell what's going on. I thought the 'F' prompt in front of the portal was some other kind of sigil...
  • I can't tell if parrying ever actually works, and it probably needs some other effect to show it go off and when it's active. 
  • Spells feel good to use.
  • Dashing feels unimpactful. 
  • Sometimes it feels like enemies are teleporting around in a buggy way. 
  • Because the controls use LMB a lot, it's easy to accidentally click upgrade just as it shows up without being able to read what it says. Probably not that bad since it only shows up after a level when enemies have all died for a few seconds, but it happened on my first run when I didn't know about it. 
Developer

Hey, thanks for playing

I'll do something about the F prompt to make it clear and I like the idea of making it more visible when youre parrying. Currently it just plays the parry animation and thats it.
As for enemies teleporting around, thats probably from that one enemy which I wanted to have a teleport attack but it still feels bad tbf.
Not sure what you mean with dashing feeling unimpactful. It just gives you invul frames and you dash wherever. Like you don't need to because you can just do circles around everything?

Submitted

Interesting game. Felt a bit hard for me, as I'm not used to this kind of gameplay. Are our autoatacks homing? Perhaps there could be an option to have them auto fire, or maybe we could hold LMB pressed to continuously fire instead of having to click each time. 

Developer(+1)

Yup, they're homing. I guess I'll try how it feels playing with continuously firing autos. It's just that most of the damage comes from spells and other stuff, so I want to lead the player to not just use autos and make use of all the mechanics, but yea i don't even have a proper tutorial yet.

Submitted

That's fine! I do wonder, you recomend to play the game with the mouse only, but I feel like using WASD might be easier, as movement seems quite important in the game, for doges and positioning. With the mouse, I need to click where I want to go, but then I need to move the mouse on top on an enemy to aim my spells. I think that's why I was having trouble. I there a reason why you disencourage the WASD controll scheme?

Developer(+1)

Could be just me being a lot more used to mouse movement, because i didn't have the option to go into WASD for a long time, but i like it more, because if you use all the buttons there's just a bit too many keys i think for keyboard movement to be more comfortable and its imo more precise to move around while doing everything. You will often want to be holding down shift to use the empowered versions of spells if you have enough mana and also for finisher attacks and then i also have keys bound to parry, ultimate and a stance switch from ranged to melee, so yeah just too many keys to where you might have to octopus grip or some shit for WASD. Understandable if you didn't do anything of the stuff I said, because there's no tutorial and i just have some short texts about them in Settings > Guides. Since you all prefer WASD, I'll test playing with that option more and make sure everything works fine.

Developer

There's no tutorial level yet, but you can view guides on all you can do in the settings.

I get the title screen, but as soon as I hit play I get a background with nothing else and the game just sits there. Can do nothing. Screen capture attached.



Developer(+1)

It should work now if you download it again. I forgot to test if it works before the save file directory is created... 

(1 edit)

Works great now. Liking the posterized graphics in-game. Reminds me of the limited color palettes on systems like the Amiga and other similar late 80s/early 90s computers & consoles. Thanks for the help.