Walking is really slow to the point you are better off doing dash cancelling for adjusting your spacing except for when you are locked out of it. Dashing mid crouch is weird. When you are suddenly dashing in the opposite direction it's likely to execute a short dash instead of a regular one, it needs a longer time window in case you pressed direction immediately after dash. Weapon mode not letting you move is a really weird decision and I'd rather not use it as it will get me killed in multiple ways no matter how strong it is.
The way the first actual combat enemies are introduced make it feel like a joke difficulty.
The way attacks range, combos, controls, movement and weapons work make it seem to me like you either steamroll entire groups of enemies with a single long combo chain, or you die due to bad initial spacing screwing you over as all your escape options are locked for quite a long time after attacking. There are also other options like jumping attack quick kills on single hobo enemies being quite reliable, but I don't think it's the intended playstyle.
i'm mixed. i love the art, the mood, the aestetic and music. But if this is a gameplay-first experience imo it needs a lot of work
played with xinput pad
played oh mah gawd justin wong mode
Imo it has a lot of potential, but players will throw the controller out very very fast. dunno how your "easy" mode is easy, and if solves my problems written below.
imo though, as this stands (wong mode) dosent seem an "hard but fair experiance for lvl.40 wizards", but just badly designed. you dont have much content so you stretch by making your players die in three hit. I get it. imo that kind of thinking is not something you should have ever, but expecially while testing.
Random notes
- "press start" screen (i could not even read the word at first lmao). You dont go forward by pressing start, but A. double lmao if this is intentional.
- in the first room, i interacted with neet chad by pressing up on d-pad, i also jumped on the same time and was stuck in mid air for the whole conversation
- neet chad's beard seems more peanut butter spread on his face. i'm a pixelshitter, but it's probably the symmetric highlight that made me see it as a liquid and not as hair
- walking is super slow for no reason, i really dont like it. since dash has not cd you wanna always dash. since you lose hp with time, walking is always a losing move. if you need a slow walk only to better postion and survive tricky jumps, imo rework it. this is a combat experience no?
- dash input in the tutorial screen seemed a combo, add something to make players see at glance that those are two alternative inputs for the same action
- also, putting a dummy near the tooltip for the dash is quite useless and confusing. it doesent make me think that you need to use the dash to pass that gap
- really like music, and that little animation when you change scenes
- while using sword stance (nice yamazaki reference) i got a crash:
- the special sword + gun tutorial dosent tell you how to exit those modes; the gated encounter of that tutorial room is ver hard for no reason. Since entering special mode and shooting/swording is a long procress, the hardship of that encounter is just a timed race to hit something before you get hit by a bullet. not fun, and not an interesting tutorial
- classic melee combat is assigned X Y for punches (Y strong); A B for kicks (B strong). you swapped contorls that are the same everywhere for no reason
- in the first real enemy encounter you place one enemy, and 1m after a stack of three. a first solo encounter is good to ck the moves ai etc; but the second needs to be more spread out. also if by putting three big enemies with aoe dmg in an enclosed space you wanna tell people that they can skip non-gated encoutners; imo that's very bad tutorialization. also you have for granted that people will dodge that aoe wind atk by jumping, so you put a low cieling; but you only give that opportunity for a player in the first enemy of that stage
- in the first gated encounter of that level (two pits on the side, and 2 enemies with signposts), the far right enemy shooter can be awaken if we get too close. that for sure is not intended, and if by chance it was intented imo it's a challenge for later levels
- overall i dont like that enemies kill you with three hit
- i dont think is "good design" to have infinite air dashes
- if you "are dyng" and life paticles ae coming to you, they should save you, and not not-heal your dead body
- in the last gated encounter of that level, second wave enemies spawn with a great deleay and you can die by "waiting". worst feel ever.
- i like that you can duck under the big puncher enemy, imo it should be introduced before the signpost enemy; not after
- problem with big puncher. since you can always dash behind him, and you can't attack while crouched (you are also vulnerable to aoe signpost wind atk), ducking is very rarely a smart move. i like the design of it, but imo you upgraded the movement too much, and made this solution almost obsolete
- i overall understand why big jump with LT is there (is the same action as quick crouch jump?), but your movement is on RT; your special atks are on LT. putting a movement move on LT is a "mistake"
Thanks for playing and for the extensive feedback.
Some things I agree with and some things I don't, but I wrote a few things down on the design doc and I'll respond here as well.
imo though, as this stands (wong mode) dosent seem an "hard but fair experiance for lvl.40 wizards", but just badly designed. you dont have much content so you stretch by making your players die in three hit. I get it. imo that kind of thinking is not something you should have ever, but expecially while testing.
I wouldn't post something like this as a Steam demo. However; I will build a game that I have fun playing first, and scale it down properly after that. Until then it will be "Wong mode" and whatever concessions I can quickly cobble together for the "easy" mode. You are still welcome to criticize the game for what it is and I always appreciate it. I'll just have to figure out what feedback is actionable. And to be fair I'm at a point with content where the agenda for the next DD could be dedicated difficulty modes.
Tutorialization will likely remain bad for longer and I should probably just include a "How to Play" wall of text in the pause menu until the game is mostly built and the mechanics are locked in place.
Also I didn't "stretch" anything. The "Wong mode" is already toned down in many ways (including enemy damage) from what the game was just a week before this DD.
> in the last gated encounter of that level, second wave enemies spawn with a great deleay and you can die by "waiting". worst feel ever.
Yeah I agree. I'll stop health drain for those. The "easy" version has no passive health drain at all along with moves being cheaper.
> if you "are dyng" and life paticles ae coming to you, they should save you, and not not-heal your dead body
I agree that it's annoying. I think I'll do a grey health system where if you run out of energy completely, you'll die in one hit until You build it all back. I could also buff and nerf some moves and add a cool shader while in that state.
> walking is super slow for no reason, i really dont like it. since dash has not cd you wanna always dash. since you lose hp with time, walking is always a losing move.
I do feel like dashing is too strong and negates traditional footsies, but I also want to keep the walk speed slow and not add a cd to dash. I'll have to think about it.
> classic melee combat is assigned X Y for punches (Y strong); A B for kicks (B strong). you swapped contorls that are the same everywhere for no reason
Was not an arbitrary decision. I originally had that "standard" control scheme. I could setup the other one as a template at some point.
> overall i dont like that enemies kill you with three hit
I think I agree. At least I'll want to have more clearly weak enemies.
> i like that you can duck under the big puncher enemy, imo it should be introduced before the signpost enemy; not after
I had a better introductory enemy in the works, but it didn't make the cut. Would've made for easier enemy groups as well. And I try to keep the crouch relevant.
>Also I didn't "stretch" anything. The "Wong mode" is already toned down in many ways (including enemy damage) from what the game was just a week before this DD.
but you say in the end of your reply that you agree that enemies killin you in three hits is bad. So i don't get what "tone down" means in this context. Overall for what i played this dosent seem a rage game, but an actual attempt at making a 2d beu: if this is the case having drain health and enemies that kill you with 3 hp is very drastic. you can tune this in multiple ways, from enemies dropping more health, adding some healing items drop etc. that's not the problem; my problem is if "that" is the first level, i don't wanna see what path of pain you will be making for the last level. And i am a beu/soul/stylish/nioh/big dick is back in town player. Moreover, for how punishing your game is, adding also a gameover + hard reset to the level like an arcade is really spiteful. that's also why i've written you streatched your content. also in testing phase imo give a bigger number of lives; if you were testing level balance and first time play with this build, imo your difficulty setting pov for what a player should expirience is completely out of wack.
>footsies
i can argue that "footsie" fights against your game design: if you want footise your gameplay is probably too fast. But this game needs to be fast because your health drains; and since wait and dodge it's a losing strategy, it's better to dash beyond any enemy that is not gated. And when you need health, you win by outmanuvering enemies by dashing on their backs and chain-stun them. in your current build "footsie" is not a good philosopy to follow. I'm basically playing megamen zero [melee edition]. if you say footises are well implemented and useful, i need to see how you play your game; because then the problem might not be footise on itself, but how you teached me how to survive in the tutoral.
>yamazaki
search yamazaki king of fighters; he has a counter move(tongue out); that pose it's very similar to one of your pg
I was one of the anons who got filtered because of the framerate in your last submission. I tried it again with my two laptops and after the 60hz>240hz solution it worked with the fastest one. I also leaved it running for about 300 seconds to see if the time desynchronizes but it didn't.
Also, I found a rendering bug: in the input menu don't make any changes and just go back, the list of buttons will stay there.
As for the game, I really like this idea, this is the type of game that I hate being bad at, I'll definitely play it more! And speaking of practice, there's a little trick that can be made with the 60hz>240hz option. Since the game will be running slower than is supposed, you can run it at that speed on purpose as a practice.
Great to hear you got it running. Some day it will be more optimized. And Thank you for the bug report.
It would be extremely impressive if you manage to figure the game out enough to beat the "normal" version. I said on the thread that beating it would be easter egg worthy. The "easy" version should be more realistically doable with some determination.
Why does the tutorial have a bunch of lava pits? I don't want to be threatened with death, it makes me not want to experiment with the controls.
It took me a minute to realize that >+RT does the same dash move as v+diagdown+>. Due to the green highlight going through the prompt linearly, it looked like one combo rather than two versions... make it more clear, like at least add a divider or have the text OR between them. Also why can't I use the stick to move?
>continues in the tutorial that make you redo from the beginning
Why do special modes(gun and sword) drain energy while doing nothing? LAME. It also means if you're low on health, you can't do your more OP moves, which seems like a "the poor get poorer" situation but for bad gamers.
>continue
For the first forced high jump, I think you should make the target platform a little taller. It looks like it could *almost* be reached with a normal jump, which is bad design.
Pressing up to talk with dude had a funny look to it:
I find it interesting that the hobos don't give energy until they die. I guess getting some from each hit was only a dummy thing.
Main reason I keep dying is due to killing an enemy, and it uses up the last(or near to) my energy then I die before the killed enemy's energy reaches me. So, I guess I need to be more patient which feels counter intuitive.
I got a couple areas in but I die too easily and I don't really like fighting games so... Overall, this is probably not for me since it's a fighting game AND attacks are linked to HP. And I don't know why it has continues, I think I'd enjoy it more as a linear challenge of how to get through each area without dying, without having to worry about being sent back to the beginning every 3 deaths. Enemy designs seem fine, easy to kill but if two or more are around you may also be comboed into submission.
If I enable 240hz mode it will cause the game to crash in the intro just from walking around.
Thanks for playing and writing your thoughts down.
The tutorial is really bad right now. I wasn't going to join this DD initially, but decided last minute to cobble something together. I straight up didn't have time to separate the tutorial input prompts properly. The reason you can't use stick to move is that it is really bad for command movement. It's a fighting game thing. You should be able to remap to stick, but I don't recommend it.
I thought I had prevented jumps in the home room. Apparently not. Also thanks for the heads up on the 240hz mode
> "the poor get poorer" situation but for bad gamers.
This is very much a poor get poorer game and will stay that way even if balance adjustments are made or checkpoints added. It is core to the design. I'm not against difficulty options and better tutorials, but eventually you will have to get your ass beat.
Thanks for playing! Changing the tickrate in the settings to 60 can help with lag.
I also just put up a easy version that removes passive energy drain, reduces all energy drain when attacking and adds energy dropping dummies along all levels. I should probably add dedicated difficulty modes anyways. It's still likely pretty difficult if you're not used to the mechanics.
It's got a somewhat unusual control scheme. At first I thought it was going to be a platformer but it was mostly a fighting game with some platformer elements. The jumping felt weird, it took me quite some time to get used to the platform jumping with these mechanics, especially the big jump.
The energy mechanic felt a little too punishing, I tried to get past that 2nd level with the hobos holding the sign posts, but resetting the entire level every time you die without any checkpoints really frustrated me (I'm sorry). At first I tried fighting everything in sight, but then after a few tries I realized it was easier to just skip the unimportant fights and just do the unskippable ones. Even then for some reason, some of the enemies did a lot of cheap damage, and losing 'health' every time you do a fighting move isn't very encouraging. I don't think this is a deal breaker though, but I do believe it needs some adjustments.
Maybe I missed something? Like does fighting more often makes the character stronger?
All that said, the graphics and designs look very cool, the animations looks awesome. Good job!
The main issue I think is that the demo doesn't allow learning at all, You get all the mechanics frontloaded and then you get punished for trying to figure them out. The only way to really facilitate non-masochistic newcomers is to have multiple difficulty modes and there will still be friction just from the core design being so unorthodox.
For a quick band aid, I uploaded an easier version that is lot less punishing in terms of energy usage and has soft checkpoints on every level in the form of dummies that drop free energy when hit.
Comments
It's potentially fun but it's too janky.
Walking is really slow to the point you are better off doing dash cancelling for adjusting your spacing except for when you are locked out of it. Dashing mid crouch is weird. When you are suddenly dashing in the opposite direction it's likely to execute a short dash instead of a regular one, it needs a longer time window in case you pressed direction immediately after dash. Weapon mode not letting you move is a really weird decision and I'd rather not use it as it will get me killed in multiple ways no matter how strong it is.
The way the first actual combat enemies are introduced make it feel like a joke difficulty.
The way attacks range, combos, controls, movement and weapons work make it seem to me like you either steamroll entire groups of enemies with a single long combo chain, or you die due to bad initial spacing screwing you over as all your escape options are locked for quite a long time after attacking. There are also other options like jumping attack quick kills on single hobo enemies being quite reliable, but I don't think it's the intended playstyle.
Overall thoughts
i'm mixed. i love the art, the mood, the aestetic and music. But if this is a gameplay-first experience imo it needs a lot of work
played with xinput pad
played oh mah gawd justin wong mode
Imo it has a lot of potential, but players will throw the controller out very very fast. dunno how your "easy" mode is easy, and if solves my problems written below.
imo though, as this stands (wong mode) dosent seem an "hard but fair experiance for lvl.40 wizards", but just badly designed. you dont have much content so you stretch by making your players die in three hit. I get it. imo that kind of thinking is not something you should have ever, but expecially while testing.
Random notes
- "press start" screen (i could not even read the word at first lmao). You dont go forward by pressing start, but A. double lmao if this is intentional.
- in the first room, i interacted with neet chad by pressing up on d-pad, i also jumped on the same time and was stuck in mid air for the whole conversation
- neet chad's beard seems more peanut butter spread on his face. i'm a pixelshitter, but it's probably the symmetric highlight that made me see it as a liquid and not as hair
- walking is super slow for no reason, i really dont like it. since dash has not cd you wanna always dash. since you lose hp with time, walking is always a losing move. if you need a slow walk only to better postion and survive tricky jumps, imo rework it. this is a combat experience no?
- dash input in the tutorial screen seemed a combo, add something to make players see at glance that those are two alternative inputs for the same action
- also, putting a dummy near the tooltip for the dash is quite useless and confusing. it doesent make me think that you need to use the dash to pass that gap
- really like music, and that little animation when you change scenes
- while using sword stance (nice yamazaki reference) i got a crash:
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in action number 1
of Step Event0 for object obj_actor_parent:
Variable oPlayer.bs_recovery(104915, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Script_anon@3074@pState_sword_stance@pState_sword_stance
############################################################################################
gml_Script_anon@3074@pState_sword_stance@pState_sword_stance (line -1)
gml_Script_anon@177@StateMachine@State_machine
gml_Script_anon@1843@pState_sword_stance@pState_sword_stance
gml_Script_anon@353@StateMachine@State_machine
gml_Object_obj_actor_parent_Step_0
gml_Object_oPlayer_Step_0 (line -1)
- the special sword + gun tutorial dosent tell you how to exit those modes; the gated encounter of that tutorial room is ver hard for no reason. Since entering special mode and shooting/swording is a long procress, the hardship of that encounter is just a timed race to hit something before you get hit by a bullet. not fun, and not an interesting tutorial
- classic melee combat is assigned X Y for punches (Y strong); A B for kicks (B strong). you swapped contorls that are the same everywhere for no reason
- in the first real enemy encounter you place one enemy, and 1m after a stack of three. a first solo encounter is good to ck the moves ai etc; but the second needs to be more spread out. also if by putting three big enemies with aoe dmg in an enclosed space you wanna tell people that they can skip non-gated encoutners; imo that's very bad tutorialization. also you have for granted that people will dodge that aoe wind atk by jumping, so you put a low cieling; but you only give that opportunity for a player in the first enemy of that stage
- in the first gated encounter of that level (two pits on the side, and 2 enemies with signposts), the far right enemy shooter can be awaken if we get too close. that for sure is not intended, and if by chance it was intented imo it's a challenge for later levels
- overall i dont like that enemies kill you with three hit
- i dont think is "good design" to have infinite air dashes
- if you "are dyng" and life paticles ae coming to you, they should save you, and not not-heal your dead body
- in the last gated encounter of that level, second wave enemies spawn with a great deleay and you can die by "waiting". worst feel ever.
- i like that you can duck under the big puncher enemy, imo it should be introduced before the signpost enemy; not after
- problem with big puncher. since you can always dash behind him, and you can't attack while crouched (you are also vulnerable to aoe signpost wind atk), ducking is very rarely a smart move. i like the design of it, but imo you upgraded the movement too much, and made this solution almost obsolete
- i overall understand why big jump with LT is there (is the same action as quick crouch jump?), but your movement is on RT; your special atks are on LT. putting a movement move on LT is a "mistake"
Thanks for playing and for the extensive feedback.
Some things I agree with and some things I don't, but I wrote a few things down on the design doc and I'll respond here as well.
imo though, as this stands (wong mode) dosent seem an "hard but fair experiance for lvl.40 wizards", but just badly designed. you dont have much content so you stretch by making your players die in three hit. I get it. imo that kind of thinking is not something you should have ever, but expecially while testing.
I wouldn't post something like this as a Steam demo. However; I will build a game that I have fun playing first, and scale it down properly after that. Until then it will be "Wong mode" and whatever concessions I can quickly cobble together for the "easy" mode. You are still welcome to criticize the game for what it is and I always appreciate it. I'll just have to figure out what feedback is actionable. And to be fair I'm at a point with content where the agenda for the next DD could be dedicated difficulty modes.
Tutorialization will likely remain bad for longer and I should probably just include a "How to Play" wall of text in the pause menu until the game is mostly built and the mechanics are locked in place.
Also I didn't "stretch" anything. The "Wong mode" is already toned down in many ways (including enemy damage) from what the game was just a week before this DD.
> in the last gated encounter of that level, second wave enemies spawn with a great deleay and you can die by "waiting". worst feel ever.
Yeah I agree. I'll stop health drain for those. The "easy" version has no passive health drain at all along with moves being cheaper.
> if you "are dyng" and life paticles ae coming to you, they should save you, and not not-heal your dead body
I agree that it's annoying. I think I'll do a grey health system where if you run out of energy completely, you'll die in one hit until You build it all back. I could also buff and nerf some moves and add a cool shader while in that state.
> walking is super slow for no reason, i really dont like it. since dash has not cd you wanna always dash. since you lose hp with time, walking is always a losing move.
I do feel like dashing is too strong and negates traditional footsies, but I also want to keep the walk speed slow and not add a cd to dash. I'll have to think about it.
> classic melee combat is assigned X Y for punches (Y strong); A B for kicks (B strong). you swapped contorls that are the same everywhere for no reason
Was not an arbitrary decision. I originally had that "standard" control scheme. I could setup the other one as a template at some point.
> overall i dont like that enemies kill you with three hit
I think I agree. At least I'll want to have more clearly weak enemies.
> i like that you can duck under the big puncher enemy, imo it should be introduced before the signpost enemy; not after
I had a better introductory enemy in the works, but it didn't make the cut. Would've made for easier enemy groups as well. And I try to keep the crouch relevant.
>(nice yamazaki reference)
Who?
>Also I didn't "stretch" anything. The "Wong mode" is already toned down in many ways (including enemy damage) from what the game was just a week before this DD.
but you say in the end of your reply that you agree that enemies killin you in three hits is bad. So i don't get what "tone down" means in this context. Overall for what i played this dosent seem a rage game, but an actual attempt at making a 2d beu: if this is the case having drain health and enemies that kill you with 3 hp is very drastic. you can tune this in multiple ways, from enemies dropping more health, adding some healing items drop etc. that's not the problem; my problem is if "that" is the first level, i don't wanna see what path of pain you will be making for the last level. And i am a beu/soul/stylish/nioh/big dick is back in town player. Moreover, for how punishing your game is, adding also a gameover + hard reset to the level like an arcade is really spiteful. that's also why i've written you streatched your content. also in testing phase imo give a bigger number of lives; if you were testing level balance and first time play with this build, imo your difficulty setting pov for what a player should expirience is completely out of wack.
>footsies
i can argue that "footsie" fights against your game design: if you want footise your gameplay is probably too fast. But this game needs to be fast because your health drains; and since wait and dodge it's a losing strategy, it's better to dash beyond any enemy that is not gated. And when you need health, you win by outmanuvering enemies by dashing on their backs and chain-stun them. in your current build "footsie" is not a good philosopy to follow. I'm basically playing megamen zero [melee edition]. if you say footises are well implemented and useful, i need to see how you play your game; because then the problem might not be footise on itself, but how you teached me how to survive in the tutoral.
>yamazaki
search yamazaki king of fighters; he has a counter move(tongue out); that pose it's very similar to one of your pg
GLfor your next build
> GLfor your next build
Thanks. Maybe it'll be more palatable next time. There's also a clip of my playthrough of the demo in the comment thread.
And I'll say this out of goodwill and respect:
>And i am a beu/soul/stylish/nioh/big dick is back in town player.
I cringed.
>I cringed.
that was my design ò__ò
(but i also fucking know how to play an action game. holy fuck i'm also devving one)
ED: and fighters ò__o
I was one of the anons who got filtered because of the framerate in your last submission. I tried it again with my two laptops and after the 60hz>240hz solution it worked with the fastest one. I also leaved it running for about 300 seconds to see if the time desynchronizes but it didn't.
Also, I found a rendering bug: in the input menu don't make any changes and just go back, the list of buttons will stay there.
As for the game, I really like this idea, this is the type of game that I hate being bad at, I'll definitely play it more! And speaking of practice, there's a little trick that can be made with the 60hz>240hz option. Since the game will be running slower than is supposed, you can run it at that speed on purpose as a practice.
I haven't tried the easy version yet thobeit.
Great to hear you got it running. Some day it will be more optimized. And Thank you for the bug report.
It would be extremely impressive if you manage to figure the game out enough to beat the "normal" version. I said on the thread that beating it would be easter egg worthy. The "easy" version should be more realistically doable with some determination.
Yeah, I saw your post
ZAMN! I'm pretty sure that you're not joking, I already saw the second part...
The game is basically balanced for me right now. This will be the "master ninja" difficulty equivalent.
Looks very nice! I managed to get at 1:27 mostly skipping all the enemies lol
Playing the 'easy' version.
Why does the tutorial have a bunch of lava pits? I don't want to be threatened with death, it makes me not want to experiment with the controls.
It took me a minute to realize that >+RT does the same dash move as v+diagdown+>. Due to the green highlight going through the prompt linearly, it looked like one combo rather than two versions... make it more clear, like at least add a divider or have the text OR between them. Also why can't I use the stick to move?
>continues in the tutorial that make you redo from the beginning
Why do special modes(gun and sword) drain energy while doing nothing? LAME. It also means if you're low on health, you can't do your more OP moves, which seems like a "the poor get poorer" situation but for bad gamers.
>continue
For the first forced high jump, I think you should make the target platform a little taller. It looks like it could *almost* be reached with a normal jump, which is bad design.
Pressing up to talk with dude had a funny look to it:
I find it interesting that the hobos don't give energy until they die. I guess getting some from each hit was only a dummy thing.
Main reason I keep dying is due to killing an enemy, and it uses up the last(or near to) my energy then I die before the killed enemy's energy reaches me. So, I guess I need to be more patient which feels counter intuitive.
I got a couple areas in but I die too easily and I don't really like fighting games so... Overall, this is probably not for me since it's a fighting game AND attacks are linked to HP. And I don't know why it has continues, I think I'd enjoy it more as a linear challenge of how to get through each area without dying, without having to worry about being sent back to the beginning every 3 deaths. Enemy designs seem fine, easy to kill but if two or more are around you may also be comboed into submission.
If I enable 240hz mode it will cause the game to crash in the intro just from walking around.
Thanks for playing and writing your thoughts down.
The tutorial is really bad right now. I wasn't going to join this DD initially, but decided last minute to cobble something together. I straight up didn't have time to separate the tutorial input prompts properly. The reason you can't use stick to move is that it is really bad for command movement. It's a fighting game thing. You should be able to remap to stick, but I don't recommend it.
I thought I had prevented jumps in the home room. Apparently not. Also thanks for the heads up on the 240hz mode
> "the poor get poorer" situation but for bad gamers.
This is very much a poor get poorer game and will stay that way even if balance adjustments are made or checkpoints added. It is core to the design. I'm not against difficulty options and better tutorials, but eventually you will have to get your ass beat.
Get the "easy" version first!!!
It feels really bad to just run out of energy walking. Kinda wish it was just a normal side scroll beatem up with these graphics.
Thanks for playing! Changing the tickrate in the settings to 60 can help with lag.
I also just put up a easy version that removes passive energy drain, reduces all energy drain when attacking and adds energy dropping dummies along all levels. I should probably add dedicated difficulty modes anyways. It's still likely pretty difficult if you're not used to the mechanics.
Interesting game.
It's got a somewhat unusual control scheme. At first I thought it was going to be a platformer but it was mostly a fighting game with some platformer elements. The jumping felt weird, it took me quite some time to get used to the platform jumping with these mechanics, especially the big jump.
The energy mechanic felt a little too punishing, I tried to get past that 2nd level with the hobos holding the sign posts, but resetting the entire level every time you die without any checkpoints really frustrated me (I'm sorry). At first I tried fighting everything in sight, but then after a few tries I realized it was easier to just skip the unimportant fights and just do the unskippable ones. Even then for some reason, some of the enemies did a lot of cheap damage, and losing 'health' every time you do a fighting move isn't very encouraging. I don't think this is a deal breaker though, but I do believe it needs some adjustments.
Maybe I missed something? Like does fighting more often makes the character stronger?
All that said, the graphics and designs look very cool, the animations looks awesome. Good job!
Thanks for playing!!!
The main issue I think is that the demo doesn't allow learning at all, You get all the mechanics frontloaded and then you get punished for trying to figure them out. The only way to really facilitate non-masochistic newcomers is to have multiple difficulty modes and there will still be friction just from the core design being so unorthodox.
For a quick band aid, I uploaded an easier version that is lot less punishing in terms of energy usage and has soft checkpoints on every level in the form of dummies that drop free energy when hit.