tl;dw: I really like the aesthetic and the idea, but the execution is very rough (as expected at this stage in development)
3 takeaways assuming u didn't watch vid
- camera control nonexistent; its just not viable in the current climate and hasnt since... idk 2003, you need camera controls in third person games unless its fixed perspective
- bullets are very weird, it feels bad to shoot because bullets are spraying all over the place, not hitting target; bullet creation possibility tied to animation frames? i dont even think you need bullets at all, probably hitscan but thats your decision but as it stands right now its awful
- dodge feels bad; imo dodge should have iframes, it doesnt, it feels bad when you go to dodge something and still get hit you can limit how much the player has access to dodge by giving them like a meter or making it slower the more you dodge in succession, but the base dodge itself needs to feel good to use
my biggest suggestion is just research other games and find out what they're doing but i REALLY think this has tons of potential dude, great idea
Thanks for giving the demo a try. The controls are indeed clunky and the lack of a camera is terrible (cinemachine is on my todo list as you mentioned in the video, currently I have a simple follow script).
The two gameplay comments you mentioned I also agree with, the dodge does need some invincibility frame-which is something I missed out completely. Also the player's bullet speed is too slow which needs speeding up. As you could tell the whole gameplay within the demo needs A LOT of polish.
The martinis as health pick-ups was a nice suggestion :)
Absolutely juicy model, some animations are great, some are a bit stiff. Controls are... weird. I kinda got used to them, but no camera movement makes me uncomfortable.
A very interesting prototype, curious to see where you'll take it next.
Thanks I saw the stream live and it was good to see that game being played in realtime.
The terrible camera was clear during the video and I like the suggestion you made after the 1st playthrough about making the 'twirl' animation more elegant (by making it more ballerina like).
possibly the lamest jump i have ever seen. it's low, slow and it has a long wind up, making it useless at best and annoying at worst. also, not being able to even partially redirect the fall mid air is a deliberate choice that CAN work in some domains, but it's very restrictive and can exacerbate further the clunkyness the controls are completely alien. j, k and q? have you ever played a third person shooter in your life? there's a lot of effort put into the aesthetics and vibes side of things, but if the fundamental arcade loops fails then people will not stick for long. i cleared a few rooms but you should focus a lot more on the arcade feel if you want it to be fun. both movement and shooting need to be fast and reactive, don't be afraid to sacrifice realism for their sake.
I played with keyboard controls only, so I can't really speak to how it feels with a controller. I imagine it's a much better experience since the keyboard controls felt pretty rough. Having J to shoot and U/O to dodge is really unintuitive.
Some thoughts while playing:
- Why does the character only shoot in a spray pattern? The heavy reliance on auto-aim means the player can't really compensate for the recoil, so it just comes across as adding extra difficulty for no real reason. There were also quite a few times where the auto-aim locked onto the wrong enemy.
- The way the maps and enemy placement currently work, it's very common for enemies to be shooting at you from behind, so you'll often get hit without even realizing bullets were coming. With the current control scheme, there's no easy way to quickly turn around either. I think this visibility issue is one of the reasons most tank-control games tend to use a more top-down perspective.
- Dodging feels pretty awkward to use. The animation is slow, and it covers very little distance so it ends up feeling pretty unresponsive.
I like the idea of a flamboyant 1920s showgirl protagonist mowing down mobsters while dancing. It's a fun setting with a lot of personality, but I think it's currently being held back quite a bit by how janky the gameplay feels. Reading the other comments it looks like its based on a game called PN03? I never played that so maybe I'm just not the target audience.
It's odd how you get a clear card when exiting a room, considering you require backtracking to finish the level. The gameplay was awkward on keyboard, I imagine better on controller. Overall, I had an OK time, but I mainly was fighting the controls/camera. It got easier once I realized she autoaims as soon as they get in sight, so you can just spray ASAP and win usually.
I read the keybinds from your game page so knowing them wasn't an issue, but when playing they felt terrible, two hands on keyboard was really awkward
Also I must have forgotten that Q was start because I read 'press start' in the game and that wasn't working so I pressed all keys until the game started. For keyboard I'd suggest Q and E to dodge, click to shoot, space to jump and enter to start. If you don't want to use click, use shift to shoot. Change target can be tab
Difficulty seems nonexistant, the biggest problem is fighting the controls, not the npcs. If I'm not wrong, you can just stand still spamming the shoot button and you just win because of the target aim. The camera also wasn't helping, I'd love to control it with the mouse, but if I can't at least make the rotation snap faster, it was really unhelpful when against other walls.
Is there more than one level? I think I pressed all keys when I finished the first one but I couldn't leave the stat page. It's hard to say if the game is fun with this short amount of content.
Thanks for giving the demo a try. I'll have to double check the transition screen for bugs as usually a click of the fire button progresses to the next area (although the demo only contains 3 areas so you are correct in that it is short).
I agree with the camera comment, for me it is the weakest part of the demo and needs major work if I continue. There's been a few comments on the enemy attack patterns, difficulty too so there's been some good learnings taking away from DD69.
I don't know if it was a bug or I'm just bery dumb, but I couldn't control the game with a keyboard. The game showed me a Joystick layout, and I tried pressing a ton of buttons but only WASD worked. This may be a journalist-tier review, but in a sense, if I couldn't figure the most basic controls out right away than I consider that a huge demerit.
It is heavily inspired the PN03, a very cool and stylish game. I wanted a project to improve my 3D work and animations and decided to try to mimic it, but in a 1930s style.
I first have the "dodge" mapped to L/R just like in the PN03 game. But I found dodging with the right stick felt natural too so I left it mapped to both for the demo to see if there was a preference. (Although I need to add some camera controls and I'm not sure how that will map yet).
If I continue with the project, I do want to add some boss fights and have the grunts attempt with different strategies to improve the gameplay.
First off, I thought the name Tammy gal might be a fit since Tammy is a woman’s name.(I know Tommy is the gun)
It feels like an arcade game, but plays a bit slower than I’d like.
-3 enemies per level feels low, I think some sort of wave system would be nice
-walk is very slow
-jump has a quirky animation(not necessarily bad considering the game) but covers very little space slowly. I’d prefer a more snappy one that covers more distance(This doesn’t promote jump to be the best mode of movement if you make the movement faster as a whole)
-I’d like it if the dodge covered more distance so I could dodge an incoming burst reliably with one roll
-I think there’s not enough warning for the first enemy in map 2/you should have more space advantage(for dodging) or warning (spawn position) advantage for it to be fair.
-locking on enemies could turn you towards them, in case you are looking away and unaware.
-My lives ended in the double encounter after getting the yellow key. It might take more experience than what I have to manage positioning successfully but it felt unfun with the current control scheme and movement speed.
I do agree with the animations, they are a little floaty (my previous project had the same issue, its something I need to improve on) and they do hinder the gameplay somewhat. I do have some tasks to improve the animations and the 3D model before the next demo, including the dodge distance. I like your suggestion on the targeting too, it makes complete sense.
I think with some better level design, and giving the enemies more structure attack patterns as you mention I could improve the fun too. hopefully.
Comments
vid:
tl;dw: I really like the aesthetic and the idea, but the execution is very rough (as expected at this stage in development)3 takeaways assuming u didn't watch vid
- camera control nonexistent; its just not viable in the current climate and hasnt since... idk 2003, you need camera controls in third person games unless its fixed perspective
- bullets are very weird, it feels bad to shoot because bullets are spraying all over the place, not hitting target; bullet creation possibility tied to animation frames? i dont even think you need bullets at all, probably hitscan but thats your decision but as it stands right now its awful
- dodge feels bad; imo dodge should have iframes, it doesnt, it feels bad when you go to dodge something and still get hit you can limit how much the player has access to dodge by giving them like a meter or making it slower the more you dodge in succession, but the base dodge itself needs to feel good to use
my biggest suggestion is just research other games and find out what they're doing but i REALLY think this has tons of potential dude, great idea
Thanks for giving the demo a try. The controls are indeed clunky and the lack of a camera is terrible (cinemachine is on my todo list as you mentioned in the video, currently I have a simple follow script).
The two gameplay comments you mentioned I also agree with, the dodge does need some invincibility frame-which is something I missed out completely. Also the player's bullet speed is too slow which needs speeding up. As you could tell the whole gameplay within the demo needs A LOT of polish.
The martinis as health pick-ups was a nice suggestion :)
Thanks for the video (I did give it a watch)
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2816049469
Absolutely juicy model, some animations are great, some are a bit stiff. Controls are... weird. I kinda got used to them, but no camera movement makes me uncomfortable.
A very interesting prototype, curious to see where you'll take it next.
Thanks I saw the stream live and it was good to see that game being played in realtime.
The terrible camera was clear during the video and I like the suggestion you made after the 1st playthrough about making the 'twirl' animation more elegant (by making it more ballerina like).
possibly the lamest jump i have ever seen. it's low, slow and it has a long wind up, making it useless at best and annoying at worst. also, not being able to even partially redirect the fall mid air is a deliberate choice that CAN work in some domains, but it's very restrictive and can exacerbate further the clunkyness
the controls are completely alien. j, k and q? have you ever played a third person shooter in your life?
there's a lot of effort put into the aesthetics and vibes side of things, but if the fundamental arcade loops fails then people will not stick for long. i cleared a few rooms but you should focus a lot more on the arcade feel if you want it to be fun. both movement and shooting need to be fast and reactive, don't be afraid to sacrifice realism for their sake.
I played with keyboard controls only, so I can't really speak to how it feels with a controller. I imagine it's a much better experience since the keyboard controls felt pretty rough. Having J to shoot and U/O to dodge is really unintuitive.
Some thoughts while playing:
- Why does the character only shoot in a spray pattern? The heavy reliance on auto-aim means the player can't really compensate for the recoil, so it just comes across as adding extra difficulty for no real reason. There were also quite a few times where the auto-aim locked onto the wrong enemy.
- The way the maps and enemy placement currently work, it's very common for enemies to be shooting at you from behind, so you'll often get hit without even realizing bullets were coming. With the current control scheme, there's no easy way to quickly turn around either. I think this visibility issue is one of the reasons most tank-control games tend to use a more top-down perspective.
- Dodging feels pretty awkward to use. The animation is slow, and it covers very little distance so it ends up feeling pretty unresponsive.
I like the idea of a flamboyant 1920s showgirl protagonist mowing down mobsters while dancing. It's a fun setting with a lot of personality, but I think it's currently being held back quite a bit by how janky the gameplay feels. Reading the other comments it looks like its based on a game called PN03? I never played that so maybe I'm just not the target audience.
It's odd how you get a clear card when exiting a room, considering you require backtracking to finish the level. The gameplay was awkward on keyboard, I imagine better on controller. Overall, I had an OK time, but I mainly was fighting the controls/camera. It got easier once I realized she autoaims as soon as they get in sight, so you can just spray ASAP and win usually.
I read the keybinds from your game page so knowing them wasn't an issue, but when playing they felt terrible, two hands on keyboard was really awkward
Also I must have forgotten that Q was start because I read 'press start' in the game and that wasn't working so I pressed all keys until the game started. For keyboard I'd suggest Q and E to dodge, click to shoot, space to jump and enter to start. If you don't want to use click, use shift to shoot. Change target can be tab
Difficulty seems nonexistant, the biggest problem is fighting the controls, not the npcs. If I'm not wrong, you can just stand still spamming the shoot button and you just win because of the target aim. The camera also wasn't helping, I'd love to control it with the mouse, but if I can't at least make the rotation snap faster, it was really unhelpful when against other walls.
Is there more than one level? I think I pressed all keys when I finished the first one but I couldn't leave the stat page. It's hard to say if the game is fun with this short amount of content.
vod:
Thanks for giving the demo a try. I'll have to double check the transition screen for bugs as usually a click of the fire button progresses to the next area (although the demo only contains 3 areas so you are correct in that it is short).
I agree with the camera comment, for me it is the weakest part of the demo and needs major work if I continue. There's been a few comments on the enemy attack patterns, difficulty too so there's been some good learnings taking away from DD69.
I don't know if it was a bug or I'm just bery dumb, but I couldn't control the game with a keyboard. The game showed me a Joystick layout, and I tried pressing a ton of buttons but only WASD worked. This may be a journalist-tier review, but in a sense, if I couldn't figure the most basic controls out right away than I consider that a huge demerit.
I thought I added the controls on the game page but I didn't
Keyboard Controls if needed.
WASD - movement
Q - start
U/O - Dodge Left & Right
J - Shoot
L - Jump
I - Change Target
i enjoyed it, seems inspired by PN03 could it be?
i vastly prefer dodging with the right stick which makes me wonder why not bind shoot to the right trigger?
i dont know what jumping achieves tbh.
aside from that, pretty nice, i wonder how the gameplay could be expanded for more complex fights
It is heavily inspired the PN03, a very cool and stylish game. I wanted a project to improve my 3D work and animations and decided to try to mimic it, but in a 1930s style.
I first have the "dodge" mapped to L/R just like in the PN03 game. But I found dodging with the right stick felt natural too so I left it mapped to both for the demo to see if there was a preference. (Although I need to add some camera controls and I'm not sure how that will map yet).
If I continue with the project, I do want to add some boss fights and have the grunts attempt with different strategies to improve the gameplay.
Thank you for testing the game.
First off, I thought the name Tammy gal might be a fit since Tammy is a woman’s name.(I know Tommy is the gun)
It feels like an arcade game, but plays a bit slower than I’d like.
-3 enemies per level feels low, I think some sort of wave system would be nice
-walk is very slow
-jump has a quirky animation(not necessarily bad considering the game) but covers very little space slowly. I’d prefer a more snappy one that covers more distance(This doesn’t promote jump to be the best mode of movement if you make the movement faster as a whole)
-I’d like it if the dodge covered more distance so I could dodge an incoming burst reliably with one roll
-I think there’s not enough warning for the first enemy in map 2/you should have more space advantage(for dodging) or warning (spawn position) advantage for it to be fair.
-locking on enemies could turn you towards them, in case you are looking away and unaware.
-My lives ended in the double encounter after getting the yellow key. It might take more experience than what I have to manage positioning successfully but it felt unfun with the current control scheme and movement speed.
Thanks for testing the demo.
I do agree with the animations, they are a little floaty (my previous project had the same issue, its something I need to improve on) and they do hinder the gameplay somewhat. I do have some tasks to improve the animations and the 3D model before the next demo, including the dodge distance. I like your suggestion on the targeting too, it makes complete sense.
I think with some better level design, and giving the enemies more structure attack patterns as you mention I could improve the fun too. hopefully.
Its interesting, maybe not my type of game tho... i wish the keyboard buttons were clearer at the initial screen.