Had a lot of fun with this game! Movement felt alright and level design seemed pretty good. Explored a couple different routes and liked what I saw. The game reminds me a lot of early Zelda, which is a good thing. I think having an inventory to store or at least not be able to pickup food would be fun. Could also maybe have coins you could collect to buy objects from a store if you had an inventory. Finally a story or some dialogue would also add a lot of character to this game. Still really like what is here and enjoyed playing, good job.
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Improvement Summary
This is our first update since submitting the game to the Juniper Dev jam. It is still in a fairly early state. We did a fair amount of updating to much of the game. The dungeons have been reworked based on now playing through all 4, rather than only one at a time. There is now a final dungeon, instead of just a boss fight. New tools have been added. The UI has been tweaked. Difficulty has been adjusted, though in its current state it is tough to beat, as there is no save/continue yet.
Devlog
https://dragonsisle.itch.io/dungeon-revolution/devlog/1611505/040-post-jam-update
Requested Feedback/Comments for Reviewers
How does the game feel? Do you think it is a good base? We plan to make this into a small game that will be sold. The current plan is to stick with the current 4 initial dungeons and unlocked final dungeon design, fleshing them out for the full version.
Comments
Thanks for playing and the feedback.
We did use (S)NES Zelda as part of our inspiration for what defines the style of game. With that as our inspiration, picking up items as you walk over them, even if you don't need them, feels more in line with the style. We are working on adding a way to heal in the dungeons beyond finding food, as well as better spreading the healing items out. Currently the plan is to add another tool you can find in the dungeon, such as a wand, that has a limited number of uses before needing to be recharged. When you first find it, it will have a max of 1 charge. Later, in the final dungeon, you will find an upgrade to increase the max charges to 2. In each dungeon there will be a limited number of recharge items. These will be like bombs where you can't pick them up if don't have the Tool, and also if you are at max charges.
Having a shop to buy stuff is a neat idea, but may be beyond the scope we want for this game. We will need to see how it goes. If the game does well, we will likely create a bigger game of the style with an overworld. That would have shops and other features. We will see how the game feels as we flesh it out, as to what, and how much, more is needed.
We definitely need to add a bit of story. We haven't decided what it will be yet, but it will be kept small and simple. Just a little something to add life to the world.
Glad you enjoyed. The kids have been having fun working on this. After almost a year mostly working on Hungry, it has been nice to do something different.
Like a 2D top-down action game, the game feel exciting to play. Controls are snappy easy to understand. The level design is quite good also. I didn't get to finish all levels due to getting killed and losing all progress. I don't particular enjoy losing all the progress that have been made after getting killed. It just frustrates me that I have to do it all over again.
I like using all the abilities, I wish there is a keyboard shortcut to toggle abilities. If there already is, I just missed it then, a quick pop-up will do great. The flute magic to make the water enemies vulnerable is too short. And I don't feel there's any change to the upgraded sword. I wish the sword range become further though. But, all in all, I feel all abilities have their appropriate purpose. During Skeleton Mage boss fights, I use the bomb and running around lot, it is very satisfying to hit multiple enemies at once! (Kinda wish the blast radius is a bit wider too though)
Since you are planning to make this into a commercial project, I will comment from a potential buyer's perspective. There's currently no motivation (or hook) for me to want to buy it. For this kind of game, there must be a compelling motivation behind, a simple short story at the beginning of the game would do the trick.
Since this is very similar to Link's Awakening or Binding of Isaac, I would rather just play those games instead due to the level of polish. Binding of Isaac is appealing to its unique artstyle and theme. While Link's Awakening was very early to market and they have high level of polish quality. So, to make me interested in buying, you would have to (a) have a unique theme with compelling background story; and/or (b) have higher level quality of polish compared to existing games in the market.
But this is me, other players may buy the game for other reasons.
But the base of the game is there. It's still in a very early stage to be an appealing commercial project. You should work out the appeal factor for some time first.
Submitted
Project RallyThanks for playing and the feedback.
We plan to make it a commercial game, but it is very early in development. We only have less than 2 weeks of work on it so far. Maybe we didn't need to include the comments about where it is headed, but it also helps to get early feedback that can help to shape it and make sure we aren't missing anything that might be obvious to others.
We plan to add an option to continue playing with some progress kept, such as gained Tools & Abilities, and probably a save feature. We agree that it is not fun to lose everything and start over, but all of our time working on it so far has gone into getting the core in place.
For now you have to select your Tools on the menu. The default to show it is E. We are thinking about options for changing tools and how best to implement it.
All Tools & Abilities are going to be refined. We will take another look at the whistle duration, and check on the sword damage. We intentionally limited the bomb radius to make sure it wasn't too powerful, though we will continue to evaluate it and maybe it can get a small bump in size.
We don't currently have any story, but do acknowledge that there will need to be something. We want to get a good core gameplay working before we do any story so we don't go down the same feature creep rabbit hole we did with Hungry For Loot and let the game get out of hand. We are taking inspiration from (S)NES Zelda games and similar games from the era. Right now we are using an asset pack, but are likely going to do at least some art of our own, and maybe do fully custom to have a more distinct look, depending on time. We will definitely be doing a lot more polish before we put this up for sale.
Thanks again for giving great feedback to us, and to the other games in our jam!
This patch has so much added since the last one.
I still cannot believe the game before was made in two days. The amount of content you have is extremely impressive, there seems to be enough here for 2+ hrs easily(maybe more).
I played for a sold 30 mins exploring different dungeons, defeated a few bosses but still haven’t been able to finish any dungeon completely.
The unlocking of weapons feels very satisfying.
The movement felt much more fluid and satisfying than before! The dash along with the new movement and terrains was quite nice and smooth. I like baiting people, hitting them with a weapon and then changing directions.
- Boss battles are really satisfying.
Points for improvements:
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The projectiles that hit walls seem to disappear even if they are not aimed at the wall. This feels extremely weird for arrows that were never pointed at the walls just get wasted because you are shooting from the edge of a wall. Same for boulder spell. There are some passages where the boulder spawns and instantly disappears and goes into cooldown. I am ok with boulder not being good at passages but this must be explained in some other way(maybe some animation?) or at least have it not go on cooldown.
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the scaled up sprites looked weird. I am assuming you will swap their textures eventually.
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HP bars for enemies would help
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The enemies keep colliding with walls around 90 degree edges, making it either too easy to kill them or too difficult (mostly too easy).
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Going back to eat food to gain HP gets boring quickly. Food also gets collected when you are full which feels very unsatisfying. I would like a food inventory and food as a consumable. It might seem like this will make the game too easy, but I would still recommend testing it out. Right now most of my deaths happen because I am too lazy to backtrack just for HP and keep thinking “1 heart is more than enough for this boss” lol. (I don’t know if there’s an item in the unexplored dungeons that allows you to collect food, even so it would be good to make food inventory default)
This has potential as a commercial game given some polish.
Thanks for playing and the feedback.
This game has been pretty quick to work on. This update was about a week of work for the kids, and about 2 days for me as I only joined in after the Hungry update. We absolutely want to finish Hungry, but may need to consider if this style is where we are better suited currently. Our first ever jam game, Recharge Your Rocket, was also more of this style.
Without being able to continue after defeat it can be tough to get through until you learn the dungeons and enemy patterns. There is also a bit of trying each and seeing which is easiest for you and your play style, so you can unlock things to make the others easier. In some cases you may find a certain tool you really like and want to partially complete certain dungeons to get the upgrades before going through to complete any of them.
Drat. I saw the projectile issue while testing something else and forgot to fix it or put in a ticket. It will be fixed in the next update. The projectiles are always spawning pointing to the right, which can cause them to collide with things they shouldn't before they get rotated to point where they should. I'll take a look at the boulder as well and see about improving the visuals and collision detection of these. Maybe we will have the boulders use a smaller collision shape for detecting walls to despawn so it can better go down paths, while still having a good size for detecting enemies.
For this game we are currently working with an asset pack, so the kids just scaled the images up when they wanted bigger enemies. We haven't decided if we are going to stick with the asset pack or make our own. Likely it will be a hybrid to not delay the game while we try make all the art.
We will think about the HP bars, probably making it a difficulty option. They can be nice, but sometimes it is also nice to not know exactly how much HP they have/have left. For the games that inspired this one HP bars are not as common, but making a modern game they ado tend to be preferred.
I need to do more work on the enemy path finding/navigation. I also want to add some logic to make them less likely to simply walk into a pit, especially around the corners.
I'm not sure on collecting food, but we do plan to add your classic healing potions/spells as an option with the ability to refill somewhere. The kids did the large pile of food at the start, and I'm not sure what I think of it. We will probably reduce that, and instead better balance the food/healing throughout the dungeons. The core gameplay is inspired by classic (S)NES games like Zelda.
Thanks again. This was great feedback!
Now that you mention it, perhaps HP bar might not be that important. I kind of already more from 1 playthrough the HP bars for most of the enemies.
Loving the direction you are taking this.
I think I have kind of a plan to win a dungeon but I am constantly hit by shiny object syndrome and always want to know what’s on the other side of another dungeon! So I never stick to any plan and just late fate guide my decisions. 😂 ( This is a good sign in my opinion, means the game has a strong element if exploration)
You can easily turn this into a larger game in my opinion. And if you are able to add so much good and replayable content so quickly this just might be a great fit! 🤔
Loving the direction you are taking this!
Going between dungeons to get the shinies is a valid tactic! It can make the bosses easier, especially if you get some of the extra HP boosts.
The current rough plan is for this to stay short so we can get something out, with this being intended for the co-op bundle. Then we will look at either starting on a larger game in this style with an overworld and more story. We may also first look at restarting and finishing Recharge Your Rocket. We were still very early in learning Godot with that one, so had to cut a lot for the jam. In the current version you mostly only play in the overworld, with a bit of the initial building having been added. We had planned for you to enter the buildings at each energy site as well, with them being short dungeons. With our current skills it should not take too long to rebuild the game in Godot 4 and finish the additional content we wanted for it.
Glad you are enjoying the game! It is still early, but we are happy with how it is shaping up.
Since you plan to make this into a commercial product I will try to adjust my feedback accordingly.
The movement have feels a bit off when you first try it.
It seems that the type of floor you are on affects the movement. I prefer the slower snappier movement from dessert/grass areas than the faster sliding one (that one feels like it needs more work).
The flute is really nice, so far is my favorite concept in the game.
I would strongly recommend adding a indication that your attacks do nothing to the water enemies. Like a line of dialog "oh, I can't seem to do damage to water" or something.
The bombs I would say were my least favorite weapon of choice, mainly because of how small the explosion is.
I do think that it is quite hard to balance this weapon.
Some of the maps felt really confining, unnecessarily so.
The black squares/holes felt a bit unforgiving, Also im not sure how much sense do they make, I think I would prefer something like lava.
I could not open the room for the boss on my second attempt even after getting the key and defeating all the enemies. Not sure if that is a bug or if is something I did not do or mby I needed to reset the game.
So, is this a good base for a game?
Yes, I do believe so. The animations, the art and the mechanics are there.
Some bugfixing must be done ofc but I guess that will be fixed with time.
Here are some other bugs I found:
Attacking through walls,
Not being able to change the sound settings after starting the game.
Spikes traps not working (in some areas? - did not test all of them since some I avoided intuitively)
This game feels a bit like Necesse, so on the more commercial aspect I would ask what makes this game stand out from similar games?
Mby when/if you add the story, the question will answer itself...
The game has some charm to it. I can see the effort that has been put into it while I play it, especially with the monsters attack patterns.
Good job making this and wish you the best of luck! Hope that my feedback is at least of some help.
Submitted
Hasten (alpha)Thanks for playing and the feedback.
I appreciate the feedback looking at it from a commercial viewpoint. It does change how to look at a project. While we are planning it to be commercial, the current project has less than 2 weeks of work in it, so is pretty rough. Still, keeping the goal in mind will help to shape it properly. You have some good points that we need to think on.
I agree with you on the movement. I do not like how it feels right now, and it is high on my list of things to refine, but ran out of time before the jam after fixing bugs.
Glad you like the flute, We wanted to have unique enemies and different ways to defeat them, and are happy with how that turned out.
We will look into better feedback when your weapon in ineffective.
We are trying to balance the bombs more as utility, and less as a main damage dealer. They can get good for groups of enemies, and needed for some, but generally take a bit more timing and effort to use well. We will be refining them further, but don't want them to be too powerful.
We were inspired by classic (S)NES Zelda and similar games, which is where falling in the pits causing damage came from. In the original jam version of this game you lost as soon as you fell in, but we changed it to do damage and respawn at the entry in this version, as the instant loss felt too harsh. I agree that taking damage and respawning does feel a bit unrealistic. We will think on it. Lava will likely be added at some point to give more variety.
We will double check the boss room unlocks. It could be a bug. Which boss was it that you had trouble with?
We are aware that some attacks can go through barriers, especially if you are close. We haven't decided if we want them to be half-height walls that you can attack over or not. Plenty of the classic games we are taking inspiration from do allow attacking through some barriers, so we are debating how it feels and which way to go with it.
I really need to work on an in-game menu for settings in our template. It keeps getting pushed down the road.
We will check the spike traps for any that are not working.
I'm not familiar with Necesse. We will take a look at it.
Right now we are focusing more on making the core game feel good. There isn't any story yet. The jam theme was "Spin to Win", which is where some of the spinning things come from. We are thinking of keeping some of that and adding rooms where the whirlwind is used to spin things as a puzzle mechanic. Beyond that we don't really have anything distinctive to market on. We will need to think on that. This is meant to be a smaller game that we don't want to let ourselves go crazy with scope creep, like we did with our main one, so we need to find a good balance of something fun that will be worth buying, but also not make it too big. If it does well enough we may do a larger game in this style with an overworld and exploring to find different dungeons, and likely other mechanics for outside the dungeons.
Thanks again for the great feedback!
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