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Crimson Skyline - Preview's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Sound/Music | #22 | 3.857 | 3.857 |
| Art / Graphics | #65 | 3.857 | 3.857 |
| Overall Fun | #89 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
| Controls / UI | #118 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Ai Usage
AI Assisted
Genre
Action
Shooter | Platformer | Slasher | Beat em Up | Base Defense | Survival | Racing
Rating
Family Friendly
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Comments
Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 9! I'm Hythrain, one of the hosts for this event! While I'm a bit behind with getting my VODs out, I played your game on stream and wanted to send you the VOD. I make the effort to express all of my thoughts for feedback in the VOD, so I hope it's useful to you! Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7WMdtPAmRA
Amazing game!!!
The tutorial explains the game mechanics well, but I found the aircraft controllers too complicated (maybe there are other similar games with these controllers that I never played and that is why I found it so hard). For me, part of the fun of a bullet hell is about dodging a ton of bullets, and usually the controls are simpler to allow the player to master this precision, and also the bullets are more predictable. Something I liked about the game was how different the two ships play.
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah I was pretty confident about the controls but after getting many people to complain about it I reworked the tutorial to split the controls in multiple more digestible phases, doing so I added a phase where you are frozen in the air and just have to align with some markers. Trying it myself I realized it was actually not that simple to align precisely and I realized the controls real issue is this inaccuracy that I had become actually very good at countering over time playing the game.
So I improved the turning system so that it allows for accurate controls and fast turns and fast stops which made the aircraft much more accurate. Update soon TM. (it's been 3 days I'm saying it's going to be live today or tomorrow xD)
The tutorial is hard to get through. Every time I failed, I had to start from the beginning, and it really frustrated me. The sea is dark, I can't find myself when I fall into it, let alone get out.
There's no minimap or any hint for the carrier. I crashed the aircraft many times while trying to find the enemy ship. MAKE IT MORE INFORMATIVE, for me, half of the difficulty comes from a lack of information.
The aircraft is really hard to control. The sea is really hard to get out of. Maybe the difficulty is part of the gameplay, but there are many places that make people feel nervous, confused.
The aircraft fighting idea is quite creative, it makes the game stand out from normal games. The positive part is that it feels exciting when you turn around and shoot down enemy aircraft, and use other powerful skills to shoot down enemies. The game is quite a time killer if you concentrate on it.
Thanks you for giving feedback!
I've already updated the tutorial so you can no longer die on the tutorial as I've noticed it leads to frustration and skipping of the tutorial which defeats the purpose of it. So this is coming in next update today or tomorrow.
I'm a bit confused what you mean by there is no mini map, the tutorial does show you the radar (minimap) after you learn the weapons and the carrier shows up in the bottom right, maybe you didn't notice it? I'll make it so it gets highlighted and the text box is nearby it too.
Controls are a bit difficult to pick up at first that's expected if you haven't played Luftrausers basically but maybe getting into the sea is adding overwhelming and unnecessary difficulty. I might prevent that until you have managed to get through all waypoints.
I need to find ways to ease people into the controls. The thing is it's a question of feeling / getting used to it so I'm not sure how I can make this easier. Maybe I need like a GIF that really shows the concept and how the controls map to the aircraft / the screen.
I will do another iteration on the tutorial, especially to improve ease of understanding for new players who haven't played Luftrausers, I really want people not to give up because it gets a bit of time to get used to it. Designing a good tutorial that can really teach anyone is so hard (this will be 4th iteration on it xD)
And about your other feedback about health, next update also has a completely reworked HUD with exact display of health + hit overlay + regen overlay + critical integrity alarm state.
I've also added a last chance effect where if a projectile is about to kill you it triggers a slowmo + slight zoom in + black/white with only colored projectiles and aircrafts so that you can have a little chance to escape or you will be able to see very well how and why you died, it really feels amazing, especially in situations where you manage to escape like 2-3 times in a row.
Thanks for your feedback it is very helpful and gives me many things to consider to improve the game further. I think after next update the game will be in a very good state, very close to be ready for public Steam playtest!
The minimap was an issue in the previous build-Crimson Skyline, so it鈥檚 okay if it gets added for Crimson Skyline - Preview.
For the controls: I don鈥檛 think the issue lies with a GIF or tutorial. The controls simply feel too hard to handle. Maybe lower the acceleration, to make turning and stopping easier.
I played this game on stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2873552263?t=01h06m45 (My VOD seems to have split into multiple videos, so part of it may be on the next video)
Overall, I had a lot of fun! I made it to wave 3 or 4 (I can't remember), and the challenge/difficulty was nice. I mainly had a lot of trouble controlling the plane due to the thrust, rotate clockwise/counter-clockwise control system. It would be nice to have an option where up means the aircraft tries to rotate and fly upwards etc, so it's easier to control. You could still have the gravity and inertia etc, but it would make controls easier for people that prefer it that way.
The graphics were beautiful; I liked the explosions with the smoke effect. The planes were also nicely created, and each wave had different planes.
In the later waves, the ships would fire slow missiles in the air (I think?) which killed me a few times. I don't know is this already exists, but having some AOE poof that takes some time to reach and hit would be interesting from the ships, like it fires a projectile, and after some time it explodes and you die if you're in the blast radius.
Thank you very much, seeing you play was both fun and very useful for me to fix some issues! Patch incoming soon (tm). No really I'm planning update normally before Monday, a lot of things are ready already. Among other things:
- Better HUD (immersive helmet style)
- Display of exact health
- Flash overlays when taking hits, hit-stop, camera shake so you really feel them
- Critical integrity state where the whole HUD turns red with an alarm and pulsing so you feel the urgency more
- Update to the tutorial so you can't die (I feel like you skipped it cause of the death and having to redo the waypoints)
- Showing controls directly in-game (hopefully you went to check controls after you skipped but otherwise you would have played without special ability the whole time)
About the controls, it is indeed by design: the experience I want is about piloting and mastering the aircraft itself and its in my opinion core to the immersion of feeling like you are piloting and not just directing the aircraft. Basically this is first person style whereas screen-relative would be third person style.
I think you still did pretty good for no prior experience and just half an hour reaching wave 4 is not bad at all. I'm sure after a bit more time it would start to become intuitive.
The controls do surprise and confuse a lot of people though and I'm not sure how exactly I can make it easier to get into it. I'll probably improve the tutorial further, I might turn it into a mini-level instead of sending you into level 1 straight away so you get a bit more time to just fly around in safer conditions.
I might need to state that it's normal to have a bit of a hard time initially as well to encourage people to try to master it. I think my target audience won't really have a problem with this but I think there's a lot more people that would also have a great time on the game if they don't get discouraged initially by the controls. I know some of the best games I've played are games I almost gave up on on the first level (Sekiro, Risk of Rain Returns) but I'm so glad I didn't.
Yes, I do agree that it got more fun once I got more used to the controls, so if you're targeting people like me who don't have much experience with the genre, maybe there needs to be more hand-holding in the tutorial or something so we keep going till we get used to it, I'm not sure :)