itch.io

Hi etaranta!

I played your game for a bit — I don't have a mouse, so did a handicapped touchpad run 😅 So feedback would be a bit different from your regular player.

The game feels fantastic, and I didn't understand at first how much I missed gesture-based input in games. Using it in such a shooter is super fun, and for me gestures were readable and easy to execute. This may be because of a touchpad, since I struggled with aiming instead.

On the Retina screen text and visuals look a bit blurry, not sure if game accounts for high DPI screens, or I just didn't turn on some setting.

And because of the touchpad, I got killed in the second large room, after getting a pistol and teleporting a few times up-right. I respawned in the original room, but weren't able to teleport back to the room I died, and there were no other signs from a game telling how to proceed at that stage. So I stopped there and decided to write you these findings.

I think I will find my mouse, and play a bit more from the start — the game feels right up in my alley!

Cheers!

Ah, and also some UI symbols (I suppose emojis) did not render correctly for me, here is a screenshot of one of those places

Hey Darius256!

I played your game, in the browser, and had a really fun time with it! I will put the friction points I encountered, and things that I noted in no arbitrary order:

At some point I got a crash — I included error from Chrome console and playtest recordings here in the archive (the link will expire in 3 days, let me know if you miss it) https://limewire.com/d/iBJyK#qrLWElu6Ef

The crash happened after day 7 or 8, I tried to drag a coin, and it just completely froze. Reloading the browser page helped, and progress was saved.

I played with the touchpad on a macbook. The very first attempt was hard, I completely failed at day 5, and did not know how to recover, so restarted the run.

Then in the last run I got to the cavalry, and again got obliterated and weren't able to recover. Maybe I missed something, but I really did not see a way to recover — I had many archers killed, and they were no match for the enemies anymore.

The ducking mechanic felt weird to me, and I kept ignoring it. I tried it a few times, saw that i still get hit, and stopped using it for the most of the run

At my second attempt I played more aggressively, and it felt really nice! I think on the touch screen it should feel amazing. I liked shooting so much that even crash did not stop me from paying more :)
І дуже дякую за український переклад :)

Feel free to ping me if you want more feedback, or want to ask questions that I didn't cover here. Cheers!

Hey Darius256, thanks a lot for playing Wheevil!

I will definitely communicate better the dash availability, maybe make a separate tutorial chamber dedicated for that. I have updated the game with properly drawn and animated character, so maybe it will help. In the version you played, the character turned blue when the dash was used, and the dash can be used only once before touching the ground.

Regarding the doors — I am planning to use them for a few metapuzzles, so for now saving their unlocked state only after you leave the chamber. I will flesh out more of the world itself, and revisit the doors, maybe this behavior won't be necessary

I am trying to find a proper balance between it being ruthless precision platformer, but at the same time I am planning the main route to be accessible for players new to the genre (hence that current tutorial stretch in the beginning, and fixation on some repeating maneuvers).

And, of course, thanks for the comparison with N :)

I viewed your run, wow, 40 minutes! :)

I especially loved that you were stubborn enough to even enter the very first flower area :) Maybe I should put an easier flower first — cause this one is definitely beyond a skill of a novice player

Thanks a lot once again!

Hey etaranta!

Thank you so much for trying Wheevil! Your notes were the very first feedback outside of my friends circle (and frustrated wife), and filled my morning with excitement :D Especially when you said it hooked you enough to keep playing: despite some ruthless challenges, I want to keep Wheevil's main route approachable-ish to more casual players.

I will address the pacing, the map, and difficulty spikes like in the level with Timing is Key in later builds. The current one is a compressed world I made for playtesting. In the end I plan to have interconnected world akin to VVVVVV or The End is Nigh, and the map will help a lot to hunt the flowers and secrets, and maybe will support a fast travel mechanic.

Spacebar is natural, but specifically in precision platforming I prefer to have zxc as controls: that way they allow very precise combinations, while space is a bit janky when you press it at the edge. Also, zxc is reminiscent of the arcade machines keys layouts :)

Same goes for drag, missing double-tap for dash, and dash without a direction input: they feel like a friction if you are familiar with traditional platforming, but unlock a lot of speedrunning and hardcore challenges. I am trying to hit that sweet spot where the novice player would suffer a bi more compared to traditional platformers, but get enough experience with the controls to start evaluating more complex flowers.

"I’m pretty sure I’m pressing ‘c’ within the swing radius, and often it doesn’t do anything" — I made it so you roughly must face the hook point to be able to grapple to it. And I am not sure that was the right decision, honestly, and the more I see players being confused by it, the more I think I should rethink it.

"time checks or multi-key input" is a great idea. I may think of adding more relaxed controls as a difficulty setting.

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If it won't be a burden to you, may I ask you to send me your run data?

The game records all your movement, so I can replay it and analyze where you were stuck, where my in-game instructions were not clear, and what tweaks I may need to do. It does not gather any info on you or your machine (or keypresses outside the game) — and it is a gzipped json you can look into to confirm that I really log only your in-game stuff :) You can send those to me via email, or upload somewhere. In the very bottom of the main menu there is an "Export run data" item, which will export your run

Hey para1992!

I played the game up until the dark level

And I had a lot of fun! :) I do love platformers a lot, and love when they introduce original mechanics, so you hit a sweet spot for me.

I didn't immediately understand how to fight the beetle before the snail boss in the candle room, still somehow managed to get it, but then ran away with one heart when more beetles appeared. And then somehow beat the snail boss on that one heart :) I saw that the beetle telegraphs when it is open to damage (or at least I am reading it like that), but still struggled to figure out if I need to dash into it, or jump on it. Not a bad thing, mind you — it reminded me a lot about playing NES-era games at home with zero ideas on how to beat some enemies, and trying again and again :)

And even when I dashed into a crate, and fell down the pit, I did not feel the game is not honest — that death was 100% on me

I found an unexpected at first interaction: during the dash I can press the opposite arrow key, and the dash will continue to the opposite direction. Not sure if this is intended.

I missed some in-game music, especially during the boss battle

I feel like I will return to the game a bit later, really want to see what else you got there, since the trailer has shown some tasty things.

І, звісно, побачити Кривий Ріг було вишенькою на торті :)

Hey besinblack!

I played the tutorial and the first campaign level. I will play more (I love those puzzle-adjacent board games :)), but I want to highlight the immediate thing that got me confused first.

In the tutorial, when I place the last sector piece to my cell, it spreads out to neighboring cells, including enemy cells. In tutorial, all the places where my sectors spread to were empty — so I assumed this is a rule (yep, new players do that :D). I played the campaign level with this assumption, and ofc got obliterated by the enemy, who has shown me that they can freely spread into my cells, no matter if those cells have a filled sector facing the enemy cell.

That is, of course, on me — but maybe it would make sense to add en explicit demo of this case to the tutorial?

Cheers!

Hi Yee95!

I played your charming little game :) Got to level 42.

I am definitely not a target audience, being a dude loving hardcore puzzles and games, so the difficulty of the puzzles itself was trivial for me, and I just allowed myself to enjoy the simplicity and watching the poop travel. Sometimes everyone needs that :D

That said, I caught one thing that may help you. When I launch, I watch on the launch power meter itself, and nearly never see that animation the poop makes during it, since launch meter and the poop are in two different sides of the screen. Maybe it would make sense to either mirror the levels to bring the poop closer to the meter, or bring the launch hud to the poop on the left, so both of them will be in sight?

Cheers :)

Hey Wiings3
I tried to play the game for some time, around half an hour, but hard-bounced a bit after the tutorial of buying linen. Please, do not treat my rambling as "your game is bad" — I am just writing the feedback immediately after playing, so I am trying to preserve a bit of frustration, while trying my best not to sound offensive 😅

I feel that the core game loop is hidden behind a million menus, mechanics, and descriptions. There is too much stuff on the screen at all times that feels not relevant to me as a new player. The worse part is that some hints and tooltips look like they intend to explain things, but they use another in-game terminology that I am not familiar with. So I look at a hint trying to understand what some thing means, and the hint does not explain it.
Here is an example. I go to mercenaries. I see I have a woodcutter. They have "logging 3" written in there. I hover over a mercenary and see "Traits: Greedy" in a hint. I still have no idea what Logging is, but now I also have no idea what Greedy is. Then I look at the right side of UI — and it has Traits and Skills panels with Logging and Greedy in it. I hover over Logging there, and see "Trade levels rise with experience. Higher levels haul more and unlock better sites". I hover over the Greedy trait, and see "Greedy (common): keeps 5% more of the haul".
So now I have more questions. What are trade levels and how are they related to a mercenary? Are "higher levels" related to trade levels, or it talks about a level of logging skill itself, or about mercenary level? Why does the game specify that Greedy is common? What is haul, is it about expeditions, or descent, or both? It feels like the game itself knows about its systems and flexes with that knowledge, while I have no clue what those mean, and where can I get some info on those.

And this is only one "logging 3" resulting in utter confusion of your novice player me :)

Then tutorial asks me to buy linen, and helpfully highlights the "Market" tab. In there, I need to click "all", and scroll through a huge list of items without any apparent order (maybe there is some logical order, but as a novice I see just an unsorted list of things that I don't know about) to find one of them. And I scrolled it twice, because it has so many things, that on the first scroll I missed linen. After that, I checked other tabs, to find "linen" in a "crafted" tab — but I had no idea that it will be there.

After that endeavor, I finally get to the helmet crafting screen, and see "Rolls Common 60%, Fine 28% (+1 stat), Superior 10% (+2), Masterwork 2% (+3). Can roll Nimble, Swift, Precise, Hale, Hasty.". What are those words? Why are they important to me?

Still, I proceed, and tutorial drops this at me:

"Your guild is running

Clear the Webbed Halls and their stairs stay open: the Bone Knight waits above them. Beat him and the deeper sites open to your crews. Heroes eat a ration a floor, so keep a fisher or hunter working. Long orders keep crews working overnight. More heroes and more crews come with gold and reputation. Somewhere below, Aldren is waiting. Esc opens Settings."

AND THAT IS A LOT OF STUFF TO SWALLOW AT ONCE :D. The settings remark was when I decided to go and write the feedback.

So, my takeaway is that I weren't able to engage with a game in full, because I lost a boss battle with the UI and systems presentation.

Also, I didn't get what am I supposed to do while some expedition happens on a timer. Do I wait and stare at it, or do I try to study the UI somehow, or do I go to some other menu for some other activity?

Same goes with the battle. I see I can use some ability that stabs and makes an enemy bleed, as stated in a hint. But I can't make a decision to use it, because I do not know how much damage it will do compared to some other ability. I can't compare them, because I do not get information I need to be able to compare them! 

And I loved the visual design! I love deep systemic games. I would love to play more of your game in the future! Just right now it feels like the game does not help me to understand itself enough to have fun playing it

Hey there!

I played your game around 40 minutes, got mixed feelings.

On one end, the core loop got me hooked, and I did want to level up, and get the boss unlocked. And I want to play more, because even after my rant below I liked the game itself :)

On another, as for me, the information density is just too much, and structure is very interleaved. On each screen there is a lot of different things described one after another. And as a new player, I assume all that information is important to me right now, so I read about complete errand, cellar risky heat, trophies, miniboss that I just defeated info, goal that I can close in the office which I did not yet unlocked and was trying to find, and a risky challenge of investigating the boss rumor. And that was before I even scrolled a panel.

The issue may be not the amount of text itself. My another problem was that most of the text assumes that I already know what it talks about, or where in UI the "company" is, or what "heat", "company", "Bisquit", or "sandwiches" are. Hints talk about them, but I don't know what those are yet.

With "Soup pot upgraded. Look at the office", maybe you would make some animation highlighting the newly appearing thing? I caught myself staring at the picture trying to understand what changed multiple times :)

With errand types at first I picked the safe option, then switched to risky after seeing 95% there. I was just slightly tempted by "weird" after seeing some tooltip, but never took one.

And stopped I because I decided to write a feedback while the first feel is still here :) I will play a bit more now (somehow I got a pet and another page of words I don't know about yet, but I am very interested in how long the game would be able to pull this unknown words trick on me).

And I would gladly return to check the more polished version!

Cheers!

I honestly had a lot of fun playing your game :) It really reminded me the golden era of flash games, and ofc Crayon Physics. I honestly missed some in-game music, and this is may be the only thing that bothered me even a tiny bit. Would you take "I absolutely loved it" as a feedback? :)

I really want to try it, screenshots look very nice!
But for me, on a macbook, instructions are very small, and I don't see very well :( 

I weren't able to do anything, since space scrolled the browser page, and I just died without any understanding of what even happened. And after three times the game said that I need to buy it. Either make a playtest build, or give us the code :)

I recorded my very first attempt for you:

I read your game description to focus on the feedback you want (or what affected me personally), but if you need more — feel free to ping me

Personally for me, the controls felt too tight for the genre. I would probably try lowering the gravity just a bit, maybe around 4-10%

2:00 — these underground zombies hit me a lot. I needed to memorize that that empty zone has underground zombies, and consciously stop before that place. Maybe some cue would be good? Or if there is a cue, and I didn't see it, maybe it should be more prominent?

3:30 — this death felt completely unearned :) Hitboxes don't feel honest to me

4:25 — Variable height jump is fun, but there was at least one place where I died because of it, and it did not feel good

Some foreground elements do not block the path, but some (like a car, or that thingy at 5:45) do — and I can't tell the difference, so relied only on memorizing it

Ninjas felt like a boss battle at first. I completely accidentally figured out that I can use a sword to kick shurikens back — but it did not do any damage to them. I was constantly thinking "what am I doing wrong".

And hitboxes did not help to figure out that I could jump on the ninja to kill it. There were a few times where I was completely sure I am going to land on top of an enemy only to get hit.

The doggos are fun — I kinda started feeling like I am anticipating their jumps. There were a few times when I was able to chain jumping on different enemies including doggos, and that felt really good

Hi MakhamDev! Found your app on Youtube, and got hooked by the possibilities. Unfortunately, on MacBook it does not work correctly with a trackpad. I opened the "Introduction" file, and it says "Middle mouse drag, or ctrl + left mouse drag to pan around". On MacBook ctrl+left click is mapped to the "right click" action, and it is not possible to change. And there is no middle mouse button :) It would be amazing if you could be able to detect the operating system, and remap hotkeys for mac to use cmd key instead of ctrl key.