To be fair, a program that does something undesired by the user constitutes being malware. So even if you mean it as a harmless joke mechanic, it still can be considered malware.
I would say making the game close is a good idea. That's more in line with what other devs do and what people would find acceptable.
It'll be a few more days before the VOD is ready, but it'll be there in time.
Hi there. I'm one of the hosts for this event.
I was playing your game on stream and found myself concerned about the labeling you chose for AI usage based on things I was seeing. Can you let me know what parts of the game are made by AI and which are made by human? This also includes programming. Failure to reply within 48 hours will result in immediate disqualification. So long as you respond and provide the information I seek to determine if this entry needs its AI usage changed, the entry will remain.
Hello. I'm Hythrain, one of the hosts for this event.
I was playing your game on stream today. While I had planned to send you the VOD later, something occurred that takes precedent. While I was exploring the game, I saw the little Party button and decided to click it, causing the animation of Niko running around my desktop. Because I'm streaming and need to focus on the game, I force closed the game and reopened it only for Niko to confront me for doing so. When he asked if I'd apologize, I said no... at which point the game triggered a command to my computer to shut down completely...
While I was streaming.
In order to ensure this wasn't some pure coincidence, I even did it all a second time. Again, it was shut down.
I'm assuming that you have coding set up to do this if the player doesn't apologize. This can be seen as a form of malware and is NOT appreciated in games submitted to this event. As such, I have no choice but to disqualify your game. I can still send you the VOD for some feedback on the game if you wish, though.
So basically, you do the initial drawing and then have AI deal with the colouring. That explains a lot. When I was playing it, both myself and chat felt like it was AI and yet we also felt like it wasn't because things were too consistent. If you're drawing the outlines and AI is colouring it, that makes a lot of sense then because the outlines are what helps it feel consistent, while the colouring and the "motion" are why it feels AI.
The VOD will be posted ASAP on my YouTube page. When it's ready, I plan to come back and share the link with you. I just need to get my VOD backlog fixed.
Hello. I'm one of the hosts for this event.
While playing your game on stream, I noticed you have it labelled as AI Assisted. For our rules, this is meant to imply less than 50% of the game is made using AI. However, during my playthrough of the game I felt like it was possible that more than 50% of the game's total assets are AI generated. I'd like to find out what parts of this are AI generated and which are human made.
Hello. I'm Hythrain, one of the hosts of the event.
Feedback Quest rules state that if your game is paid, you must provide a free version in order for people to play the game. Your game doesn't have this. In addition, we don't allow HTML downloads due to malware problems.
I can give you up to 48 hours to correct these problems if you think you can fix both in time. Otherwise, this entry will be removed.
So it's meant as a TTRPG version of your main project. I see, I see. That makes sense. Sadly, I still think it's likely to not get coverage. I can bring it up to others in the Discord, but I want to give you a realistic expectation as I'm personally planning to cover every game (even if not during the event) but I wouldn't be able to cover yours due to the limitations I have.
Hey Pixxele, needed to do a follow up with you.
So I didn't realize until I went to download the game to play on stream that this was a physical-only TTRPG. Unfortunately, I don't think this game is really going to get covered by anyone, including myself. As a streamer, I'm in no way set up to cover a TTRPG unless it has a digital version (and even then, it can be challenging). I would imagine this is true for all of the other streamers. Meanwhile, it could be difficult for other developers, who are expecting all of the games to be digital, to cover it as well.
Since you do seem to have digital games on your page, have you considered trying to develop it into a program that can allow people to connect to a host and play together?
Hello. My name's Hythrain, one of the hosts for the event.
I was playing your game on stream and had noticed you had it flagged as AI Assisted. However, based on what I'm seeing in the game with NPCs being able to respond to custom messages and to reply in voice, I don't feel this qualifies as merely AI Assisted. Just these two aspects alone would be enough for me to view the game as being "Mostly AI Generated" as these can be two of the biggest components for the game. Meanwhile, if other elements are also AI generated than this would push it further.
Please change the AI usage to be "Mostly AI Generated." If you disagree with this, please tell me what specifically is and is not generated by AI.
Hey there!
So I sat down to play your game on stream, but I think something isn't work right. I was going through the tutorial and I got to the part where I have to build a warehouse. However, after I hit Build... I don't know where I have to choose the Warehouse from. The only place I could think of was on my character area in the bottom left, but the tutorial text explicitly covers that area.
I'm not going to rate your game yet as I do want to try this out. However, I need to know what's going on so I can actually play it properly.
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
As part of a change in my process, I'm actually no longer doing long write-ups. However, your game impressed me so much that I wanted to put this here. This is, hands down, one of the best visual novels we've had in Feedback Quest. Quite possibly the best one. It's so good that, outside of two small writing things I mentioned during the stream, I had no real feedback to give! You're doing an amazing job! Keep at it! I want to see more of this!
What I could recommend for the text wall is a guided tutorial. I mentioned about teaching organically, and I view this in two ways: where the game makes it obvious you need to do a thing that you then figure out how to do (this applies more to action games), and where you're given a guided tutorial that lets you experience things in gameplay as you learn. The latter would be best for your game.
So for example, start the game with higher base money but nothing unlocked. Then, in a step-by-step order, have them do the following:
1. Buy their first cell.
2. Do research to unlock their first set of isotopes.
3. Force the player to use the slowest isotope.
4. Teach them how to use speed controls.
5. When the cell's heat level reaches about half way, teach them about heat. When it gets to near full, force the player to eject and get cooling. Also make them buy a second cell. Should they lack enough money due to poor decisions, you can supplement them with the money they need to do all this.
6. From here, let the player continue playing on their own for a while, as they now have everything they would've had from the start. When they gain the ability to use an isotope that requires shielding, force them to eject a cell, buy the first shield and put in an isotope that requires it. You can do another supplement if they don't have enough.
7. After they have more than 2 cells and have access to materials meant to absorb heat, teach them that so they can see it in action (Make them eject what they have in the second node, supplement their money in the event they don't have enough).
And from here, you leave them alone. You've covered everything. :D
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
A pretty simple game. Easy to understand for the most part, and lots of room for improvement.
These games normally just make attacks go off automatically. I feel like you'd be better off incorporating that. Having to hold the mouse button can be painful after a while.
Personally, I felt like the bit crushed sound effects didn't really fit with the clean music. A more cleaner sound effect would be better for this.
While I generally understood what the various upgrades did, there was one that initially confused me: "More Shapes." In my head, I thought this would mean I'd get new shapes which was covered by a later upgrade. I think this would be better off called "Faster Shape Spawn" to clarify it. Speaking of upgrades, I also noticed that the word "chance" was spelled wrong for two upgrades.
One thing I found myself wondering was... what was the purpose of levels? Like, did it just get you more money or did it do other things? If it did other things like affect stats, I would like to be able to see what my stats are.
The in-game cursor lags behind my actual cursor, which can sometimes cause me to miss something because I'm moving much faster than the in-game cursor is. Would love to see these line up better.
I noticed a bug where enemies would sometimes see their entire health bar reset to full yet would only take one hit. It's as though they would dip below 1 HP but not hit zero, so the game bugged and reset the bar. The only way I could see this happening is if behind the scenes, damage was calculated using a float instead of an integer. I would recommend keeping these as integers to keep more solid numbers.
I also noticed that when a run would end, shapes would vanish right away but coins would be left behind for a longer duration. I feel this is unintended behaviour and that they're supposed to vanish at the same time.
Speaking of coins, there are two changes I think would be good for them. First, to force them to spawn more on the stage. Sometimes the middle of a coin can spawn right on the edge of the arena, which can be annoying to grab. Forcing coins to spawn in a smaller area would solve this. Second, I'd like to see it that the additional levels in the coin upgrade makes it that the coins are worth more rather than spawn more. The objective is to get more shapes going, and I feel like adding more coin spawns complicates things.
And lastly, I think the upgrade to slow down the speed of shapes should be changed. Shapes already tend to move in very slowly and I think that should be changed to make them faster. I think this upgrade would be better if it made it that your attacks could freeze shapes in place for a short period of time. That way, it has the same effect but not in a way that impedes how long the shapes take to first get on the screen. It would also better compliment the shapes moving faster.
Hope this helps out!
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
I love a good rhythm game, especially if it's doing something different. This certainly qualifies as an action game.
As requested, I won't speak on the visuals or audio in the game. I'll focus on the gameplay and the general feel. However, I need to note one thing: the font you have is a bad choice. As a bitmap font, it's very hard to read. If it was a normal font with anti-aliasing, it'd be fine. I recommend either changing it or letting the text have anti-aliasing despite the visual style you seem to be going for.
Okay, onto the stuff you want covered. The first thing I noticed was that the game tells the player incorrect controls. The game tells me to use Left trigger for dashing, but I found it was the Right trigger. It also tells me to press Up on the D-Pad to summon my mandolin, but it ended up being Left. I also wasn't sure if the commands for changing targets were working correctly, but I found the descriptions of "L2" and "L3" to be confusing. Normally, "L2" would be... Left Trigger. Y'know, the one the game said was to dash. Speaking of controls, I want to recommend adding native support for non-Xbox controllers. While having the game on Steam does mean it'll benefit from Steam's design already giving some support, what it ends up doing for something like the Nintendo Pro Controller is invert the buttons to match the letter facings rather than the directional facings. So while you designed it that the player pressing the bottom face button to jump, it becomes the right face button if I'm using a Pro Controller. Having native support means you can control this directly and ensure you can make the controllers use the correct face button you want.
My general experience is that the controls are very sluggish and floaty. It feels like the game is very slow to respond to my inputs. This is especially true with the dashes, where I can absorb a very clear delay between when I press the trigger and when the dash goes off. While the sluggish and floaty feel isn't inherently bad (as enemies are also subject to sluggish movements), I feel like the dash having such a huge delay is bad. Plus the dash is just so fast by comparison. I wonder if it'd be possible to make the game less sluggish but keep some of the floatiness.
In terms of gameplay, I'll admit I didn't get far. I did love the use of timing my button inputs to the beat to deal better attacks., though. It felt really good and somewhat relaxed. However, when I got to the point where you recommend using the hook, I found it just wasn't working. After falling into the water twice, I suddenly lost the ability to summon my mandolin. At this point, I decided to call it. While it wasn't far at all, I felt like I already had enough that you could address for your next build.
All in all, I want to see more of this. I want to see where this goes. Please keep me up to date!
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
So I like the concept of this: small Minecraft worlds where you go in, gather resources and then leave. What I'm not so much of a fan of is the execution of it. Let me start with the smaller issues and work my way up.
One of the first things I took notice of was that when you descend to a planet, there's some weird audio issues with the sounds being played. it's like there's an obvious repeat point.
I recommend having graphical settings the player can control and lower. I found that this game was just not kind and used a lot of resources. Being able to change graphical quality can help (as would some rounds of optimization).
One thing I also noticed was that there were invisible walls. While this makes sense, one thing I honestly wish it had done was made the little planetoids actually round, with gravity changing as you moved along the world. I can understand this being a limitation thing, though. However, I still wish there was a better way to deal with the edges of the maps beyond invisible walls that let me see huge openings beyond them.
From here, we get into the stuff that bothered me more. In the first mission, the player is told to go mine a diamond. However, when they finally find one, it turns out they don't have the ability to! What? Why make it an objective then? I feel like this is just not a good idea. If you're going to tell me to get a diamond... then let me get one!
During my second run, I ended up seeing the stability of the world drop to 60%. This is when the game flags things as being Danger as now the world just constantly shakes and tremors happen regardless of what I, as the player do. The constant shaking was just annoying and misleading about the state of things (as was the music, which went from nice and calm to "RED ALERT YOU ARE GOING TO DIE RIGHT NOW IF YOU DON'T RUN." The tonal shift gives me whiplash.
Player movement was way too fast. I felt like I was Speedy Gonzales on cocaine with how fast I could run around! When I compare it to Minecraft, it feels like I'm in permanent sprint mode but going way faster. I'd like to see movement slowed but then have a sprint button.
I also feel like the player needs to have tools in order to move vertically easier. In Minecraft, everything is at a slow pace. You take your time moving around. Thus vertical movement is also slower. This game, by contrast, can suddenly put you in a situation where you need to get out and fast. Having a starting tool for vertical movement that takes time to recharge would be immensely helpful.
And the most important thing I felt was a problem... I'm too big. No, seriously, the player character is too big. Minecraft makes it that a player character is exactly two blocks high. At this height, you're required to jump to get on top of a block. However, this puts the player's height somewhere between 3 and 4 blocks high. When moving around, I just step on top of single blocks. The problem is that this height makes it really hard to navigate. I would often get caught in blocks because I didn't have enough room above me to jump, even when I cleared out extra blocks to compensate.
Given that this game is very clearly inspired by Minecraft, it should also feel like Minecraft. Player height, movement speed, all of these should feel the same as what's inspiring it. People are going to draw the connections between the two right away, and if they find it plays too different they're going to drop it. While I understand this could make the game feel too derivative, the only way you'd be able to escape that is if you dropped the blocky aspect of the world and made it something unique.
Oh, and also cut down the number of blocks that are like glowing crystals. It's honestly really distracting when I'm trying to see things when scanning.
I hope to see more of the game!
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
So I'll admit I don't know if this game is featuring real isotopes. I know that thoron, a name you use for several isotopes, is actually just a commonly used name to refer to a specific isotope known as Radon-220, but beyond this I can't say. If this game is named on real isotopes, that's cool.
There are two primary complaints I have about the game, both stemming from the early game. The first is that players are forced to read a bunch of text instead of being taught the game in a more organic way. The more text a player has to read before they start playing, the less they're going to remember. Working this into the gameplay in a guided tutorial would be better, especially one that explains things like what the various numbers related to each isotope even mean and how to utilize shielding, cooling and ejecting.
Second, I felt like the game can start very slow due to the long half-life of the starting isotope. I think it'd be useful to have a function that lets the player alter the game's speed, both to speed it up and to slow it down, so that they can control things better.
Some other issues I had were that I found myself just not using the elements meant to absorb heat from other cells. it just felt so inefficient to me compared to just having stronger cooling systems in each cell. I also was really annoyed at the fact that I had to keep scrolling all the way down the elements list to what I wanted instead of the game remembering the last element I had put in and keeping the menu there when I went to put something new in. The last thing to annoy me was how isotopes start to cause a money loss once they have so little mass. Considering the idea is that elements will decay into other elements, having this function of the player losing money makes no sense because it discourages them from letting the isotope decay fully. And speaking of losing money, why do I lose money if I have no isotopes in my cells? That made no sense. I thought it might've been a bug, but even after I filled a cell and ejected it I was still losing money.
Overall it's a great concept, but I feel it needs some improvements to make it more fun to play.
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
So admittedly, my time with this was pretty short. While it's a fun idea, there was something I immediately felt needed to be fixed when it came to the gameplay that prompted me to stop early (that and, for some reason, when I went to retry the second race the game decided to start over). Before I get to that though, there are other things to cover.
First, I wasn't able to play the game by downloading. I would get to the screen where I enter a name but nothing would happen. Of course, the real question is why I need to enter a name at all? I wonder if perhaps it was loading, as the first time I went to load a race on browser I found it seemed to freeze as well. Perhaps some loading screens would help?
Next, while this obviously isn't the focus of the game, I feel like the cutscenes could use cleaning up. There are a lot of words that can be contracted to read more naturally, and I was thrown off when characters had their names given in narration instead of being introduced properly. For example, Ryan's name shouldn't be known until Danny says who he is. That way, it all feels more natural and names are given to the player at the same time their character, Mike, is learning them. It's also weird how Danny describes how to repair your car and get coffee.
Last thing before I get into gameplay: let WASD work as well. Some people will prefer to use those instead of arrow keys because they're used to using their left hand for movement instead of their right hand, but to use arrow keys with their left hand means shifting their keyboard around.
Alright, now for gameplay. Honestly, I was surprised how smooth it controlled. It was really responsive and did a great job. I felt like any mistakes I made with steering were my own fault. I did notice that if you come to a stop and reverse a little, the turning gets mixed up until you move forward again. This makes sense if you're still moving backwards, but not if you're stationary.
One thing I found annoying, though, was how other cars would just beat the crap out of me during the race. I couldn't even get through half of the laps without losing all of of my durability from other cars smacking me around. This was especially true if I managed to get into first, which brings up another issue.
Having a racer who automatically gets to go faster than you is incredibly unfair. First off, it means they'll be running into your backside if you get into first and will drain your durability. This happened to me. Second, it makes it impossible to catch up to them if you fall behind. Even when they're bumping into things, not being in first yourself means that the other cars are smacking you around and keeping you back. This is some Mario Kart shenanigans here, but at least Mario Kart cheats only when you're in first and otherwise slows down so you can catch up.
Another issue I think exists is how wide the tracks are. Normally, racing games give very wide tracks relative to the size of one's car. Doing this gives players plenty of room to navigate around other drivers while also navigating the track. However, here the track's width feels small compared to the size of the cars. Given that crashing into other vehicles also causes durability loss, this basically guarantees you'll crash into other cars. This then puts the player at a huge disadvantage, because it's not like computer racers are going to run out of durability or stamina. These things only affect the player. The only ways to fix this would be to widen the track to perhaps double what it is or to make it that colliding with other cars doesn't touch durability. I would personally go with widening the track, but doing so exposes another issue...
The tracks are also very small. The way this is compensated is that drivers have to do more laps. However, if you widen the tracks then this'll cause some serious issues. I think making longer tracks with less laps would be better than what you have and would work better with making courses wider. Of course, I would say keep the first track you have as is, 8 laps and all. It works really well as a test course to get used to the game, but that's all it should be: a test course. Once you get into the proper races, though, there should be new tracks that are made for multiple drivers.
I hope this helps out! Good luck with the game, and feel free to let me know if you update it with some of my suggestions!
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
While writing my feedback I messed up and hit the wrong button on my browser, which caused me to lose everything I had written. As such, I'll just speedrun through this all.
Remove that Test button until you plan to put in its functionality.
Make the Tutorial pop-up in the middle of the screen and pause the game when a task is completed and the player has a new task. Make it congratulate them for their success then point out the next thing to do.
Put a girl to hire close to the starting point that the tutorial directs the player to. Make this a good girl to start with: decent stats, no stress, already interested, etc. That way, players start with a decent girl. Would also be good for teaching the player about the different options for hiring girls and how to know what to choose for each girl.
Make girls move faster when following the player. They're really slow compared to the player.
The roads get glitchy when they crossover. There could be ways to easily handle this, but they can depend on how the pathfinding works. Contact me on Discord when I'm not streaming and I'll try and workshop ideas with you.
So I got robbed in the night when I had no money on me. However, I have no idea who did it. While I think getting robbed is a cool idea, the fact that I can fend off muggers from my girls but not myself is weird. Given the nature of the game, I feel like my character should have (or be able to get) a gun to use in defence. The trade off would be that having to resort to shooting someone would result in more issues with the cops.
Are girls supposed to accept clients based on their sexual preference? If so, why did my straight girl start walking off with a lady?
And lastly... I had three separate crashes during the game. Two of them occurred when I was trying to place girls on corners. Could be a correlation.
I feel like I had more, but because I lost the write-up and had already deleted the notes from my text file, I couldn't recover it during the stream. I'll try and check my VOD later for what I missed. Otherwise, great game! Want to see more!
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
Before I get into the feedback proper, I want to note two things. First, I recommend changing the game to NOT start in fullscreen. Renpy can sometimes misbehave and make it that players can't see their cursor, which happens to me. Starting in Windowed mode lets people navigate the menus without this issue. I also think you should slow down the first few screens when starting the game so players can fully read the warnings and information you're giving. With that said, time to dive into this.
For visual novels, what I do is focus on the dialogue and narration to achieve two main goals. The first is to ensure the writing itself is clean: easy to understand what each part of a sentence is talking about, catch punctuation mistakes, and try to avoid bloat and repetitiveness in lines. The second is to ensure the logic the story presents, including the order of things happening, makes sense.
I'll admit that when I started this one up and read the warning of what this would be about, I was a bit excited. I wanted to see what this story would tell. While early on there were some issues with some sentences feeling oddly worded, this is easy to fix. However, eventually I realized there were some other issues going on, which will come out at the end. I'm going to go through my notes in order, as these will also be in the order that they happen in the game.
"The smell of fresh summer air drifting into the small, shabby room, mingles with the aroma of coffee filling the cafe and settling over the dusty checkerboard floor." This sentence is complicated in how it's presented and can be weird to read. It may work better like this: "The smell of fresh, summer air drifts into the small, shabby room and begins to mingle with the aroma of coffee that fills the cafe, settling over the dusty checkerboard floor."
Mika refers to the main character as Levi, but the labels for dialogue boxes call him Lewis (also, his name label is hard to read due to being black when a lot of backgrounds are dark as well). She even calls him Levis later on, which he also calls himself. Getting all of these to a single consistent name would be a good idea.
"The look on her face makes it clear that she wants to hear everything" This begins a trend of mixing what tense you're using. Some sentences are written in past tense, some in present tense. Since I think going in past tense works better for this story, this line needs to be changed. Specifically, the word "makes" needs to be changed to "made." I won't be covering all instances of wrong tense, but I wanted to bring it up here.
"I don't even know where to start..." Except he clearly does, as it starts with his mother's death. I feel like this could be cleaned up. As an aside, if he lived in this town and it was when his mother died that he moved, shouldn't Mika know she died?
"Everything has changed after that day." Remove the word "has." It's not needed here.
"All my life, I've been suffocated by fear. More than anything in the world, I love music. But..." The transition of dialogue from talking about his fear to talking about his love of music is weird. These need to be connected better to show that he loves music but that his fears prevent him from continuing it.
"It's my hometown after all." Remove the words "after all." They're not needed.
"And the emptiness that was left behind when my mother was gone has only grown." This sentence is worded poorly. I'll give you two different ways for this one:
1. "And the emptiness that was left behind after my mother was gone has only grown."
2. "And the emptiness that was left behind when my mother passed away has only grown."
"I feel like someone has actually listened to me." This sentence should be about Mika to match the previously line. Something like this: "I feel like she's actually listening to me."
"She pulls a crumpled piece of paper from the pocket of her jeans and tosses it onto the table. Then, without another word, she turns and heads for the exit." I was originally going to say to change this to say she pulls the paper from her pocket, but then I realized... wasn't she sitting before? Nothing was said to indicate she got up.
... Is that a picture of Michael Jackson with a wig? XD
"won't let me sleep, eat or live in peace." Besides lacking capitalization, it feels disjointed from the previous line. It goes from Levi talking about what his head is shouting at him to this. It could use some better bridging.
"Someone I know told me about it." Remove the words "about it." They're not needed.
"More than anything right now, I want to get myself back... myself." I feel something is missing here for this line to make sense. I can't say what precisely because to fix it requires fixing the more in the line, but I want to identify it for you.
There's an empty line when you first go into the church, making the player click a second time. Would recommend clearing that out.
This is the first time that the story makes mention of the Surface and I have to ask... what's the Surface? Players need context for this so they understand what you're saying. Even if the Surface is supposed to be slang for something, it should still be explained.
"This swarthy girl barely comes up to my waist." If Liliya was this short, she'd be a dwarf. Her artwork doesn't make her look like one. You'd be better saying she barely comes up to his chest.
From this point on, the name Mikael/Michael is given many times. They're different spellings but they're used for the same name. The question is... which is supposed to be the spelling? Michael is the spelling for a guy's name, but I eventually learned that this character is supposed to be a woman, which would be Mikael.
"There's still plenty of time. Give it time, and he'll end up on that stage." Instead of using the word "time" again in such close proximity, let's change this. Instead, change the second part of this line to "Just wait and he'll end up on that stage."
At this point, the name Kletzerg is dropped in narration. However, the player doesn't know who this is. Either this is the wrong name or this is something we're supposed to meet later. I suspect it's supposed to be Yan, which makes sense since Yan is the one who gives the drinks.
"But every time he sees An writing in agony..." Since the player is still getting used to the names of characters and the world, it's better to save nicknames for now. Just use Anatan's name.
You describe Liliya's expression as frightening, but was it? It just seemed dead to me.
There was another name mix up as well where Yan is called as "Jan." I suspect that his name is supposed to be spelled as Jan but pronounced as Yan, in which case calling him Yan in English is a better idea.
"Michael has an arm around the happy girl, her hand resting possessively on her shoulder." Ignoring the issue of Mikael's name, this sentence is strange. First, between where Mikael's hand is in the picture and where Mikael is relative to Liliya, Mikael can't have her arm "around" Liliya. Second, the multiple use of "her" in the second part can create confusion about who you're talking to. I think what you'd want is something like this. "Mikael is close to the happy girl, resting a hand possessively on her shoulder."
And for the final note, and where I ended up stopping in the game... the entire scene of Levi confronting Jay is strange. So much of it is written as though it happens in the club, yet it's happening in the coffee shop. This needs to be corrected. I also feel like Jay should be trying to deny being Yan and that it should be when Levi pulls out the pendant that Jay's act drops and he exposes himself. This would have the confrontation make more sense.
And that's the end of my notes. I'll admit that parts of the story are very confusing, but that's also because of the very nature of the story and how the drugs that people are taking cause them to forget things. One thing I didn't make a note of but which I realize now is a problem is how, at one point, Anatan refers to his mother as having "left" him when she actually died. Yet if his memories are messed up, shouldn't he not even remember her? It's weird that he remembers her. It's even weirder when, later on, he remembers she died.
There's still work to be done, but I can see this being a very interesting story.
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
Wow, this is a cool game! It made me feel so dang smart! I'll admit I didn't get much into the condition symbols and instead just focused on trying to do the ascends, but once I started to understand what I was doing it just felt so dang good!
That said, I'll admit that it took me a while to understand what was going on, particularly with fuses. I didn't understand how the fuses worked at first. It took me a while to realize that what fuses did was always output something that the two fused pieces didn't have while retaining whatever they shared. This might have been explained in the tutorial, in which case I think the tutorial should expand on it more by making the player do more of it so they can observe multiple times what's going on, letting them see multiple fuses to better establish what's going on. Otherwise, I worry it can get lost very quickly.
There are two other things I think would be beneficial for the game. First, the player should be outright told that they can only have one of each full piece type, which I'm going to refer to as cards for writing simplicity. I had rounds where I'd be drawing the starting cards, only for one card to just poof away into another and for me to draw a new card. I didn't understand what was going on. It wasn't until I was starting to figure out fusing and ended up fusing a duplicate, which then immediately was absorbed into the first one, that I realized what was happening. I assume the reason behind this is because if players tried to fuse those two, they'd come out the same. So making it obvious to the player that you can't have duplicates would help a lot. To go with this, any time the player draws a card and it's a duplicate, there should be something to inform the player that they got a duplicate and are getting a new card.
Another thing I'd like to see is a function to sort the cards you have. One thing I was repeatedly doing while playing was manually sorting them to keep colours together before ordering them by number and then shape. This helped me better grasp the cards I had and allowed me to think about the combinations I could make. Along with a sorting option, you could also put in a Shuffle button that puts the cards in a random order for those who would benefit from that sort of function.
Other than these things, I got nothing. This game is really solid and I want to play more! If I was ending my stream right now, I'd be doing that!
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
When I realized the type of game this was, I decided to just run it on the bottom of my screen during my streams. My intent was to just go through the whole event to see if I could get all of the upgrades during the event, and then I would leave my feedback at the end. However, I now have all of the currently available upgrades and feel like I've messed with it enough to give some proper feedback now. So rather than wait... here I am!
So first, I want to note that I was very confused when I started it up. While the game has starting values for the four different properties of a ramen, one thing it doesn't have is a default price! Instead, it sets it to 0. This means that, if you're not paying attention, you could waste a lot of time and not earn any money. However, I was also confused when... it seemed like my customers weren't paying me what I had priced the ramen at. I eventually realized this was wrong, but the nature of them dropping multiple coins really threw me off. I feel like this would be better if they just dropped one coin and that coin was what the cost of the ramen was.
I also found that the way the ingredients were to work was confusing. It took me a while to finally figure out the ideal settings to make customers happy, but there's something about the aspect of "they won't pay full price if it's not good" that doesn't sit with me. I think it'd be better if they still paid the price, but that if they really enjoyed it that they're willing to give more. I know tipping isn't a thing in Japanese culture, but the use of English writing in this means you intend for it to reach an English audience. In North America, tipping is absolutely a thing. Thus, I would say this idea could work for a game.
Next... uhh, what does the New Menu button even do? I've tried pressing it but it does nothing. Is this something that hasn't been put into the game yet? If so, why have it there now? It just creates confusion.
One thing that drove me insane was how insanely picky customers were about price. When I set my ramen to 5 yen, they were happy with it. Yet the moment I made it 6 yen? Everyone says it's too expensive! Now correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a yen about equal to a cent in USD? So I'm selling ramen at 5 cents? That feels insanely cheap! For every customer to balk at a price of 6 yen feels weird to me. Now I know the reason behind this, too. It's because you want money to be slow earning. You don't want a player to speed through the game. After all, it's meant as a sort of productivity tool. It takes time. Being able to set really high prices would also devalue the need to add new menu items down the road (which is what I assume we'll eventually be able to do). However, I just feel like there should be some balance here where increasing the price will cause some customers to be turned away but not everyone. You could then scale it where the higher the price is from an acceptable price point, the more turn away. This would mean that the player needs to be even more productive to generate more potential customers to get more potential sales. Wouldn't that fit with the idea of what you want out of this?
Lastly... as someone who doesn't know a lot about ramen, it'd be nice if the game had something built in that explained what the different ingredients did and maybe even explained how they can work together. Right now you have noodles just listed as "Noodles" but I think it'd be cool if, down the road, you had different types of noodles and could use the game to teach how different ingredients work with different noodles. That way it not only would be a fun productivity tool but would even impart knowledge of making ramen to those who use it, thereby informing them of what Japanese people look for when it comes to good ramen and giving them a new appreciation for it.
Overall, fun experience! I hope it goes places! :D
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
So I love D&D. I also love Inscryption. This clearly takes inspiration from both of those and I'm all for that.
What I'm not for is just how utterly brutal this game is. I'm going to dive into this at the end as I think this is the most important thing to cover, though. I first want to cover a few things I made notes of.
First, I don't understand why my inventory comes up when I try to rest on the couch. What does the game want from me? I was going through my inventory while trying to find whatever relevant item I needed, yet nothing seemed to work. It would be helpful if the game did more to tell me what it wanted.
I also felt that the way to cancel out of an ability was a little confusing. I would assume it'd be the bottom most button, which happened to be labelled as "Back." However, it's not this. It's the button above it labelled "Cancel." Choosing "Back" causes the player to back away from the game board and stand up, which I feel like doesn't make sense to do in the middle of a fight since... well, what does this even allow the player to do? It's not like they can move around and change their perspective on the board.
Speaking of getting up and moving around... while I understand the intent of the fixed perspective, I feel like that doesn't belong here. In tabletop games, players are always able to get up and move around. You even let the player do the first part of this. As such, I think it would be good if the player could also look around the entire thing instead of being limited to a specific view. It would also make some of the controls actually useful or at the very least allow you to replace them with useful controls (like leaning to one side. When I used this, it didn't feel like it was giving me a better view to see things. It just made things worse).
Next, I want to address the dice rolling. When I first began experiencing terror rolls, I had no idea what was considered a good roll. It would be nice for the player to be made aware of what they don't want instead of just having no idea whatsoever until they get the bad roll. I also felt like the stamina system for rolls is very punishing, given how it only decreases if you fail a roll.
And this lets me get to the heart of the matter: the game's absurd brutality. In D&D, your dice rolls are typically combined with your stats to come up with a final result. This final result then needs to exceed a certain amount to be successful. While a low roll can be punishing, it doesn't outright mean you've failed the roll... unless, of course, you roll a 1 and get a critical failure. Similarly, a high roll doesn't necessarily mean you'll succeed if the skill check is very high, unless you roll a 20 and get a critical success. The main point in these is that you're not bound purely by the luck of the dice on whether you succeed or not.
However, the way dice rolls work in this is that you have to roll a D20 and get a number that is equal to or lower than the stat the character is using for that ability. This means that, from the very start, each die roll has a less than 50% chance to get what you need. While rolling more dice does increase the chances of success, failure means you reduce your stamina and have less dice to roll in the future. On top of this, some actions only give you a few dice and some use stats that are so low that you just don't really have a chance to get them, increasing the odds of failure.
From the start of the game through the first fight with a shadow and then into the second fight against the two guys trying to steal my batteries, I had far more failures than successes even when always using maximum dice. When I closed the game, I had already lost my warrior in the second fight and was about to lose another character because... the enemies don't seem to be subject to dice rolls on whether their abilities hit or not, only about how much damage they do.
Now I know this takes inspiration from Inscryption, which can also be a bit brutal at times. However, one thing that Inscryption has is that the person you're playing against has the same limitations as you do. They're bound to the same rules. If enemies had to roll dice in order to succeed with their attacks with the same low odds the player has, this would be different. This isn't the case, though.
So how can this be improved? There are a few ways. First, you could increase base stats across the board so players have better odds of getting a good roll. You could also use different types of die depending on the situation. For example, using a D10 or D12 in normal fights, then saving the D20 for fights that are supposed to be harder. You could also overhaul the way the dice rolls work to get something closer to what D&D does. However, I think that the one thing that should be done is that enemies should be bound to the same rules as you. They should be subject to the same dice you use and should be subject to things like terror. When enemies get to play by different rules when the game is skewed against the player, it makes the game unfair. When the game is unfair, it means the game stops being fun. When the game stops being fun, it means players won't play it anymore and will tell others to not play it. When that happens... well, now your game won't sell and you wasted your time and money on its development. So no matter what, this needs to be addressed.
And that's all I got. I wish you luck with the game. If you do change things up, feel free to hit me up and I'll happily try it again.
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
I won't lie... I felt pretty brainless playing this. It felt like all I did was click to spawn a lot of cats in order to make progress, along with doing a few upgrades. Once I reached a point where the fights were getting difficult, I pulled out to see if I could "level" and then shortly after stopped to write this up. I'm just going to cover my notes in order here.
First, when I first started the game I wasn't able to read the tutorials correctly as they weren't setting themselves above all other text. It wasn't until I reloaded the game that this correct, but honestly it doesn't make sense that that was how it reset so... might be something going on in the code.
I also didn't like how I couldn't go Back when I was going to start the first level. While I understand why this was done, to me it felt kinda irksome. The only time it would work was when leaving the Upgrade screen.
I found it strange that so many of the starting cats you have are listed as Defender cats, yet they have better offensive stats than the very first cat, which is listed as a Melee. I think having something to explain what these titles mean would be helpful.
I also wish I had the ability to read the in-battle tutorials without the action going on, especially when it's one teaching me how to do something I may not know (like being able to direct a cat to attack something specific).
Next, you make use of ESC to access the pause menu. This in itself isn't a bad idea. However, right now the game can only be played in browser. If I happen to make the game fullscreen, pressing ESC doesn't issue the pause command but instead cancels fullscreen. I then have to hit ESC again to actually pause, and when I want to get back into the game I have to full screen it again. A secondary button for pausing would be ideal here.
One thing I found myself wishing was that I had the ability to deploy my cats using my keyboard. With how often you're hitting them, having to click over and over and over can get taxing on one's hands. I already suffer from hand problems due to a lifetime of gaming, and so things like this can cause me a lot of pain for no good reason. As an aside, I also feel like the rate you're spawning cats should be slower. Right now, it's a 2 second cooldown per cat. While changing this would also require changing a lot of the stages (particularly the harder ones) to compensate for the slower spawn rate, I think it would be better overall.
Speaking of spawning cats, why have only three set up when you start the player with 8? I assume this is because doing the first few levels with 8 would trivialize them, because that's exactly what happened. However, in that case it would be better if you just start the player with three and give them a lot of meteorite shards in those first few levels in order to build their starting roster. That way players learn the game without it being trivialized, and over the next few levels they get enough shards to fill the roster up.
I found it confusing that the difficulty of levels ramps up pretty quickly, only to suddenly drop again. By the end of the first page, you've gone from Easy to Very Hard. Then it drops back to Easy by the second level of the second page. What's the reasoning behind doing this?
And speaking of pages, I would recommend making it that when the player finishes a page of levels, it progresses to the next page automatically. I also think that levels that are beaten should have something on them to indicate they've been completed. At least with these, the player won't be faked out into thinking they cleared the area once they clear the first page. I say this because it almost happened to me and... well, I know that there are a lot of people out there who are dumber than me. I could see there being people who get to the end of the page (which was listed as "Very Hard" level) and then thinking they finished the area.
Lastly, this isn't from my notes but is a general thing... I wish this game required more from me mentally. Like I said at the beginning, all I was doing was brainlessly spawning cats over and over. After I did the first few levels, I ended up doing a bunch of upgrades and then just went on a brainless run until I finally encountered resistance in the levels. This made it feel less like a game and more like a task. Given how the cats seem to have different effects, I feel there could be a lot of ways to make this more strategic.
And that's all from me! I hope this helps!
Edit: Almost forgot... sometimes when I opened the game, there wouldn't be any sound. No idea why.
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
So this was pretty fun! It gives a bit of a Legend of Zelda vibe with the top-down view and collecting treasures in dungeons. I also found the gameplay pretty simplistic.
Before I get into my feedback on the gameplay, I want to note some issues I had with remapping keys. Before I knew what the gameplay was going to be like, I had read the controls and wanted to change them to make my left face button be my first skill, my bottom face button be my second skill, my top face button be my third skill and the right face button be my shield. Of course, I eventually realized that this wasn't a good idea and switched it back (though I would argue that the bottom face button should be the default for the first skill, but that's just me), but before that I caught some problems. First, remapping the skills also remaps the confirm and cancel buttons, which I feel shouldn't be changed. Perhaps have the option to set those as their own controls, so players who are used to Nintendo style controls can set those to how they would like? Second, I noticed that certain in-game labels didn't update to the remapped buttons. For example, if I remapped what you initially labelled as the B button, then when I went to a rest it would still be labelled with B instead of whatever I set. Lastly, I think it'd be an idea to make the labels automatically change based on the player's controller. You already have support for the Switch Pro Controller in there (as evidenced by the fact that the game didn't go berserk when I used mine, which is what happens when developers don't put add the support in due to how the Pro Controller natively works on PC), so it'd be nice to see it pushed a bit further so that labels matched. Basically, this would have the X-Box controller remain with the current labels, the Pro Controller see A-B and X-Y switched, and a Playstation controller would become the symbols.
I also want to note one oddity I noticed... whenever I would pause the game for the first time after starting up, the game would freeze for a moment. Again, it was only for a moment but this feels like something that shouldn't happen.
Okay, now for the gameplay stuff.
First, I noticed that enemies could start trapped in blocks. Depending on how deep into the blocks they are, they could become impossible to fight (I noticed this even happen in the dungeon with where you get the Compass Shield). While the Compass Shield and bombs can correct this, I feel like this can still look bad.
When I started up a second run, I noticed I had the option to upgrade the Compass Shield immediately despite not having the shield yet. While it seems the game does keep memory of items you've obtained in previous runs, it doesn't make sense to let me upgrade something I don't have yet.
I encountered a room design where it simply was not possible to get the reward in the middle without taking damage from spikes. I don't know how common this may come up, but I feel like when this happens that the rewards should just be far better. Either that or there should always be a way to get to the reward without taking damage.
One thing I don't remember learning about was that bombs remain active if you move rooms, which is something I think players should be made aware of. I ended up testing this myself after I encountered a room where the only way to progress further into it from the door I took was to plant a bomb, but the only way I could stay safe from the bomb was to leave the room (There was another way into this room, but it was all spiked off). While personally I'd rather see it that I wouldn't have to leave the room (and instead the rooms are always designed to give me room so long as I place the bomb correctly), if the player at least is informed that bombs keep going when in another room then this would be fine. In fact, I would say that there should be a tutorial room to show them this.
Is there any correlation between how I touch enemies and how the fight begins? For example, if an enemy touches my backside then do they start behind me? Or if I touch an enemy on their left side, do I start on their left side in the fight? I ask because I noticed that fights were inconsistent about how the player starts relative to the enemies, even when doing additional encounters with the same enemies. I'd either like to see it remain consistent in some way (either all fights start with the player on the left side of the arena or each enemy has a specific start that never changes when you encounter it on the field) or to have it that how you touch the enemy matters (so an enemy touching you from behind means it starts behind you, and the side of the enemy you're on determines which side you start on).
I also understand that the design of combat is pretty simplistic because the game is supposed to be more about the stuff you deal with outside combat, but I do wish it was more engaging than it is right now. Currently, it's just to occasionally use skills and then perform dodges and shields. Part of me wishes I had more control over the fight and more ways to do stuff, even if that meant taking away the simplicity of it.
Lastly, there's one thing I'm still rather iffy on... the trail of darkness. One thing I find that the trail of darkness prevents is backtracking. If you want to return to a previous town to buy supplies or realized you missed a dungeon, now you're just putting yourself at risk for a Dark Dungeon, which I realized are just insanely deadly. While I'm not opposed to the idea outright, I feel like it needs some tweaks to improve it. I'm going to offer a list of various ideas that I think could help.
1. Make the Trail of Darkness start later. Give the player time to adjust to their run before it starts becoming a problem. There should be a key boss that the player has to defeat before it begins.
2. Slow how fast the Trail of Darkness grows so that the player can more easily do backtracking without putting Dark Dungeons in their way.
3. Don't make it that every tile gets the Trial of Darkness. Instead, make it only appear every few tiles. That way, the player has more wiggle room to backtrack.
4. Create ways for the player to erase the Trail of Darkness.
I think that's everything I got! Good luck with the game and I hope to see more!
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
Something about this reminds me of old text based DOS games where you just had to figure out everything for yourself. The design of it is more simplistic and it's a lot more clear about what you're doing, though. I can see this being pretty fun.
What isn't fun, however, is how hard parts of this game can be to read. There's a lot of small fonts and heavy use of italics, all combined with font colours that don't stand out well enough against the dark backgrounds. I found that I had to increase my browser's text size to 130% in order to ensure I could read everything clearly enough. This shouldn't be necessary, though.
What also isn't fun is having to scroll back up the page to check on my health and stamina while in fights, then scroll back down to choose what I wanted to do. This would all work far better if everything was contained on a single screen without the need to scroll. Currently, you dedicate a lot of space to a piece of artwork. It'd be better if this artwork encompassed the entire screen and all of the UI elements laid over it. It's not as important to see the entire image as it is to have the UI elements. Then when it comes to fights, you can ensure each fight places the UI elements such that the enemy in the artwork isn't covered.
From here, I want to bring up some gameplay issues I felt should be addressed. Let's start with equipment: what does each piece of equipment do? Since each area boss drops both a weapon and armour, as well as a ring, each of these must have different stats. I'd like to know what these stats are so I can make more informed choices about each one. Otherwise, it just feels random.
Next, there's a rather obvious flaw in the game's current design: there's no reason to ever use Attack. So if I'm not in a position where I need to restore stamina, my options to deal damage are Attack and Parry. The problem is that Parry is superior in every way; it takes less stamina to use, it completely prevents the enemy from dealing damage AND it does more damage than Attack does! There's just no reason to ever use Attack.
Now for what I feel is the biggest problem in the game: the dice rolling. When using Attack, Parry or Dodge, there's a random D20 roll. It seems to be that so long as you score 7 or higher, you succeed. This means that your ability to do anything is based on pure luck. If the player gets a string of failures, there's just nothing they can do about it. There should be something to give the player a bit more control on this.
For the last bit of this, I just have some notes of things that didn't quite fit into the other areas above.
First, I think that the player shouldn't have the option to return to where an NPC is once they've gone through the scene with them. It just clutters the options available to the player.
Second, what's stopping me from searching the cell anyway after freeing the prisoner? It's not like the prisoner is going to stop me. It'd be nice to see some logical reason for why I can't search the cell after they're gone.
And last but certainly not least... my name escapes me? What do you mean? The game literally JUST asked me my name! I said it was Bananaman! How can I not remember my own name when I just said it?! I'M BANANAMAN!
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
I was all ready for a silly experience of owing this weird cat a lot of money, but there were three things that just ruined it immediately and made me stop before I had truly gotten into it.
First and foremost, the text is too small. I had a hard time reading just about everything. And it's not like I have bad eyes. It's just legitimately to small. Between that and how fast text can pop up and disappear, it's just impossible to read. As such, I just never knew what was going on.
Second, the mechanic of having to click multiple times is insanely bad. If it were always a few clicks then I'd see this as okay, but sometimes you could be click dozens of times to make the calculation correct. That's just unacceptable. The only games I accept doing this are cookie clicker games, because at least then you're not on some sort of time limit (plus where you click never changes, so you can use an auto-clicker to do it if you really wanted). Either force equations to only require no more than 4 or 5 clicks or make it that the player can press and hold a mouse button to make a steady change.
Third, there is way too much happening at all times and virtually NONE of it is explained. From Mr. Weezer talking to cats causing chaos to random events that I don't understand what's going on. You need to slow the experience down, especially early on. Otherwise, you have nothing to ramp up to later on.
If you update the game, let me know and I'll come back to try and give it a deep dive.
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
I feel torn on this one. I love the visual aesthetics going on and found the style of it really creepy, and the music you have is pretty good too. However, I think the game design itself is flawed and needs work.
First, I think there should be more sounds. Right now you have the (admittedly good) music and the water spraying. There's no sound effects for getting hurt, though, nor any for when monsters spawn or perform certain attacks. I think both of these need to be rectified.
I also found the hitboxes for enemies to be massive. There were many times where I took damage while the monster was separated by a few pixels, which in turn makes it feel like I'm taking a lot of cheap shots. I had more than one death where it did not look or even feel like the enemy hit me.
Next was just how difficult it felt to even make progress due to an insanely high enemy spawn count. It felt like I barely ever had time to do damage to flowers or the infection because of enemies spawning. In the end, I had to cheese it a little by kiting the enemies around in a huge circle, starting on the outer walls of the room while letting the enemies keep building up and being stuck in the middle. It got repetitive and boring as a result.
Lastly was health, which just felt insanely unfair. The only means of healing is from taking a 30% heal between levels, but at default levels even the weakest enemy deals 20% of your max health. Thus I was better off never bothering with healing and instead just trying to use cheese kiting strategies to hopefully not get hit.
However, there are ways to fix ALL of this and make the game more engaging.
First, there should be cap for how many enemies can be up at a time. There should also be limitations on where enemies can spawn and how many can spawn: enemies should only spawn on infected areas, and the number that spawns should be based on the number of remaining flowers, with the number decreasing as flowers are destroyed. Once you've destroyed all flowers, no enemies should spawn.
Next, it should be possible to get experience from the infection that flowers spread should you clean around them but not kill them. While this sounds like it could lead to an infinite XP exploit, there's a way around this: a timer. Each level has a timer for how long you get to take to kill the flowers. If you don't have the flowers killed in time, an unkillable enemy spawns that just tears the player apart. Why only the flowers? Because monster spawns are tied to them. Destroy the flowers and nothing can spawn the monsters, meaning it's only a matter of time before you clear the level.
And third, there should be a way to check out what your stats are. Right now, the player can get upgrades but has no idea how many they've collected for each one. I'd suggest that there should be a stats screen so the player can check their full stats. This screen could also better clarify what each upgrade does (for example, stream cleaning vs. splash cleaning, as to me it feels like I'm only cleaning with splash cleaning).
These three things would improve the player experience while also preventing excessive cheesing. From here, you can introduce new monsters to deal with cheese strategies like kiting everything in the middle and force players to engage with the game properly.
And that's all I got. Good luck with the game!
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
I find myself challenged to write an introduction to this. I've played similar styles of games in the past in Feedback Quest and have generally had a good time, but aspects of this one just... left me confused. The first level that this happened in was... ugh, my memory is bad... Developmental Something. It's where the moment you spawn, there's a gravity block right on you. The gravity block then will make you automatically fall down and to the right, where you hit a green block to unlock something. If you don't do anything, though, the ball will roll and die the moment it reaches the red block below the green one (even though technically it shouldn't as you should be sent away from it. This level I struggled to figure out the solution, instead janking my way through this first part by hitting the orange block that sends you rightward, then nudging myself down to hit another orange block that fixes gravity to go down. I'd then jump the moment i hit it and use the momentum in the air to let me get up and over the ice blocks. What made this weird, though, is that there's clearly another key block I can't reach if I do this, making me feel like I didn't do the solution right.
Then I got to the level after, called... Glorbbz's Revenge? Huh? Who the heck is Glorbbz? This level just stumped me because it feels like you can't do it. When you hit the key blocks, it causes gravity blocks to fall in your path. Not a big deal on the first one as you can jump the gap with ease. The same cannot be said for the second one, though, where jumping the gap is impossible. So I thought maybe I need to land on the gravity blocks and jump, but that didn't work either. In the end, I gave up here in frustration because I legitimately don't see how it's possible unless there's something in the gameplay that I've not discovered yet that you, as the developer, would know about.
When it comes to feedback to improve the game, I'm honestly unsure what to say. I'd like to see if that catching the corner of a red block while rolling along other, more prominent blocks didn't kill me, but that's about it. I also think it'd be better if the player was taught about each block organically instead of having to read a "how to play" to have an idea of what each one does. Lastly... I'll be honest I hate the sounds of a guy when I jump. I'm a marble, not a person. Why do I sound like a person?
This is all I can give you, unfortunately. I don't really have much without being able to experience more of the game.
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
While there have been a few vampire survivors during this event, this is the best one I've played so far. It has amazing music and a lot of weapons feel great to use, making it a lot of fun to mow down monsters. It also gives me some slight DOOM vibes, but this is more in the aesthetic I see than in the gameplay.
However, I'm not a fan of starting levels where you simply cannot win, especially when it happens when I'm still trying to figure out the controls (more no the controls in a bit). I'd rather see a first level that helps the player get used to the game, THEN give them the impossible level so they reset and begin a proper run. Otherwise, you're beginning the game with an instant death which can turn some people off.
Okay, brief note on the controls. Before I started, I decided to see what the controls were supposed to be (instead of just jumping in and seeing how well the game teaches me on its own). For some reason, when I went to see the controls, the game somehow jumped me direct to the gamepad controls. I thought this was a controller only game, until I noticed the game display using keyboard to interact when I bumped my mouse. I'm not sure why it went to the gamepad controls on its own, but there could be something going on there.
Onto other stuff, I want to recommend changing how you display text in the game. More specifically, you should remove the gradient you use on the font. Gradients on a bitmap font can be hard to read, especially if said gradients go towards whatever colour you're using for backgrounds. In this case, your tooltips have a dark, slightly transparent background, which makes the text harder to read (especially if you're moving fast). I'd say either you should remove the gradients and keep everything to single colours, or you keep the colours you choose for each gradient at a higher colour than what they are now.
I'll also say that I'm not a fan of money despawning in these sorts of games. Due to the sheer volume of enemies you deal with, vampire survivors often see the player moving away from whatever they're shooting. The end result is they're now moving AWAY from the money and have to jump into enemies and get harmed to collect it. While this can be seen as part of the challenge, it can also be really annoying to some. If you're going to make money despawn, I would say the base time should be a lot longer or that the default pick-up range is bigger (maybe even both) to make it easier for players to get their deserved rewards.
One thing I found myself wishing I could do was to organize the order of my weapons. You can do this when you have a spare weapon around, but it's time consuming and a little cumbersome. I'd love to see a way to organize one's weapons more easily.
Lastly, while some of the guns are really fun, others are just... dull. The Explosive Pistol. the Laser, the Grenade Launcher and the Faust all come to mind. The Faust would feel more fun if it was faster. The Grenade Launcher would be more fun if it had both more firing range and a bigger explosion radius. The Laser would be cooler if it could pass through enemies while firing, allow you to sweep through an army of enemies at once. Aaaaaand I got nothing for the Explosive Pistol. I just wasn't a fan of using it.
These were the main things I could think of bringing up. I hope they help you out!
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
This is probably one of the most unique tower defense games I've seen, employing actual characters instead of actual towers and adding in RPG elements. It was a lot of fun to try out! I was also really impressed with some parts of foresight I saw, specifically how you thought about menu switching between the shop and the character screen while on the map (I found I could hit the two buttons on the bottom back and forth and it never broke anything).
Since this is also part visual novel, I did keep a mental note while playing to try and catch things that I normally do with other visual novels. There was one line where I thought it could use a rewrite (the line in the opening about an elven man, which I felt should remove the second use of the word "cave" to make it not feel as repetitive), and there was one general thing I wish the story had done: I wish character names weren't given to the player automatically until the name was said out loud. That way, players have to be introduced to characters. What could help facilitate this is a tweak to the beginning where it's the guildmaster's first day and they're first introduced to Yuki, then to Ragnar and Luna as needed. Once a character's name is said, whether from someone properly introducing themselves (as Aelwyn does later on) or from their name coming up in the conversation (much like how Yuki invokes Luna's name very early on, which could then act as the "introduction"), then it can be shown in narration dialogue. That way, names aren't revealed by narration before the player knows them.
In terms of the gameplay, one thing I found rather frustrating was how the only character I was ever able to start with was Yuki. While this makes sense and is fine in the first few levels, you eventually get to a point where, unless you specifically are giving all of the gear and talent points you get specifically to Yuki, she starts getting her ass kicked before you can really build your group up. In some fights, you really need two or even three characters to prevent someone from dying from the first enemies. I think the best way to resolve this would be to either given the player higher starting deployment points or to reduce the amount of deployment points needed for each character before you begin the level. It could even be done where specific fights encourage deploying specific characters first. As an example, the first fight with Valessia could be set up where she and Aelwyn take less points than other characters, making it a smart move to start with them. The logic behind it could be that because you're in the heart of elven territory, they know the land better and can thus be deployed faster.
I also found that the rate of gold feels really slow. I don't know if you plan to add more equipment down the road or if what the shop has will be everything it ever has, but it was taking 3-4 fights for me to buy anything. While I know I can get money from losses, I'd much rather just have it I get more money from winning and to have a better pace of gear. A higher money rate could also allow you to weaken starting items and to add more powerful stuff later in the game, fitting better with the RPG elements.
Lastly, I feel the design for the talent trees is a little awkward. They're based on weapons, but there's no visual consistency on where you start. You just have to find the one small icon that's glowing. While doing the weapon thing is a cool visual concept, I think it should be designed in such a way to remain visually consistent. For example, where the early talents start on the left or bottom and work their way right or up regardless of the weapon. That way, the player doesn't need to fumble around to figure out where the starting talent is for each character.
That's all I have! I hope to see more of this!
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
I'm always down for a good vampire survivor game, and this one was surprisingly well done. What I really liked was how it has a built-in autoaim for the player, meaning all the player has to focus on is moving around (and building defences, but we'll get to that). I would've loved to see more animation from the zombos and the player, but for what it is now it's pretty good. Of course, there's room to make it better and I hope to cover the major areas of improvement right now.
First, I found it generally annoying that there wasn't the ability to visit shops between levels. I particularly felt this during the second level, when enemies were coming in so fast that I just didn't have time to do anything but fight. Part of this is due to the level structure, where the spawns are very close to home, and part of it is just how fast they appear compared to the levels before and after. I almost felt like it should've been the setting of the last level rather than the second.
I also felt like it should possible for the player to set up their defences before zombies start coming at them. I like the idea of some zombies roaming around that the player can kill to earn some starting cash, but I feel like the round shouldn't stop properly until they hit some sort of confirmation. That way, the player can take their time to learn the map and plan their defences. As a fun trade-off, this then makes it easier for you to give larger waves because now the player should feel more prepared for them.
Speaking of defences, it should be possible to pick up any placed defence item and to move them around. That way the player isn't screwed by a misclick.
I liked the randomly spawning chests that give the player more money. However, the player shouldn't have to wait for the money to spread out on the ground before it can be picked up. Instead, money from chests should just go straight to the player. I also don't think that money should despawn.
When it comes to shops, in particular the store that lets you get more defences, I'd say that instead of making it that what the player can get is completely random every time they buy something, make it that everything is accessible but the costs for each specific type of upgrade rises as you buy more of it. When I was playing, I just put my focus into grabbing any upgrade that affected my nail gun or my barricades, and typically I was always getting at least one of these. I had something like 8 nailguns that had huge range and did tons of damage, trivializing the third stage. Making it that you can buy everything but each time you buy that upgrade ups the cost of the next one means focusing on specific upgrades will eventually become too costly to be worth it, which in turn will encourage them to grab other upgrades.
Lastly... I'd say drop the voiceovers of "Begin!" When you hear it once, it's not a big deal. When you hear it several times in a single level, it can get really annoying.
Overall, fun experience! Hope you do more with it!
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
This was pretty fun to play! I kept going from "OMG EAT EAT EAT" to "OMG KILL KILL KILL" over and over and just had a smile on my face the whole time. However, twice I accidentally fat fingered hitting R while trying to press other buttons (E, 4, etc) and reset my game. Instead of putting the reset on a key, make it just an option in the menu?
So originally, my feedback was going to primarily be about how to have some control over what fish eat. However, as I was writing in and thinking of other things I thought could be useful, I realized this wasn't going to be adequate. So I'm going to just keep the food stuff as it is, but after it I'm going to dive into the new stuff.
Overall, the one thing I wish I had was control over what each fish would eat so that it could be easier to get specific mutations. I really felt this in the second level when I wanted to get one fish to upgrade with tank food, but everything else kept eating it. Of course, as fish it wouldn't entirely make sense to control what they eat. Instead, what I think should happen is two-fold:
1. Over time, fish should prefer food that relates to how they're evolving. So after evolving a few stages, a pure DPS fish should only want Meat, while a pure Tank fish should only want Ore.
2. There should be a way to feed a specific fish more directly. For example, perhaps you can click on a fish and directly feed it with a cooldown for using the ability on a per-fish basis (Something like the Chum, but more direct and singular).
With these, it would be a lot easier to maintain your fish. In addition, neither method would make it easy to get food to the extra fish that give you stuff (like the turtle and relic fish).
Actually, speaking of those extra fish... I didn't quite understand what relics did. For the most part, I was just dropping them in and letting the fish have at them. I'd love it if I could save up relics in an inventory and look them over to see what effects they have. Then if you incorporate the ideas above, you could make it that you can just give relics to specific fish (not on a cooldown, though, so it's more like you're "equipping" a fish with a relic). That way, the player can ensure relics go to the fish they want to have them. You'd also then be able to make more types of relics!
Okay, onto the new stuff.
As I was writing about wanting to know how much damage the player could do with left click, it occurred to me how I also wanted to know the stats of my individual fish. As far as I can tell, there's no system in game for doing this. You can't even click on a fish, as doing so just drops food. This leads me to realize that to do some of the things I suggested above would take some changes to how the game plays. So rather than let you have to figure that out on your own, I want to provide it as a suggestion.
Right now, the player chooses which food they want to drop and then left clicks to do so. However, I think there should be an option to not drop food at all. This could then be the mode you have to use when you want to attack an enemy fish (so if you're in food mode, you won't be attacking fish). You can also click on individual fish to bring up a menu about that specific fish. This menu could not only give stats and let you directly feed a fish or assign a relic, but you could even NAME the fish. That would then make it all the more devastating if you lose the fish, as the ghost fish would then carry that name in the background. I would say that while in this menu, gameplay should pause so the player doesn't feel rushed.
One thing I almost forgot to bring up.... when a fish gets an upgrade, I recommend having a confirmation for the upgrade chosen. I had times where I was spamming food, only for an upgrade screen to pop up and I hit something I may not have wanted. Having a confirmation screen that intentionally puts the buttons in a place where the player is just unlikely to be spam clicking. I would say along the very top of the screen. This would be normally be a weird place to put them, but it would also avoid confirming a wrong upgrade.
Alright, I think that covers it! Good luck with the game and I hope to see more of it!
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
I need to start this by making a confession: I generally don't like these types of games. I refer to them as "momentum" games, where the objective is you have to navigate around using controls that not responsive and where if you overdo things you'll likely just screw it up. They also tend to use what I call "tank" controls, where you use A and D to turn the character and use W to move forward, which I'm also generally not a fan of. Despite all of this, I wanted to play it and give it a chance because I HAVE seen some of these games that I do like. It's all about the game's design and how it treats it.
For the first couple of levels, I didn't feel there were any real problems. Then I got to the first level where you have a wall of floating spikes in the way, where you need to use an ability to push them out of the way. Now up front, I like the concept of this idea. Having a tool to let you force certain types of obstacles out of your way can be fun. What I wasn't as big of a fan of was how using the tool didn't just push the spikes: it also pushed ME in the opposite direction with quite a bit of force, making it that I then had to overcome that force to regain the careful momentum I had been using. Now maybe if this power could be used for other things - like, say, for pushing blocks quickly or for pushing buttons without need to get too close - I could see this as being okay. Sadly, it doesn't seem to impart a lot of force on blocks (moving them about the same or just a little less than how much it would move me if both myself and the block were sitting on the ground), meaning I was better off just using my body to do so, and it had no impact on buttons.
One thing I DID like, however, was how blocks I had to move would retain the progress I had made on them. Thus if I had gotten a block where I needed it to open a path, that path would stay open. I like this. You also had checkpoints, which made this even better! Nothing annoys me more in these games than getting so far through a level only to die right near the end and having to redo everything. These two things made this not the case and I do appreciate it.
But then I came to the part that... Look, I'll be honest; it just turned me off to this and I quit part way into the second level with them: enemies. There are blocks that, if you come within a certain range of them, will come at you and instantly destroy you. Not push you around, not block your path. They just outright destroy you. More than once, I ended up having these things attack me on a spawn point where I just repeatedly died until the enemy would self destruct (as a consequence of this, it would make it that I could no longer sit straight up on the spawn point and had to now navigate back into play at an angle that was disadvantageous to me).
There are honestly several problems with these enemies. For starters, between the size of the player character, the size of the enemies and the general amount of space you usually have for navigating around, these enemies have attack ranges that are just too big. There's just no way around them. Another problem is how quickly they can move. Where players have to work with the momentum gameplay and can have a hard time navigating around if they're going really fast, these things can go from 0 to 100 about as fast as Sonic the Hedgehog. It's outright impossible to get away from them without absolutely max speed, and even then I don't know. I never got the opportunity to try because they were ALWAYS perfectly in my way to prevent me from attempting. Essentially, this means that unless an enemy is far off your normal path, the only choice you have is to keep beating your head against these machines until they blow themselves up and clear the way.
Maybe these enemies could work if that tool that can push spikes away could also push them away or even destroy them, but this doesn't seem to be the case either.
Overall, right now this is a frustrating experience unless you're REALLY good at tank controls and know perfectly how to play these games to maximize speed. It's just not fun to play. You have some cool ideas here, but there would need to be some major changes before I even think about considering to try this again.
