itch.io

Thanks!

Which texture works best?

Concrete:

Marble:
Stones:
Decorative pattern:
Plaster effect:

Or should I keep them all (at some cost to download size)?
If I keep multiple textures, should I set the texture myself for each level, to give each level a kind of identity, or should I let the player choose which texture they want displayed, as a kind of UI skin? (perhaps with 'random' or 'from level' as an option there)
(Game link: Lockstep Arcade)

Lockste Arcade

Maybe you know about this already, but there's a thing with browsers not wanting to do things like interacting with the clipboard unless this happens inside a click on an actual dom element. (I had to spend a lot of time working around this issue.)

Pretty cool!

The jumping mechanics have been done before, as Animamundi24 says, but these are implemented quite well, and the platform then feels pretty solid.

I got to the boss battle and tried a few times, but I'm currently demotivated by failing parts of this that I had previously got through successfully. :)

The music is a bit loud and I had to turn the volume down a bit. I do like the music that it transitions to in the boss battle though.

I was 'caught out' by a dialog choice, and liked that idea.
There are some spelling mistakes in the dialogues, though, that I think should be pretty easy to fix.

Looks very interesting!

Just went through the tutorial so far, but encountered some issues:

After throwing first lot of dice in the tutorial, and clicking through the explanation of score multiplier, I got an error, with an interesting bit of UI for showing details and offering to copy, but copying here (or in another log view I got to somehow) did not seem to actually copy anything to the clipboard.

(It was possible to close the error and continue after this.)

In browser log:

bunch of cross origin requests blocked

Trying to get length of sound which is not loaded yet. 20260908_AlphaDemo_v0.4.83.8_ZAR_web.framework.js.br:9:117041

(Bunch of warning level messages)

CombatController recovered stalled enemy-damage flow. Reason: Damage feedback handler 'PlayerScoreCalculationUIController.RequestCalculationFeedback' timed out after 15s realtime. Context: Stage=WaitingBeforeEnemyDamage, Room='Basic Enemy Room', Enemy='Lock Imp', Round=1, Throw=3, Score=11.5, BlankedDice=0, TimeScale=1. Damage flow will continue.

Thanks for your testing and feedback! (I actually wrote another post replying to this before, but it seems to have gotten eaten by itch. :/)

I also tried a little bit of the campaign mode. I didn't spend too much time on that since it was mostly levels I played in the tutorial already.

So yeah, the first levels in the campaign do just repeat the tutorial, but then it does move on to some new levels.

I was kind of intending for the campaign to replace the tutorial, but I'm not so sure about this plan now, and then if this doesn't replace the campaign I will need to separate out the levels and avoid this kind of repetition.

I didn't understand what the point of the "ghost" rocket was.

The ghost rocket is all about multiplayer, essentially.

You control the ghost rocket directly, with immediate visual feedback to your control actions.

The rocket with a coloured in circle then follows along the same path some frames later (15 frames by default = 1/4 second), and this then shows network synchronised state. This network synchronised rocket is then what actually interacts with things like switches, doors and enemies.

This is not actually needed when you play single player, and I should probably look into removing these delay frames when you play single player, I guess (although this will then make things feel and play differently in the two modes).

I feel like it had something to do with bypassing the beam, but I didn't figure it out.

Yeah, it makes perfect sense to look for some reason for that ghost mechanic, actually, given that this is not explained to you, and that there is actually *no* reason for this in single player. It's a shame this worked out as a kind of red herring, and got in the way of working out the beam puzzle. :/

I didn't care for doing the Mosh Pit level. Having to get just the right spot for the swarmers to build the stairs wasn't fun.

So this is actually what the trigger mechanism is all about. But most people don't understand this when playing that tutorial and this obviously needs to be communicated better. I'm then thinking that it could be good (and relatively low effort) to just add some images (e.g. bits cut out from screenshots, with highlights) in with the existing text explanation for the tutorials.

[Serpents + Pilots] Do you plan on adding single player variants of these?

Serpents is already something that is *possible* to play single player, with the goal of getting the most tail banked in the time limit, to get a place on the high score table, but this is much less interesting than Spirits or Neon Swarm single player because it lacks some kind of puzzle + completion condition. (Actually, I just realised this is the key point, as I was writing this response, and then a good next step for this game can be to add this kind of element, then!)

Pilots is the most interesting game with respect to multiplayer architecture, in a way, because it solves the problem of immediate feedback to the local player + synchronised simulation after network delay in an interesting way that *doesn't* require rendering the ship at separate local and synched positions, but this mechanism makes things tricky from a game design point of view. I should definitely extent this game in ways that make it more interesting for single/co-op play then, but it just requires a bit more thought.

There seems to be a bug with the name change tab. I wasn't able to type anything in at first. I refreshed the game and was able to get it working. But it might be worth looking into.

There was a problem with some controls (including text entry boxes) not working when in full screen mode, which sounds like what you report there, which is fixed for the next version. (Thanks!)

Thanks!

The tipping point increases quickly, so there is a lot of pressure to get some kind of setup which delivers good hands quickly also, and I didn't see any way to do this.

Ok, so that was my first run. I got a nice combo of jokers early on in my second run, but got unlucky and still lost early.

I also discovered the redraw button, which made things a lot easier. ;) (Note that I one found this because I saw the reference to 'per redraw' on the joker and then looked to work out what that was talking about.)

I am here, currently, on my third run:

It feels like I can't lose from here, since I increase my £ each level and everything scales up from that.

I also can't burn anything, because even high card wins, with this setup.

So I just keep buying cards I already have lots on, and save up more and more money, and then, now, it feels like the tipping points doesn't increase fast enough. :)

As a general point, I feel like the jokers that depend on you getting a specific hand are significantly underpowered compared to 'generic' jokers such as I have here, since it is very difficult to get to a situation where you can ensure you consistently get some specific hand type.

Very nice!

Worked well, first of all, and I didn't see much in the way of bugs, apart from once when it was still saying 'not enough cards, buy one more card to continue' even after I had bought enough cards (and then went on to continue to the next round).

In terms of gameplay, I find it annoying that the rule about having to equalise number of cards across hands means that a lot of your plays are forced. So there is no actual choice until the fifth card, for example, and even then the placement for every fourth card is also forced.

I like the idea about being able to strategically burn cards, but the lack of choice means you actually end up not having much say over what gets burnt, in practice.

The tipping point increases quickly, so there is a lot of pressure to get some kind of setup which delivers good hands quickly also, and I didn't see any way to do this.

I didn't see if there was any possibility to sell stuff in the shop (which could be nice). (I didn't try buying another joker after all my joker slots were full, since I was too desperate to restock cards, and had to spend all my money on that!)

Because I feel like I didn't have much choice, there is less the feeling that 'I know what I need to do differently now', just one more game, that games like this can give you.

Some more choice is really key then, I think IMHO. Maybe, if removing the restriction about equalising hands would be too much, some kind of option or power to 'cheat' and move cards around (e.g. coming from jokers, or something) could be good, or the possibility to influence the stack the cards of cards the cards are coming from, or anything giving you the possibility for more control, and to do 'clever' things that influence the outcome.

(Please try my game, Lockstep Arcade. Any feedback is appreciated!)

but no matter how much coffee I gave him at the second spot he just kept asking for more and wouldn't move on again

Ok, correction, after an enormous amount of coffee he continued. :)

I got to the skull castle at the end, and triggered the boss battle.

I was doing pretty well (because I had a lot of power ups), but got hit by a rat nevertheless and got respawned at the respawn location with the boss rat gone. Moving towards the end of the level again, I found the guy on his way back asking for even more coffee, so I bought him one more for the road, he moved forward to the end again, and I got the text saying I won the game. :D

Not sure what happened to the giant rat boss. :)

The goal is to get the hero npc to the other side of the map. If the player moves too far from them, they will lose money, when they run out they will return to the start.

Ok, this makes more sense now!

(That needs to be made a lot clearer though, somehow, I think.)

I tried again. This time I got the guy his coffee at the first place he stopped, and he moved on to a second spot, but no matter how much coffee I gave him at the second spot he just kept asking for more and wouldn't move on again.

It felt like there was a bit of an exploit, in that I could just keep mining gold, and give him a bunch of this, as well as buying upgrades, indefinitely, so I actually bought him quite a lot of coffee in the end, but since he just wouldn't move on I eventually just had to give up.

One other minor issue: Escape key is supposed to exit you from the shop, but if you are in full screen then the first press on escape actually just exits full screen, and then you have to press again (in windowed mode) to actually exit. (Then go back to full screen if you were wanting to play in full screen.)

Another UI issue is that the explanation boxes above character heads tend to go off the screen where you can't read them.

Thanks!

I should have made it more clear, but in the bottom-right corner, you can see "Current" and "Best." Current is the current round  you are on and Best keeps track of the furthest round you've reached (it updates after you die or replay). Based on your screenshot, you got at least to round 10.

I went quite far beyond round 10, and then it seems to have stopped incrementing what was actually shown for that.

My first run. It got a bit crazy, which is cool. :)

Some issues:

- when I standing by the edge of the playing area my bullets hit the edge and get removed straight away (biggest problem, I would say)

- heart placement is not very random, as we can see

- there is nothing to show how many rounds I have actually played here (which is a shame, as I want to show off that I survived for a ridiculous number of rounds)

- at this point, I can't actually choose the 'present' between rounds, since my bullets are still moving (slowly), and will kill one before I can make any choice

- the 'your bullets convert enemy bullets' powerup is kind of broken, I think (but some brokenness is ok, as it is fun to break builds in these kinds of games) 

Please try my game (lockstep arcade). Any feedback is appreciated!

I like the screen effects, and the overall feeling. One thing that felt odd was only being able to change gravity direction when you are actually standing on a platform. I guess it has to be like that, or you could effectively hover at will, but it nevertheless felt a bit like an arbitrary limitation, from the player point of view.

Some improvements from when I saw this before, which is cool! The flying monster is problematic, as the fireballs don't seem to hit this. And then there is a problem, for me, with the fact that, when you successfully avoid or shoot the monsters you still get "you lose" after a while with nothing to explain why. Is there a time limit? If so, I think this should be visible.

The new game, 'Spirits', is an homage to the classic platformer N++, with inertial movement (WIP), and support for online coop.

Elements included so far: switches and doors, edge crawlers with beams, mines that rearm, timer and time replenishing pickups. (Many more to be added.)

I'm interested in thoughts/feedback about the control method, because this is central to the game and very tricky to get right (so still to be tweaked a lot).

I'm also interested in trading play-testing, and setting up mutual play sessions with other people developing multiplayer games (as discussed here.

The game is playable in free a browser, including for online play, with no account required (use 'Connect as guest').

Playable link: https://locksteparcade.itch.io/lockstep-arcade

Other games in the arcade include:

- Neon Swarm (a Lemmings retake, single player, multiplayer versus and co-op)

- Pilots (multiplayer battles with homing missiles)

- Serpents (a multiplayer version of the classic snake with inertial movement, single player with high score)

Very nice! Took me a while to understand about the red dice feeding into the multiplier, somehow, even though I played a load of Balatro. :) This run was looking good, just needed to get over the hump of getting those category upgrades going, or maybe I needed some money generation to go with the ladder as well..

So I'm:

1. developing a multiplayer game arcade thing as a hobby project, and
2. interested in connecting with other people for online gaming sessions

I notice that when you look here on Itch, or places like reddit r/playmygame, lots of people are developing games, but it generally seems to be quite difficult to find people who are interested in testing games.

So what I suggest is to get together with other people who are also interested in online games and developing their own games, for weekly sessions where we would go into discord or whatever and have a session where we play each other's games for a bit.

Three or four people would already be enough to start something like this, as long as everyone is interested enough in the games the other people are developing to spend a bit of time playing them each week.

I suggest a restriction to browser based games, so no worries about security issues.

For timing, I guess a weekend morning in the states which corresponds to a weekend evening in Europe would probably be good.

Let me know if you're interested!

Hi, my game, at https://locksteparcade.itch.io/lockstep-arcade does not appear to have been indexed, (never came up on the fresh games list, and doesn't show in a search for 'lockstep').

I read that this can take a while, and waited to give some time for this to show, but it has been more than one month now, so I guess there is some problem with the game page setup or with my account having been flagged for some reason.

I read through the faq, and tried to make sure that everything is set up properly on the game page. (Maybe there is still some problem with the way this is set up, but this is certainly not obvious, if so.)

I sent an email to support four days ago, and got a response code (365202), but didn't get any response to the support email yet.

Why I believe my game should be indexed: It's a hobby game, available for people to play for free in the browser, which I am trying in good faith to get out there for feedback so I can get better at the art of game development and improve the game.

(Seems like this is what itch.io is all about, right? Having to beg to get the game indexed in this way kind of then puts me off the whole platform a bit, I've got to say..)

Anyway, any idea what is going on, here, and what I need to do to get this sorted out?

I got to the right side of the map, and went off the screen, but nothing happened (and I could still jump). Didn't understand why I would get "You lose" after a certain amount of time, is there a time limit?

I wondered about that (whether the new character might be on my side), but I couldn't seem to be able to select them. It also seemed like their threat areas were being rendered the same coloured as the other enemy (but I might be wrong about that). Having an easier first fight is probably a good idea, maybe, with some kind of checkpoint after an initial short fight so you don't have to repeat the tutorial part.

Btw. yeah, the tutorial was perfect for getting the idea of the game, the music is really nice, and it is great to have the leaderboards. 

Nice game! Got 4th place on the leaderboard, on first play through. :) I guess I then feel like I completed it, and don't want to play again. Not sure what to suggest as improvements. The game was enjoyable to play. It would be good if I didn't complete it first play through, I guess (and then I would want to play again to try to complete). Maybe if it felt clearer that what I needed to do to get higher on the leaderboard (time to complete?) was actually important, I might then go back and try to get a higher place on the leaderboard. Also, I guess there is always the possibility to add a meta (rogue like) set of unlocks/upgrades outside of the game itself (and set the difficulty harder so that these upgrades are kind of necessary to complete the game). (But, it kind of feels purer, in a way, without that.)

Interesting game! I tried fairly hard, though, and couldn't beat the first level, so maybe this is a bit too hard. :) I managed to make some progress by repeatedly bracing one turn, then moving out and back into their threat region so they have to move and take my reaction attack the next turn. The thing where you take a debuff and then start losing health every turn put a bit of a spanner into this though, and when I felt like I had finally got it and thought I had killed the guy, it seemed like a second enemy jumped in to the fight?

I played classic mode, which is maybe kind of stupid now the I notice your changes most probably relate to decay mode specifically. In my play through in this mode, however, I never took any damage as far as I could see (so not sure how this even works, it seems like it is ok to be on a black hole for a short time?), and I relatively quickly got to a point where no black holes were appearing at all. It would be better if I would take damage and die, in this first playthrough, and have to learn something in order to succeed. ;)

I felt like I still had to work out the mechanics of when I can play what card, myself, essentially. This isn't actually too much of a problem for me, personally, because I find it kind of interesting to work out stuff like this. More of an issue is that the play feels kind of meaningless before you get to the point where you might actually fail to get through all of the enemy cards, and then take some damage, and it takes quite a while to get to this point. What I would suggest, then, is a small tutorial situation, with a small deck and small number of enemy cards, but with this situation carefully design so that you actually have to make the right decisions to get through this without taking damage.

Hi, so I'm looking for feedback on this project: https://locksteparcade.itch.io/lockstep-arcade

It's a collection of 3 games (currently), built around a shared lobby and network platform.

The games run in the browser and can be played without any signup (if you go into credentials setup and select 'connect as guest').

One of the games (Serpents) is designed to work on phones, and if you load the arcade on a phone you should get a custom simplified version of the UI that enables you to play just this game.

The games all used the same underlying multiplayer networking model, which is that the simulation runs deterministically on each client, with only a very small amount of data sent over the network (key player inputs), and with a delay between user actions and their effect on shared game state integrated fundamentally into each game by design.

The games are:

1. Neon Swarm: A retake on the classic "Lemmings" puzzle-strategy game, reimagined for competitive and cooperative multiplayer! Guide your lemmings from start to exit, managing limited resources and competing against up to 3 other players.
2. Pilots: Fast paced battles between spaceships in a top down view with smooth inertial movement, based on target locking and homing missiles. 
3. Serpents: Combination of the classic 'Snake' game with inertial (asteroids style) movement.

Neon Swarm is the most developed,with a number of tutorial levels that teach some of the basic game mechanics.

I'm a bit divided about where to take this from here. It's kind of just a hobby project at the moment, and a way for me to play around with some game mechanics and a networking model I find interesting, but I need to get people actually playing the games to stay motivated, and I like the idea of doing 'market-lead' development, getting feedback, and making something that people actually find enjoyable and interesting to play.

I think that there is a basic problem for multiplayer gaming in particular, which is that it is much easier to get one person to randomly click on your game and play it than it is to get more than one person to get organised and try something like this together.

Some different paths I could take with this:

• Double down on mobile support, as started with the Serpents game. In this direction it could be good to try and make something targetted at groups of people that are already together and in the same room, and make it as easy as possible for the group of people to get connected and playing something multiplayer in this kind of situation.
• Build up the single player side of these games (e.g. by developing more of a campaign mode for Neon Swarm), as a way to get people interested and playing that, with multiplayer gaming then something that can follow on from that.
• Bring stuff like the high score tables more front and centre, setting things up so that people can see high score changes as soon as the game finished, comparisons with friend's high scores, and so on

Anyway, questions welcome and any feedback appreciated!

Name of System: Lockstep Arcade

Game website

Number of Players: 4 max per game room, currently

Approximate Session Length: 10 minutes

Testing Period: I expect to just keep on developing this, incrementally

Other Details: 

The game code, networking, and lobbying is pretty solid, and there shouldn't be a lot of bugs, but gameplay is a work in progress, so currently limited but will keep improving.

What I need: People willing to test over the next couple of weeks, Feedback on gameplay, balance, and bugs

Ideally bring a friend (easier to get matches going)

Time commitment: ~30-45 minutes total (can be split across multiple sessions)

You can download the game here

You need a credential file for lobby access (fill in the form here for this). There is also an offline tutorial for the Lemmings clone part (no credential file needed for this part).

The game runs on Windows and Mac, and Linux via Wine.

How To Contact: Through the game website, locksteparcade.com