itch.io

i want to reach gameplay depth equivalency of terraria 1.0 by cl*ning
then... we will see..

thank u.. good point about the night, i didnt run the game with it enabled in forever
movement is beefed up slightly since theres no items to improve it... but next demo.... oh theres gonna be items...

i was getting 20 fps with default settings but half res works just fine for 60fps

i feel like i dont have a clue what im doing

i cant react in time to the enemy sound so i find myself just frantically doing 360s until i see them - then spam my shotgun (no success at all with the other gun) and hope i clear them out entirely - if any of the single yellow guys remain and goes outside of my field of view im definitely going to die in the next 5 seconds

attempted that like a solid 50 times and only once got to the fourth enemy spawn

no idea what the titular swing is for either 

*watches the video in the comments*

i understand what the swing is for now
gave it some more tries but i cant pull off that movement at all so now i just die to fucking up the swing and falling in the drink

it would be nice if you had more than one swing available, i know that enemies give you charges but i kinda just run out instantly from shooting them 

menu is heavily unnavigateable on the lower resolutions - for one of them its so bad i cant even select any other resolution and its stuck like this on restart (solved by blindly selecting maximized window in screen mode)
because of my very awful bad setup (i5-1030h capped at 2.5ghz with integrated graphics at 720p) i had low fps and slight input lag during the parry tutorial and couldnt get past it (im also very bad at parrying in videogames in general)

sorry

it spawned a boss which i dispatched of quickly, dont remember what happened next (probably nothing if i had to guess) and i found myself back at the floor

running on i5-1030h capped at 2.5ghz with integrated graphics at 1080p results in unplayable 15fps in first room
720p increases it to nice 40 with drops to 30 which is very playable (for me)

no hover on buttons in main menu and the options not working initially made me think it froze and i almost just closed the game and gave up on playing it (i can now see that the candles in the back are slightly animated which imply the game isnt frozen, didnt see it at first though)

i like the whole tutorial part before first enemies, though it is a bit repetitive with a bunch of containers that dont contain anything or just books,  and a lot of doors that dont open (both the ones at the start and later in the game) but its nice
reminds me a lot of the start in gothic 2 (very positive)
(apparently the containers are randomly generated.. in which case its not good.. a carefully placed potion here, coin there.. now thats something..)

armors and stuff looks cool, wish there was a sword or something right away instead of swinging around pieces of brass 

as for the combat...
overall i do find the combat janky but janky can be good (like gothic 2 for that matter, if theres a whole game around it to support the combat - noone likes gothic for combat afaik)

main issue i found is that all attacks are so slow - like 0.8s for a left/right/down swing, a whole 1s for an up swing, which seems to be true for all weapons so far (small/large candelabra, hatchet, table leg)
the animations arent particularly flashy or weapons hefty so it feels off to me (gothic 2 starting weapon takes 0.2s or so from input to hit) (checked ds1 too for the sake of it and the starting weapons are like 0.4s)

i know theres a difference between swing/thrust damage but trying to wrangle the cursor to the right position was pretty hard sometimes (i can tell it changes only if you move mouse fast enough, so sometimes i would accidentally move one way, but adjust too slowly and not switch back)

im also really bad at parrying in all games ever so i did it once after 10 failed attempts and never again sorry

my first intuition was to hold S at all times when winding up to avoid damage but that just took too long to do during every fight (and sometimes enemies would hit me with a plunge while i dont hit them with my own? weird)

then i discovered that the left swing hits the fastest so i ended up just walking up to the enemies on the side and clotheslining* them (pic related)

and honestly that made for a much more fun experience than trying to interface with the whole of what combat offers
i wouldnt even move my mouse to not accidentally lose the left swing (being able to run/dodge in all directions helps a lot)

so even though its janky its fun! it can be fun!

if there was several hours of content beyond the cat i could easily see myself doing the same thing all throughout and enjoy my time

---
*A clothesline is a move in which one wrestler runs towards another and extends his/her arm out from the side of the body and parallel to the ground

very fun and approachable game 

i dont like how the screen shakes when you move a piece next to the wall - trying to move it into the wall, sure, but moving just next to it shouldnt do it 

i think it should be said at the start somewhere that you cant instant drop pieces intentionally, its an obvious tetris staple and just feels wrong to not do it, but knowing its locked to characters/skills is fine

the controls are bit all over the place - game proper is played with keyboard only, but selecting next level and previewing enemy abilities is mouse only - the fight start screen could just expand the enemy ability text boxes automatically, and selecting next room etc could all be done with the keyboard easily
or how the abilities menu is openable with L but you need the mouse to do things in it
or how the status menu is openable with O but you need the mouse to hover over things (those could also just say their text outright)

i have no idea what ? rooms do, i picked the top option in like 5 different ones and couldnt tell what happened
playing again i got the room with 3 options that you can all pick separately and did see i got a nuke out of one but didnt see the penalty - which apparently is considered an enemy ability, rather than something on me

i got the "triples do +50 damage" skill offered again after picking it once but it shows up as only a single one in the skills list

i also think that seeing all the items at once is overwhelming, i ended up using just nuke (with the skill that makes first item use free its very nice) and bombs, didnt really look hard into the others since those were enough really

the enemy variation is fun enough and im sure theres plenty of more things that they could do, though some are much easier than others
like magician being effectively "your pieces start a bit lower" - you just wait until you pass the red bar and then play s normal
the guy who rotates your pieces is probably the hardest - turning an L sideways just bricks (hehe) you completely, and theres no counterplay at all that i can see, since it feels like hes just doing it randomly
compare it to the boss who has a mana bar and you can see when hes going to spawn garbage (but then after a while he starts spawning the single green tiles randomly which has a similarly annoying effect with no counterplay)

still its very fun and id play the endless mode but it seems to end on the first floor


as for the ai portraits they are off-putting not so much for being ai but for each one of them being a different style
if it was something like the same anime girl but with a different hat on for each class it would be miles better than this imo

im running on i5-1030h capped at 2.5ghz with integrated graphics at 1080p which should explain the technical issues

in combat i keep moving then trying to scroll one option lower to attack but defend instead because of the option shifting down to attack automatically - im sure thats something to be used to, but being able to cancel a defense the same way you cancel a move would be nice to have

the ranger enemy keeps shooting at me through its teammates and the soldier keeps walking up in melee range just to heal himself
also, at one point the soldier enemy seemed to be stuck walking in place for a couple seconds but he snapped out of it eventually and the fight went on

at the gate fight vs 4 enemies my sword swing that covers two enemies would hit only one - spear attacks in the same fight hit both
i thought thats just the quirk of the sword but at the fight down south next to a horse the sword hit both too

after a fight ends it freezes for a moment - longest one was when i killed two enemies with a crit swing and the other guy leveled something up

when i walked inside the mansion the game fps dropped harshly and dialogue started to be delayed (was relatively smooth up to that point in all other areas)
during the fight that happens next all attacks stopped connecting, except for an enemy healing themselves once (it went through with the healing number showing up only once out of 5 heals) 

at some point when alt-tabbed the walls stopped being see-through? maybe it happened earlier or was caused by something in the game itself, not sure

i tried running it in windowed at the lowest resolution provided but that didnt help the delay, fight still didnt register any hits - it almost feels like it draws the game at full resolution first, then scales it down, saving no compute at all - just a hunch
also theres no way to option the settings menu during a fight or in the main menu

its fun overall though and i wish i could enjoy it fully 

oh theres gonna

nvm