Episode Ninteen
Hey. Hello. HI!
Lets fucking GOOO! Some really stand out games this week. Blastell was a little bit of a slow starter but the gameplay loop made up for it. Dark And Quispy grabbed me right away with it's visuals. The gameplay was also pretty good but felt like it needed some tuning. Regardless, I remember these games over two months later... yikes... still behind. Oh well! You get what you pay for ;O
This weeks games;
- Blastell - By Culinaris
- Dark And Quispy - By Jaminite
Blastell #
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I have a special place in my heart for any small project that seeks the impossible task of bespoke assets. There is nothing wrong with asset packs or using AI to prop up your vision; but when someone gets this done and does it well I get very happy. I also have a special place for low poly assets. Very likely my middle age brain seeking its childhood?
The Good
The execution for the vision here is fantastic. I think the core game mechanics are there, needing a little more, but still very good. In particular I enjoyed the models. They where very well done. The detail in the intro room is fantastic. The foundation is set for adding more kinds of experiences.
The Bad
The intro room, while very much representative of very clear artistic choices... needs one simple change. The exit sign thing; I spent a lot of time exploring the first room – WHICH WAS REALLY INTERESTING – but I was starting to get nervous that I was missing something. I think changing the exit sign -> Play or "Enter" would be a good choice. If there is some kind of prompt for the player it could work. Maybe just a BUNCH of arrows pointing at the door; something super obvious would do the trick.
There is also a supppper nitpicky thing where you can spam the play button. While this is a minor thing, it is a thing. Fire that event only once, or just disable the user mouse on click. I am pretty OCD about that kind of stuff.
The Ugly
Nothing ugly! Good job! The intro room almost qualifies but I think with a liiiitle player guidance it is just regular bad ;)
Conclusion
I would like to see this game expanded. The intro room, for example, just needs more direction or player prompts. In general I feel like the beginning of the game really adds a lot of flavor, it's just kind of confusing. I would also like to see more enemy variants as well as some overall balancing and tuning to the experience.
It would be interesting to see how you can possibly make the player grow in power to get further? If that is the goal the difficulty is probably pretty on point. It really depends on the way the developer wants to take it.
Really great job (sorry for the delay D:)
Dark And Quispy #
A Fantasy Rogue-Like game with Paper thin graphics. Cut through waves of enemies and collect their souls to increase your power! Encounter a variety of enemies and events as you make your way through the DARK.
In the age of AI and asset packs I get really excited when I see coherent assets in any project, let alone custom assets? FORGETTAAAABOUT IT. I was very excited to play this game as the "survivor" genre is really fun for me. The trick is making the difficulty ramps appropriate and balancing the weapons. You want players to feel a struggle while still having fun. This game needs some tuning in that regard; at least the beginning progression felt too hard and underwhelming. Overall the vision was well done and I really enjoyed my time with it.
The Good
Obviously the stand out element of this game is the custom assets and the depth of the overall systems in place. The characters all had fantastic details and really drew me into the world. The enemies felt unique and interesting. The merchants also stood out as quite interesting.
The overall design of this game is also noteworthy. There was a lot of work put into the various enemies, weapons, mechanics and all that.
The Bad
This work of art is really something to be proud of, so this is entirely aimed at furthering that vision. I am not trying to be negative.
It's very hard to build out systems that work well in this kind of genre. Too much power, players will get bored, not enough and they will get frustrated. Judging this in such a short snapshot isn't ideal; but this game felt too hard to start. I think the light radius is too low and player to slow.
The minion spawn time needs to be slowed down in the beginning of a play. They came out me too fast, too soon. These are all elements that require extensive play testing and feedback so people may have very different experiences. In general you can either tweak the player power start line or make the enemies less powerful in the beginning, just something to play around with.
Not a fan of the 2d/3d mixed assets. I don't think it takes away from the game, as in it's not really even noticable. It's pretty well done for what it is, however, I think it would just look better if the world matched the characters. Additionally, not a fan of the way the entities in this world "flip" in 3d space. It felt a little distracting. If the world were to match the character assets it'd probably be my favorite aesthetic of the 50+ games I've given feedback on. Even without that, it's top 5... so if this is the vision go for i!
Last thing is the overall systems felt in need of some polish. I know it's tempting to stray, but just straight up copy the systems from Vampire Survivors and evolve from there. The currency systems are probably fine being different but the overall player path needs to be fixed a tiny bit.
Examples:
- Have the user pick the weapon before entering the arena. You can still have them be able to upgrade in the same way but users will start the levels without a weapon.
- The progress bar to enter/exit levels; just put a clear and concise UX for this one. Press "enter" to start is fine. Some kind of cave or clear exit for the user to touch to leave. Maybe it pauses and asks if they are sure? Either way that did not feel great to me in hindsight.
The Ugly
The mouse needs to be disabled and hidden OR capture the mouse input for menus. This will certainly be losing you players. I thought the game was bugged because I could see my mouse and I was unable to click menu items. This is a pretty severe UX issue that needs to be addressed.
Conclusion
Really fantastic vision and execution here. I think it needs a little love but what game doesn't? I really think despite the torrent of developers flocking to this genre there is still a demand for it! With the standout art and overall gameplay nailed down I think this one will go far.
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