I just dropped my arena FPS demo on steam.  My goal was to develop a simple and fun multiplayer game that was fun even when you're losing.  I've dubbed it; Dodgeball with guns.

It's a very simple concept.  Knock your opponent off, or instantly vaporize them.  KO's are worth more points.  Augment weapons with powerups.  Shoot the floor out from under your opponents.

Here is a small gameplay demo;

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;

1. Blastell - By Culinaris
2. Dark And Quispy - By Jaminite

Blastell #

Play In Browser | Discord | Twitter | Tumblr

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 #

Demo on Steam |

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:

1. 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.
2. 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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WHAAAZUUUUUP.

Two distinct art directions for the games games this week.  Slime project was a beautiful and mysterious spectacle while spud customs was just too freaking funny to really think.  How serious can I really be giving feedback to a potato border crossing?

This weeks games;

1. Spud Customs - By BroHeart
2. Slime Project - By Hamantha

Spud Customs #

Play demo on itch | buy it on steam | Source On Github | Game Dev Stream

Forced to serve as a border officer, you inspect documents and decide the fate of potatoes.  Very high stakes.  The concept of this game is to pay attention to details.  Potatoes hand you documents and it is your job to make sure they match.  If they do not match... BANISHED to a stew! (not really).

Custom graphics and gameplay in this game jam game.  It was built over a weekend and then a round of bug fixes for another game jam.  Given the completeness of it I decided to escalate it beyond the game jam review format.  Turns out I was right because the game was pushed to steam recently! Huzzah!

The Good

The whole picture for this one felt complete.  Between the custom graphics, UX and the the gameplay loop it all felt tied together nicely.  It felt kinda dark... depressed and destitute potatoes seeking a better life.  Hilarious.

I was able to figure out the game with zero tutorial or much info.  That's always a testiment to game design when players are able to progress with only a little direction.  Rules were simple, UX was (mostly) clear and concise.

Boy howdy, there were some really good details for this one.  Beyond the nice pixelated aesthetic, there was fantastic sound.  The music was somber and matched nicely.  The little sounds between opening the passport to the stamps and the little potato language added a lot to the immersion.

The Bad

The one comment on the UX; explaining the rules was a little odd.  I understand the themetic nature of the note on the desk but it felt a little distracting. I think a less verbose, more informative set of rules for which potatoes to let in or not would be a great addition.

The one comment on the aesthetic was the stamp felt too crisp.  The rest of the assets were pixelated a certain way and the stamp was not.  I think revisiting this to not stand out too much would really complete the art direction.  Also, the shadow was not right.  Either change the "picked up" indicator or study some shadows to get a better idea of what it would look like.

The Ugly

Initially I didn't file anything under the "game breaking uglyness" category.  I think the one thing I noticed is I didn't really understand some of the reasons for rejection/approval. When a player fails a check the game needs to make it clear why they failed.  Correcting a players error clearly would go a long way.

Conclusion

Overall this was a very solid base for a game to do a full release.  I am not surprised these two were able to take it further and release on steam.  I think this game jam was quite impressive for such a quick turn around.

Love to see game jam game's make it up on steam! Great job broheart!  It looks like there has been even more features / details added to the game.  THE POTATOES HAVE EYES NOW!! Also I guess you get to blow them up? Sounds like it is very much worth checking out.  If you like the demo, you can pick up a copy for just $4.99!

Slime Project #

Slime project was an interesting game to me.  You are spawned into a very beautiful world to explore and find slimes! I didn't really know what the purpose was going in and it took a bit to grasp.   Eventually I found puzzles and the slimes!

The Good

It is important to note that everything but the audio was made by Hamantha.  First of all, the handle is also good.  I really liked the world that was built.  I had fun just exploring without knowing what I was doing!  

The colors were brilliant and well done.  

The Bad

When I do these demos I am a captive audience.  I have committed to the game and will continue playing for 20-25 minutes.  I believe other players, who aren't enamored with the world, will not make it that far.  SOME kind of prompting / waypoints would be the next thing to add.

The Ugly

Beyond that there just needs to be more.  The world is beautiful, the slimes are cool, it's time to add more content.  More puzzles, more slimes, bigger world.  I think this type of game definitely has an audience.  A relaxed, chill experience where you explore and find slimes.  Totally get it... GO MAKE THE GOOD VERSION OF IT!!

Conclusion

This is a side project for Hamantha.  It is very hard to be consistent and show up every day after a day of work and grind away at a passion project.  Trust me, I've been procrastinating showing up for this blog post for weeks...

I see the vision here, it just needs more.  I am very interested to see how this progresses as I really enjoyed this world.

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Hey.  Hello.  HI!

The Disco Option has been a regular hanging around in the streams since this was played and Varii was a very prolific participant in the months of August / September... oh my where has the time gone? I am very new to this whole game feedback and blog thing.  It really started on a whim.  I am a very whimsical individual, so I may put things on hold just as quick as a pick them up.  There is one thing I know, its not to force it.  I had a little bout of Depression (big D), I really needed to take a step back.  Next time I will be upfront about this with my budding audience.

One of my very influential figures is a small content creator / poet / traveler / programmer named Steven.  Steven has a really nice newsletter/blog, you should sign up.  Steven also suffers from Depression.  He wrote a really great book that is a very pragmatic guide to Depression.  In it one of the main takeaways is your economy of energy.  I really hunkered down this fall, it was pretty bad.  I have begun to feel better and I am excited to get back to a regular schedule.

This weeks games;

1. Divine Dining - By Varii
2. CyberPong - The Disco Option

Divine Dining #

Play In Browser | Varii (programmer) | BrushingBlooms (Artist) | PenguinSphen (Music/Sound) | Gr0n (programmer/UI)

Welcome to the diner, where both the food and the guest are Divine! But be careful, lest the anger of the gods be upon ye! Seat your guests, make some good food and serve them to the guests, while keeping the gods wrath away; with wine!. How long can you last serving your Divine Dining?

This was probably one of my favorite game jam games.  A clone of plate up / overcooked with some nice thematic twists.  Truly impressive the scope of this one, especially the custom graphics.  I must say the art direction still stands out in my mind all these months later.  It's kinda crazy that it only got 57th in the jam (the art was #29).  I believe there is some luck to these and it seems like early submissions have a clear advantage.  Perhaps in 2025 I will set up a Fizzle Studios Jam so as I can really see how accurate democracy is for picking these.

Anywho... this was a genuine fun good time.  I hope they take this one further to a full release.  I typically format game jam feedback to include what stood out, what needed more/less time.  If there is nothing to spend less time on I escalate it.  I truly do not know how this was done in such a short window.

The Good

I feel like this game really made me feel the rush of my old restaurant duties.  I was a horrible employee and dear reader, you can see that stands true to this day.  Rushed multitasking makes my brain melt.  It was a good and hilarious stress (for me).

The base game loop was very fun.  My dyslexic brain had a lot of trouble getting its wires crossed, there are some real subtleties to the rules.   Patrons of the diner order in symbols of food which translate to ingredients and preparation steps.  As true to the genre, when a patron gets impatient they leave and you lose money.

All of the mechanics tied together in a way that felt complete and (mostly) smooth experience.  I am quite surprised this game didn't rank higher, but I do believe they submitted it pretty late in the submission window.

The Bad

One of my main frustratations were when I would get behind and I'd want to just drop / throw my dishes out.  Perhaps this was an intended mechanic, I think it got way too hard when I got behind, there was zero chance of catching up.  I had an urge to just throw this food out immediately and move on to the next dish.  It felt VERY punishing to pick up the wrong ingredient due to this.

The plate washing mechanic didn't seem to really matter.  I would just end up leaving dirty dishes around.  This is a little nit picky but this mechanic needs more.  A penalty of some kind would be a good add.

Designing Game Jam games is different.  When a player boots up a game jam game they are even more likely to quit at the first sign of adversity.  I think the fantastic graphics defnitely bought you some currency with new users, but the tutorial certainly lost this team some votes.  I had to play through it twice to even get a chance to understand the mechanics.  The game needs to, at least, pause for me to read.  A stop gap could be making the timing twice as long for slow readers like myself.

The Ugly

Nothing ugly, but the tutorial borders on it.  It's not ugly to me beause adding a pause state should be a minor addition.

Conclusion

I really wish Varii had time to make more games, I found their work really creative and different amongst the sea of generic platformers and R-type clones.  I think it takes a certain something to try ambitious ideas in such a short period of time.

I know several people who would pick this game up retail.  It has a certain charm to it with the graphics.  The gods coming into a V.I.P. section and demanding wine is very nice touch.  This is on the short list of games I'd see to production.

Great work!

Cyber Pong #

Somehow, someway this is the first pong clone i've been handed.  I think the closest I had was one breakout clone.  In general it was nice to just zone out and watch a ball bounce around.  I freaking loved breakout.  Something about the geometry really vibes with me.

The Good

This was a really great start.  Getting the basics down is often overlooked.  Things like the UX and the graphics where all tied together nicely.  It was a bug free and complete experience.  It is not to be understated how important it is for any game to be in this state.

1. Basic game loop set up and established
2. Art Direction
3. Simple and direct user experience to get them in the game
4. No Bugs

This foundation, assuming the code is well structured, could be turned into any number of pong flavored games.  Done is better than perfect.  

The Bad

The controls felt a little slugish.  I would prefer to use mouse control.  Personally, I prefer a more responsive paddle.  It is very frustrating to see where I want to put my paddle and not get it there in time.

A minor nitpick is the volume levels of the music.  The ball SFX were drowned out by the music.  It's an impossible task to be a solo dev, so I'll forgive the fact that most people can't be an audio expert, programmer and artist.

The Ugly

The key to getting things done is iteration.  It is hard to iterate without feedback, it can also be scary to share things and ask for feedback.

The first thing that must be fixed is the random angles of the ball.  I actually wasn't sure if this was a bug or not, it was a design decision.  This design decision does not fit.  The simple fun in these types of game are in the prediction and manipulation of geometry.  Taking that away makes the game straight up random.  Let the users line up a good shot that is hard to block; this is the fundamental core of pong.

Conclusion

Fantastic core and a great start to a pong game.  What a fantastic game choice for a first project to dip your toes in game development.  I think more people should elect this type of game.  I think it's, engine selection depending, a bit of a challenge to get the geometry and collision set up right.  

This is why I focused so much on this being a great foundation.  Random angle bounces aside (easy fix... delete code), it felt responsive and accurate.  There are any number of games this could be added upon.  I don't believe there are plans to take this much further, which is fine.  I think overall most devs should focus on finishing a vision and moving on to the next, not that I've been paralyzed by indecision for my personal projects or anything...

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Verwelkoming!

What are the odds of two tactical-advance-wars-like games in one week? I dunno but it happened!  Both of those games were really fun.  The one that caught my eye right away was Ianis Materia.  Something about gelatinous main characters like Gish or super meat boy that really draw me in.  The tactics games were really quite good but something about the character and art directoin of Ianis Materia really vibed with me.

I was a bad little streamer and kinda dropped the ball on this recording... I think... twice? :D anyways, it'll be a bit choppy on the actual playthrough because video wasn't on for some time.

This weeks games;

1. Ianis Materia - by XCronos
2. Tactic Legends - by Cameron Wills
3. Endless Tactics - by The_Procrastinator

Inanis Materia #

Play In Browser | XChronos Itch Page | Johann Fowl

Ianis Materia is a Puzzle Platformer.  In a society of alchemists a master alchemist creates the most basic of all matter and it is deemed heretical! This alchemist throws the "Inanis Materia" over the city walls and that's where our story begins.  There is some really good lore on the Itch Page if you'd like to read more!

Now... the age old question; Is there room for another puzzle platformer?

WHO CARES!

Gameplay and art direction are all that matters.  There are no "hidden gems", quality work paired with quality marketing = $$$.  Will Ianis Materia be the next Super Meat Boy??? Probably not.  However, with more content at the same level of work and the proper price point this will be a successfull game to launch.  Don't ask me what that price point would be I've no expertise in this ;)

The Good

Overall the gameplay matched the fantastic animations and art direction.  Some of the mechanics felt a little clunky.  This may just be a UX / controls issue.  To me this is very... very impressive for a game jam that took 2 weeks.  Always blows my mind when this kind of quality can be achieved.  It's good enough that I will be doing the normal game feedback format on this – which is probably the highest praise I can give a game jam game.

Holy crap.  The animations were smooth AS BUTTER on this one.  GREAT job Johann.  How has this individual not been snapped up by some studio and been given huge sums of money to make pixel art?  He's open to collaborations so someone looking for this type of assets should go reach out.  Even the freaking torch flames are fantastic.  Incredible work.

The puzzles were also fun and interesting to figure out! I think the concept is sound and there is an infinite number of ways you could make these elements interact.  Very great foundation for a puzzle game.

The Bad

The overall sound was pretty good, however, there was no music so at times the soundscape was a little barren.  This is the kind of thing that, if you don't have someone composing music for your game jam, just go find some royalty free music or even better...  go to a site like Noiiz and purchase something that is just right.

One thing that I would consider redoing is the posters in the background.  Not a really big deal for something like a game jam but going forward these should be redone to match the quality of the other assets in game, they do not really fit.

The Ugly

Really the only thing that added a lot of friction for my gameplay was how to swap through elements.  It could be an issue with controls, or UX or design... but it was not a smooth experience.  I believe this can be reconcieved to be more intuitive and not be an impediment in gameplay.

Conclusion

Overall the quality of this game jam is truly fantastic.  Great foundation for a really fun puzzle game.  It EVEN HAS A STORY! The concept is sound and I would love to see this made into a full release.  Gosh that little blob is just so cute.

Tactic Legends #

Demo on Steam | Discord

FULL DISCLOSURE: this is one of the first games to disclose the use generative AI for assets.  I found this very interesting because the art direction in this game stands out.  This is not something I've come across, most of the games w/ generative AI look mediocre.  Here is the thing; the artist came first and then these high quality assets were used to generate variants for the website.  The UI is also AI generated.  

Now for the feedback...

Tactic Legends is a cross platform, player-vs-player, turn based tactical strategy game.  It is currently on Steam w/ a demo version does a great job showing the initial game play loop and how fun it could be to play against others.  I feel like its a really well thought out and well produced game.  Very... VERY complex.  Always a challenge to do multiplayer, I would love to give this another try with a friend at some point and test that aspect of it.  

The Good

This one had really high quality assets.  Better than most, really.  Unique characters, great animations, pretty decent environment.   The overall direction of the art was very established and felt very consistent.

The tutorial did a great job of introducing several of the basic mechanics.  It's really hard to grasp too much more about the core of the game and how it's balanced, but the initial game play loop was solid.

I think the introduction does a great game of showcasing the complexity and would definitely peak the interest of a player who makes it through that far.  I can tell a LOT of TLC and hard work went into this project; it shows.

The Bad

There are some UX improvements to be made;

The UX for the initial booting of the game is a little weird.  Unfortunately I wasn't recording properly, but, there is a button that is labeled "Create Account / Login".  This presumably logs in with your steam account.  It just shot me directly in to the game.  Get rid of the button, auto log the user in with their steam account.

The item select UX felt a little odd as well.  In the play-through you can see me struggle a little at first.  The problem is having to select each slot to fill.  To streamline this;

1. Game automatically selects the next open slot for the character.
2. User clicks item to add it to inventory
3. Game auto selects next open slot
4. Use can click previous slots to adjust already selected items

This will reduce the number of clicks by 50%.

The Ugly

The only real problem that REALLY takes away from the game is the mixed pixel resolutions, a common problem I run into.  Probably my most common critique I've given since I've started giving feedback.  In the attached screenshot you can see how dramatic the difference is.

The characters stick out and it shatters immersion.  It really looks like the floor and the character are from different games entirely.  This is going to be a really time consuming / expensive issue to address and it will require some hard decisions.

The problem transcends into the marketing materials and the character select.  It just doesn't match up.  The characters just feel so different.  A user would never think this game would be pixel graphics based on the marketing materials.  Not a good thing to surprise your users.  As a developer; you are missing out on those who like pixel assets AND misleading people who do not.

Conclusion

Pixel mixing aside, this is a very high quality project.  Game play, pixel aesthetic and overall UX is great.  Yes, some nitpicks about the UX, but those are very fixable and don't really take away from the game.  There is a lot of depth to this game.  Achievements, weapons, abilities, items... LOTS of stuff to get into and learn here.  The good aspects of this game far outweigh the aesthetic inconsistencies brought about by the pixel mixing.  

It's... SOOO hard to start a multiplayer game.  It's basically a requirement for a game like this to come with a Vs CPU + a great tutorial to explore the depth of the game.  Users who find this will likely need to convince others to join, so discovering a way to hook users with the tutorial is a very smart direction to go.  Great job! I look forward to seeing this game grow.

Endless Tactics #

Demo On Steam | Official Website | Instagram

Endless Tactics is a turn-based roguelite game. Play as the commander of a high-risk planetary mining operation, defend your base from alien creatures while trying not to get overrun. Use resources to upgrade your starship, unlock new technologies, powerups, and deadly new worlds to harvest.

This game hit me righ tin the feels.  I used to LOVE advance wars.  My brother and I used to play this in the car on our gameboy advances over USB.  It was the first multiplayer strategy game I really got into.  Endless Tactics has very clearly taken a page out of the Advance Wars book.  Overall it was a very pleasant playthrough.

The Good

The UX was very good.  I was able to understand the controls almost immediately.  There were a couple specific things, like the range of the weapons, and the blocking of line of sight that were very well conveyed.  Yes, I was punished for not understanding these things, but it was a very intuitive and clear learning experience.

The overall aesthetic and art direction of this game is really solid.  Even the music fit the look and feel.  Fantastic cohesion and polish.  The pixel art was really unique and the animations where very well done.

The Bad

The economy was pretty confusing to me.  I am not sure the best way to convey this better to users.  It could be beneficial to have some kind of info-graphic for me to refer back to?  This is probably a bit overly critical because I really only did play for 30 minutes and it is a complicated game.

I think the tutorial is thorough enough, but it's not conveyed in the right manner. Conveying the mechanics of this type of game is rather challenging. This is something that I didn't really take note of until revisiting this game just now, 3 months later (OH LORDY I'M BEHIND).  

The Ugly

A good introduction to a game will slowly introduce mechanics.  Listing everything I need to do before it's actually happening will not work.  What's worse is this tutorial is only available on your first playthrough.  A player must manually delete the save to experience the tutorial again.

I would recommend breaking individual mechanics into discrete playable tutorial levels.  Make sure each level forces a player to learn the mechanic to beat the level.  For example, I did not realize terrain could be destroyed until my revisiting of this game.  Make one of the levels force a player to destroy terrain to continue in some way.   Do this for more and more of your mechanics and drip feed the player information.

Conclusion

Overall this is a really great game.  Easily amongst the best I've reviewed.  I think it feels very well fleshed out.  The problem with any complex game will be introducing the players to these mechanics before they get bored.  I think this game has great depth but just needs a better tutorial.

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Howdy Folks!

This weeks games were pretty great! Three very distinct games that I enjoyed! I gotta say I wasn't sure what to expect for frog attack and you can hear my audible surprise when I gobbled up a human.  I've started to garner a couple of regular viewers which is fun.  I do this for my own enjoyment so it's really no big deal either way but it is sure less lonely!  Stop on by next week to join us at 1600 GMT.

This weeks games;

1. Frog Attack - by Popi
2. Haunted Crescendo - submitted by Regalia Rose (5 person team)
3. Blother - by MOHMOH

Frog Attack

Play In Browser | Poppi's itch page

Now, it is important to note that I will not turn down any game submitted and I always play with target demographic in mind.  I foolishly assumed this was for children.  Whoa buddy... what a surprise.  It brought me joy realizing that my purpose was to consume human flesh.  What that says about me? I have no clue... but good lord was that first gobble, and it's SFX brilliant.

The Good

The entire concept is weird... and fantastic.  Maybe it was the shock of that first person being wrapped up by a disgustingly long frog tongue and swallowed? maybe it was the sound effects?  Either way there is something wonderful about how unexpected the mechanics were.

Also while I understand the art direction was a bit... childish... it was endearing.  I always... always... ALWAYS... enjoy custom artwork no matter the quality.  Frog Attack's models were very casual but endearing.

The Bad

The puzzles where not that great.  The ones that were solvable for me were probably a bit too easy.  I think it was likely a fun exercise for the developer to come up with different mini games but really just kinda felt like chores.

In general I think some effort on working towards making more engaging and interesting puzzles would go a long way.  The sound design and zany mechanics were enough for me to forgive this but the actual puzzles need some TLC.

The Ugly

There was one bug that required me to restart the level.  I don't know how to replicate this but I think I clicked after the win condition? Who knows... Infinite eating glitch achieved.

I think the fly puzzle is unclear enough to classify as bad.  This needs clear instruction or a more intuitive win condition.  I tried... way too hard... to solve this and figure out what I was supposed to do.  Generally speaking, as a developer, one does not want players to feel like they are dummy dum dums like I was feeling.

Conclusion

Charming.  I know that's an odd description for a man eating frog game where you ruthlessly swallow people whole... but charming none-the-less.  The juxtaposition of the music and the hand drawn paint graphics with a square frog DECAPITATING AND EATING PEOPLE... is a great thing.

I am unsure of this individual's plans for this but with a little bit of polish I can see this being a cultural icon for young children around the world who's parents would never recognize their kids are eating humans alive.  Like seriously I would probably let my kid play this without even giving it a thought.  "Could this innocent looking game possibly, in any dimension, be inherently violent? NEVER".  Great work.

Haunted Crescendo

Download On Itch | ReliaRose | Watermylon | Uncle Skeleton

Haunted Crescendo is a submission to the Iron Mouse game jam months ago! YES I am that far behind on blog posts!  This is a horror game where you walk around a mansion trying to find memorabelia connected to Iron Mouse's ghost! There is a creepy dude who follows you and if he touches you... DEATH! Throughout the level when a new accessory is spawned, you have nothing but the angelic voice of Iron Mouse (seriously what a voice) to guide you to the items.

Now, I hate horror as a general rule... FNAF has zero appeal to me.  I hate being scared.  This was not nightmare fuel like FNAF... BUT it definitely made my butt pucker. This playthrough was fun for me.  This was a handful of games I've played (up to this point) with the developer watching.  I'm glad they were because being thrown into this haunted mansion with ZERO direction would have been probably pretty boring to play and worse to watch.

I picked the normal game format instead of the game jam one because... ya know... I wrote all this and forgot that I did that so... here we go!

The Good

The art direction and world building were stand out for sure.  Boy howdy was that menu pretty.  It may sound a little bit of an exaggeration but menu screens are massively important for a game jam.  It's something that buys a lot with prospective users.  I think of a players attention like a gauge; when it bottoms out the player quits... and a fancy menu adds to that threshold.  I am more likely to forgive any immediate transgressions or bugs if the dev bothered to put a fancy menu in.  It's a confidence thing; "I am so confident in this submissions gameplay that I spent valuable time making a menu".

It's also important to note that this was a mix of an asset pack for generic assets (tables, chairs etc) and the key elements like the theatre, monster and puzzle pieces were all custom.  It's a coherent world and that can be very hard to do w/ custom assets along side asset packs.  Stand out job for sure.

The feeling of running / hiding from the monster was definitely terror inducing.  The sound and screen overlay gave me intense anxiety and I hated it.  Good job.

The Bad

At times the AI felt too hard while at others it felt too easy.  Fixing this aspect of the ai, and re-examining it will not be easy.  Honestly, for a game jam, it's quite nit-picky for me to ask to spend more time on AI mechanics.  This requires exhaustive play testing from players who do not know the game.

I think for the jam it wasn't bad...  BUT... I gotta put something here, so... here we go!

Currently the ai works by forcing to be respawned near the player when the player exits a certain radius.  So, in order to explore how to fix this try tweaking the following;

1. Radius which triggers respawn
2. How close monster spawns to player
3. How aggresively the monster pursues the person
4. How easy it is to hide

I cannot possibly give specific direction on these values without actually playing them.  It's also tricky for a developer to test this themselves as... ya know... they are acutely aware of how exactly the ai works.  Again, excessive play testing would be required to address this.

The Ugly

The start was pretty rough.  I had... ZERO... direction on what to actually do or where to actually go.  I spent the first bit just straight up walking around this massive level.  I think just starting the person in the theatre room would be the quick and easy fix.  A more user-friendly tutorial and intro into the world would be the harder thing to do.

Conclusion

Overall I had a great time.  I found the world I was thrown into to be engaging and compelling to explore.  I feel like a little bit more prompting for direction on the player would be nice.   There were times when I had no clue how to get closer to the sound.  Perhaps a revisit to the layout of the level? I'm not sure.

Either way this was a compelling game jam game and the team should feel proud! Good job my dudes!

Blother

Play in browser | MohMoh's LinkTree

Nice action packed and small game here.  There is no game too small for me to review!  In fact, I find the smaller games like this who know their depth to be more compelling than a game that doesn't have clear direction.

The art on this one slapped me in the face.  It reminded me of a 2d duke nuke'em for some reason.  While I did struggle with my rampent dyslexia on this one, it felt pretty engaging.

What stood out?

Man the artwork on this one was slick.  The animations were satisfying.  Once I grasped the game loop it felt satisfying.

What needed more time?

I was very confused by the general mechanic.  You can see me struggling to try and mow down obstacles improperly.  There were flashing arrows prompting me to choose a side and I took it to mean, "SHOOT AS FAST AS YOU CAN OR DIE".  A simple fix to this would be to literally prompt the user to choose.  Bonus points for adding an animation to fail conditions.  I actually had to message the dev to make sure I wasn't experiencing a bug.

What needed less time?

I think there wasn't really anything that felt like a waste.  I use this metric to hopefully get teams thinking about doing the right work at the right time.  I don't really think there was anything that needed less time, just really the design issue with confusing me to pick a direction.  So maybe less time coding in general and a little more time watching a play tester experience the game.  

Now, I can hear you saying, "PLAY TESTER? THIS IS A GAME JAM".  Ah, yes, great point.  Still, 5 minutes watching a tester play this game w/ zero prompt would have saved this design decision.  It's always worth taking the time to watch someone experience your game unprompted.  Don't have someone in mind to test?  GO FIND SOMEONE.  Offer an exchange of testing.

Conclusion

Dopamine inducing for sure.  I can see this type of game being a good time killer game on mobile.  The graphics are good enough to draw people in, with a little bit of polish I think this game is worth fixing some UX issues and releasing.  Why not?

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Buenos Dias!

Wow.  I am a month behind on blog posts! YAY! On a personal note I started a new job so I've been a little drained and busy.  Mainly these FREAKING VACATIONS... whoa is me! My beautiful family dragging me away and distracting me from my true purpose... game feedback... /s ... No but really; I'm trying to play some catch-up on not only the blog writing but also the feedback sessions.

I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not to have so much time between writing these posts and actually playing the game; probably NOT... but... to look on the positive side I really get to watch my own content to remember how I felt.  Holy shit my mic is trash.

Anyways, episodes games contained two puzzle games and a game that reminded me of super mario 3 multiplayer stage.  This week was also three game jam games!  I still haven't settled on a format but this week I did the whole, "What stood out, what needed more time and what needed less time" bit.  I think its good, dear reader, what do you think?

This weeks games;

1. Mini Morph by JGG Log and Gallo Pinto Games
2. Survival Lab by Wearritt
3. Cosmic Reclaimer by Bearded Cynic

Mini Morph #

Download on Itch | Gallo Pinto (twitter) | JGG Log (twitter)

This was another submission to the GMTK Jam.  This was actually one of the better game jam games I have played to date!  The asset selection and art direction where all very nice.  The music, which was a team members production, was a very nice bow on the top.   Most importantly there were no major bugs, no major hiccups or issues with player direction.

What Stood Out

Again, the overall aesthetic between the asset selection, level design, vfx all tied together nicely.  For a game jam game this is easily the first and important set of boxes to check.  If a game does not have a distinct and tied together art direction it just won't get traffic.

The second most important piece is actually the gameplay.  Not just the gameplay, but to immediately capture a users attention with gameplay.  This game definitely pulled me in right away.  The grow/shrink mechanic was well done and engaging.  The puzzles where well built and challenging without being "fake" difficult – as in there were no just annoying mechanics hidden as "puzzles".  It took the right level of exploration and experimentation to get to the goal.

What needed more attention?

Really not too much that I would have liked to see in this game for such a short turnaround.  The SFX for finding a secret was quite underwhelming, make it more grandiose.  

The biggest issue I had with the game was the camera.  I feel like it was a little too static, and not positioned quite as I'd like.  The shrink/grow mechanic should necessitate a change of angle.  Personally, I'd prefer a free form camera (think 3rd person MMO w/ camera on swivel) OR a Mario 64 style camera with rotation.  If a static camera is really desired then I would recommend the following;

a) Big -> Camera should be level with the shoulders of the player, MAYBE pointing down.  

b) Little -> Camera should be pointing up.  

What needed less time?

So with any short game jam game the economy of time is the biggest challenge.  For this game I don't really know what could be cut to make room for better camera movement or SFX.  I think the only option would be to make the game like 10% smaller.  There were 15 secrets, i found 5, probably make it just 10 and fix the camera / add some more SFX.

Conclusion

Overall this was a fantastic game to feature.  I think this one would have not registered as a game jam! I think part of that is the asset selection and overall vision just felt really tied together.  Smooth gameplay, clear goals and objectives with little prompting, puzzles that were the right kind of challenging.  Overall great work!  The developers have stated this is the end of the line for mini morph, so don't get your hopes up for a full release ;)

Survival Lab #

Survival lab was another game jam.  This was a interesting one for me.  The art was pretty low fidelity and kinda "amateurish" but that has charm for me.  I really enjoy anyone who has a vision and executes it by themselves.  This was a solo dev who was abandoned by his usual team.  Yes, this entire project was made by one individual.  Revel in the glory.

A simple concept with quite good execution.

What stood out?

The custom artwork and art direction immediately stand out.  Like it or hate it the style is unique.  Personally I find them endearing and enjoyable but if you need hi definition graphics this probably won't do it for you.  The gameplay loop felt well established and also stood out.  I really enjoyed the concept and reminded me of the super Mario 3 multiplayer mode.  

What needed more time?

While the gameplay loop felt established and well tested, I didn't really like how items worked overall.  Picking them up/dropping/swapping items felt a little buggy.  There were moments where I was a bit frustrated by trying to swap items.  In general this is the only real major thing I would have liked to see more polish on.  Here are some ideas for items;

1. More balanced - the fire rate was the obvious superior power-up
2. dropping an item on top of another should just swap them.
3. better RNG - the victory condition came up really quick at times, it seemed.
4. The whole mechanic was under explained / not intuitive.

What needed less time?

I want to say this the right way to not take away from the art direction.  It's not the highest quality but it is complete and coherent.  Those are definite positive marks. However, this exercise for me and the developer is one where we take a look at what was great, what wasn't so great and where their time could be spent better.  The custom models, depending on how much time was spent, may have been better spent elsewhere.

Game jams are tricky because, as this user said, "I do these to expand my skills and add to my portfolio."  Now, if this was an exercise in asset development / art... change nothing.  It would be really silly of me to say, "Spend less time on the thing you wanted to get better at".  This section has nothing to do with the developers goals for professional growth and is from the perspective of "what would make this game jam better".

Conclusion

Overall an endearing game.  There were no game breaking bugs, the gameplay was understandable in <5 minutes and had a solid game play loop.  WHO CARES about really anything else.  Many game jam games don't make those points and it is a testament that this was finished so quickly.  Great job.

Cosmic Reclaimer #

Oy vey... another stream where I botch the video.  Sorry BeardedCynic... my OBS setup / control is amateur at best.  ALSO another game jam game.  I think there were several game jams going on at this time.  Great stuff.  The trend of game jams will, honestly, do wonders for the game industry in the future.  I often reflect with awe and reverence to see what Thor has done to revitalize this industry.

Anyways... puzzle games! game jams! huzzah!

Aside from the botched video this game went pretty smoothly.  I did re-record that section because there was one little level design bit that I wanted to comment on.  Overall it was a pretty simple puzzle game.  This was another GMTK game jam game, so I am not really keen on being overly critical with this one... aside from the music which bored its way into my very consciousness.

That being said it didn't really have the same feeling of completeness some of the other game jam games I've had.  It's not really even about the asset packs or selection.  The models, textures and assets where great.  It was something about the world that lacked depth.  I can really feel the difference in level design compared to a game like Mini Morph.  I don't usually compare games but it's just such a stark contrast there and is a real opportunity for the designer of Cosmic Reclaimer to learn.

What stood out?

The asset selection was good. I mean just look at that render I took from their itch page.  Very high quality.  I feel like the models and textures fit very well together.  These were asset packs (listed on the page) and they are quite high quality, fitting together nicely.  In particular the VFX for the explosions and lasers were nice.  These are good enough to really lean into showing them off!

What needed MORE time?

Music.  More of it.  Less repetitive.  I am excited for the rest of my life where I will not have to listen to that repetitive melody again.

The level design was lacking.  Between it feeling a little too blocky and obvious in some spots, there were several spots where this linear and clearly laid out puzzle was missed by my feeble mind.  This left me in a state of confusion as to how to even progress.  The main spot I point out in my re-recording where instead of the usual trigger with a terminal to grow the cube – it was just a grey 3d box.  It is important to train players (the first cube / terminal) and not switch that up on them without any warning.  I can assume that there was just not enough time to get this in there or it was just missed due to the hectic nature of the game jam.

I mentioned in the playthrough that some cut-scenes would do wonders for the game in terms of leading the player.  It would also be an opportunity to show off some of these high quality assets!  Speaking of camera stuff; I would also like to see the camera controls revisited – the rotation felt sluggish.

What needed LESS time?

The animations where bad enough / mismatched that I'd recommend just not including them.  In fact it would have been better to just remove the whole "vault/climb" mechanic altogether and throw in a jump.  All time spent on this mechanic was wasted and better spent on level design.  It felt tacked on; these types of mechanics belong in a fast paced game like Mirror's Edge.  This animation was clunky and just quite frankly didn't fit.

Conclusion

Please, if there is anything to be done it's to switch out that cursed music.  At least add some more tracks.  Overall, while the game did feel a bit dry and lack depth; it did have it's redeeming qualities.  I really enjoyed the models and textures.  The VFX and SFX were fun and added a lot.

I think this was a great excercise for this team, just possibly bit off a bit more than they could chew.  It feels like they wanted to do a lot more with this idea and ran out of time.  My overall advice would be to focus more on buliding a immersive worlds that don't feel so blocky.  This may feel impossible in the scope of a game jam, but it's totally doable with practice.  I think in general it would be a good excercise for this team to take on a longer standing project and learn what it means to refine an idea a bit more.

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Ahoy-hoy!

Fantastic.  Two games I didn't have to solicit for.  Two developers re-submitted games! Dear gaming gods please let this be a trend... for next week... cuz I'm about to go through my last batch of games from pirate discord...

Three games that I feel like stood out as unique for my playthroughs so far.  

This weeks games;

1. Big Data Big Problems by Varii
2. Space Turret Runner by DarkMajesty
3. Chicken with robot legs

Big Data Big Problems #

Play in browser | Varii on itch

This was another game jam game from Varii (featured last week with plato's brewery).  This game made me really take a step back in how I approach these reviews.  Game Jams are intense.  This whole project was built in 4 days.  It feels weird judging them from the same framework as a full release or even demo.   So for now I am going to categorize feedback into "What stood out", "What needed more attention", "What needed less attention".

For Big Data Big Problems, it felt more complete then the last submission from this team.  It's a more approachable concept.  I'm sure this is inspired from some kind of game but it is unique to me.

What stood out?

I feel like the overall vision of this project stood out.  While it was ultimately a fairly buggy experience that was a bit confusing, I still had fun and can understand exactly what the core gameplay loop could be with some more work.  

The main character was animated for this project from a very talented artist.  This was so good I assumed it was a asset pack.  I enjoyed the overall aesthetic and artistic vision.

The music was a vibe.  I am assuming this is a purchased or free asset.  If it's not... good job.  If it is... great selection.

What needed more attention?

The gun floating in front of the character, while the character already had a gun, was pretty bad.  Beyond the visuals, this makes it so players can be trapped by the enemies with no way to kill the enemies.  Time being the limiting factor on these game jams; removing the gun model and having bullets spawn closer to the character would be a fantastic compromise (the animator did not have time).

The core gameplay needed a bit more polish and balance;

1. Enemies felt weird.  The difficulty ramp was too slow at first then felt really steep.
2. The economy / ability system was buggy and imbalanced.  Probably give the player a bit more money.
3. A clear picture of the players income choice.  I was just guessing.

What needed less attention

The scope of this project was too large for the game jam.  Certain features felt fairly incomplete.  There were elements of the game that felt confusing.  The hard drive mechanic was a mystery.  EVERYTHING that isn't the core gameplay should be left out until the end.  This means;

1. No floating gun / interaction to "pick the gun up"
2. No hard drives mechanic
3. probably no economy (let the player just upgrade every level??)
4. probably no servers.

This would leave a game where you are in a server closet, running around the map trying to kill enemies and stop them from hacking.

Conclusion

Great concept that needed some more time to espouse the full vision.  Game jams are tricky and we must forgive them their imperfections.

Space Turret Runner #

Play in browser | Google Play

In space turret runner your ship travels on a path while you control it in a 2.5d space.  You are given control over acceleration and are constantly shooting.  The player is given math puzzles that will add/subtract/divide/multiple your ship count.  There are ships to unlock and they have different damage stats and have different maximum ship counts.  Someone said in stream, "It's like those mobile ad's but... real".  This made me laugh.  It's true.  

It took me a couple tries to really grasp the mechanics.  After a few plays I was able to gain some traction and amass a ton of ships and blow up a buncha stuff.  I am not sure which games are popular in the mobile space these days but this seems like it would be a perfect meaningless time sink while you're in line at the pharmacy or whatever.

The Good

I love me some mindless pew-pewing.  I really zoned out playing this.  Not a lot of commentary on stream is a good sign.  I feel like the entire game was very visually stimulating and a dopamine addicts dream.  Tons of stuff blowing up.  Tons of bullets.

The balance felt good overall, with the assumption that the rest of the ships had an appropriate power creep.  I didn't happen to unlock any of the extra ships but it looked like at least the prices and pace which you can unlock the ships were reasonable.

The atmosphere was well defined.  I felt like the music, models and animations all played well together.  Overall I can really feel the difference between this, a game that has been released and is complete, and the games I play that are in early phase development... which is probably an obvious statement... There are always little details that make a thing feel done.

The Bad

Overall there really wasn't much negative to say about this game.  What you see is what you get for the most part.  There is one area I would find worth distributing a  new build for... the explosion sounds were a big dud.  The only thing they have going for them is they aren't annoying... which is something that would prevent me from playing this game.  With some really good SFX this game would stand out.

Beyond that the controls felt a little odd.  I got used to them and its likely due to it being intended for mobile, didn't really like it on PC.

The Ugly

Nothing really all game breaking or glaring issues that would prevent users from playing.  Some of the multipliers seeemd to be improperly color coded... ocassionally I would be forced to pick a negative modifier.  This may be by design, but it didn't feel good.

Conclusion

PEW PEW PEW.  10/10 for a game to play while in the doctors office or any other benign activity where you wanna give your brain the illusion of progress.  A game that knows what it is and is properly represented.

Chicken With Robot Legs #

Steam Demo

Boy howdy I was so excited to click this game based on the title alone.  I love an "on the nose" title and with this one... its a bullseye.  Platformers... are they played out? maybe.  A saturated market? certainly.  If you're gonna break into it do it with the style and grace of a chicken with surgically implanted robot legs.

This game is self described as a "runner-vania" game, which feels right? I dunno genre bending and game tags are their own meta.  Anyways, you're a chicken that is trying to escape a lab.  Where to? What road are they crossing? It is unknown.  In this game you traverse obstacles and puzzles to get to the other side.  For some reason any perpidicular surface immediately kills this chicken.  Dunno why.  But it adds a fun level of difficulty to the game.

The Good

DUDE.  Great intro scene.  Really drew me in.  The animations and setting of that scene are very well done.  This is the exact type of mysterious backstory that a game like this should have.  Why is this chicken in a vat? Why does it have robot legs? WHO CARES HE'S ON THE LOOSE.  Fantastic concept that will absolutely draw people in to at least check out your steam page.

The developer has described this game as complete just missing some final bits of content.  I tend to agree!  This game, much like Space Turret Runner, has a rare feeling of completion amongst the games I've played.  This is not a mark against those others, as I tend to solicit devs that are very early in the process.  This is a mark for both of these games and my endorsement that the game seems ready for release.

The Bad

Despite my glowing review for the game in general there is a sin that has been comitted mixing pixel resolution without intent.  I have been hard on previous submissions for the same thing and I do want to amend my iron clad "do NOT do this" statement.  Do not do this, without a REALLY good reason to.  You need to learn the rules to break them (properly).  This linked post summarizes the subject clearly, concisely and with great technical detail.

This is exclusively in the marketing materials and main menu of the game... so describing it as a "sin" is probably a bit much.  However, I do believe it is going to affect sales.  The marketing materials need redone in appropriate pixel resolution.

There are also some minor ux improvements that could improve gameplay;

• Menu ux for exiting levels was weird
• Add a mini map
• Fast travel
• Standard options menu

The Ugly

Nothing.  Good job.

Conclusion

Overall a very exciting concept that was excecuted well.  I have mixed feelings about it being a runner game.  For me, it feels like it would be more fun without that mechanic, but it does add a certain feel to the game.  Maybe it's just not my thing? Hard to say.  It would also be... very... very silly to remove such a thing at this point in the release cycle; just something I would suggest being open to for a version 2 – if its in the cards.

I think this game has... legs... (get it?).  I am excited for the dev on this one.  It feels complete.  It feels fun.  It's a funny concept.  With another pass at marketing materials I predict this game will have a good launch.

Cheers!

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Aloha!

Another great addition of eclectic games this week.   Two math games this week... which is odd.  Yet another shoot 'em up airplane game... which is fantastic.  Love the genre.  Finally getting back into the groove of streaming not so much with the writing.  I have been busy as a bee working on a new side project.  I will be teasing it on stream within the month or tw and the play test will be weeks after that.

Lets get into it;

1. Far Out Finley by Ed Lytle
2. Plato's Brewery By Varii
3. Astro Wars By Azkalan Kan

Far Out Finley #

Download on Itch | Instagram

Math! Education! FUN!

Three words I enjoy saying in a row when describing a game.  This one brought me back to my childhood favorite game – math blaster.  Overall, this was a well-made game.  The art style was a bit childish.  That is not a negative mark; the target demographic for this isn't picky about graphics, but they do require engaging gameplay.  Far Out Finley surprised me in that regard, I wanted to keep playing until I beat it.  I did not.

The Good

The overall mechanics were intuitive and required almost no explanation.  I found the game play very engaging and quite a bit addictive.  I actually wanted to keep trying and testing my math skills.

This was a highly custom project.  From the animation, to the UX, to gameplay programming.  It was also done by one person.  That is always admirable.  It feels impossible to be able to do it all.  The key is striking a balance in all of the disciplines and finding the right things to put more time into.  This game was very balanced and polished.  Very impressive.

The Bad

While the gameplay is mostly intuitive, there needs to be SOME kind of explanation or introduction to the game play.  A tiny level with some tool tips and step by step introduction into how, at least, the basic mechanics work would go a long way.

The Menu UX was rather disorienting.  While I can admire the trailblazing attitude... conventions exist for a reason.  In order to defy popular conventions like radio buttons you need a damn good reason.

The number range should fluctuate based on the multiple selected.  When the user selects 2, the highest number I got was 18.  This made it easy as the rest of the board was between 1-100.  Instead of hard coding the range by doing $multiplier * 9, do (99 / $multiplier) * multiplier.  This will allow for maximum variations for each multiplier.

The Ugly

There wasn't much here that was prevent me or anyone else from playing this game... EXCEPT THAT FREAKING buzzer.  I hated it.

There was also a minor bug when getting hit while holding a number up, the card stayed visible.  It would be cool to fix that and add an animation to trigger when you get hit holding a card.

Conclusion

I'm sure there are a wealth of educational games on mobile but it warms my heart to see one for PC.  This is the first one I've seen on itch – I'm sure there are others, send me them!

I think there are possibly some balance issues to address, especially if this is targeted for kids (if it's not it should be).  I would get some math enthusiast kiddos to test this if possible.  Probably 7-12?

Anyways, I enjoyed this one and I think it has a lot of merit.

Plato's Brewery #

HOW DOES YOUR BRAIN WORK???
- me on stream

This was a fascinating game to me.  This was a game jam game so there are different rules when critiquing them.  I am a philosophy degree drop-out and I really enjoyed ancient philosophy.   The cave alegory was... spot on.  I really felt like I was in plato's cave interacting with platonic forms.  It was difficult, confusing and made my brain hurt! JUST like philosphy school.  I loved it.

The Good

Great concept.  I love the on-the-nose bit about literally being in a cave.  The core concept of throwing runes into a well was fantastic.  I really enjoy geometry and patterns and figuring out how to manipulate the shapes to get a desired effect was a very fun challenge.

The music was also very good.  A viewer specifically pointed it out and I agree.  I'm assuming this was purchased or royalty free due to the game jam fact... but it was a vibe.  100% great choice worthy of mention.  

The Bad

In general my largest comment is that this doesn't feel complete.  Being dropped into this game is like a fever dream.  There are mechanics and rules for successful potions.  Good luck.  I won't harp on this too much – it was a game jam – but the game definitely should have been reduced in scope for the time frame.  

An example of something I would have cut is the whole throwing the potion into the pot.  A simple list of your ingredients and a UI to manipulate and combine them would go far.

One very important feature that is not in this is direct and engaging gameplay that is digestible in the first 60 seconds.  To fix this;

1. Visual representation of stable / unstable
2. get rid of anything that's not essential...
   a) ditch the customer mechanic, just give the player a recipe every time they complete one
   b) ditch the 3d potion model in favor of a list

For a game like this to be made in a game jam I would have straight up built the game in a UX like the purchasing of materials and expanded to a 3d environment once the core mechancis were done and engaging.

The Ugly

Not a ton to go over here (it's a game jam game).  The look sensitivity was horrible.

Conclusion

solid effort for 4 days or whatever it was made in.  The idea was a bit too ambitious and it shows in the lack of intuitive gameplay.  I actually ended up looking at the itch page for an explanation of the stability mechanic... not a shining beacon of intuitiveness if I am on your itch page looking for hints.  THAT BEING SAID... I enjoyed it.  After I figured out what the game was ;)

Astro Wars #

I feel like this genre is very approachable for game jams and beginner devs in general.  I'm not saying this in a negative way by any means, it's just that I've seen so many of these.  There is a very defined gameplay loop, it's 2d, projectiles an infinite ceiling of features you could add.  Astro Wars definitely ticked the right boxes to feel good and engaging.

The Good

Custom models were fantastic.  The art felt unique and cohesive.  This is very important for this type of game.  It's really all there is to stand out as almost every mechanic you can imagine has already been done.

The balance and challenge for each level was really solid.  I felt like there was a lot of unique enemies and different situations that I was put in that kept me engaged.  This is very well done for the genre.  I've played many of these types of games since starting streaming 3 months ago and this one was easily the most balanced.  I can tell the developer played a LOT of it and probably watched others play it as well.

The Bad

The music and environments felt repetitive.  I would like to see more variance here, it would really add a lot to the experience.  Not really much else to say that's a "nice to have".

The Ugly

While I appreciate custom UI.  This isn't it.  There are conventions out there for a reason and this UI breaks them for no good reason.  Fortunately it's fairly easy to shift around

Conclusion

Great job.  I would fix the UI and add in some variance to the biomes/music before a release and be happy with the rest of it.  The developer intends to release this on itch.io for $1, so make sure to keep an eye out for that.  PERSONALLY, I think throwing the demo up on itch and releasing on steam is the call.  Beyond that with some solid music and more variance in biomes I think $3 is a fine price point.  With early access it could easily be for $1 as I played it.

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Hey.  Hello.  HI!

A short stream this week.  I had a false start stream where 2/3 of it was useless...  So... I took the 1/3 of it and edited it to one video on youtube!  I was hoping to pick up my rate of feedback for these coming weeks but this last one was rather difficult for me adjusting from my "vacation" – do you really get to vacation when you are in charge of a 3 year old?

This weeks games;

1. The InBetween By VCD
2. Race For Glory By Snap Games Studio
3. Monke Simulator by Totem SoftProducts

Last Bastion #

Steam Demo | Twitter | Threads

This was another charming game in my eyes.  100% original artwork with a story... yes please!  I didn't really get too far but the story felt inspired by Heartbound, which is great!  Heartbound is a fantastic game to draw inspiration from.  I'm not sure this is the case but there are some parallels.  While I did not get very far in my 50 minute playthrough (wow, where did the time go??)... I can see this game has a ton of love put into this.

The Good

The entire world that was built is very captivating.  With fully fleshed out cut scenes and a ton of dialog, this was a very immersive world.  The music, animation and modeling all fit together very nicely.  In addition to this, the level design was good – mostly (more on that later).  Once I got out of the town I found the platformer elements I experienced to be engaging and the right kind of challenging.

While I did not get to any other abilities I enjoyed how the dash was used to traverse the map vertically.  I would be very interested to see how the different abilities unfold!

The Bad

The default controls were a little wonky.  I feel like this was designed on a gamepad... which is fine... but the default keyboard controls were not ideal for me. I would certainly be rebinding them... c for dash was very confusing for me.

There was a large chunk of time I spent attempting to find the portal.  There was a vague hint about a "cool looking guy" and I mistook this description to mean a different building.  To fix this make the climb up to the next level of the town much more obvious.  Bonus points for some kind of direct hint if the player struggles for too long.

The combat simulator could use a bit of attention.  Namely these two small points;

1. I could not tell I was supposed to hit arrow directions.
2. The hitbox for the arrows was too large.  Probably space the arrows out a bit more so they can't be hit at the same time.  This is visible in my playthrough.

The Ugly

I was able to crash the game at one point.  You can see it @ 20:00 of the stream; I was attempting to find the portal and I was slamming a BUNCH of buttons.  This would probably be a doozy to reproduce but is perhaps worth looking into.

The controls screen has a bug; Any time a player enters the screen they are forced to rebind the "up" key.

Conclusion

Very strong game here.  I believe single player RPG / platformers are probably the hardest genre to break into.  This game feels like a unique experience, even if it is slightly reminiscent of the Heartbound story.  On that point, I wouldn't even take that too seriously because I've only played about 1 hour of both of these games.

My thoughts are that this game is quite close to a release to be proud of.  Assuming the story is complete and the level of quality gameplay, ux and level design stays the same, this game is basically ready to release.  Very polished and complete feeling for a demo.  Great work!

Race for Glory #

Download on itch | Discord | Twitter | Itch page

I love racing games.  Definitely one of my favorite genres.  Race for Glory was a bit frustrating for me.  I played... a lot... of this game.  This was a game I failed to record properly so I played this for about an hour in total.

The Good

The colors, models and overall world was great.  I love me some vaporwave and there is no better genre to implement that type of style.  I enjoyed the look of the game quite a bit.  I am assuming these car models are part of a pack... but if they are not... bravo.  Either way they were the right models for this game.

The gameplay loop was great while the AI was working.  I like the concept of racing for "pink slips" (ownership of the car).  I'm sure other games have done this type of thing but it's very fitting for a small game like this.

The Bad

The race tracks were a bit too repetitive and should be given some love.  The first 4 or so felt exactly the same.  The first unique race track had a rather disorienting fence post mesh lining the track.

There are some minor elements that need fixing;

1. Current car player is viewing should be the "selected" car.
2. When the garage is full give the player the option to sell a car.  Currently if your garage is full and you win, the car you won just... doesn't go in the garage.
3. the engine sound should be linked to the speed of the car, it currently just starts when the player hits the gas.  If i'm going 150 mph and i let go of the gas... the sound starts over when I accelerate.
4. Crashing into the wall is unforgiving and didn't feel right.

The Ugly

The way car handled very poorly.  It was very different from any racing game I've played in a very distinct and frustrating way.  The issue can be seen when I hit a wall and am forced to back up.  I suggest changing the turn rate depending on the speed.  If i'm backing up or going slow it should be faster than if i'm going full speed.

The AI was horrible.  It was either crashing immediately and never recovering or it was absolutely smoking me.  This could have been because I figured out how to break the AI very early on and was probably going up in levels too fast.

Conclusion

The bones for something fun are all here.  Fixing the car handling then re evaluating the AI would do wonders for this game.  These two "uglies" are definitely enough for me to not enjoy this game.   After that, I would very much enjoy a small racing game like this.  With the big issues out of the way and a little polish I think this would be a very compelling.  The developer asked if anything was "missing" and it's really just polish.  Don't add any other feature until these issues are addressed and then probably just release that bad boy.

Monke Simulator #

Demo on steam

Please Note.  This dev submitted their game to r/destroymygame and I took it from there.  This was recorded in a separate session.

Hilarious.  Fun.  Challenging in the right ways.  NOT the best visuals. Definitely Unreal Engine.  You can tell by the floaty feeling physics... Which work very well for this game.  This one was very polished.  It felt like there was a pretty large amount of content off my limited playthrough.  I had a lot of fun with the speedrun aspect of it.  I can see this being very addictive.

The Good

It felt complete.  This demo does the game justice and is very compelling.  The level select in particular was very nice and well executed.  The gameplay loop was satisfying.  I feel like the variety of both abilities and levels really shine in this one.  There was a lot of love put into this project.

Really good menu's.  Really good gameplay.  The abilities, even if I only got to see a couple of them, were really compelling and fun.

The Bad

Making low fidelity "minecrafty" graphics is a real challenge.  I feel like it's an art in-and-of-itself to mix high resolution models with low resolution textures.  A game that does it... wonderfully... is Minecraft Dungeons.  I'm guessing there are strict guidelines and strategies that the makers of Dunegones used to have such high resolution assets that are meant to look low res.  Perhaps exploring what makes these models so great is a worthy task.

The wall jump was a bit glitchy.  It felt like with some practice I could bypass a lot of the level mechanics.  I was pretty easily able to infinite wall jump which seems like a bad idea.  It's rather difficult to program wall running / jumps in a sane way, however, this needs to be revisited.

The Ugly

The tutorial level felt harder than the first level. There was a TON of stuff thrown at me at once.   I feel like this needs to be broken up into different sections and dispersed through the world.

I'm not 100% sure but I suspect people are cheating to achieve the high scores.  If there is no authoritative server verifying gameplay then this is almost certainly the case.  I suppose it's possible the other abilities or weapons are powerful enough to zip through levels in seconds... I highly doubt it.

Conclusion

Loved it.    I can imagine the vast possibilities for this one.  I am unsure of the price point on this one but I would imagine this to be a decent success on the steam charts. With some better and slower introductions into the base movement mechanics I think it would be more approachable, but that is being very critical.  I feel like I would enjoy this on steamdeck, so it's worth adding compatibilities to it.

The release date is set for 2024, so lets see when they deliver!

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YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAW!

While I do feel a deep shame in missing two weeks in a row and releasing an article late... it was worth it.  I feel recharged from unplugging for a couple weeks and I am ready to play some indie games!

This session was a very enjoyable one for me.  One of my favorite aspects of doing game feedback is playing games that I would probably not have picked up.  It's hard grabbing my attention now and I've got a massive backlog of games to play.  I've never even played Mass Effect.  This project has definitely been a cure for scrolling my library until I get bored and open YouTube.

I played three very different games on this stream;

Episode 10: Indie game feedback -- 1️⃣30 leagues later 2️⃣Up With Doznik 3️⃣ Wisdom Tower - codederleek on Twitch

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1. 30 leagues later - by b0ngdragon
2. Up With Doznik - By Space
3. Wisdom Tower - by

30 leagues later by... B0NGDRAGON!!

Play in browser

This was a pretty tiny game so I will be diverting from the normal written format to avoid fluff.  This was a charming game for me.  I really enjoyed how all of the sound effects were made by the developer.  Love me some mouthy pew pews.  Even the singing was original!

I think the character pixel art was very fun.  The pistol being as long as the character is tall makes me chuckle.  The rest of the pixel art needs work... I think that's probably worth spending similar effort and attention put into the enemies and boat.  The boat in particular looks chunky and needs more detail.

As for the mechanics I found them satisfying, challenging and a bit too random.  There are several situations on stream where bad luck leads to a bunch of monsters spawning at once and at other times there are brief lulls.  One thing to address immediately would be to lock the mouse into the window.  I had several playthroughs ruined by clicking outside of the app window and losing control.  Full screen would be nice.

Overall it's a interesting concept and a good vertical slice of what the game would be like, but it just needs more work. I think with some effort this being a popular mobile game but I'm not so sure this has an audience in the PC world.  It felt like a mini game, so with some more content, mechanics and just overall polish I think it's possible to appeal to the PC gamer crowd.  It's definitely unique among the huge number of similar games I've been playing on these streams.

Up with Doznik

Steam Demo | Twitter

BOYYYY howdy do I love me some unreal.  There is something distinct about the visual effects in the engine and this game made some very creative use of the particle system.

The Good

The introductory cinematic grabbed me right away.  The camera movement in particular was well done.  It shows a level of polish and attention to detail that most demos of this scope lack.

I also really enjoyed the models and in particular the morphing animations.  The monsters dematerializing is what gave it away as an unreal engine game for me.  I found that to be one of my favorite design choices.

The weapons were also creative and had a good feel to them.  It was a satisfying gameplay loop and I can see this being taken far.  I am very interested to see where this will be taken

The Bad

It was a bit too easy.  I think perfecting a more difficult AI would add a lot to this experience.  It felt like the monsters were not really attacking me and I could run around them rather easily.  I think getting more player feedback and iterating on ways to make this more challenging will be very worthwhile.

It's also worth addressing the save game bug I experienced in my playthrough.  I clicked the tutorial first, was confused, quit and was able to "continue".  This was a confusing user experience.  Personally, I am a fan of tutorials that are built into the actual play through... so either spend some time introducing mechanics very intentionally or polish the tutorial more.  It was a bit confusing.

The Ugly

I experienced a couple interesting bugs;

1. Potions would spawn in a specific location.  Upon picking it up I would throw them immediately.  Probably just need to take a look at how potions are spawned.
2. I was able to spam dash and potions, bypassing the cooldown.

Conclusion

Very promising game.   I really enjoyed the world that was built for this one.  I think I would like to see some roguelike or experience gain mechanic added.  Something for the player to grow towards would add a lot to the game.

That being said the gameplay loop, with some more difficult enemies, is very promising.  I would lean hard into the monster transitions as that's a really fun element of the game.  I am also interested in seeing what direction the developer will take the story element.  It feels like there could be some interesting lore in this one.

Wisdom Tower

Steam Demo | Twitter | Discord

Platformers... platformers everywhere!  When entering into this genre it's important to find unique combinations of mechanics... AND to do it well.  Mixing smooth gameplay with a unique aesthetic is essential.  Beyond that the game will not make it without an extremely polished and well executed concept.

Wisdom Tower checks the boxes.  I had a lot o fun playing this and would have played it longer if I had more time.  I didn't complete the demo, so I cannot speak to the depth of the game.  With some minor changes in mechanics I think this game will be fun.

The Good

The sounds were great.  This is one of the things that really added to the overall feel of the game.  I can see the love that went into selecting/crafting(?) the SFX for this game.  It reminded me of 90s retro games.  The music was good but needs more variance.

The pixel art was top notch.  The animations really stand out.  The character design (or asset selection?) was very well done.  I can't remember if this is an asset pack or not, but it works regardless.  My guess is it's custom.

The gameplay loop was really fun.  The spell was satisfying and the level design was nice.  I had a lot of fun exploring the map and trying to get as far as I could.

The Bad

The game needs some checkpoints OR roguelite element.  I'm not sure what the end goal or vision for this is but it's pretty hard.  I think adding some more pop to the jump would add a lot.  I think the enemies probably do a little too much damage.  The invulnerable enemies felt kinda bad.  This would be a fantastic starting power for a roguelite game.  I'm sure there are more spells planned so maybe that's something I was missing?

The scrolling effect gave me motion sickness a bit.  I'm not sure how to address this but there are many great games to compare the transition to.  I think Super Meat Boy has a similar mechanic.  It's possible just slowing it down would be enough.

The Ugly

The music will haunt my dreams after it was seared into my brain.  Maybe adding some more biomes w/ different music would be good? or just a longer loop?

The Menu UX was a bit much.  Just do away with the slidey screen animation for this one.

Conclusion

Very appealing game.  I think leaning into the spell casting and coming up with as many novel enemies and ways to kill them is the right direction.  I could see myself playing this for the sound alone, but the overall feel of the game is fantastic.  Depending on the price point and depth of the game I would be purchasing this one.

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I was a bit behind on canvasing this week so I hopped on r/destroymygame and picked a couple recent demos.  I'm actually going to have to start venturing out of the pirate games discord... Which, as a game dev, if you're not already there you gotta jump in.

This week I actually managed to align with 2/3 devs and I feel like it added a lot.  I FORGOT TO TIME THE SESSIONS AGAIN... so one of 'em I ended up playing for about 50 minutes.  The other two were around 20-25.

1. Le Chat Noir By Monimus Arts
2. Please Fix The Building By LogicIne Games
3. Dark Aces By Crashed Software

🏖️ 9 - Indie game feedback 1️⃣ Le Chat Noir 2️⃣ Please Fix the Building 3️⃣ Dark Aces - codederleek on Twitch

codederleek went live on Twitch. Catch up on their Software and Game Development VOD now.

Twitch

Le Chat Noir #

Play In Browser | Website

Le Chat Noir is my first narrative focused game... and for me... it was a positive experience.  I am big on aesthetic and art direction and this game was very polished in that regard.  This game is a vertical slice developed in 4 days, which is always impressive to me.  It's a short thriller noir game based in 1960s New York. The player lives the life of Detective Casey, exploring a deeply stylized world to solve a murder.

The developer asked for focus on "feel and atmosphere" as well as "Is the game fun? interesting? immersive? What kind of game play would you expect this?".

The Good

Fantastic feel and atmosphere.  The aesthetic was easily the best part of this project for me.  I really enjoyed the character illustration and the overall art direction.  I found myself immediately connected with the characters on the first scene.

The dialog was serious and funny at the same time.  The absurdity of a Noir cat detective really worked.  All of the aesthetics work and compound to have a very established feel.  The music, art and dialog all tie together for a very nice vision.

The Bad

While the aesthetic was top notch, I'd like to see some of the dark corners be a little less dark.

The action sequence didn't feel right.  The slide animation is too unforgiving, this can be seen when I don't press it fast enough.  I think the player should drop to the floor immediately and upon release pop right back up.  Additionally, the bottles in the sequence affect player movement too much.  I think a little bit is ok, but it shouldn't disrupt the player path.

One nitpick with the dialog – show shots of the characters that are talking.  It made the dialog scenes a bit hard to track who was talking.  It's also a great opportunity to showcase the games fantastic art.

The Ugly

Really no bugs, but I would like to point out my struggle with finding the bar chair to progress the scene.  I am being a bit critical here, but I almost had to quit the game because I wasn't sure what to do next.  The solution here is to;

a) make it obvious what is next.
b) make the interaction crosshair a lot bigger.

Conclusion

The game is interesting, immersive and the art direction is great.  This game is at a crossroads.  Easily the weakest part of the game is the action sequence.  While I did feel quite a thrill realizing that there was a giant ethereal cat chasing me, it wasn't really fun.

I think most people who would get drawn in by the presentation would be a little frustrated with the action sequence.  If you keep it make it easier;

• Shortening the sequences
• Make the controls more responsive.
• Slow the cat down a bit
• Fix some of the hit boxes to be more forgiving

Overall I think the mixing of genres was likely just too ambitious for a 4 day game jam.  With significant investment the action scene could be made more fun, but even then I think it would diverge from what people would expect.  If the action sequence is kept in I believe a significant change needs to happen in how the game is marketed.  Show the action sequence up front.

Personally, just drastically reducing the length and making them less challenging in general would be the way to go.  The game was very immersive up until I got frustrated with the action.  I was... very upset that the bottle knocked me off of the ledge at one point.  However, I think the art is good enough to go all in on the narrative theme and just ditch it altogether.  With some careful decision making I think this demo is very much worth taking further. GREAT work.

Please Fix The Building #

Steam Demo | Discord | Twitter

This was one of the random reddit games I selected.  I was pretty happy with how this one worked out.  One of my few streams where the dev is watching me play.  I really enjoyed the dynamic of this sessions because of it.  Mostly because I freaking love puzzle games.  It was nice to have the dev there to nudge me in the right direction.  I'm sure it gave them some great ideas on how to improve the UX of his game.

In "Please Fix the Building", players are tasked with re-assembling buildings in a neighborhood.  There are many ways to assemble them and there are subtle rules the player must discover to complete the puzzle.  I went wayyyy over my time on this one because I am a puzzle addict.

The Good

Great asset selection from kenney.  I really think anyone who hates on asset packs can go sit in a corner and figure out how to be like 10% more normal.  Anyways, the assets here fit the vibe of the game perfectly.  The animations were very satisfying.  All of this was tied together with some very nice music.  I'm not sure exactly what kennai2 actually worked on, but it doesn't really matter.  I'm guessing the music was purchased as well.  No one who enjoys games cares as long as the whole thing ties together and is fun.  I will be assuming the dev was a programmer and was primarily tying together asset packs from here forward.

I think the best part about this one is the UX and, broadly speaking, the game play.  I am a puzzle addict after all and this definitely scratched this itch.  There was almost zero friction in the way the player controls the puzzles.  It was very satisfying and responsive.  The feedback the player gets from snapping puzzle pieces around is fantastic.  It is also worth noting that the camera controls were quite well done as well.

The Bad

While I did enjoy the puzzles, there is room for improvement with introducing the puzzle piece rules.  I eventually figured out most of the rules... I THINK... but that's not something players to feel.  I do not think I would have been as successful if kennai wasn't there.  If you look at the chat transcript on the vod you can basically do a 1:1 transcription to make hints for the players.

I also think there is an opportunity to improve the victory conditions.  The sparkly building effect is cool but the people playing these types of games crave that dopamine.  Make a big deal when a player finishes the level.

The Ugly

Nothing to bad but, there were several places where I got puzzle pieces stuck under the board.  Additionally in my live review I was able to glitch out the buildings and they were "sparkling" with mismatched roofs and being incomplete.  Kennai pointed out this was a bug.

Conclusion

I believe this was the longest I've played a demo on stream.  It was just under an hour.  If that's not an endorsement I don't know what is.  I think with a METRIC TON of these puzzles, with more and more unique pieces slowly introduced, this game would go pretty far.  

The UX is really what stood out in hindsight.  It was very snappy and felt good to whip those buildings around.  Great job all around.

Dark Aces #

Play In Browser | Discord | Kofi | Twitch

These types of games will always bring me back to my childhood.  I don't even recall the names of the ones I used to play in the arcade... but if there were little airplanes with abilities I was all about it.

I think this type of game is a challenge for a solo developer to tackle.  Mainly because this is a very competitive genre with some very great games added to the genre in recent years.  For it to stand out it must be a very well rounded game; graphics, game play and ux.  If any of these are not great a game will have a hard time gaining an audience.  This is true for every saturated game genre... but there seem to be an immense amount of bullet hell games.  The challenge here is to stand out.

The Good

I enjoyed the graphics for this one.  The developer lovingly crafted these assets by hand.  I think one of the biggest advantages to having an in house artist is that all of the games assets will have the same style.  The style in this game is (mostly) coherent and is really nice.  It's a little bit odd to have the contrast between the old time planes and the monsters... but... WHO CARES ITS A GAME!

I feel like the difficulty and the manner in which enemies were spawned was well made, albeit pretty hard at the end.  After a couple plays I felt more confident and was able to get the boss to 50%.  It's definitely hard, and I'm operating under the assumption that this is intended.

The abilities were satisfying and visually stimulating.  It would be a nice quality of life improvement to have a visual indicator closer to the plane instead of on the side, but that's a minor thing.  I also thought the idea of healing when you're not shooting was an interesting thing instead of the typical health pickup.

The Bad

While I enjoyed the graphics, I think the resolution of assets is limiting this game.  I understand that this is the same as, "Just do all of the art over", for a pixel artist.  ZeroK humbly stated, "I am not great at art".  I think ZeroK is too hard on themselves.  The art is great, just too small, not enough detail.  I think given enough time and larger canvas the art direction would really be taken up a notch.  Given that a complete rework of graphical assets is... probably insane to ask of a solo indie dev.  Maybe just for Dark Aces 2... lol.  I just want to be clear here that I think ZeroK needs to be more ambitious.

I think there are some minor tweaks I would find an improvement;

• Tone down screen shake / add audio feedback
• Icon or visual indicator for abilities being done near the plane
• Regen state needs to be more obvious – I didn't notice it until I went to go take a screenshot!

The Ugly

One of the weapons was flat out broken.  I feel like this could potentially throw the difficulty ramp I experienced off.  While I love, love, LOVE the new browser based game resurgence... gotta make sure it all works!  This is the thing that needs fixing before any other work is done.  I'm a huge advocate for simply cutting a buggy thing to get a demo out over releasing a broken game.  It takes away a LOT from a game when a major feature doesn't work.  Given it's already live, take a step back and fix it or permanently remove it.  I'd lean towards fixing it – it seems like a different and important ability.

Besides the laser bug, the lack of sound is probably the largest thing holding this project back.  Being a solo dev is a near impossible task... a programmer, graphic designer AND audio engineer? What do I need to be, some kind of jack of all trades? It's insanity to attempt to be all of these things (I definitely feel insane when I do it)... so... time to go find an asset pack.  If any dev is getting serious about a project, I would recommend finding one and purchasing it.  I'm sure there are some very affordable ones.  The main thing is there are an immense amount of stolen assets being marketed as free – it's worth knowing  it's a legal license.

Conclusion

Great work.  I enjoyed it a lot.  I think if I wasn't a geriatric gamer who lacks stamina I would have beaten it.  I try to keep that in mind when giving feedback at the end of my sessions.  

ZeroK mentioned that they were considering adding a 'roguelike' element to the game.  I took that to mean experience and abilities that reset with permadeath. I think this would be a great addition.  It is something that needs to be added before any more levels are added.  A roguelike element would drastically shift the level difficulty.

Wrap Up

I feel like the games are starting to blend together in my memory.  Next week I will be giving feedback to my 30th game in just over 2 months.  For me, the obvious one I will remember is Please Fix the Building.  This may be my favorite game I've played yet.  It's also the first pure puzzle game I've played.  Send me more puzzles!!

I appreciate your support!

This is a passion project for me, so I appreciate all of these developers putting themselves out there and letting me give them some public feedback.  If you enjoyed this content and would like to support this channel please do the things;

• Discord
• Twitch Channel
• Item Collector Ball

PS - I just wanna say out of the... oh... 50 or so people I've messaged only ZeroK has told me they don't click strange links.   Y'all... this is how you should act when someone sends you to a strange website.  Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Woooo Two months! It's been a blast.  Most of my free time has been going towards finding and giving feedback for games.... zero complaints here.  The quality of some of these games over these weeks has really hit me in the face, and this week is no different.

I'm a bit late on this post as I ATTENDED MY FIRST LAN PARTY IN 20 YEARS!!! The boys are back in town and we were gaming until our eyes bled.  10/10 weekend escape but boy howdy... we aren't as stoic as we used to be.

Lets get into it!  There was quite a spread of games this week.  Tower defense, a roguelike dungeon and a retro 2d platformer.  All of which were very quality and had very intentional and unique mechanics.

Check out the stream;

🏖️Episode 8 -- Indie game feedback 1️⃣ Kingdom Defender 2️⃣ Tilemancer Dungeon 3️⃣ Gravity Storm - codederleek on Twitch

codederleek went live on Twitch. Catch up on their Software and Game Development VOD now.

Twitch

1. Kingdom Defender  By Lefmakesgames
2. Tilemancer Dungeon By szym
3. Gravity Storm By Jamplay

Kingdom Defender #

Play in Browser | Lef's Itch Profile

This was a very promising beta in my eyes.  It has the right emphasis on the core of the game play.  A lot of projects seem to neglect this and focus on aesthetics.  Placeholder assets can be looked beyond, but a sub par game play loop will kill a project.

Kingdom Defender is a deck-building tower defense game.  Players are given a isometric view of a hex grid.  This grid changes every play through and contains paths in which your enemies will go as well as areas designated for building.  It has elements of RTS (upkeep, resources, etc).

The Good

The game play.  Fantastic.  The vision is very solid for the core loop here.  The time that was spent on aesthetics and world building was well spent.  It is enough to convey the point.  This is often the crux of solo game dev – just good enough to move on.  It would be easy to spend days on modeling enemies; but fancy models don't win you players if your game sucks.

I think I was most impressed with the UX.  The hex grid system was pretty solid.  I did find a couple areas hard to click so it may be worth looking into why I was having trouble clicking certain squares.  None-the-less the cards, HUD, and general UX was quite smooth.

I cannot emphasize enough how this effort on this project was focused in the right places.  No one will care about the placeholder assets.  Everyone will care how fun your demo was.

The Bad

One of the areas that was to be focused on was, "if enough info is provided to understand the game".   Let me first state that while there is a guide, I honestly don't remember seeing that.  I think it's safe to assume the majority of players will skip this.

That being said, this is the area to focus on next.  I think most players who download a tower defense game will assume they can just trudge through it all. I can be seen figuring out what all the symbols meant as I went on, which is a testament to the games system design.  As guide's or tutorials are a bit dated, it would be better to simply demonstrate what these mean in a players first game.

This may not even be necessary with some careful UX tailoring;

1. Population UI was unclear.  Instead of telling me how many more I can build, show me the totals as RTS's like Starcraft do.  e.g. 11/13 buildings built.
2. Upkeep was confusing.  I wasn't clear on this mechanic upon playing.  At one point I ran into a deficit and thought there was a bug.  For this I think showing the players current upkeep along with their total food would be a positive change.
3. Trigger some animations when players HUD changes.

I feel the need to emphasize "the good/bad/ugly" is just a stupid play on words.  This stuff isn't "bad" it's really just what a developer should focus on next.  One really powerful UX feature would be to prompt the player on what they can do to perform the action they wish.  There were plenty of times where I was trying to place a tower or farm and I had to look at various buildings to figure out how I could a) get more population or b) more building materials.

The ugly

No sound is a HUUUUUGE opportunity for improvement.  The rest of the game was so well ironed out that I didn't even notice until 2/3 of the way through.  Music and SFX are easily the lowest hanging fruit for improvement.  There are tons of royalty free assets that can be used out there.

I found it annoying that I couldn't click/drag the cards.  I remember the first time I played this I was really confused and I was constantly confusing my the lack of click/drag with my inability to do a thing.

Conclusion

Fantastic demo.  The vision is depicted clearly.  The game play was fun and satisfying.  A lot of games are too easy, I think this game strikes a nice balance.  I was punished on my first play through for not knowing the mechanics and the next I was able to go much further with the understanding I had gained.

I would like to add feedback specifically about the deck building.  I found it novel and a great addition to the tower defense genre.  I did feel that I got stuck one time due to bad draws, maybe that's part of the fun in this game.  Honestly, I think the game would be lost in a sea of tower defense games without this mechanic.  Great work Lef, I look forward to seeing how this one evolves.

Tilemancer Dungeon #

Steam Demo | Follow on X | Itch Page (LOTS of games)

This was an entirely unique game for me. I'm sure there are others out there like it but I've yet to see it.  In this game you are provided a top down view of a grid.  At the end of the grid you have a boss.  Players are given sets of tiles with variable exit paths (like pipe dream) and are asked to build a path towards the exit.  It felt like a puzzle dungeon crawler... thing.

I feel like this game is very polished.  I didn't really even take many notes as I didn't really have too much to critique!

The Good

Great vision execution.  Even if this isn't entirely unique, it's well done.  I actually recommended this to a good friend of mine that I believe will really enjoy it.  Once you get the feel of the game, and how to build robust paths, it is quite a pleasant puzzle to solve.

The walk through of the mechanics was quite well done.  Beyond that the mechanics where really fun and rewarding.  The ramp up to difficulty was also quite balanced for the content I did experience.  I feel like it would be interesting to see how the difficulty scales up later.

The UI/UX was fantastic.  Very well polished.  I found it very intuitive to pick up and the care that was put into it really stands out.

The aesthetic was perfect.  Great selection of assets.

The  Bad

My old ass eyes did have a hard time reading some off the text at times when I was all the way zoomed out.  I think something could be done in that regard.  Either an "old person mode" with bigger text or just some kind of dynamic UX that depicts the tiny numbers (damage/monster health).

There was a point where I felt it would be useful to plan out a path.  I think being able to place pieces, form a plan, then submit them would be an interesting thing to explore.

I also feel like the mechanics walk through needs to emphasize the deck shuffling of the discard pile.  This was a minor nitpick I discussed with the dev on stream.

Additionally, in hindsight, I do feel the general aesthetic and asset decisions where fantastic... I just feel like it does need more.  More characters.  More monsters.  I'm sure that's on the devs mind and I'm being hyper critical here.

The Ugly

No bugs.  Nothing ugly.  Good Job.

Conclusion

I would like to see the final version of this.  I found the game engaging and something that I could see myself playing.  I do think this game has a lot of potential.  The groundwork for something great has been laid.  Without changing direction I believe this game will be a success.

Gravity Storm #

Play In Browser | Itch Page

This was a really eye catching platformer I found in Juniper's Family Tree that I originally noticed because of the cover art posted.  I really enjoy the art style on this one.  I always appreciate original works of art and this one felt like it had a lot of TLC put into it.

In this 2d platformer you are a robot that can control gravity for yourself and the enemies.  Let me just say that up front I really struggled with this one as a dyslexic.  I found this mechanic fun regardless, and anything that I was mentioning on stream is not to be taken as a slight against the game.

The Good

As I mentioned I really enjoyed the artwork on this one.  The main character was really well done and each of the enemies was well crafted.  The animations were smooth.  Even the background images where solid.  I did mention at one point one of the obstacles looked squished but that was super nit-picky.

The SFX were really solid on this one.  It felt immersive and really added to the already polished aesthetic.  The sounds match your artwork nicely and the music in particular was really nice.

I really enjoyed how you kept score.  I feel like that element hasn't been present in many platformers I've played lately.  It definitely gives me a little dopamine hit when I do a bonus-worthy thing.

The puzzles that I did come across were really fun.  I think leaning into that type of mechanic and playing with ways in which you can leverage the gravity in the game are definitely worth expanding upon.

The Bad

I felt like some of the enemies were a little too easy.  I gave some pointers on how that may be achieved on stream, but one of them was to make the little floor/ceiling mounted guns could aim at the player, and decreasing the trigger box for the red claw traps.

One thing that felt really bad is when I accidentally instagibbed myself.  I think it's ok to instantly kill the enemies but the player probably should get a pass.  Just doing a significant amount of damage would be an improvement in my opinion.

The Ugly

I can't really think of anything I'd classify in the game breaking category.

Conclusion

Really solid start.  I think this game is definitely fighting an uphill battle with the genre it's trying to break into.  2d platformers feel like a really saturated market... but this one can break through if the quality continues.  With some more difficult and variable game play I think this will be a captivating.  Leaning more into the puzzle factor could be interesting.

Wrap Up

Very polished games this week.  I enjoyed playing each of them and sortof have trouble picking one that even really stood out.  I think the gameplay of Kingdom Defender wins, while the mechanics and overall vision of Tilemancer wins.  The artwork from Gravity Storm also stood out.  Each of them are worth exploring further.

I appreciate your support!

This is a passion project for me, so I appreciate all of these developers putting themselves out there and letting me give them some public feedback.  If you enjoyed this content and would like to support this channel please do the things;

• Discord
• Twitch Channel
• Item Collector Ball    

PS - Here are the games we played at the Great LAN Escape of 2024;

1. Chivalry 2
2. Gauntlet
3. Heave Ho
4. HL2: Deathmatch
5. Minecraft Dungeons

Konnichiwa!

Pretty great round of gaming this week.  I would say the average quality of the games in this episode are probably the best to date.  I've begun to really appreciate number of indie games that exist these days.  itch.io is such a fantastic platform!!! It reminds me of my childhood and the explosion of free Flash games.

This week my life required me to do another Friday stream at 1700 GMT.  This time I didn't code for 8 hours before starting so I was able to go for two hours.  It's become abundantly clear that my marathon gaming days are gone.  Should be interesting as me and the boys are doing a 3 day LAN party for the first time in 16 years.

Anywho...

1. Eidolon Awakened - by Platinum Star Games
2. Astro Link - by Zach Losier
3. Spoogle Spirit - by otter (kelp krew)

Eidolon Awakened #

Steam Demo | Twitter | IndieDB | Mastadon

I originally thought this was going to be a horrible game (for me).  The story is at the forefront of the steam page and the artwork looks like a narative comic book game.  I think this does the game a great disservice – MOST people who view the steam page will not understand this game is cyber punk pokemon.

Turns out... IT'S CYBER PUNK POKEMON!!!!!!!!!

Fantastic.  It's a well done take on the genre with some good twists.  The design and worldbuilding was on point.  I was a bit frustrated with some of the tutorials being too verbose. BUT... the story was captivating and the cut scenes were well done.

The Good

Boy howdie did I enjoy the pixel art, music and animations.  NAILED a coherent and interesting aesthetic.  It's hard to mix high and low fidelity pixel art but this is done quite nicely.  The music was fire.  I really found it tie the entire thing together.

The demo was interesting and engaging.  The gameplay loop was satisfying and fun.  It had a good difficulty ramp.  With zero experience I didn't feel like I was just walking through going through the motions.

The story was interesting and engaging.  I can tell a lot of time went into this and it shows.  The cinematic explaining the set and setting in the beginning was pretty dang good!  I was a little confused when it turned out I was just watching a documentary as the character... but it works.

The Bad

Every RPG needs the ability to skip text.  I would say this is the only "must" fix.  I found myself smashing the next button.  Speaking of the text, it was too verbose.  Economy of words is funny in that one should strive to achieve as much meaning as suscinctly as possible.  This does not apply to storyline, only informative dialog.

Minor UI tweak – make the default option yes.  Users will accidently close dialogs, which is quite frustrating.  Without the ability to skip text this lead to a couple frustrating moments which can be seen in the stream.

The one thing that I think could use some touchups was the animation / screen when a player meets a friend.  Maybe even just making it smaller? I dunno it was a bit jarring.  Nit picky here for sure.

The last piece of nit picky advice would be to take into account how popular and prevalent this genre is.  I understand the urge to cater to the lowest common denomenator, and there are several key differences (which are fun)... but the informative dialogs are exhaustive for anyone who's played a pokemon game (probably 98% of users).  One option would be to separate all of the similar mechanics into a rapid fire tutorial that experienced gamers can just bypass.  At a minimum all of the informative dialog needs to be shortened, a lot of it could probably just be removed altogether or condensed into one quick interaction.

The Ugly

No bugs or game breaks.  I almost put the lack of skipping text here but I don't think that really would turn anyone away.  "Ugly" stuff is usually reserved for serious issues that would lose you players.  Not so sure there are any glaring issues here.

Conclusion

One of the few games where I went past my 25 minute timer and wanted to keep playing on stream.  Fantastic job, I think platinum star games should be happy with the results.  I think another pass at your marketing materials emphasizing it to be cyber punk pokemon would do your game good.  I also touched on the trailer having a narrative opening as a mistake.  I think that can be kept, just in a separate video that isn't played first.  Also your game play should encapsulate what it's like to actually play the game, so more combat than is currently showed.

Great job!

Bizarro Portal (I mean Astro Link) #

Steam Demo

All that matters is the MOTHER F*CKIN GAME PLAY - Asmongold

A showcase in Asmongold's wisdom.  This is... Bizarro Portal.  No one who picks this up will care it's a clone.  Everyone who liked portal will like this. A developer should impose their unique touch on a project when attempting a clone.  

It's kinda like a cover song.  No one says, "MMMMM! Jimi Hendrix was so lame for covering Bob Dylan."  At first I disliked this comparison because comparing an indie dev to bob dylan or hendrix is a bit insane.  BUT... portal is definitely one of the greatest games in history.  This is a great take on that game.  So maybe they are the Hendrix of game dev???  I dunno. We can only hope.

The Good

Hendrix or not, I really enjoyed this game.  The puzzles were the right kind of challenging.  The ramp up to difficulty was fantastic.  The basic mechanic and twist of this game was clever.  

Players teleport by shooting a gun at this plasma ball. The player and the plasma ball switch spots.  The ball can be moved directly only by shooting carefully placed devices.  When the player shoots a device it moves slowly to it.  Players can shoot the plasma ball while its moving.  This is a key mechanic.

It's a bit hard to put into words, but dear reader, you can check it out yourself.  Once I really got the mechanic I was pretty determined to beat it.  I love me some puzzles.

The graphics were impressive.  The voice acting was top notch.  I thought the level design and world building was fun.  Yes, it's portal... but it's like bizarro portal.  I like bizarro portal.

The Bad

While I loved the narrator; the narrator wasn't present enough.  I really enjoyed in portal how the narrator was introduced as a good character and slowly turned adversarial.  Maybe do the opposite?  Either way adding some more dialog throughout puzzles would be good.

Additionally the sound design wasn't that great.  In particular the levels are a bit off; the gun noise was too quiet and the ambient noises too loud.  Part of what made portal special was the top notch sound design.

While the world building is nice and the aesthetic mostly well aligned for an asset pack; some things were under whelming.  The gun was not interesting at all.  The different cubes confused me – at least my fallable old wizard brain remembers one cube not triggering.

The Ugly

I did not understand the whole shooting the moving ball mechanic.  I actually thought the level was broken or something.  It took me an embarassing amount of time to grasp this concept.  I believe some kind of prompting or... joke about "shoot the moving ball dummy" would be great.  I was about 2-3 minutes away from quitting D:

My only other major gripe that would prevent me and other brain broken folk (dyslexic or even color blind) was the green / yellow power switches.  Change this to red / green or even better just on/off.  This repeatedly confused me and was a major issue for my fragile brain.

Conclusion

Bizarro Portal!!! woooOoOO!  Love me a well done "cover song".  After speaking with the (actually) solo dev, Zach, I am confident this game will go places.  A little bit of polish with the assets and a more "hit you in the face" tutorial and I think it's got some real potential.

Spoogle Spirit #

Download on Itch - Kelp Krew

This was a pleasant surprise for me.  Mainly in that the dev was very humble and assured me it wasn't going to take me 25 minutes to complete.  This game made me realize how old and bad I am at video games.  No Joke.  The mind is willing but the reflexes are dull and the carpel tunnel is crippling.  Stupid rotting flesh.

I am not really sure how to describe this one; chips challenge (i'm old) meets NES zelda...? I dunno players get this cool invulnerable roll thing and get to whack a bunch of monsters, dodge obstacles and remember how slow their crippling old brain has become.

The Good

The world building / aesthetic was good.. AGAIN... 3/3 on world building this stream. The sound immediately stood out on this one.  It felt good.  It felt responsive and it was well designed in general.  I also felt like the pixel art and animations really added a lot to the game as well.  The text and the sounds it made while typing made me happy.

I liked the enemies.  They were unique and gave players great feedback with sound and animation.

The Bad

A little more variance in the levels would be nice.  There are a LOOOOT of spinning scythes.  I think using them in the middle of levels is great, go nuts, but using them as a border felt repetitive and took away from them as a obstacle.

I grew  a bit frustrated when I would flip a switch and the wall would raise up and kill me.  Not a very intuitive interaction and will be frustrating for new players.  It felt like a needless mechanic.  Making the collision just teleport the player to a place where they aren't colliding with the wall would be ideal here.

The difficulty was a little boring for levels 2-4. A sliiight lull in the difficulty increase is felt by myself.

Rolling while stopped doesn't do anything.  When not moving it should probably roll in the direction of the cursor.  There were some semi difficult spots that are artificially hard b/c of this.  

The Ugly

The ugliest thing was this developers lack of confidence ;)

Really though, no bugs or game breaking things.  I think the biggest area for improvement is the polish and getting more content into the game.  I think with some time and effort this has promise.

Conclusion

Otter/legaming dev was in the chat watching the other reviews and under sold this one as a "small game".  I think it's worth noting that when sharing a game this attitude is always best.

I think this game is fun and has some interesting mechanics.  With just needing more.  The combat felt pretty good, the levels were appropriately scaled after the first 4.  I was told I was 1 level away from the final boss.  I think I will add this to the pile of games I need to go further with off stream.

I appreciate your patronage

This is a passion project for me, so I appreciate all of these developers putting themselves out there and letting me give them some public feedback.  If you enjoyed this content and would like to support this channel please do the things;

• Discord
• Twitch Channel
• Item Collector Ball

Aloha!

This week I tried a new time slot and it... didn't work out too well.  Mostly because I was already working all day and got a gnarly headache.  I managed to get two feedback sessions in.  I will probably stick to the old slot.  Such a bummer, I had a full two hour stream planned.  Giving quality feedback is really important to me and I wanted to make sure the next two games got my full attention.

This week I played two very different games and enjoyed them both;

1. Everchained - By Chief's Hammock
2. Quantum Cortex - By QCDev

Ever Chained #

Demo on Steam | Discord

Initial Thoughts

The intro screen is badass.  It got me pretty pumped for what was about to come.  I feel like I was thrust a bit too quickly into the deep end, which took away from the game play session.  I unfortunately didn't make it past the first boss.  Souls-like games are a genre I do not have a lot of experience with.  You can see I had a lot of trouble with the dodging ability.

The Good

This game has a lot of charm for me.  I really enjoy the artwork, even if it isn't the most sophisticated style, it is unique and clearly chief's own vision.  It is all on theme and has a unique feel to it.  The game felt polished and had clearly been thought out.  The music was fitting and not distracting.  

The one boss I fought was unique and had fun mechanics for your players to learn.  It is definitely something that I wanted to continue playing once I started getting into a rhythm.

The Bad

Learning curve too steep
There is a very steep learning curve that is made worse by a lack of thorough tutorial.  Here are some area's that could help make this game easier to approach;

1. I was kicked out of the tutorial before I was ready.  Making sure your player is ready is very crucial for a game like this.  
2. There is no clear feedback for how to maximize damage.  I would like to see sound and visual feedback for exactly when I should strike to do more damage. Additionally, the font for damage numbers is unclear.  I think I kept seeing a 2, but it looked like a letter.
3. More forgiving timing for the swing.  I am not sure how I feel about the sequence of commands I must press to attack, but they should definitely be more forgiving.  Giving players visual and audio feedback for this will help... BUT you can see that even 15 minutes into my play that I am having trouble balancing attacking and dodging.

Ability Points
This felt bad.  It makes me think of some advice I randomly saw on the interwebs... basically... "Most players don't finish games, make yours shorter".  Your game has a ton of bosses for a $3 game.  I think it would be a great change to keep your spent ability points after you die.  This would require some changes to the cost and overall balance of these abilities.  This would have certainly allowed me to beat the first boss in my initial play through.

The Ugly

I didn't encounter any bugs or game breaking situations.  I feel like the lack of clear and thorough tutorial is ALMOST ugly here but I dunno the whole, "Good, bad ugly" thing is just a play on words.  The lack of preparation is probably this games biggest issue for new players.  e.g. if someone doesn't know what "souls-like" means they will not understand the invulnerability during dodging.

Conclusion

I think for a $3 game this is a good buy for those who are into the genre.  After a player gets comfortable with the mechanics I suspect the game has some pretty fun and interesting mechanics.  I will be checking this one out again when I have time.

Quantum Cortex #

Demo On Steam

Initial Thoughts

Boy howdy was I confused by the trailer.  I had the impression that it was some kind of ball you were dragging through obstacles.  The trailer is super fast paced and visually stimulating.  It actually wasn't until I booted up the game and started that I realized I was actually a little robot dude walking around a level.

The aesthetics of this game are bad-freaking-ass.  Really love the grim dark creepy feel throughout the whole thing.  The corrupted bloody eyes on the wall are a nice touch.  This game feels like sonic + metroid.  Great work overall.

The Good

The textures and level design immediately stood out.  This game uses unreal engine and they did a fantastic job on the visual effects.  Super fast paced.  Super visually stimulating.  The soundscape on this was also noteworthy, bringing back some nostalgia for sure.

The movement for this game felt really satisfying (minus one qwerk detailed later).  I enjoyed getting the hang of launching myself around.  In the first 25 minutes I was slowly introduced to some pretty complicated movements.

The ramp up to difficulty felt nice... but maybe a little too easy.  I think it does need a little more obstacles that are threatening, but beyond that it was a pretty dang good walkthrough.

The Bad

UI/UX needs work
The menu and UI are the weakest point of this game.  I can tell how much work you put into the mechanics and level design, but the UI/UX feels a bit amateurish.  There are some theme mismatches and odd UX.  The checkpoint menu looks different and has some weird -> indicators.  I know how monotonous it is to build out good looking UI but this is easily the weakest part of Quantum Cortex's aesthetic.

The ability / ammo UX needs to be moved to a static location.  I honestly didn't even notice they were there until I booted up your game the next day to recall some of my notes.  Make it bigger, make it in one location that is easy for the player to read.  I think the refresh counter on the cursor is fine, just move the actual ammo count to somewhere and make it MUCH bigger.

Some Assets Don't Fit
I mention it in the vod, but some of the assets really don't fit into the grim dark feeling world.  It looks very out of place to suddenly see flat green squares on the checkpoints and it felt like placeholder assets.  Taking another broad pass at your assets and making sure they all fit is worthwhile.

Make a bigger deal out of important boxes
I think some kind of mini map or screen indication that a super important ability or item is nearby would be nice.  At a minimum you need to immediately, on the first box show them this can contain something important.  I think I flat out skipped some – I thought they were just currency.

The Ugly

Inverted Ceiling Movement Feels really bad
Straight up disoriented me at first, eventually, just frustrated me.  I think this mechanic can be filed under "artificial difficulty".  Man was it super disorienting and jarring to be zooming around the level, holding down the forward key, only to start randomly going the other direction.  I see the intention here – you were thinking about how in sonic you hold one direction and you go through loops, etc.  The difference here is that sonic can't walk on ceilings or walls, he can only ROLL on them.

This is tricky because I'm assuming this was not easy to do.  Unfortunately it feels just... so bad.  Furthermore, as an unreal developer who's spent a lot of time on movement components, this is probably going to be pretty complicated to get right.  I think this mechanic is annoying enough to make me want to quit.  This game is about speed, zooming around, and bonking enemies... to be taken out of the flow is really disorienting.

Conclusion

I think this is a rare and interesting metroidvania game in a sea of the same.  The core of the game is good and the game play loop is quite satisfying.  The difficulty ramp up was pretty good, albeit probably could be more challenging.  If QCDev can figure out a way to make ceiling movement more smooth I will 100% be buying and recommending this to anyone into metroidvania.

Check Out My Game

I do more than just feedback! I am a little bit of a game dev myself.  This project actually started because I found it genuinely hard to get feedback for my games, so I started "tricking" people into it by giving them feedback first... now I just do it for fun... BUT...

Please, if you are so inclined, check out my demo and give me feedback.

Next Week

Still no access to Crete, but man I am chomping at the bit!! I also have two more games that I delayed due to my headache.  If you are reading this and would like to apply, please do not hesitate.

Cheers – Keep on creating!