Thanks a lot for taking the time to play this and share your thoughts (especially since it can be a pretty frustrating experience), i got a LOT of good stuff out of this! Sorry for writing a small essay in reply, i just wanted to cover your points!
I thought that the lack of controller support was a pico8 limitation, but it looks like there's ways to make it work, so i'll definitely look into that. Unfortunately there's nothing to be done about the font, as it's the one that comes default with pico8; if i ever end up expanding this in unity or unreal, i'll solve that problem too :)
It never occured to me that it might seem counterintuitive for the player to get hit by arrows during a jump, that might be something worth experimenting with, as it'd relax the stress from having to dodge bullets AND land your jump properly.
I designed the game with the idea that you'd have to play aggressively to succeed, and i made the arrows/machinegun pretty relentless to encourage the player to keep moving; it's not instantly apparent, but the enemies stop shooting arrows once you're in melee range, and they start charging at you with much less potent melee attacks; even so, i feel like it degenerates into a spamfest pretty quickly. Maybe it'd be interesting to increase that melee range and allow the player to block melee attacks as well?
Someone suggested i'd make the bounce-back arrows actually deal damage to the enemies, and i was planning to try and implement that as well. The reason why i never did it is because i thought it'd encourage sitting back and picking off enemies by reflecting the arrows in their general directions, which is also why i added a 5 frame cooldown to the sword-slice (i'd just hold down the attack button throughout the game as the player became virtually invincible to arrows). Still, it seems a bit wrong for those bounced arrows to never deal damage.
That's also why i made the 'sinister scimitar' upgrade improve that attack speed, but i'm not sure that's the best idea; i'd rather have fights be more like precision strikes, and less like spamfests. Maybe allowing the player to either spam, or charge his attack for a stronger/longer range hit would make it more interesting.
Like you noticed, the floaty jump and smash were designed that way to allow the player to jump large distances, and the pound doubled as a way to control where you land; that's also why i only allowed the player to pound while above a surface, otherwise it'd insta-kill you. This way, you can spam the pound and make sure you'll land on a surface. However, the player starts with a less-than-ideal jumping speed, which i nerfed when i made the speed upgrade/fad diet potion option. After 2-3 upgrades, you can really soar across the rooftops in one jump, but i feel like not a lot of people get to that point. Unfortunately, it is a bit hard to immediately tell when the player is airborne, originally i wanted to communicate that via sound, but the dd20 deadline was too close and i didn't get to add any sfx in. Maybe that could solve part of the issue?
I've already implemented a few changes based on previous feedback, made the game pause before each round and show you where the player and the targets are, since i've gotten a lot of criticism about the player instantly taking damage, and not being able to tell where he is. I'll try to add your tips as well, and update the game soon!
Hey I just want to say I'm happy you found it useful as I felt like this one came out more rambly than most haha. I feel like I should write more but for now it's late and I'll just mention that I thought it would be a good idea if the deflected bullets ricocheted off in random directions rather than back at the enemies as that would be less misleading.
Pretty cool. One feature that I'd really like is something at the start of each mission showing where your character is. E.g. some kind of concentric ring effect. Otherwise I need to spend some seconds figuring out where I am and could already be taking damage.
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Thanks a lot for taking the time to play this and share your thoughts (especially since it can be a pretty frustrating experience), i got a LOT of good stuff out of this! Sorry for writing a small essay in reply, i just wanted to cover your points!
I thought that the lack of controller support was a pico8 limitation, but it looks like there's ways to make it work, so i'll definitely look into that. Unfortunately there's nothing to be done about the font, as it's the one that comes default with pico8; if i ever end up expanding this in unity or unreal, i'll solve that problem too :)
It never occured to me that it might seem counterintuitive for the player to get hit by arrows during a jump, that might be something worth experimenting with, as it'd relax the stress from having to dodge bullets AND land your jump properly.
I designed the game with the idea that you'd have to play aggressively to succeed, and i made the arrows/machinegun pretty relentless to encourage the player to keep moving; it's not instantly apparent, but the enemies stop shooting arrows once you're in melee range, and they start charging at you with much less potent melee attacks; even so, i feel like it degenerates into a spamfest pretty quickly. Maybe it'd be interesting to increase that melee range and allow the player to block melee attacks as well?
Someone suggested i'd make the bounce-back arrows actually deal damage to the enemies, and i was planning to try and implement that as well. The reason why i never did it is because i thought it'd encourage sitting back and picking off enemies by reflecting the arrows in their general directions, which is also why i added a 5 frame cooldown to the sword-slice (i'd just hold down the attack button throughout the game as the player became virtually invincible to arrows). Still, it seems a bit wrong for those bounced arrows to never deal damage.
That's also why i made the 'sinister scimitar' upgrade improve that attack speed, but i'm not sure that's the best idea; i'd rather have fights be more like precision strikes, and less like spamfests. Maybe allowing the player to either spam, or charge his attack for a stronger/longer range hit would make it more interesting.
Like you noticed, the floaty jump and smash were designed that way to allow the player to jump large distances, and the pound doubled as a way to control where you land; that's also why i only allowed the player to pound while above a surface, otherwise it'd insta-kill you. This way, you can spam the pound and make sure you'll land on a surface. However, the player starts with a less-than-ideal jumping speed, which i nerfed when i made the speed upgrade/fad diet potion option. After 2-3 upgrades, you can really soar across the rooftops in one jump, but i feel like not a lot of people get to that point. Unfortunately, it is a bit hard to immediately tell when the player is airborne, originally i wanted to communicate that via sound, but the dd20 deadline was too close and i didn't get to add any sfx in. Maybe that could solve part of the issue?
I've already implemented a few changes based on previous feedback, made the game pause before each round and show you where the player and the targets are, since i've gotten a lot of criticism about the player instantly taking damage, and not being able to tell where he is. I'll try to add your tips as well, and update the game soon!
Hey I just want to say I'm happy you found it useful as I felt like this one came out more rambly than most haha. I feel like I should write more but for now it's late and I'll just mention that I thought it would be a good idea if the deflected bullets ricocheted off in random directions rather than back at the enemies as that would be less misleading.
Looking forward to future updates!
Pretty cool. One feature that I'd really like is something at the start of each mission showing where your character is. E.g. some kind of concentric ring effect. Otherwise I need to spend some seconds figuring out where I am and could already be taking damage.
You're right, someone else also mentioned it so i'll definitely put that in soon. Thanks for taking the time to play and comment!