I gave your game a shot.

First, the good. The game is actually fairly entertaining once things get more hectic. The sound effects aren't bad, and some of the enemy designs are interesting. I can say I had some fun playing it and exploding shit up with wild abandon. Being able to customize controls is always a plus.

Now, I'm not going to criticize the graphical quality too much (making good graphics can be pretty hard), but the graphical consistency and readability are very problematic. The background are often very busy, and added with the menus and fonts not looking very crisp and consistent made working with stuff like the upgrade menu a bit problematic. In-game the backgrounds are busy enough and use the same color scheme as the foreground that I got confused of where the enemies sometimes were. Some graphical elements look like they came from completely different places.

You should try and increase the general framerate. Just 20 FPS feels strange for me, especially as I'm trying to work with menus, and even more so in action games like this one.

There are some weird counters that sometimes show up right in the middle of the screen in the main menu that serve no purpose for the player.

The music is good, but it's also apparently taken entirely out of the Matrix soundtrack, from what I recognized. Again, making original music isn't easy, but when the player can easily recognize the origin of a song it makes it feel cheaper. Perhaps you could use some other free music resources.

I didn't read your whole post so I was a little surprised that I got 10 million cash right off the bat. Even so, the difficulty seemed to grow VERY fast. Not necessarily a bad thing, but even with that ridiculous starting capital I couldn't get much farther than level 15, I believe, and it's very fast to reach it.

You also have to work on your presentation of the game itself. Pick a good, original name for it, make the website a little more interesting to look at, distribute it in a file that isn't called "abc1", both zip and executable. Some people might think you're trying to distribute a virus or something, and it doesn't give a good first impression.

Overall I think the game has some good potential. It's going to require some polish to get there, but you have a generally good base.

Pretty impressive for an originally KNP game. The fact the ship is so small and the same color as the enemies and debris makes spotting it in chaotic situations very difficult. The game's very tough, I only got to the ninja-star-shaped boss. It was mildly fun.

Wouldn't she be able to use the boosted healing super to counteract the health drain?

Might be very hard. The resurrection special taken 5 full bars, and after that the healing special takes 3. In the time she has it might be really hard to pull off a heal.

some understanding of D&D

I played it once.

an appreciation for lesbians

I have nothing BUT appreciation.

I still think voxel could become the new pixel art, if there were easier ways for everyone to use it.

I don't doubt that happens a lot.

Thousand Cuts Torture.

Well guys, I can't switch characters at the moment. Really sorry about that.

Dude, in the inner circles we call that 'expressive'.

Yeah, that's one thing I personally wondered, if knowing the story was required to get the most out of the game.

Remind me not to piss Aquin off.

Mmm, the subtleties of that are kinda difficult to imagine in my head. Guess it's a game that I'll have to try somehow.

It's hard to get indier than His Dark Majesty.

Tough as fuck though. Couldn't beat it.

If anything I think a good deal of indies are all about the nostalgia factor and older gameplay/presentation ideals that were abandoned by the mainstream and they crave stuff like a good challenge a lot more than most people. We wouldn't have games like Super Meat Boy, the Jumper series, Spelunky, etc otherwise.

Paul may look like a serious person, but behind the long posts he's all about the girly RPG's and sparkles.

I haven't played X-2 myself, though. I might try and get it someday just because of what you say.

every anime ever, is unwatchable garbage

every zelda game is incredibly boring/stupid

all of nintendo's consoles and games post-snes are complete disappointments

I'll have to agree with Red. For me to dismiss an entire genre or something similar as awful isn't even logical, considering its elements are often very unique from eachother. There are tons of completely different anime styles out there. To say absolutely everything in a specific group is awful is to say you personally tried every element of it, and I find that kind-of extremely difficult.

Seeing as he still credits his wife in the special thanks, when according to that previously linked blog they've been separated for several years, maybe he's somewhat delusional?

Of course, this is all wild speculation. I really just want him to pay SOMETHING for years of this bullshit.

Yeah, the combat didn't really feel mindless. I guess I just wasn't a fan of how it was organized in general. It's very hard to pinpoint why, especially in retrospect. Maybe later I'll try it again and will be able to formulate a more detailed critique.

I imagined the game was one of those in which the plot started somewhat slow and got better over time, but I guess I didn't have the patience. One thing I remember is that I didn't like the fact you could pick your characters (crazy, I know). I think it is because they are designed in such a way that each fills a 'role' in the scenes and dialogue. This was obvious from experimenting with two parties at the starting area.

I imagine this was done so the developer didn't have to rewrite the whole game from scratch for each possible party configuration, which would be insane and impractical, but it also made the characters feel 'cheaper'. Like instead of each one being an unique individual, they were more like 3 squares for the square hole, three circles for the circle hole, and three triangles for the triangle hole.

There also seemed to be a low variety of combat moves between characters that fit in the same combat role, just a difference in the order they acquire them. That made them feel even less unique for me.

And Nietzsche

This dude is just ridiculous.

This DEMANDS righteous punishment.

Somebody get his phone, lets all call him at the wee hours of the morning.

From videos Nidhogg almost seems like some kind of castlevania-like mixed with fencing and psychedelics.

How exactly does the multiplayer work? Is it a bunch of people trying to kill eachother?