Well, I played a lot of Unreal Tournament (the original, 2004 and a bit of UT3) and enjoyed it a fair amount. This reminds me more of Quake III Arena, which I always hated. The thing about UT was that it was fast, but you were usually at a decent distance from enemies. I mean, I could hit things with slow-moving rockets or get headshots with the sniper rifle. There's no chance of me having that sort of precision here. In UT, there was none of this frantic "GYAH! WHY IS THIS ENEMY RIGHT ON TOP OF ME!" stuff either, and nobody was constantly flying back and forth over my head. In Shootin', pretty much everything is up-close (except for the things that shoot me before they're even in view).

In terms of the art, I don't think it's a question of ability. It's that it looks like you didn't put any effort into certain things. The actual designs aren't absolutely terrible (although they could be improved), but the lines that should be straight but are instead crooked look really bad. If you clean up that sort of thing, maybe it'll be fine.

No problem. So...I downloaded it, started a new game and was instantly stuck because nothing I pressed on the keyboard did anything apart from toggling character selections. Only when I tried to quit by pressing Escape did the game start. That's a bit unintuitive.

When I finally got into the game itself, I couldn't do anything except switch characters and swing my pick-axe in the air. It took me a while to work out that I had to use the other character to mark areas first. Even then, it took a while to work out how to dig because my character didn't seem to be having any effect (maybe sound and spraying rocks/dirt would help). On a related note, I noticed that some of my digging "plans" disappeared once I reached a certain spot with my tunnel. Is that intentional? If so, I have no idea why it does that.

The button in the main menu that's supposed to let me quit the game does nothing when clicked.

Playing with a gamepad, I noticed that you don't seem to have deadzones implemented. My character often ended up facing left when I released my thumbstick because the stick is just a tiny bit loose. I would say a deadzone is a must for any game that allows gamepad control.

Anyway, it would probably be fun with someone else, but playing alone makes it so incredibly tedious. If the miner could dig without requiring a plan, that would make it far more enjoyable. Maybe miners should just dig faster with a plan than without? That way the character planning tunnels is still useful in multiplayer but solo players can manage on their own.

Your IndieDB link is malformed. It seems to include quotations.

Anyway, the game looks cool. I really like the art style and animation for the characters. I'm going to download the alpha and try it out. Just thought I'd mention the link issue first.

Edit: Oh, I see you fixed it already.

To give you more info regarding Vallar's 12th point, I was actually impressed that I never ran into a dead-end. Every door I took led somewhere, and at least one or two doors led back to where I was before so I never felt like I had to backtrack. I didn't play that long, though.

I forgot to mention earlier that you have a typo on your website. It says "rouge" instead of "rogue" above the game window.

It's pretty good. At first, I didn't think it was loading because there was just a white box for seven seconds or so. It might be a good idea to include a loading screen of some sort.

-I saw a coin floating outside the dungeon walls.
-I hate jumping with Up and attacking with Spacebar. Using something on the other side of the keyboard, like X=jump and C=attack would be nice.
-I jumped into water and when I came out I had no walking animation and just moved at a very slow pace.
-I feel like the inventory should use the attack key for selections, rather than Enter which is unused anywhere else.
-Combat's a little clunky. It often feels like I have no chance to avoid damage because enemies get right on top of me. It's also very simplistic. I feel like a block and/or dodge move would be nice, or maybe a secondary weapon (like Castlevania) would work if you don't want to add advanced maneuvers.

I mostly like how the castle/dungeon feels, although some variety would be nice in later versions. It's a good start.

Well, it feels slightly better but I think you introduced some new bugs (or maybe I just didn't notice before).

-At the start, I can move down past the bottom of the level.

-I could be wrong, but it seems like enemy spawns now stack up. If I move up, then down, then back up there will be a huge cluster of enemies because a whole bunch of new ones apparently spawned where the old ones were.

-If I just fly straight upward at high speed, no enemies spawn after the initial group.

-At least once, the screen-shake seemed to last a long time after I finished firing. Then again, maybe something else was causing it. I don't know.

Also, why can I run into boats and rocks? It really makes me feel like my vehicle isn't flying.

I was thinking a bit more about the strafing/aiming issues. One thing that would probably minimize my own strafing issues would be to make the camera stick vertically to the cursor. If I aim up, my plane will be at the bottom of the screen and if I aim down, the plane will be at the top. That way, the plane is almost always aiming far away from itself so strafing won't change the aiming direction as drastically. (I have no idea if I explained that well.)

If you plan to sell this, I hope you're going to completely redo the enemy, weapon and HUD graphics or that you'll make it really, really cheap. It looks slightly better in-game than in screenshots (mainly because of the painted skybox that had a cool look), but still not like anything I'd ever even consider paying for.

The gameplay, on the other hand, is better. I hated it, but it's functional. I found myself really wishing for a crosshair. Also, enemies seemed to come out of nowhere sometimes. Before I knew it, they were attacking me from behind. I was in the tunnel at the start of level 1, so I'm not sure how they got there without going by me. Better-than-expected path-finding, perhaps?

I found the game much too fast and cramped. Most of my deaths were from being knocked out of the level by enemies rather than getting killed directly, which was a bit frustrating.

In level 1 of episode 1, I hated dying because being sent back to the menu every time meant another seven second load time (the other levels loaded much faster). Also, those jumping enemies that make kind of a dragging-chain sound are never on-screen long enough for me to shoot them. I just stayed near edges of the map and hoped they'd jump off.

In level 1 of episode 2, I spent most of my time being knocked back and forth in the air while waiting ages for my stupid weapon to recharge. It's gotta charge at about a fifth of the speed I would've expected.

In level 1 of episode 3, I had octopi shooting streams of ten or so projectiles at me from outside of my optimal firing range and they moved fast enough that I couldn't always get out of the way. Frustrating. I felt unequipped to deal with that. Maybe a double-tap sideways dodge move would be a good idea for those sorts of situations.

My health level doesn't stand out much. I didn't even notice that bar the first couple of times I tried level 1.

I had no idea what the goal of each level was. Do I just have to kill everything? I guess that'd make sense, considering the name of the game.

Enemies often jump off the levels without any action on my part.

I don't think enemies should be able to shoot me from outside of the drawing range.

As far as things I actually like, the paintball-gun sound of the initial pistol is kinda cool, the hand/glove weapon is a nice idea and the shotgun feels like it'd be decent in a level that worked better with it. The menu music is decent. I like the look of the marker skybox in the first level and some of the enemy concepts (not the art but the way they act) are kind of cool, like the one that shrinks when you hit it.

Overall, I didn't get much enjoyment out of it. The enemies bounce around too quickly so I just end up firing wildly and hoping I hit something with my crosshair-less weapon. Getting knocked around so much by enemies made just moving through the levels frustrating. One of the things that makes shooters enjoyable a lot of the time is seeing the results of your actions. When you see an enemy go down in an action game, you sometimes feel a nice sense of accomplishment. In this game, I never see my enemies die because I'm just trying to survive being bounced into the air by a swarm of things as I spin around trying to shoot them. They're also usually right on top of me, too close, or at my feet where I can't see them unless I'm staring down.

I think there's a decent game in here somewhere, but in my opinion it needs a lot of adjustments. Mainly, I think it could really use a crosshair and enemies that are slower and/or stand back a bit.

I didn't encounter any noticeable technical issues. It ran at a very fast speed and everything seemed to look the way it should.


Edit: I decided to watch your video. I think the game is running faster on my computer than on yours. Maybe it's my imagination but your framerate seems much more manageable. Also, the shotgun looks like it makes level 1 a lot easier but there's no way I ever would've expected to be able to destroy that ground. It really doesn't look explosive or weakened in any way.

Yeah, I can see some people liking the strafe as it is. Maybe I'd get used to it after a while if the aiming itself felt right to me.

You say that the accuracy is intentional? I should be clear that I'm not talking about bullet spread or recoil effects. There was a ship at the bottom of the screen. I put my cursor over it and could not hit it because my bullets would not go that low (ie. I needed to aim at 280 degrees and the plane would only shoot at 230 degrees, so my bullets weren't going near the target). I tried multiple times, with breaks in between, so there shouldn't have been any spread/recoil affecting things. If that inability to aim at the top or bottom of the screen is intentional, I think you should really reconsider.

The strafing does feel really, really strange but I imagine it's just a result of the way the game works (with the camera moving vertically but not horizontally).

I absolutely hate the screen-shake when firing. It's fine if my plane is exploding or maybe even for it to happen with really powerful weapons, but for it to happen almost constantly is really annoying to me.

It's possible to fly off the sides of the screen, which is probably not a good thing. It's also possible to have the camera fly ahead if the player is getting damaged and knocked back. The camera should probably be tied to the plane's position a bit better.

Enemies pop into existence while on-screen.

If I have the mouse near the top or bottom of the screen, my plane doesn't properly aim toward my cursor so I can't properly shoot at enemies. This is probably another part of the strafing problem. It might feel less strange if the plane aimed accurately.

I feel like there needs to be more feedback for the player. I was never sure how much damage I was doing or how much was being done to me. Some little explosions, sparks, or dust clouds could be a good or you could go the retro route and make things flash when damaged.

I like the idea of a scrolling shooter where the player controls the forward movement speed, but I feel like I would have a lot more fun with it as a dual-stick or keyboard-controlled game. The strafing weirdness just throws everything off for me, but then again I rarely like mouse-controlled 2D games.

Ah, so the shield does defend. I thought it must.

Just one note: Initiative draw is almost never fully automatic. I usually have to click to draw, so if it's supposed to be automatic then there's a bug somewhere.

The other aspects of the game were pretty clear. Knowing that the shield actually does something clears up my confusion about the damage/evade mechanics.

As for the UI, I'm not suggesting that a prototype should have amazing graphics. If anything, it should be the opposite. Changing the skill's card color shouldn't be too difficult. Also, maybe the pop-up text should appear inside an ugly box so that it always stands out on a plain background. If you want people to be able to properly test out your prototype, they need to be able to understand how things work. It's probably also just a good idea to use the prototype phase to see how much you can teach players without having to spell things out.

Did you recognize the ability cards on the lower right?

Nope. I played the Knight and had no idea I could manually use my shield. The action moves fast enough that I figured it was having an effect that I wasn't picking up on.

Maybe it would be a good idea to use colors/shades more consistently. If black means "Interact with this card" (like the deck you draw from) then you could have the shield/action card turn black during the Attack phase to show that the player can use it.

Some more thoughts/questions from playing briefly again:

-For some reason, it bugs me that "Skip Monster" exists as an option (And I'm not sure why/when I get that option). I guess I feel like I should have to deal with what's thrown at me. In a normal dungeon crawler, I can't just make a monster go away by wanting it to.

-Why do I have to manually draw the "Initiative" cards most of the time, but not if I skip a monster? Also, sometimes I draw both initiatives and other times I just draw one of them and the other is automatic.

-It was unclear why I was losing health from exhaustion. I guess it's from using my skill, but it might be good to show that more. In general, the pop-up text kind of blends in with the text on the cards and then fades away before its moved out in the open where it could be read more clearly. I'd recommend making it stand out more, somehow.

-Sometimes I completely negate damage even though my Evade value is far less than the enemy's Attack value. Just now, though, I got completely destroyed by something that I thought I'd evaded. Your instructions mention that unmatched colors cause a 50% reduction in power. Does that work both ways? The numbers are onscreen for such a short time that I'm not sure, but it seems like sometimes the attack is decreased and other times the evade value is decreased. The instructions are a bit unclear about that.

This is really cool. I've thought about this sort of thing before, but always ended up getting side-tracked by other ideas. It's nice to see someone working on a game like this.

My favorite part is actually just how you're representing HP. I thought that would be a separate counter, but using a stack of cards seems so obvious now.

Despite my interest in the idea, I found it incredibly boring and unsatisfying. As you can probably guess, it was because of the complete randomness. Maybe consider giving the player a hand of cards to choose from, rather than just drawing every time. You could have some attack and defense cards do special things, like Heart cards cause 50% bleeding damage for one extra turn if they hit or something (place it sideways over the target for one turn as a reminder?). You could also give players the option to perform a different action during a phase, like giving up their attack phase in order to attempt to heal some HP.

If you give players some choice and a few special options, they'll have to determine what to play and what to save for stronger enemies. I think it could be a really enjoyable game with some strategy involved.

I didn't play it and don't have an Android phone. It looks interesting, though. Congrats on getting so many people to download it so far.

Anyway, the main reason I'm commenting is just to recommend that you draw the interface on top of objects. Looking at your latest GIF, the dragon, castle and cannonballs all cover up parts of the HUD at various times. With the castle, in particular, it looks really jarring to have a chunk of the ground suddenly pop forward.

Any chance you'll release this on another platform at some point?

Interesting idea. I liked the music and the gameplay worked fine, but I do have a few thoughts/suggestions.

-I had no idea the icon at the top of the screen was draggable. It just looked like a HUD element. When I clicked it, it seemed to change "mode" so I thought that I was just changing my weapon mode or something. It might be a good idea to make it clearer what the player is meant to do.

-Without any movement or AI, firing the gun manually seems pointless. Maybe number the "splitters" and then have the player character shoot them automatically when Start is pressed. Then the character can fire in sequence until they run out of bullets. This way, the Start button isn't as annoying and there's no pointless manual aiming/firing. It would probably have more of a puzzle-game feeling this way.

-Why do I have to "activate" the splitters by clicking them first? Why can't I just click and drag with one button press?

It's a nice idea, but since I can just take my time and tweak things to my heart's content, there's no sense of urgency or challenge. Maybe you could have enemies slowly focusing their aim on the player, so you have to hurry and set everything up before they shoot. I don't know. Either that or make puzzles get harder early on. If a player can take as much time as they want, there's little reason not to challenge their minds. As it is now, I got bored of it within four or five levels. I still played to the end, though. The last level was kind of cool. It was far, far too easy, but it was still satisfying to watch my convoluted setup play out.

Another thing you might want to consider is a scoring system. Give the player more tools than they need for a level, but reward them for using the minimum possible. That way, the difficulty level is in the player's hands to some degree. I did manage the level with moving enemies using only one bullet instead of two, but that wasn't difficult.


I only found one bug. Sometimes (especially in level...4, I think), the splitters move left a few pixels every time I fire.

1 - Well, I'd say to test it on Chrome, Firefox and Safari at least. Three browsers isn't that bad. Anyone who's serious about web gaming probably shouldn't be using IE for it but it may be worth testing anyway. Firefox is never really great for anything JavaScript-related, either. Chrome always seems to be a lot smoother.

3 - I think the point might be to make a rectangular box (for reliability) but handle bounces as if it's a triangle (or actually a trapezoid, so that there's a bit of a flat area in the center). If the slopes are only in the math and not in the actual box, then you should have a bit more control.

6 - Oh wow, I didn't even notice it the first three times I tried the game. I guess I'm always looking at the rest of the screen at the start, to get a sense of how the enemies/obstacles are arranged rather than at my ship.

The animation looks good but completely pointless and also a bit too slow in my opinion.

1 - Not to me, but that's to be expected. I've never liked this genre that much.

2 - My ball kept disappearing at the top-right corner of the screen and I wasn't sure why. I thought the point was for the ball to bounce around, but bouncing kept "killing" my ball. That was in Firefox. In Chrome, the game ran more smoothly and didn't seem to have that issue. I got to level 2 with no problem and stopped after I died because I don't enjoy these games much.

3 - Well, there's that ball-disappearing-in-the-corner glitch. There are other little things that aren't really bugs, but just feel "off". Some of the sounds seem slightly delayed and the aiming doesn't feel right. I expected the ball to angle sideways more when it hit my ship off-center, but it didn't. I haven't played enough of these games to know what the standard control style is, though. In any case, the ball's bounce direction seemed really unpredictable.

I also had the ball bounce onto my ship at a shallow angle, go back and forth between walls almost horizontally and then continue that while moving down toward me. The shallow angle should never have happened. Also, why it went from slowly making its way up to slowly making its way down, I don't know. It didn't hit anything except the sides of the play area.

Some actions in-game (like movement) feel delayed. Even the menu button only moved half a second after I clicked on it. Even with the smoother gameplay in Google Chrome, the slight delay was still there.

4 - The gameplay speed seemed fine to me. The asteroid rotation seemed fast/choppy, but it's a prototype so no big deal.

5 - See #1.

6 - I didn't notice any animations for my ship. The ships in level 2 are small enough that the little animations don't really stand out at all, but they looked all right.

7 - One issue I had was that the mouse is used for movement but not to enter the game or release the ball. I kept automatically clicking and then remembering that I had to reach over and press the spacebar instead.

Also, the stars seem to be moving backward. They should be moving down so I feel like my ship is moving forward, shouldn't they? Maybe that was intentional, like you're fighting off enemies as you retreat?

I'd probably start by right-clicking on the image and selecting "View Image" or "Copy Image URL" (or something similar, depending on which browser you're on). That will get you the direct URL for the image itself, which you can then use in the [img] tags on here.

If you have issues with that, I found postimage.org to be pretty decent too, and it'll give you the URL to use.

Does the height of your jump depend on how your "character" is rotated at the time, or is it just random? I didn't like how the game felt, personally. If it is rotation-dependent, though, then that's a nice idea and I like that it would require some practice and decent timing.

Sometimes enemies kill me if I touch them and other times they just react by spinning. I don't know why that is.

I didn't play long, since it doesn't seem like my kind of game (especially the unpredictability of the controls). I do think it's a good concept, though. I like the idea of endless jumping in order to dodge things. It's different and it works pretty well.

For example, by roaming the dungeon intelligent monsters are able to find and collect better equipment. They will also get in fights with each other over resources (rats are prey to pretty much everything for food, which, ironically, they don't drop yet). Creatures are susceptible to all the same effects players are, such as starvation, poisoning, paralyzing, blinding, etc. If a monster is attacked by something, or finds something else to attack, it will also rally creatures of the same type to attack this creature too.

Wow. I never would've guessed all that, especially the part about collecting equipment. It seems a shame that you've done all that work making the enemies "intelligent" when players may never get to see that behavior. If an enemy has a nice helmet or something, I'm not going to think "They must've stolen this from another warrior after winning a fight." I'm just going to think "They were programmed to have that helmet. No big deal."

One reason is that I don't seem able to just sit and watch enemies from the shadows. They usually start walking toward me in attack mode before I even see them in the darkness. A limited stealth system could potentially help with that, so players can watch the advanced AI behaviors without instantly being attacked. Maybe some enemies should carry torches, if they don't already. Some less aggressive enemies could be a good idea too. In any case, I would love to be able to notice and properly appreciate the AI you've put into the game because it sounds pretty cool.

It's possible your slowdowns are due to the AI code (which is fairly complex and can put a strain on most computers when there are more than a few dozens monsters roaming around a level) but we'll see.

I don't think there's any actual slowdown. Animations and movement speed look fine, so it's probably just an optical illusion making things seem choppy because of the flickering lights. I'm curious to see if the un-synchronized flicker helps matters.

About the AI, does that mean enemies are simulated even when nowhere near the player? If so, is it necessary? I'm kind of curious how complex the AI is now. Enemies mainly seem to run straight toward me when they see me, which shouldn't take a ton of processing power. If you're simulating a lot more than that, maybe their intelligence needs to be made more apparent somehow.

On a related note, it might be good if the humanoid enemies could open doors, if they can't already. I'm pretty sure I used doors to escape and flank enemies last time I played.