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[ithamore]

I like the game so far. The dialogue (mostly before the crash so far) is rough, but I know that trying to provide back-story in-story isn't the easiest thing to do.

I felt that leveling up through fighting for experience vs. fulfilling quests a bit imbalanced but acceptable if you want to detour the player away from grinding.

I also found trying to sneak up on the mutants to punch them a bit more tricky than it was worth, but I might be missing a basic understanding of why it works perfectly sometime (like I hit a sweet spot) and not at others. I'll have to play some more to give you a better assessment about I well I feel the punch works.

[Micco]

I like the game so far. The dialogue (mostly before the crash so far) is rough, but I know that trying to provide back-story in-story isn't the easiest thing to do.

I felt that leveling up through fighting for experience vs. fulfilling quests a bit imbalanced but acceptable if you want to detour the player away from grinding.

I also found trying to sneak up on the mutants to punch them a bit more tricky than it was worth, but I might be missing a basic understanding of why it works perfectly sometime (like I hit a sweet spot) and not at others. I'll have to play some more to give you a better assessment about I well I feel the punch works.

Thank you for feedback! The dialogue is kinda rough but will be improved in the next update. I have also done a full spellcheck which should reduce the amount of typos and grammar errors. I have also replaced most of the swearwords with different expressions of frustration.

What do you mean by imbalanced levling up? Too much/little experience is rewarded for fulfilling quests?

[handCraftedRadio]

I was going to play a little bit longer before giving feedback, but I haven't had time to play in a couple of days so I'll just post up the notes I have so far. I got to a little bit after the part where you use the dynamite to that ammo room.

The first impression the game gives is really nice. The menu is really polished and looks and sounds really nice. The opening scene is a bit lengthy in my opinion but its not too long. The dialog could use a lot of work, like the others said, but I'm not really too good with that kind of thing so I don't really have too much advice in that department.

-I liked that you kept the training portion of the game short.

-When seeing ammo on the ground  for the first time, I thought that it was some sort of hazardous spikes/rocks and jumped over it.

-There was some sort of weird message screen blip when reading the text boxes. Not sure if it was just my computer but I think you should try to fix it because it made the conversations hard to read through.

-The starting gun (semi auto rifle i think) seems way to wimpy. It was weird that I only have a limited amount of ammo with the gun and whenever I shoot it, it goes off in some random direction. It felt like I was shooting some sort of water balloon cannon or something. I could point my gun in the correct direction and not even hit the target when I'm standing almost right next to it. I guess 'aiming' wasn't one of the traits they genetically modified  . It was frustrating that I had next to no ammo with the gun and I couldn't hit anything except if I got lucky.

-The opening scene using the same portraits (though flipped) was kind of weird. Especially because one of them is the main character. Maybe redraw the head in a different position or something(even if they have the same face) to more easily tell who is speaking.

-The enemy design wasn't that great. I think the only enemies I fought were the cockroaches and mutant things, but they had pretty much the same AI. Whenever they detected you they relentlessly followed you at a speed that almost matched your own. The movements didn't really seem organic, not to mention fairly difficult for the very first part of the game. It was very difficult to kill them without taking very much damage. It's hard to believe that I am going to assassinate some super villan guy whenever my guy has trouble killing a cockroach.

-The mutant enemy looks too much like a human/friendly character and I ran into him on purpose the first time I encountered one. He wasn't attacking me so I thought he was not an enemy.

-This is pretty much only a problem because of the limited ammo, but I kept pressing the shoot button when I was looking for jump and wasted some ammo. I would suggest redefinable keys, as I would for any game really.)

-As I said above, I thought that the menu and hud seemed really polished which gives the game a feeling of completeness.

-I really liked the graphics and the music and the general atmosphere the game provided.

-The landscape seemed a bit repetative without anything too new or different to look forward to between screens. Maybe adding in some unique tiles or landmarks in some areas to mix it up a bit might help.

Overall I thought it was a really good work in progress. I'll play through the rest of the game when I get a chance and let you know what I think. I'm really interested in seeing this game develop. Good work so far! 

[Micco]

Thanks for the long reply and I'm happy you liked the game.

The starting gun (semi-auto rifle) is indeed the suckiest gun of videogame history. It has lousu accuracy, and the bullets scatter all over the place if you don't upgrade your dexterity skill.

I will make the player aware of the allies in the game somehow so the player won't run to the first mutant to see if he has something to say And vice versa to the first friendly NPC.

In this version (0.2.1) there are 3 types of enemies. I know, that's pathetic so in the next build there will be more, and they will be different from each other. Also the areas will recieve some diversity, which can be seen from these sneak peeks from upcoming version 0.3.0:

[handCraftedRadio]

It has lousu accuracy, and the bullets scatter all over the place if you don't upgrade your dexterity skill.

Ok that makes sense. I still think that the amount of ammo is far too low if you don't upgrade your accuracy like I did. You hardly have enough ammo to kill anything (i played in the middle difficulty, hard i think.)

I also forgot to mention in my other post that your game reminds me of a sort of cross between iji and knytt. 

The new screenshots look nice too! 

[Micco]

Alright, maybe I'll increase the amount of ammo given from the pickups.

I also forgot to mention in my other post that your game reminds me of a sort of cross between iji and knytt. 

I have never played knytt but I've played Iji. An oh boy how awesome it is! I could say that this game is inspired by Iji and Borderlands. "Iji and Borderlands put into a blender"

[Pencil_In_Pain]

What? It's over? That's not fair. I was having an awesome time! Really promising game. I just finished the beta and can't wait for a new version.

Here's some ideas. Take what you like, ignore what you don't:

-> I second It'd be cool to have some more variety, or landmarks, in the maps. It'd be nice to be able to differentiate towns at first sight.

-> That weird flicker while reading messages is annoying. You get used to It eventually, but if you could get rid of It, that'd be great.  

-> The minimalistic graphics are fantastic, but I had some problems to distinguish some objects from the background. The first time I got to a train station I didn't notice the train in there until It moved. Same for the projectiles of the tank or the computers in towns. Maybe you could try a different combination of colors?

-> Near the end of the game, I had to talk to a questgiver called James (before I could go down the fortified tower to fight the tank). However, James didn't have an exclamation sign on top of his head. That got me disoriented for a moment, since I thought there were no quests left in the game.

-> I'd try to find a way to call player's attention to that nice scene where you talk to a woman about some bad news. It's easy to miss that cool bit.

-> Also, when I walk into the mines, in the darkness, I hear a shotgun sound effect playing there. Am I missing something?

-> Some might say the game is too easy, but I enjoyed the difficulty level. I was never frustrated and It was the variety of the quests that kept my interest all the time.

So, keep It up. The new screenshots look great. We'll be looking forward to a new release  

[Micco]

Thanks for the feedback!
In the next version more variety will be added. As for the flickering, I'll see what I can do. It seems that some computers suffer this more than others, and mine primary PC doesn't suffer from flickering nearly at all.

Thanks for the graphics tip, I think I'll add somesort of border etc. to make things more nociable.

There are various exlamation marks missing, thanks for pointing James out. And the island woman scene is kinda "hidden" there, so if you visit the island before going to Ashvale and realize that it has been raided the dialogue/option choosing won't trigger.  It's kinda hard to make players notice her, maybe if I put and exlamation mark over her head

Shotgun sound effect? I've never noticed that. Maybe if I listen to the background music and concentrate...
He he! Now I got it! It's only a part of the music track. It has nothing to do with the game. I couldn't have noticed that myself if someone hadn't pointed that out 

Good thing that you found the difficulty alright. May I ask you in which difficulty setting you played?

BTW, I just counted the screens of the game. At the moment there are 104 SCREENS in the main game plus 4 screens in the training session.

[kidchameleon]

Micco,

I like this game. I think the style is pretty. The sound is great. I found the control a little fiddly at first but soon got used to them. The little tiny enemy's were frustrating because my bullets couldn't hit them. Also, I found it hard to distinguish who was an enemy and who was a friend I should talk to. Perhaps the humanoid enemy's should be a different color than you allies?

[Nugsy]

This looks fun! Downloading it now. I will post up my thoughts tomorrow as i'm just off to bed.

[Micco]

Micco,

I like this game. I think the style is pretty. The sound is great. I found the control a little fiddly at first but soon got used to them. The little tiny enemy's were frustrating because my bullets couldn't hit them. Also, I found it hard to distinguish who was an enemy and who was a friend I should talk to. Perhaps the humanoid enemy's should be a different color than you allies?

Glad you like it About the enemies and allies getting confused, I've made a short monologue to the next build to make things a little more clear, something like "Geez, I believe that's one of those mutants the sarge told me about. I think I need to kill him."

[Micco]

Hi there guys!

Just wanted to write here what's going on with Devastated since it has been a long time I last posted here.

Anyway, the progress is doing great. The game areas will nearly double in size when the next build comes out. In total there will be 172 screens in the next update. The next build will also feature lots of more stuff to do, including quests, arena, achievements ("challenges" in Devastated), new player abilities, improved movement engine, more enemies and much more. A lot of thought has been given to the new areas - no area is alike and they all have different background scenery and landscape.

To track the development progress, check out the newly established Devastated development blog at: http://devastated-game.blogspot.com/

Stay tuned for version 0.3.0, guys!  

[Micco]

Version 0.3.2 released! After months of, ummh, "work", the update is finally here! The new version features a lot of new stuff to do, including new areas, quests, somekind of an arena, new enemies, challenges, new scenery, an another boss battle and much more!

You can get the game from here:
http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/rpg/devastated/3543/
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/145400-devastated

If you have played 0.2.x and would like to start from the end of the previous version:
There is a cheat code for just that! Do this and you'll start where you left:

• Start a new game with the difficult level you wish to play
• In the first screen, after the dialogue press and hold DOWN ARROW and X
• A cheat entry box should appear. Wipe out any extra X's you may just have accidently typed and type carefully skip content and press ENTER
• Confirm the content skip
• Read the epic comic if you want. You will have to make one selection and choose which level you want to start on
• You should spawn in the screen where the tank used to be. Because of a glitch the HUD is invisible but will re-appear when you change screen. You will now start automatically to level up until you reach the selected level
• Start playing!

Comments are appreciated