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[jambri]

In Light Bound, players are thrown into a randomly generated arena where they have to find and collect weapons and do battle against each other.  The arena can only be seen where lit up by players and weapons.  Players can create custom games using a variety of configurable options.

Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74wWw0-MDc4

Web Demo:
http://www.light-bound.com/demo.html

Current this demo shows multiplayer gameplay with easy AI and 1 background with 1 selectable player.

What I'd like to know is the following:

Was it easy to understand? If not, is there a better way to show how it plays (without a tutorial).
How would you rate it (out of 10)?
Where would you like to see improvements?
Did you play by yourself?
Was it fun?
Anything else you would like to add?

Thanks for any feedback you can provide!

[Quicksand-S]

The basics were easy to understand, yes, but I think it's really lacking in player feedback. I didn't have any indication of what weapon I had equipped (after the initial pickup) and didn't know how many bullets I had left without keeping track myself. Shooting didn't feel responsive. I guess there's a delay between shots that's enforced, but it just felt like in frantic, close-quarters situations I couldn't hit the enemy because it wouldn't let me shoot.

I also spent a huge amount of time without any weapon at all, it seemed. They don't have much ammo, and the pickups don't respawn particularly often. They also seem to pop up in clusters, so there are often areas of the map that have nothing.

Many times, my projectiles would hit enemies and do nothing. Sometimes I even seemed to get hurt, while the enemy didn't. I don't know if I just didn't understand the weapons or if there are collision-detection issues, but it was pretty frustrating.

I'd give it a 6/10, but that's using the "5 is average" scale. It's decent but there doesn't seem to be a lot to it and the combat isn't as fun as it could be because half the time I'm not participating (no weapon/ammo or waiting to be able to shoot again).

I played against the AI, which seemed to work quite well.

It was all right, but would have been more fun if I'd been in combat more.

It would be nice to be able to use my mouse in the menus, or at least navigate left and right with the gamepad rather than having that change my selections. I think the level design/generation could use some work, because there were a lot of rooms with only one entrance that were pretty useless.

I really like the music a lot. The graphical style is also pretty cool, although the characters aren't as defined as I'd like. In-game, they just look like balls of light as opposed to characters.

[jambri]

First off, thanks for taking the time to play it and more so for providing honest feedback!

We intentionally didn't want people to see what weapons the players had equipped so it worked like a card game. If you approached someone you wouldn't know what they had. I think we may have to nix that idea as you aren't the first to say this.

In regards to a lack of weapons, we have an algorithm in place to spawn them in unused rooms. We're trying to keep the players moving around the map as much as possible. We found spawning 6 weapons in the map to be much better and we may change to that in the future. You can also track ammo by the spinning orbs on the player, again something we'll need to make more clear.

If an enemy or yourself is flashing it means you're hit and invulnerable for a short amount of time and cannot fire. This allows the player to get away/relocate. Other than this there should be no reason a projectile hit an enemy and not count as a hit.

I want to avoid the need of a tutorial as its more of a pick up play type game. If you have any suggestions to I'd love to hear them!

[Quicksand-S]

In regards to a lack of weapons, we have an algorithm in place to spawn them in unused rooms. We're trying to keep the players moving around the map as much as possible.

Well, it sounds like you've got the right idea. I'm not sure it works yet, though. Weapons often seemed to spawn in the middle of occupied areas rather than in empty rooms.

If an enemy or yourself is flashing it means you're hit and invulnerable for a short amount of time and cannot fire. This allows the player to get away/relocate. Other than this there should be no reason a projectile hit an enemy and not count as a hit.

There might be collision-detection problems then. I'm 90% sure that I fired at non-flashing enemies multiple times without doing any damage at all.

Sometimes I seemed to lose more than one health block from a hit as well. Do explosions do more damage?

I don't think a tutorial is necessary, but I do think things need to stand out a lot more (the ammo, for example).

I'm also not sure why you can choose the number of weapons at the start. It seemed to imply that I'd be able to carry multiple weapons at once.