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[phampire]

Download the early demo (for Windows) here.

Readapt is a local multiplayer arena shooter where every round is different.

A range of modifiers change weapons, abilities, levels, players, movement, objectives and even controls. The game supports up to 4 players and has bot support too.

Players are given time before a round starts to discover and experiment. Once the round begins players compete over survival or the objective.

   
 





Any feedback is greatly appreciated, you can comment below or complete a short two minute survey here. 

Thanks!

[Quicksand-S]

It might be a good idea to mention bots in the title. I normally skip over multiplayer-only games because I don't have people to test them with.

-The main menu has issues. I can click on things with my mouse and they react, but the menu items don't actually have any effect.

-On a related note, it might be nice if mouse+keyboard worked. It's not ideal for a twin-stick shooter, but still doable.

-I was very happy to see that you built in a delay when scrolling through menu options with the gamepad. There was a small issue, though, where sometimes the menu would keep scrolling after I let go of the thumbstick (as it moved back to the center position). It might be a good idea to only change the selection if the stick is pushed almost all the way in one direction.

-The Player Select screen is interesting. I'm so used to left being "less" and right being "more" that it felt very strange to use that menu.

-Once I got into the game itself, I couldn't move or aim. I could shoot, but that was it. The thumbsticks did absolutely nothing. Then I realized that I had to play with the keyboard and mouse. I had to enter the game and make selections using the gamepad, but had to play with the mouse.

-AI should probably pick targets based on health levels, distance and weapon power. It seemed like they just all targeted me most of the time.

-When I hit the enemy, I don't get any real feedback. Some sort of explosion, debris, flash or knockback would be nice. It's just not satisfying to shoot something over and over and over with the only result being a slightly smaller or emptier circle.

-One level showed me its configuration and then moved on to a new level without letting me play first.

-There seem to be two guns that use the tiny triangles as bullets, which seems a bit weird. I kinda expected the circular gun to fire circular bullets.

-I liked the music. It seemed fitting.

-The art is all right. My only suggestion is that I think players could use more precise health states. It wasn't always easy to tell how many hits I, or the enemies, could take.


I didn't like it at first, but I think I was just getting boring configurations. The normal blaster feels terrible to use. Once I started getting other weapons, and crazy secondary weapons, it was much better. I really liked the remote-controlled explosive launcher.

That seems to be the biggest problem with the game: That some of the random configurations are boring. That said, the only really bad part was the slowness of the basic blaster, so maybe if that's removed or improved, there won't be any boring parts anymore. Some more varied arenas might be nice too. I never really felt like I had to change my playstyle to deal with obstacles, only to deal with weird weapons.

[phampire]

It might be a good idea to mention bots in the title. I normally skip over multiplayer-only games because I don't have people to test them with.

Good point I'll change the thread title to make this fact more upfront. 

-The main menu has issues. I can click on things with my mouse and they react, but the menu items don't actually have any effect.

The main menu can only be controlled with WASD or Arrow keys with the spacebar to accept selections and the Esc key to back out, I think people tend to click on the menu because the menu looks clickable. I see what I can do to make this more clear. 

-On a related note, it might be nice if mouse+keyboard worked. It's not ideal for a twin-stick shooter, but still doable.

Mouse and keyboard should work, there is an option to switch between M+KB and controller for player one under the options section of the main menu. 

-I was very happy to see that you built in a delay when scrolling through menu options with the gamepad. There was a small issue, though, where sometimes the menu would keep scrolling after I let go of the thumbstick (as it moved back to the center position). It might be a good idea to only change the selection if the stick is pushed almost all the way in one direction.

 
Thanks for letting me know, looks like I need to increase the controller deadzone. 

-The Player Select screen is interesting. I'm so used to left being "less" and right being "more" that it felt very strange to use that menu.

That's odd, left should be less and right being more, I did have another tester point this out recently, it's nice to have confirmation and I'll try to find the issue. 

-Once I got into the game itself, I couldn't move or aim. I could shoot, but that was it. The thumbsticks did absolutely nothing. Then I realized that I had to play with the keyboard and mouse. I had to enter the game and make selections using the gamepad, but had to play with the mouse.

That's strange, by default the controls should default to mouse and keyboard and should lock out the controller. Although now that I think about it, having both inputs work with the controller plugged in isn't a bad idea. 

AI should probably pick targets based on health levels, distance and weapon power. It seemed like they just all targeted me most of the time.

Right now the AI is rather basic and just targets Player one (they also function as a team and the round ends when player one dies). Originally I put them in just for testing purposes but I should really make them more intelligent. 

-When I hit the enemy, I don't get any real feedback. Some sort of explosion, debris, flash or knockback would be nice. It's just not satisfying to shoot something over and over and over with the only result being a slightly smaller or emptier circle.

 
An excellent point, I will look into what sort of visual feedback makes sense. 

-One level showed me its configuration and then moved on to a new level without letting me play first.

Thanks for letting me know, another tester reported this bug too.

-There seem to be two guns that use the tiny triangles as bullets, which seems a bit weird. I kinda expected the circular gun to fire circular bullets.

One of those guns might have been the charge weapon. Originally I picked triangles for projectile shapes because you could tell which direction they are going. Circular gun? I am not sure what you are referring to.

-I liked the music. It seemed fitting.

Thanks! I'll pass it on to my music guy. 

-The art is all right. My only suggestion is that I think players could use more precise health states. It wasn't always easy to tell how many hits I, or the enemies, could take.

Good point, the health states can be a bit hard to see especially with the score overlay on players.   

That seems to be the biggest problem with the game: That some of the random configurations are boring. That said, the only really bad part was the slowness of the basic blaster, so maybe if that's removed or improved, there won't be any boring parts anymore. Some more varied arenas might be nice too. I never really felt like I had to change my playstyle to deal with obstacles, only to deal with weird weapons.

I'll see if I can make the basic blaster more exciting and if I can't, I'll ditch it. The environmental objects could do with an overhaul to make them more impactful with player playstyles. I'll also look at other modifiers that seem less exciting and see what I can do to spice them up. 

Thanks for your feedback it was very helpful and greatly appreciated!

[Quicksand-S]

Weird. I was sure I got rid of the comment about there not being keyboard+mouse control after I noticed there was. Oops.

The misleading part about the menu was that I could depress the buttons with the mouse, but they just had no effect. If they hadn't reacted, I would've just switched to another input right away. Anyway, I'm of the opinion that PC games should allow mouse control in menus even if they're otherwise keyboard/gamepad controlled. It's just faster, and it's convenient because the player double-clicked the EXE with the mouse so there's a good chance they've already got it in their hand at the start.

Circular gun? I am not sure what you are referring to.

I wasn't paying much attention to the guns (the shapes held out in front of each player), so I thought I only saw a single weapon that used a circle in that position. Looking at your video, though, I see that's not the case.

What I meant when I wrote that was that since triangle bullets came from the triangle weapon, it seemed like circular bullets should come from the circular weapon.

[phampire]

The misleading part about the menu was that I could depress the buttons with the mouse, but they just had no effect. If they hadn't reacted, I would've just switched to another input right away. Anyway, I'm of the opinion that PC games should allow mouse control in menus even if they're otherwise keyboard/gamepad controlled. It's just faster, and it's convenient because the player double-clicked the EXE with the mouse so there's a good chance they've already got it in their hand at the start.

Ah that makes complete sense, I'll look into it. 

I wasn't paying much attention to the guns (the shapes held out in front of each player), so I thought I only saw a single weapon that used a circle in that position. Looking at your video, though, I see that's not the case.

Ah you are referring the player pointers, which are used to show where players are aiming. The different shapes are to aid people who are colour blind and the player number is also represented in the number of sides the pointer shape has. Thanks for clearing this point up.

[phampire]

Updated the original post with build 8 of Readapt. There are a bunch of changes which are fully detailed in my development blog, some of which include:

• A visual overhaul
• New particle effects and animations
• New modifiers
• Removed boring/bland modifiers
• New sounds
• New variables to existing modifiers
• and a whole ton of bug fixes

[phampire]

Updated the original post with build 8.5. Changes include:

• Arena layouts are more like traditional levels and have less complicated behaviours. Only a handful implemented with more to come.
• Added two player support for one controller vs mouse/keyboard in the options.
• Added light flicker for the darkness modifier.
• Constant movement modifier only occurs for grid and diagonal movement.
• Updated AI pathfinding.
• Initial non lethal stages of projectiles no longer push players and should remove on impact.
• Time delay when players are damaged has been increased and is now consistent.
• Various bug fixes and balance changes.

[phampire]

Updated the original post with the latest demo build. It's been awhile since I've last posted so pretty much everything is new.

• Updated all visuals and effects.
• All menus and UI elements redone.
• Added more player modifiers, weapons, abilities and objectives.
• New and improved levels
• New audio system.