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[AdamButcher]

Kit630 - oh man you're close to completing it! Good luck with Proving Ground. Who will be first to finish the game? Kit or Veracity?? 

Also Kit - glad that you're feeling the game is the right difficulty for you. You seem like our ideal player 

I think some people didn't realize that the desert is easier than the factory, so that even though the game is not very linear level-wise, it is probably adviseable to go to the desert area first, complete it, THEN go to the factory.

Absolutely right! We liked to give people options, but Desert was always designed as World 2 and Factory as World 3. Might find some way of making that clearer (but maybe playing it should make people realise!).

Hey guys, excellent game!  This thread is already almost a month old so I don't know how much merit my feedback has, but here goes anyway.

Thanks for all the feedback Ryansumo - it's not too late at all - we're still tweaking the game for a proper release in the next few months. All this feedback really helps, glad you're having a good time.

Thanks again to Veracity, more great feedback and level commentary. Will try and solve some of those issues. I guess you're stuggling against the Energy Hive Sentinel now??


Still lots of niggling things to iron out, but let me know if anyone gets any further (completion??), or if you find anything else.

[offset]

Just tested this game, and marks is 4 / 10. Many good stuff, but some elements works very bad.

Graphics looks awesome. Sounds are suitable. Prefect music. But gameplay leaves much to be desired. A very long time to get used to the management and still did not work. I tried to press different buttons nearby, but they were always locked, probably weapons were locked. It turned out only to use the back weapons. Using them is damn uncomfortable. Flying is very inconvenient. Saves only the down arrow, but not always.

I hit about 100 times of those damn trees. And it is not fun. At the level where there are tanks, killed two and turned off the game, so how to kill them all - is akin to suicide.

Verdict: Damp, very damp. It is necessary to rewrite the movement of the hero, IMHO. Overall not bad, but with such a control character to play is impossible. I'm sorry if you hurt this criticism, I tried to make it constructive and understandable to you. I want you to make this game better.

And sorry for my English, English is not my native language. Good luck, Adam. 

[AdamButcher]

UncleDec thanks for the feedback - sounds like you've had more trouble than most. Did you do the training level? It's selectable from the main menu. Should help the controls make more sense for you. Let us know...

[offset]

UncleDec thanks for the feedback - sounds like you've had more trouble than most. Did you do the training level? It's selectable from the main menu. Should help the controls make more sense for you. Let us know...

Hmm ... I saw this item on the menu. So when I ran the game away for a while. Then came, and suddenly found himself in the level selection menu. Maybe accidentally hit Enter.

[Linc]

OK, I've finally gotten the chance to play this a little bit. I had enough time to beat the first two levels, so I've only played for 20 minutes or so, but I'll just tell you some of my first impressions:

1. Bada** title-screen is bada**.
2. Graphics are quite good, however, levels that scroll left/right and/or up/down would be nice/good.
3. Training was fine, not too long but not too short.

However, I have kind of a personal preference type of suggestion. I think with this semi-difficult control scheme, I prefer less of the shooter or bullet hell element, and I prefer the puzzles. I found the levels that were like "Press these switches before time runs out" were a lot, lot more fun than the levels that were more of the "Kill ALL the BAD GUYS!@!!1!" The puzzle element you added with the switches were more satisfying than the button-mashing shoot-em-ups. Then again, I heavily prefer hybrid puzzle-action games.

[Pandara_RA!]

Made a let's test, what a cool game.
figured it's only fair to bump your topic with the video =]

[Ben Claxton]

Pandara
You're one cool dude! Thanks for the amazing feedback, it's so satisfying to see someone apart from us playing the game and really getting in to it  
I've just finished watching and it was full of great points. Here's a few things I can remember off the top of my head.

-Having an indication of the number of waves left on the 'Ambush' style levels sounds like a good idea. Funnily enough on the Greisha Worms level (your pronunciation wasn't that far off ) it does tell you that you have to kill 6 worms. It's in the mission briefing and the little text feed next to your HUD, easily missed though. We could have a similar thing for the wave levels.

-There are rewards for getting the medals, so keep collecting! It becomes more clear once you've completed the final level. Perhaps we could make it apparent before that though.

-All your points about control, or rather loss of it, are really constructive. We already made some changes to the boosting/breaking in the last build to make it more forgiving so we'll continue to fine tune that I expect. The bouncing off walls issues sound like they might be more of a bug or an oversight so we'll look in to that too.

-I have to admit I kind of enjoyed seeing you rage at the Weapons Factory Sentinel
It will make great Let's Play material, can't wait to see that! Your points all make perfect sense though, so maybe it won't be quite so ragequit worthy in the next build.

-Adam is entirely responsible for the cool story so I'll leave that to him. I'm sure he'll be happy to hear you liked it though.

If I missed anything it's because I agreed with you and didn't need to explain, or I just forgot.
Once again, thanks for the great feedback, it's really appreciated.

Linc
Thanks for making some time to play
Your point about enjoying the puzzles is largely encouraging. We always designed the game to be more mission based so I'm glad you're liking those elements. Hopefully the more combat oriented levels won't put you off though. They can be really tense and exciting once you get a bit better with the controls.

[Kit]

I beat the game!  

Well, I have to say: That was added to my list of the most fun and polished indie games I've gotten from this forum, which I hate to admit is a short list. The last boss was pretty fun. Took me a fair number of tries to beat him, but once I figured out the best ways to dodge his moves, I whooped him :D I found that all it took was being patient, completely dodging on some waves and then mostly shooting on others. And the ending was satisfying enough for me.

Also, can't praise the pixel art enough. The atlas, the enemies, the bosses, everything was very polished, fit well together, and basically was of commercial quality. Being somewhat of a pixel junkie myself, I only wish I could make sprites half as good as the ones I've seen in the game. They were very stylish and colorful, in my humble opinion.

Spoiler (highlight to view) --> I had a little issue at the end figuring out where to shoot the last boss on the third form but once I figured out you shoot into the hole where the beam was firing through, I was able to beat his third form quite quickly, and felt that it should have been obvious to me way before I actually figured it out (So I think it was just me, not the game). It would be satisfying to see the planet actually explode from a far off view, flash of supernova style white light and the planet disintigrates.

But it was satisfying to know that Jones finally got to rest in peace. I got the feeling that he was deteriorating throughout the war even though the process of transferring his mind was supposed to be fairly perfected. I also think it's an interesting way to state how war can affect a person's mind long term; and it is pretty cruel to use someone to die over and over again which I think we humans would do if we could figure out how. So the social commentary was great, but not to the point of being intrusive and forced on the player.


Also, after beating the game, I was delighted to see a survival style level to fight waves of enemies in. I didn't even have to ask for one, which is great. <--

The only real bug I could find was that sometimes the game crashed if I paused it. This was particularly unhelpful when I had to use the bathroom during the last boss XD (Too much information, I know!)

Some of the boss fights were puzzle fights where others were straight up blast the hell out of them, while others were a combination, and I found the balance to work quite nice. I never, ever felt like I was fighting the same enemies twice throughout the game, and I only felt that maybe one level (Force Sector, I think, in the Energy Hive) was a bit too frustrating for me personally, which could be solved by tossing a repair in it near the last 3/4 of the level. I think it's just because the path randomizes a bit so you're learning multiple layouts for the same level. It was the level that took me the most tries, incidentally.

I guess my only couple question are: Are there multiple endings? If so, is it the medals that determine which ending you get? If so, that would enhance replayability. If not, I don't think you necessarily have to do anything differently. (Feel free to PM me the answer if it's major spoilers)

Finally, some advice: If you make any more indie games, which I assume you will (And hope you do!), I recommend charging a "Pay what you will" price, something with a minimum of one or two dollars and a maximum of whatever the person chooses to pay. There are plenty of amazing indie games that charge $5, and I think I would have payed $5 for this game.

I think I would pay $10 if there was some form of multiplayer versus or multiplayer coop. Can't imagine how fun it would be to do these levels with a buddy! Or to shoot him down in a dogfight :D

[AdamButcher]

I beat the game!

Man, I was so pleased when I saw this! Glad you stuck with it and got a lot out of it!

Some really good feedback there. Among other things, I was thinking of changing Force Sector just a little.

Are there multiple endings? If so, is it the medals that determine which ending you get?

Once you've completed it, you should have noticed a reward marker for 10 x Medals. Did you see that??? You may guess that there's rewards at other points as well...

A QUESTION FOR EVERYBODY

Does anyone use the Teledex? It was made to be quite useful to people who weren't sure how to defeat a badguy, or who were stuck on something and wanted to get some tips. For instance, it's useful for the final boss, Kit630.

Made a let's test, what a cool game.
figured it's only fair to bump your topic with the video =]

You're amazing! Thanks for making this video - it's pretty long so I'm working my way thru it. But really appreciate the dedication.  Let me know if you get any further, and have any more thoughts on the game!

ANYONE ELSE PM ME IF YOU WANT A COPY! 

[Kit]

I do use the teledex, and it is really handy and quite informational. I just didn't think to look at it for the last boss. But no I did not see the reward marker for the medals lol. My bad, probably just missed it in the excitement.

You're amazing! Thanks for making this video - it's pretty long so I'm working my way thru it. But really appreciate the dedication.  Let me know if you get any further, and have any more thoughts on the game!

His video is very enjoyable, and he hit a lot of points that I missed, or didn't even consider. In particular, the feedback about the continual crashing in some areas, and the feedback about being able to bump the mines away from buttons by shooting them in the Factory sentinal level. I think if you add a majority of what he suggests, it will add that much further polish to the game.

Though I don't think you need to add an HP bar to the decryption machine, as I noticed each part will become damaged and the screens blink out as they are hit. Maybe if you threw in some spark particles after they are damaged to draw a little more attention to it though.

Anyway, thanks for the opportunity to play this game. I'm off to discover the medal rewards now :D

[Danmark]

Who will be first to finish the game? Kit or Veracity?? 

I beat the game! 

Damn. Leave for a few days, and come back finding I lost a competition I didn't know about.

The Energy Hive Sentinel was great. Proving Grounds didn't give me much trouble (2 tries), except weapon selection. At no point prior do you have so many at your disposal, and it reveals the fault of the cyclic weapon selection. It seems you ought to be able to instantly select any weapon, though it's not like early first-person shooters where every weapon is available often enough for their respective keys to be quickly learned. Anyway, I found myself using weapons other than the default in panic mode, with no real thought given to selection.

Does anyone use the Teledex? It was made to be quite useful to people who weren't sure how to defeat a badguy, or who were stuck on something and wanted to get some tips. For instance, it's useful for the final boss, Kit630.

No. Hadn't even peeked at it until you mentioned it. Never really though to. In retrospect, I recall seeing "Teledex" on the menu, but I never thought anything of it.

Shouldn't visual and audible feedback be enough to figure out how to defeat enemies? So far the thing that's stumped me most is the damaged Omega Sentinel's machinegun. But is that a fault in my intel going into battle, or my ability to work out how to avoid damage, or the presentation of the machinegun itself?

[AdamButcher]

Veracity: assuming you haven't completed that boss yet - I wait til the bullets start to contract and then boost through the gaps. If you think that needs to be more obvious, I'd be curious to hear...

Shouldn't visual and audible feedback be enough to figure out how to defeat enemies?

That and a bit of experimentation should do it - but we wanted to give people another opportunity to find out how best to do things. Do you think it's worth driving people towards the Teledex, say, after they've completed the first level?

A QUESTION ON INSTALLERS
I've used the Clickteam Install Creator for this, but it seems on some people's computers that it doesn't install the fonts correctly. Maybe a Windows 7 problem. Any other free install-maker software people can recommend?

[Danmark]

Veracity: assuming you haven't completed that boss yet - I wait til the bullets start to contract and then boost through the gaps. If you think that needs to be more obvious, I'd be curious to hear...

Oh, not that one. I meant the minigun that sweeps across the screen. But it was just a poorly-executed rhetorical device for the thing about Teledex.

Speaking of minigun, is it necessarily avoidable after you've opened lots of holes? It's uncommon, but sometimes the minigun fire pushes you towards a beam, while the safe zone near where it starts firing couldn't have been reached in time.

That and a bit of experimentation should do it - but we wanted to give people another opportunity to find out how best to do things. Do you think it's worth driving people towards the Teledex, say, after they've completed the first level?

I think it would dilute the experience somewhat. I really enjoyed having to work out new tactics from scratch throughout the game. Perhaps you could direct them to Teledex after they've failed a mission a large number of times (like 5).

Anyway, I finished Telenaut. Best shooter I've played in ages. Congratulations and thanks for making such a great game.

[AdamButcher]

Just to let anyone here know - WE FINISHED THE GAME!

It's now called TELETROOPER!

New TIGS Post!