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[foresthighway17]

Read about this on RPS a few hours ago at work (that's gotta feel good to hear, eh!), come home eager to play....d'oh!! Dropbox bandwidth over maximum. I'll keep an eye out for mirrors (hopefully some kind TIGfolks can help with that!).

[Kyzrati]

Read about this on RPS a few hours ago at work (that's gotta feel good to hear, eh!), come home eager to play....d'oh!! Dropbox bandwidth over maximum. I'll keep an eye out for mirrors (hopefully some kind TIGfolks can help with that!).

Help is on the way! I uploaded a mirror of the Windows build here: TinyWizard-v0.0.7a-win-tigsource.zip. No limits there

[mike_w]

Help is on the way! I uploaded a mirror of the Windows build here: TinyWizard-v0.0.7a-win-tigsource.zip. No limits there

Oh man, thank you. I had to wait until I got home from work and I was super sad when Dropbox told me to buzz off. Was gonna test it on my Macbook Air to help out a little (since it's not the fastest, hardware-wise) but I guess I have to wait until there's a mirror of that too.

[kebabskal]

Wow! Overwhelming response so far. Thanks a lot!
I'll be back with a summary soon.

Apparently Dropbox gave up, so I moved the files temporarily to google drive dedicated hosting.
Original post updated, and links available below:

Downloads UPDATED
Windows - Tiny Wizard 0.0.7a
OSX - Tiny Wizard 0.0.7a
Linux x86 + x86_64 - Tiny Wizard 0.0.7a
Note: These downloads use Google Analytics to report some usage parameters to me.

[SafetySnail]

On someone elses computer right now so I'll come back and give a proper performance review when I have time but I played through this and it's pretty insane. Like others have said I didn't know how to get into the shops at first and also didn't realise that smiley faces were bombs.
When I did figure it out, I used a bomb right at the end of a level and it blew me past one of the skulls and into the next room where I was then unable to move but could still shoot and collect coins. Couldn't do any spells though, just default mouse click weapon.
Tried to screen shot where I got stuck but it wouldn't let me for some reason, I believe that's a problem with using dual monitors though, not the game's problem.
Overall it's nice though! Just needs to be a little clearer on some of the key components and it'll be really enjoyable. Great stuff.

[deab]

Only had a few mins to try but some quick feedback:

Screen shake I found very distracting, and a couple of times the screen turned purple and I couldn't see anything - think I was colliding with an enemy?

Also wasn't obvious how to get in the shops, first time managed it by mistake.

Performance was fine, i5-2500K @ 3.3GHz, GeForce GTX750 Ti.

[124c41]

Well, most of the things I'd like to say have allready been said, but anyway, here is my feedback after ~40min of play:

- the color scheme looks good, but damages gameplay. walkable space and obstacles are hard to keep apart when there is a lot going on, some enemies (spiders and bats) and items (bombs) are hard to see, and some projectiles look the same as the mana-orbs. combined with screenshake and the flash on hits, it can be very confusing.
- rooms could use a safezone at the entrance. sometimes you start rooms in a very tight space with several enemies spawning on top of you, which feels unfair. also hat some spiders jump on me from offscreen - some limitation to their jump distance would be nice.
- mana pickups were overabundant, life pickups very rare. this made me feel like an early mistake could not be compensated and pretty much doomed you.
- spells did not feel very usefull, with the exception of the second one, which was a nice way to get out of tight spots.
- I found the inventory to be confusing at first. Also tooltips on pickups did not allways work, and sometimes only appeared when hovering over a really small space.
- I experienced some slowdowns when there were a lot of particles, coins and projectiles on screen (old rig: AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual Core 4600+, 2.41GHz, 2GB, GeForce GTX 260)

Other than that, I found it running smoothly, controls were good and I liked the 'gamefeel', even though this is a genre I don't play very often.
 

[davorable]

Very enjoyable though I found the screen shake a little much. Also sometimes i was just sitting around waiting for mana.

[lionfish]

Great Job with the game.  I had to tell myself to stop playing and get back to work several times before I actually did.

Here's the notes I took

   * Improves

      * Potions didn’t stand out from background
      * Too much screen shake - maybe once a certain amount occurs, it doesn’t keep happening, or it’s minimized in some way.  If everything produces screen shake, emphasis on really powerful items is decreased
      * Took me 10 minutes to figure out the bombs, and that they could blow up walls.  Maybe show what the bomb looks like in the start menu.  Couple of milliseconds more on the delay would be nice too
      * Coin Collection too fast.  I thought I was being attacked by them a couple times
      * Hard to tell what was life and what wasn’t
      * Blue was damage shots of enemies and mana pots, so I became confused for a bit
      * Didn’t realize enemies were enemies sometimes, maybe because of the screenshake
      * It might be nice to pick up bonus gold or something else when I try to pickup a weapon I already had.  Otherwise I just felt bummed out
      * Finding that last enemy in the room can be frustrating.  Maybe have an arrow pointing to the last amount?
      * Hyper Buff Length wasn't displayed so I had trouble using it strategically
      * Stats display, like luck up would be nice to see, so I can see how much stronger my wizard is getting
      * Have bonus description linger a little longer so I can see what I get
      * When hit, maybe have Immunity time to gather senses.  O/w I didn't know what was going on when multiple enemies were around
      * Maybe having the Inventory open doesn’t move the screen, because when I tried to see the bonus effects, it felt like I was chasing it with the mouse
      * Having enemies in the rooms to buy items that can only be accessed by a bomb could be problamatic

   * Likes

      * Separated Rooms - I liked being trapped in the room, and that feeling of completing a room before moving on, while you maintained the random room generation that made a unique fight in each room
      * 2 was my go to ability on the purple wizard.  I liked it.  1 felt weak.  4 helped me when I was dodging bullets
      * Didn’t use 3 at all, (never mind, i just got a different weapon and it really helps, but drains my mana like crazy)
      * I Didn’t look at mana bar until I ran out
      * Big Enemies felt big when hit because they didn't move as far
      * I Like Thor’s Toothpick.
      * Maybe reset mana after finishing a level, o/w what’s stopping me from waiting, which would be lame
      * Exploding ants lead to chain reaction, which is fun
      * The Names, like Raspberry Supernova are fun

   * Thoughts

      * Maybe movement with mouse and have Q W E R for abilities.  It felt like too much for one hand to move around and use the abilities
      * Basic attacks maybe not cost mana?
      * Being able to rest between levels lets user set their own pace.  Nice.
      * Introduce enemies one at a time slowly.  I didn’t realize blue guys blew up.  Maybe you do that, but I couldn't tell.
      * Mass Carnage Bonus like in Diablo 3 so there's that extra sense of greatness when I survived a major battle, or a bonus when I survive a room with little health.

Once again, lots of fun and great job!

[twasBrillig]

Definitely a fun time! Balance-wise, I think the points about spiders (especially the giant spiders) leaping on you from offscreen and enemies spawning on top of you are my biggest beefs. Similarly, trying to nail the tiny melee bats when the screen is shaking is a a pain in the butt.

UI-wise I'd definitely appreciate more info on some of the items/stats. I didn't even know accuracy was a stat until I picked up an item that increased it. The boom from the auto-critting blunt wand is satisfying at first, but simultaneously makes other wands feel too quiet and eventually becomes kind of overwhelming.

I'm a big fan of the aesthetic. I didn't realize that technowizard dungeon was something that I wanted in life, but here we are.

Bugs

• Blunt wand doesn't proc goo fields, as far as I can tell.
• Enemies can get stuck outside of rooms, making it impossible to progress. (unless you're lucky and they stay near the walls)
• The destructible walls at the entrance to rooms let the player walk out of the rooms. Getting too close to a room will spawn enemies, lock the entrances, and spawn the next room. Because of how the lock blocks spawn relative to the destructible blocks, it's hard to reenter the room (and the normal game progression) without skipping at least one room.

Even with those issues, though, I'm excited for the next release. At last, I can fulfill my dreams of being a tiny, pink wizard with too much firepower.

[Indie4Fun]

Hi! I just downloaded the alpha.

I really like the mechanics, smooth, fast pathed, seems polished.

No performance issues, everything fine at fullHD and max detal on a core [email protected] and a GTX460. The visuals are quite nice.

I have to agree with others, the screen shake each time you fire is sometimes annoying. Also I miss a coin picking sound.

[libertango]

Very fun.  You have done a great job on the level generation.  I don't really have any complaints at the moments...I'm assuming you just haven't had a chance to add many sound effects yet.
In regards to the difficulty of finding the enemies on the screen at times, I'm not sure if the players won't naturally overcome that as they learn the game, the enemies and their attacks.  Would need to play more, to see. 

[franches]

Hello there,

I Have played it and I can say that it looks very good and the gameplay has potential, but it's not even nearly finished.
I have some problems with some of the game play ingredients such as:
- I don't like how the mouse movement affects the camera movement. It could be more subtile cause it's not giving me a lot of advantages by having this feature.
- I would prefer to have some sort of cooldown when the next room enemies will spawn.
- I would like to see where the enemies will spawn, with some sort of FX in the spawn points.
- As others said, you miss a lot of sounds in this point but it's not a big deal, I think you are conscious of the missing sounds and how they affect the gameplay feedback.
- The camera shake when I shoot it's quite annoying
- The camera effect and screen effect when I get damage it's quite overkill as well. A sound fx and a more subtle effect would be more appropriate.
- When picking up stuff, I would like to know more about what I picked, what it does etc. Or even what stats have been healed/upgraded.
- I want to say it again, after playing a few more hours, you really need a sound designer.


I guess this is it for now, hope it helps and hope you get it done and out there somewhere.

Cheers

[kebabskal]

Hello again peeps!

Took quite a while to go through and think about all the feedback.
You have all been super helpful. I've both learned new stuff, shattered misconceptions and cemented beliefs.
Big thanks!

Thought I'd share my notes with you:

GOOD STUFF:
+ Controls feel good
+ Most people seem to enjoy the alpha as a whole
+ Google Analytics integration is superbly useful. Glad I took the time. Look below for a random list of stats.

GAMEPLAY:
* Bullet distinction from player projectiles, mana orbs etc.
* Enemies spawning too close
* Lessen screen shake. Slider?
* Camera follow mouse. Slider?
* Less screenflash on hurt. + Audio!
* Blacken spider heads on death
* Make walls a bit more distinct. (Floor darker?)
* Better bomb graphics
* Coin physics: Increase pickup radius. Tune drag.
* Several items in shop. Choose only one.
* Explode into shop unintuitive: Have well hidden item rooms with no item cost and remove blocks around shop.
* Mana overhaul: Either:
   a) remove regen, force player to move forward.
   b) make regen quicker, its function is now to limit short term bursts.
   c) Introduce a time based constraint. Spawn some special mob if the a timer runs out?
   d) Automatically refill mana on room complete
* Spiders should only jump to player when they are visible. Also cap jump length.
* HAVING to destroy all pots and skulls is no fun, keep explosion effect, remove rewards.
* Not enough incentive to use spells.
* Deny "stay in the entrance and shoot"-strategies
* MaxHP+ on enemy kill is too strong.
* Increase bomb explode delay
* Add a maximum repeat spawn on items. Two heavy wands is quite fun, three is not.
* Arrows pointing to last 3 remaining enemies.
* Custom, more visible mouse pointer
* Some sort of multiplier on many quick kills: For a certain character maybe?
* Better Inventory/Character sheet. Show all stats
* Fix crit mechanic with heavy wand.
* Change Goop Cube to proc on any hit wether or not crit but at low percentage of times.
* Add more sounds: Especially coin pickup :D
* Enemies spawning in effect before actually spawning.

BUGS:
* Arcane rain lags
* Raspberry nova lags
* Keybinds for AZERTY
* Framerate drop on death?
* Misplaced exit blocks
* Slime color on death: Simple animation fix
* Fix loading flicker
* Out of bounds bug: Blow up blocks around item
- Movement feels sluggish: Not sure about this one. Do not agree.

Some random stats at time of writing:
* 4-500 sessions per day since release. Naturally starting to drop off.
* 22% of the sessions are returning players.
* 3,338 attempts started
* 2,366 deaths (indicates roughly 30% quiting while alive)
* 23 final boss kills.
* 13,265 big items picked up.
* 32,638 rooms entered.
* Most deaths on level 5. This is where things are starting to get hard.
* Average attempt time 04:37
* 29.465 successful skill uses.
* 10.100 failed skill uses.
* Pink nova (pink skill 2) is 27% of all skill uses.
* Arcane rain (pink skill 4) is only 6%
* 1080p: 38%
* 720p: 20%
* Average level generation time is 676ms
* Room 1: Average clear time 27 secs - Takes people a while to get used to controls?
* Room 2: Average clear time 15 secs
* Room 9: Average clear time 41 secs

Hope that is interesting to someone :D

Be back soon with more updates!

[Rabid Llama]

Here's some notes from my brief playsession of 0.0.7 - Apologies for not noticing the updated version!

needs music!

hard to see breakables vs. the background vs. unbreakable obstacles

beam spell feels really weak, although I appreciate being able to attack through walls. Generally preferred rapid fire.

cast time on arcane nova is scary, considering I generally want to run up to a group of enemies and use it point-blank

should either restore mana on room end, or have a mechanic to force me into the next room. Right now, optimal play is to use 100% of mana and then wait at the entrance to the next room for a reaaally booooring minute or so. In fact, I wrote this feedback while waiting!

can use weapons/items while dead, which is amusing

Incredibly hard to read the popup text when you grab an item

woah bomb orb is OP as heck - so much money from breaking blocks. Expensive in terms of mana, but see above feedback about just waiting for mana to come back.

Entering rooms is terrifying - every enemy flies at you at once. The big guys are especially scary.

Framerate is great normally, but occasionally (lots of projectiles/gold coins on screen) the framerate plummets to 1 or 2 FPS. Actually, it might be when projectiles escape the map? I know it happened when I died and coins that were trying to collect to me flew off at incredible speed.

[MixexiM]

I have a few issues with some minor details in the game that you don't seem to have mentioned above:
* The hit box on the walls don't really match up with the graphics within the game, especially on the corners of walls. It's minor, but I noticed it a couple of times i was trying to shoot something round a corner.
* A pause button would be appreciated
* The font of the cooldowns on spells makes the number 0 look like an 8. Confused the heck out of me a couple of times.
* Character movement is just right for gameplay, but it does feel sluggish. It's a bit disproportionate to the perceived speed that the character's size/ walking animation suggests.
* Enemies that can past through destructible terrain may become trapped within shops.
* The font of the item prices in shops is different from any other font within the game, making it slightly jarring.
* The bomb orb grants far too much gold from destructible terrain. Also makes regular bombs almost obsolete.
* The particle effects of projectiles that hit enemies and walls looks a bit cheap. I would suggest switching it out.

I also have some worries with making the floor darker to make the walls distinct, since this may then make the black coloured spiders harder to see.
I do love the art style and the graphics, as they were visually rich and interesting.

[catpolice]

I've only spent a few minutes playing it so far, but I'm generally pretty impressed!

My comments so far:

- (Note: I wrote the following before even discovering the blue wizard - I just got the pink one several times in a row - it still mostly applies, though) The basic weapon feels pretty good (unlike others, I like the screen shake, though I guess it wouldn't hurt to tone it down a bit).  One thing that feels a little odd about it though is the initial cooldown time.  In a lot of rogue-ish action games, you can spam your attack much faster, and it's a little unsettling to suddenly be able to only pull it off only every half second or so.  As you upgrade its speed, it feels a lot better, but in my experience so far, speed upgrades are rare enough that it can be a little frustrating.
You could do something like allowing for a faster initial rate of fire but making the power of the attack partially dependent on how full your mana bar is, so if you're spamming it a lot, you're going to be shooting a lot of weak blasts, and slow, well timed blasts will in general be a lot more effective.  Maybe just make the blast you shoot with a completely full power bar much more powerful and have it always crit, so you can cater to the play style of both the patient sniper and the spammy machinegunner.  Just a thought.

- Spiders sometimes jump from all the way off screen and hit me pretty quick, and my initial weapon doesn't seem accurate enough to reliably get them in the air - that's a bit annoying, I feel like the enemies should have to be on screen before they can pull off attacks that I can barely dodge.  This might have to do with my relatively low resolution - I don't know if you're scaling it to account for that or not.

- You might want to make it so enemy generation is a little more biased toward being away from the entrance of a room.  I'll sometimes walk into rooms and it spawns two or three big spiders plus a lot of bats right in front of me, and I'm stuck in the doorway, unable to dodge.

[hardpenguin]

<snip>

Just played your game, I think it's GREAT! I love when spells in games are so much rewarding but quite balanced too! Lasers! Explosions! Magic staff dual wield! Awesome!

Now please take my humble feedback (registered here to share it with you):

* Performance issues

Pentium 4 2.8 GHz, 1 GB RAM, GeForce 8400 GS, Debian GNU/Linux 7 32-bit

Lags/slowdowns from like 5th room and when more powerful spells are casted (nova ftw!)

* Controls and game feel: Do you use the spells? Does pew pewing feel good?

It feels really geeeewd. Very rewarding! Although you could work on sounds + laser spell for the red wizard could be a little bit more powerful.

1,2,3,4 keys for spells shortcuts doesn't seem like a good idea combined with WASD for moving. How about mouse scroll AND 1,2,3,4 for choosing spell and middle click/E for firing spells? User-side customisation for controls seems like a good idea anyway.

* Structure of play: Does the room structure feel good? Are shops a good idea? Do you feel you are making interesting choices on how to tackle a room, which items to purchase etc?

Rooms could look better and include more cool objects.

* Should it be harder or easier?

Considering difficulty level is scaling very quickly on entering next rooms, I think it is just ok for now. Don't you dare making it any easier! I love how monsters are able to surprise me.

* What is missing?

Customization, managing the inventory (equipping stuff).

A little bit of (optional) music also wouldn't hurt.

[gtg3000]

Registered to commend, :D

The game is quite intoxicating so far, but I have a few issues.

• Mana system is somewhat out of focus - Regen is too slow for the current strength of spells, either separate basic attacks from spells with latter being more powerfull but eating into the precious mana, or speed up the regen to allow more commonplace use of more mana-consuming stuff. On the same note, player needs to have ability to regain mana on entering new room. If there's regen, player is encouraged to wait for bar to fill up, what can take quite a time currently.
• Health needs more work as well. With how little ways of replenishing it there is, it's basically non-recoverable, with maxhp+ buff being quite useless. For prolonged game, player needs to be able to recover HP to full (which I wasn't able to achieve). Either through onhit or onkill heals, active items that heal for mana, stationary objects that heal while draining mana or just passive health regen.
• The spell system is nice, but requires tweaks, such as repurposing skills (like pink wizards' 4, which is quite underwhelming, or his 2. Or Blue wizards' 3). I propose making pink wizard's spells to affect his basic attacks, in same way his 3 right now increaces the fire rate, his 4 could add homing effect (for more mana per shot) and his deathray could take effect based on his left-handed weapon, such as having a single powerful ray with blunt stick, current lengthy animation with sharpened stick, continuous splitting lightning with thors' toothpick, radial rays with strawberry nova or plain 'leaving a persistent lazer trace behind' with the dashing item. His 2 could be slightly retooled to throw the nearby enemies backwards more. Blue wizards only poor skill is her third, which is just a variation of her first (that even makes first effect disappear, it seems). It could be instead a shield to stop ranged attacks from reaching him (or her? I'm not sure).
• Besides that, mechanic of 'blowing your way into the shop' is flawed. such things are better left for separated secret rooms, while shops could use to carry more than one item. Your game seems to be similar to Risk of Rain in regards of items, maybe you could take some pointers from there?

Hope my feedback isn't too sporadic or offending.

[kebabskal]

Hey Everybody!

I have been pretty productive the last couple of days.
Many of the bugs and inconsistencies you found have been touched and remedied.

There has also been some actual feature progress: Moste namely, leveling and stat upgrading.

You kill enemies to level up. Each time you level up you receive an Upgrade Point (tally shown in the lower left, above the xp bar).
These Upgrade Points can be spent in the "inventory" screen by clicking on the plus-button right next to the stat you want to upgrade.
This is wildly unbalanced at the moment, which is the main reason that I'm not releasing a new build to you guys just yet.

To facilitate this there has been an overhaul of the stats system as a whole.
Each stat was previously just hidden floats but now it is a little bit more elaborate.
They now have a Rank which maps to an array of predetermined values. This way I can easily tune the actual value for each rank.
This also meant that I had to redo all the stat increasing items so they add a rank to the correct stat instead.

I'll probably hide some from the upgrade screen, making them only upgradeable via special items.

A lot of balancing is needed here.

All GUI work is temporary, I am still waiting for the promised 4.6 (or 5.0) version of Unity which should bring a new (and awesome) UI system.

Other things fixed:
* Mana Regen removed completely as per request from many
* No more money or drops from breaking pots and skulls
* Reduced money from exploded walls
* Multiple items in shop
* There is now a small animation that plays as the enemies spawn, giving the player a bit more time to react.
* Enemies should spawn further from the entrance.
* Spiders jumping are a little less annoying as they now have limited jump length.
* Spider heads now disappear as they die.
* Bomb take longer to explode.
* Throwing bombs should be less annoying.
* Screenshake is decreased across the board and removed in many places
* Some items have been fixed: Goop Cube, HP Infusion etc.
* Bullet collisions have been adjusted. I now have two radiuses for collision, one smaller for walls, and one larger for enemies/player. 
* Started working on bullet distinction, but as you can see, it's ugly as heck...

I guess thats all for now.

I will try to get you a few more free alpha builds before I go to greenlight.


Gameplay gif showing new stat upgrade system

BR // Hannes