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[stuhp84]

Neon the Ninja is a 2D, punk rock, anti-everything-corrupt-in-the-world, action/ stealth game that tasks the player with a hit-list of the eight most vile leaders in the world. Slash your way through everything that moves; dive into neon signs for camouflage; or maybe do a little bit of both (who would we be to judge...that's Neon's job) in this Quentin Tarantino-vs.-Saturday-morning-cartoon take on video games.
Things are going to get much, much brighter with Neon around.




There's a "Mega Man" style boss select screen allowing the player to choose which boss/level to play first.




Each boss will have a weapon you can unlock upon kicking their ass.
There are stabby weapons that will slay your enemies and blunt weapons if murder isn't your thing.




"Neon" can hide in plain sight by jumping into objects that are his suit color.




Since your ninja suit is made of hyper-molecules you can swap colors with ease.




You can attack your enemies head on with the right gear...




...but to be a true master you'll need to dart in and out of cover to perform 1-hit kills

[ThisIsAvery]

Here's 20 minutes of me playing the first areas:




Sorry, I'm on keyboard.


Also: holy crap, 213MB expands to 1.42 GB?? What's going on there?

PS: Link to the feedback form gives, "file you have requested does not exist."


Look/Feel

Sweet music, look, feel to the animations, style on the environments, everything. I like the way the ninja animates. I like how he looks jumping around, slashing, doing his ninja stuff. The way he animates, and the key frames he holds are all paced really, really well.


Camera

By far the biggest problem was the camera behavior. Most of the time it's really jarring, and moves things around on the screen so much that it's hard to focus on them. When you jump, the camera stays lock-step with your character's height which is really harsh on the eyes. Every time you jump, you're making kind of a blind leap because now that you're sailing through the air, you can't focus on what you're landing on.

There's a bug where if you tap left then right quickly, the camera will permanently offset. If you do this enough you'll get off the screen.


Level Design

In general there's a feeling of assuming the player knows a bit too much, and is a bit more familiar with the game than they really would be. There are some blind jumps, where you can't see what you're jumping to; you just have to know there's a building there. There's a few setups I encountered that have a right solution that is really unclear the first couple of times you go through. There are places that assume the player knows an enemy is just off the screen, before the player's actually seen the enemy.

Go through the levels and really think, "what would the player know by the point they're here, at this exact spot." Are you assuming the player knows about something ahead, that he can't actually see? Change it.

If you're not particularly good about thinking in that way, then have a bajillion people playtest it, and see where they struggle. Do this anyway, actually, because nobody's perfect about guessing what the player will be thinking. I hope the video of me playing with the title is very useful to you.


Summary

Very great look and feel to the game. There are some bugs, but it's got the makings of a really, really, cool/fun game. If you've got a lot of levels already, all you probably need is a bunch of polish to get something really solid! Congratulations, it's a noteworthy accomplishment indeed!

[Quicksand-S]

1.42gb for a 2D game? Wow. I'm really curious what's taking up all the space.

I think the logo would be hard to read for anyone who didn't already know the name (Mainly the word "Ninja").

The word "Score" in the top right was cut off in a window at 1280x960 (Picked a random windowed resolution). I didn't check out other resolutions.

Selecting my character by pressing Left or Right, even though the text is arranged vertically, felt really wrong. Also, there didn't seem to be enough of a deadzone. Just touching my left stick would sometimes switch characters. The deadzone was a problem during gameplay too.

I really dislike the movement. Combat feels clunky. I don't like how my character lunges forward if I attack while moving, because it throws off my timing.

I wish the attack animations didn't take so long. If I could swing my sword as soon as his leg starts to lower or something, that would make the combat flow a bit better, I think.

With the aerial attack, I found it hard to judge how close I had to be because the attack doesn't look like it has any range whatsoever.

Even ignoring the camera bug that ThisIsAvery mentioned, the camera seemed to be positioned strangely. It might be another issue with the chosen resolution. I couldn't see as far to the right as I could to the left. I would prefer to be able to see in whichever direction the character is facing, because there were a lot of blind jumps with the current camera.

I hate that I go back to the character select every time I die. It destroys the pacing, in my opinion.

Why is the in-game menu control inverted? Pressing down on my stick moves the selection up.

Bug: Dead enemies just stand there.

Bug: If I'm knocked down, I can slide left or right while lying on the ground.

Bug: After playing Orange, I died and selected Green only to turn into the Orange ninja right after spawning.

Bug? If I change direction quickly, I can moonwalk.

Bug: When I die, the music often starts and then restarts as the character select loads.

Bug: The in-game menu was incredibly unresponsive. I only managed to get to the Controls screen, and only once.

Bug: While in the in-game menu, certain actions caused my ninja to move even though the game was paused (and when I managed to unpause, my ninja flew sideways into a pit).

Bug: After the second building you can enter, I mis-timed my jump, fell into the pit, jumped in mid-air, teleported to the far wall, fell, jumped again, teleported again, repeated that cycle about ten times and then appeared on top of some flying vehicle or whatever it is above that pit. Then I fell into the pit and died because I was so thrown off by that last teleport. I was also changing color every time I jumped.


I like the music a lot. The stealth aspect seems decent. I love that the game gives me the option to explore the areas, which a lot of games these days don't allow or encourage. I gave up playing, though, because I couldn't deal with the bugs and clunky/unpredictable movement. The game's certainly got potential, though. If it gets fixed up a bit, I'll probably give it another try.

[stuhp84]

Here's 20 minutes of me playing the first areas:

This will help me immensely, thank you!

Also: holy crap, 213MB expands to 1.42 GB?? What's going on there?

It's probably a combination of me needing to clean up old assets as well as very large uncompressed textures something I'll need to look into when I start building out multiple levels for sure.

PS: Link to the feedback form gives, "file you have requested does not exist."

Thanks for the heads up. fixed.

Look/Feel
Sweet music, look, feel to the animations, style on the environments, everything. I like the way the ninja animates. I like how he looks jumping around, slashing, doing his ninja stuff. The way he animates, and the key frames he holds are all paced really, really well.

Awesome!

Camera

By far the biggest problem was the camera behavior. Most of the time it's really jarring, and moves things around on the screen so much that it's hard to focus on them. When you jump, the camera stays lock-step with your character's height which is really harsh on the eyes. Every time you jump, you're making kind of a blind leap because now that you're sailing through the air, you can't focus on what you're landing on.

There's a bug where if you tap left then right quickly, the camera will permanently offset. If you do this enough you'll get off the screen.

I agree it's a huge weak point right now. I really want the camera to feel dynamic and reactive to the player but it's just not there yet.

I'm going to work very hard on the "jarring" part of the camera. I think I just need a slower buffered response time overall that feels more like a steady-cam.

Another thing I'm going to try is having a gradual zoom out as you're coming near the edge of a building instead of a fast zoom out as you jump from the building.

Level Design

In general there's a feeling of assuming the player knows a bit too much, and is a bit more familiar with the game than they really would be. There are some blind jumps, where you can't see what you're jumping to; you just have to know there's a building there. There's a few setups I encountered that have a right solution that is really unclear the first couple of times you go through. There are places that assume the player knows an enemy is just off the screen, before the player's actually seen the enemy.

Go through the levels and really think, "what would the player know by the point they're here, at this exact spot." Are you assuming the player knows about something ahead, that he can't actually see? Change it.

If you're not particularly good about thinking in that way, then have a bajillion people playtest it, and see where they struggle. Do this anyway, actually, because nobody's perfect about guessing what the player will be thinking. I hope the video of me playing with the title is very useful to you.

Agreed. I think watching your video will really help with this! I also plan on watching more people playtest in person. My eventual plan is to have a intro training level Mega Man X style to cover things like wall double-jump, wall-jump and stealth.

Still the current level does have glaring issues in it with the many blind jumps and the probably too responsive enemy AI.

Summary

Very great look and feel to the game. There are some bugs, but it's got the makings of a really, really, cool/fun game. If you've got a lot of levels already, all you probably need is a bunch of polish to get something really solid! Congratulations, it's a noteworthy accomplishment indeed!

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it overall! It's definitely good to know hear that you think there's potential because it's easy to second-guess yourself after working on it for a while. You given much to think about and work on! Thanks again for all your great feedback!

[stuhp84]

1.42gb for a 2D game? Wow. I'm really curious what's taking up all the space.

I just have some cleaning up to do. I honestly haven't thought much about compression at this state.

I think the logo would be hard to read for anyone who didn't already know the name (Mainly the word "Ninja").

Noted. I've been back and forth on it myself.

The word "Score" in the top right was cut off in a window at 1280x960 (Picked a random windowed resolution). I didn't check out other resolutions.

I need to go through and perfect the UI scaling. I had a quick fix in there while I focused on other issues.

Selecting my character by pressing Left or Right, even though the text is arranged vertically, felt really wrong. Also, there didn't seem to be enough of a deadzone. Just touching my left stick would sometimes switch characters. The deadzone was a problem during gameplay too.

In my last build I had so much dead zone the the diagonal directions weren't responding. This is really the first time I've worked with joysticks. I need to do more reading on the subject or see how other people approach this issue.

I really dislike the movement. Combat feels clunky. I don't like how my character lunges forward if I attack while moving, because it throws off my timing.

I've been on the fence about whether the "lunge" attack is a good call. I think it works well for the jump kick and I was trying to do something similar with the running attack but I agree it's not great right now.

I wish the attack animations didn't take so long. If I could swing my sword as soon as his leg starts to lower or something, that would make the combat flow a bit better, I think.

Agreed. Timing on the attacks and successive attacks still need to be refined.

With the aerial attack, I found it hard to judge how close I had to be because the attack doesn't look like it has any range whatsoever.

Maybe this is something that can be fixed through tweaking the animation.

Even ignoring the camera bug that ThisIsAvery mentioned, the camera seemed to be positioned strangely. It might be another issue with the chosen resolution. I couldn't see as far to the right as I could to the left. I would prefer to be able to see in whichever direction the character is facing, because there were a lot of blind jumps with the current camera.

I have it flipping sides depending on which direction the player is facing but it's clunky and I think it gets stuck or way off sometimes. This is the main advantage the controller has with the right analogue being a way to look around but the camera definitely needs help right now.

I hate that I go back to the character select every time I die. It destroys the pacing, in my opinion.

This is interesting. I was trying to give the player a way to change suit colors in between plays but it could be reworked as more of an optional thing. Like a line of text that blinks "Press Y to change suit color" for a few seconds after you die.

Why is the in-game menu control inverted? Pressing down on my stick moves the selection up.

Bug: Dead enemies just stand there.

Bug: If I'm knocked down, I can slide left or right while lying on the ground.

Bug: After playing Orange, I died and selected Green only to turn into the Orange ninja right after spawning.

Bug? If I change direction quickly, I can moonwalk.

Bug: When I die, the music often starts and then restarts as the character select loads.

Bug: The in-game menu was incredibly unresponsive. I only managed to get to the Controls screen, and only once.

Bug: While in the in-game menu, certain actions caused my ninja to move even though the game was paused (and when I managed to unpause, my ninja flew sideways into a pit).

Bug: After the second building you can enter, I mis-timed my jump, fell into the pit, jumped in mid-air, teleported to the far wall, fell, jumped again, teleported again, repeated that cycle about ten times and then appeared on top of some flying vehicle or whatever it is above that pit. Then I fell into the pit and died because I was so thrown off by that last teleport. I was also changing color every time I jumped.

I like the music a lot. The stealth aspect seems decent. I love that the game gives me the option to explore the areas, which a lot of games these days don't allow or encourage. I gave up playing, though, because I couldn't deal with the bugs and clunky/unpredictable movement. The game's certainly got potential, though. If it gets fixed up a bit, I'll probably give it another try.

Thanks so much for being so thorough! I have much to work on.