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[rozza]

Just put the first public playable build of my game up online, keen for people to test it out! http://gamejolt.com/games/bees-won-t-exist/194883

I made a post in devlogs a while ago but to sum up, Bees Won't Exist is a top-down hack 'n' slash with a friendly theme, set in a dystopian world where bees have taken over humanity. You play as one of the remaining displaced humans, and it's up to you to try and defeat them.

So far all of the game should be completable, although there are still a lot of levels missing final art, there are many known bugs, and the second boss of the game is only really implemented in a very rough form. Let me know if anything blows up or you have any general thoughts regarding the game, as we're still tweaking a lot of stuff.

[Robbie]

Hey, I played this game for about 5 minutes and couldn't go through the gate. The game in general looks good but performance may be an issue. Those bushes with so many meshes might be replaced.
I liked the concept. I'll try to get into de fortress later. We'll see.

[rozza]

Oh man, you're the second person today who's downloaded it and told me they couldn't get past the first gate puzzle. The idea of it is to teach the player the difference between the dodge and the dash attack and some players get it really quickly, but others find it really difficult which isn't really the point since it's so early into the game so we may have to tweak it or find a different way to achieve the same goal.

Yeah there's almost certainly some low-hanging fruit that could be optimised more, so that's definitely something we'll be working on in the next few weeks. So far it's been mostly just focusing on getting everything into the game.

[rozza]

New build is up on the Game Jolt page! http://gamejolt.com/games/bees-won-t-exist/194883

This release includes many fixes, proper character portraits in dialogue encounters, and we redesigned the door puzzle in the beginning of the game because so many players were getting stuck on it.

[Alec S.]

This is really nice so far.  Here's some running feedback:

- Combat feels good.  I like the dashing attack.  I also like the tradeoff of the regular attack being able to hit multiple enemies.  Both are very satisfying
- I feel like the nature in this game should move so that the world can feel more alive.  The grass, at the very least, should move when you walk through it, but maybe also things like having the flowers move in the wind.
- I'm not crazy about how the dialogue text auto-resizes, making it so that short bits of dialogue are just larger to fill up the dialogue box.
- The health bar should have more contrast.  Maybe make the un-filled areas darker and the filled areas brighter.  Or just remove the texture from the un-filled bits.
- There was a room transition where I exited on the left side, but then then in the next room the path back from where I came was also on the left side.  At first I had thought I had spawned at the end of the next area (especially since my motion was maintained between rooms, so I started out moving towards the entrance to the area I just entered)
-The next room was missing a way to get back to the previous area.  There's just a sheer drop there.
-Health items should have a sound effect
-There's a door in the room with the path that has honey on both sides which doesn't have an arrow.  If I run up against it, I can't go to the next room, but I'm able to dash through the door and get to the next room.  Looking now at your previous response, it seems this was intentional.  It's really not clear that that's what your supposed to do in that situation, or why it works.  It just seems like a bug.  There's no reason given as to why dashing lets you get through the door.  I think the difference between the dash and the dodge is pretty clear by virtue of the dash being an attack.  Maybe make it so the door bursts open when you use the dash on it.
-The glow effect on the bees kind of obfuscates the actual telegraph effect, making it hard to avoid their attacks.  Also, it looks a bit weird when the glow suddenly vanishes.
-The small doors that move you between levels: they spawn you a little too far away from the door, and they maintain your velocity, meaning you spawn in front of the door and move briefly towards it.  Not a big deal, just a bit weird looking.
-I got to another gate and now the dash doesn't get me through it.
-The gates that only unlock after I fight off a group of enemies doesn't seem to count the beam bees.  They open up as soon as I defeat the last regular bee.
-I enjoy the level design of this dungeon.  Some nice verticality.
-There should be a minimum height you can fall before the landing animation plays.  It's a little weird to have to stop for half a second after descending from a slightly raised tile
-Sometimes the small doors don't work when I walk into them.  I end up having to back up and try again.
-After I beat(?) the boss with the mouth and four legs (or possibly just got it down to low health, it knocked me off the stage, and I ended up falling through a few level chunks until I fell into a room with a powerup.  When I grabbed the powerup, the falling sequence played a second time, and I landed back in the same room.
-Also, the boss having such strong knockback that basically any time you get hit by it you fly off the stage is a bit annoying.
-Now that I have the swiming powerup, I managed to jump into an area of honey that I can't get out of.  Well, I guess I can reset...
-The landing animation even plays when you fall into honey.  So the landing animation plays, and then the swimming animation plays
-I grabbed an item I couldn't really see very well.  It was spinning, and when I grabbed it, the little jingle played.  Not sure what it did.

Anyway, I think that's enough for now.  Aside from a number of small issues, which are mostly small issues of polish, I think the game is really nice so far.  Look forward to seeing this develop!

[rozza]

Whoa that's heaps of feedback, thanks for playing the game!

I'll respond to your comments in order
 - I'm really glad you liked the combat. We spent a lot of time trying to get that to feel satisfying so I'm glad it paid off.
 - Yeah, that's fair enough about the UI for dialogue.
 - Noted
 - If the room you're talking about was the village with all the people in it, we have actually fixed that transition to make it more consistent since then.
 - The sheer drop has also been fixed since we uploaded that build
 - Sound effect for the health orbs isn't a bad idea. I think we just never thought of that / didn't have time
 - Dashing through doors is actually a bug, and it has been fixed since we uploaded that build. I can't remember if we also made it more obvious what you need to do in that particular scene too, but you're not really supposed to dash through the door
 - I think we might have turned the glow down a bit but actually that's good to hear, I hadn't thought about how it would affect your ability to tell what the enemies are doing
 - Yeah, if we have time I'd like to make the small doors a bit more intuitive. The way they spawn you away from the door is a bit weird
 - Hehe yeah, the dashing through doors bug was a bit inconsistent and only happened on some doors. We made them all solid since then though
 - I think I know the encounter you're talking about and yeah, there isn't any real reason it opens the door before you kill all the enemies. That is also a bug
 - I'll let the guy who designed most of the levels know you said that! Verticality was actually a bit of a challenge in this game because of the fixed perspective, but most scenes ended up pretty good after a few design iterations
 - Yeah, we turned the tolerance for the falling animation down a bit since making the last build
 - There is a bug where the small doors don't always work
 - That falling sequence playing twice is definitely a bug! I think we fixed it because it didn't happen in the test run through I did today but I should probably test it a few more times
 - Yeah, the knock back on the big teeth boss is a bit crazy. Might tweak it
 - You should be able to leave all honey pools so that's definitely a bug
 - I guess landing on honey and then falling does look a bit weird. Noted.
 - That item was probably a key. Since making that build we added the number of keys you've collected out of 5 to the HUD, so hopefully that makes it a bit more obvious

tl;dr, that's all awesome feedback. We should have a new build very soon so I'll update this when we do :D