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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperPlaytestingEves Drop - Cyberpunk action roguelike
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Author Topic: Eves Drop - Cyberpunk action roguelike  (Read 1281 times)
8Points
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« on: February 08, 2019, 03:50:00 AM »

Update 7/26 - BETA 1.0






What's new:
- Art by Kyle Templeton (@supajackle)
- Music by Rupert Cole (I don't think he's on these forums...)
- Cohesive art style and color schemes
- New powerups
- Removed the entire health system, now the only way to lose is to get crushed by the gates. Damage now closes the gates.
- New enemy types and new final boss
- Dozens of balance tweaks

New Year's Eve, 1999
Big Brother has gone too far.
Stop them.

You are the head of an elite underground hacking ring dedicated to stopping the largest surveillance corporation turned deep state puppet master, Big Brother. We've spent months setting up this operation. Tonight, at midnight, we'll have our chance.

Take control of the E.V.E. program, and take down Big Brother's mainframe.
Free-fall through cyberspace.
Hack classified data.
Crash & Override their systems to get through the protocol gates.
Unlock new skills.
Destroy the data core, once and for all.



Eves Drop is a 2D, arcade, roguelike about free-falling through cyberspace. Made in GameMaker Studio 1, this project has been in development since July 2018.


HOW TO PLAY

Arrow keys only

When free falling
- Control your speed with up and down keys
- Move side to side with left and right keys

When on a data node
-Hold up key to override, turns it into something else
but look out for the red nodes
- Hold down key to charge a crash, release key to launch the crash
- Aim for the sides or top! Crash them hard enough

pickup the data fragments to complete the hack
Crash enough pink or green nodes to get a powerup
gates reset your progress

Damage from enemies and explosions close the gates.
Hack your way through all the gates, destroy the data core

  DOWNLOAD HERE



8points is made up of two best friends, Drew Dunaj and Jacob Mercer-Pontier. We've been fooling around with game dev for nearly 10 years, and now we want to get serious. We plan to release this game commercially by the end of the summer. Any feedback, or just good vibes, is greatly appreciated :D

We have a feedback form here: Feedback Form!

Thanks!
« Last Edit: July 28, 2019, 11:43:15 AM by 8Points » Logged
Vallar
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« Reply #1 on: February 09, 2019, 06:20:03 AM »

Hi guys,

I tried your game out and here is my feedback in no particular order:

- Interesting concept and I liked the general idea.

- I like the part where you spin over a circle to shoot it at a certain direction.

- I didn't really quite see a point to hacking anything to open the door, in fact I just kept on launching balls at other objects and waited for it to hit me, get low HP and then just heal it back. After the 3rd/4th door that strategy started to be useless given the enemies appear.

- Difficulty isn't bad. However I didn't feel the speed of a "infinite runner" with a strategy based choice (aiming and rotating the circle to aim) blend all too well. If anything they contradict each other. At one end, I am trying to spend as little time as possible on a circle so I don't get pushed down. At another I am trying to aim the circle to get some HP because I got hit by enemies.

- Continuing from the previous point, it kinda felt this could be an interesting concept if it was turn based with a time limit. So in free fall (i.e. you aren't on a circle) the game functions in real time. Once you land on a circle time is slowed down and you have this kind of timer. If you didn't do whatever you need to do within this timer, time goes back into real time until you land on another circle. Similar to how it works as you near the gate.

- Art, sound, music -- well no comment there you mentioned it is placeholders so nothing from me on them.

- I really didn't understand what the password mechanic is or what it does. That part is completely and enigma and I didn't bother to look at it considering the speed of the game + where you position the password (top right).

All in all it seems like an interesting concept. Hacking is a theme more or less which I wished wasn't the case -- I actually thought this might be a completely different thing from the title. It needs a lot polish (read: juice) and might need some tweaks on the mechanics (personal opinion). Otherwise you have something that may have potential here -- specially for mobile.
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jbarrios
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« Reply #2 on: February 12, 2019, 09:31:09 PM »

I had a chance to play your game.  I recorded my playthrough:





- I really like the game feel.  The movement feels good as does landing on the balls and spinning around.  I also like the streak that appears behind the character when moving fast.  I like the slow down when a barrier appears

- I like the barriers.  They keep things fresh and interesting

- I didn't really understand the password system.  I also didn't understand how to gain points.

- The GUI is pretty cluttered.  That may be for debugging purposes.

- There are a few time (2:17 , 2:56, 3:16) where I was moving in a direction to hit a ball and I expected the ball to rotate because I kept the movement key held down, but the ball did not spin.

Overall I really liked it.  It definitely has that addictive repetitive gameplay loop that I enjoy.  Great job!
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8Points
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« Reply #3 on: February 14, 2019, 08:07:58 PM »

Thank you so much for playing, guys! This is great feedback. We got a lot to chew on.

Vallar:

That tension between moving fast and taking the time to hack/launch is supposed to be the main conflict of the game. We are discussing ways to make them feel more naturally  intertwined, as well as making the hacking more engaging. To compare it to a game like Bit.Trip Runner; in Runner there is strategy in which actions you take to get passed obstacles, but it is more directly related to the speed. In our game, the gate is supposed to force interaction with the nodes. We used to have it so that getting squished was a game over, which was too punishing. We'll have to find a balance. We did have an idea to make the hacking more of a simon says or ddr kind of mini game, but we're not sure if that would be too much.

Porting this to mobile is something we've talked about, but neither of us have any experience with the platform. Could be a good learning experience!


jbarrios:

The game window is actually re-sizable, the UI scales to the edge of the screen. I realize the window is tiny and there isn't anything to indicate that you can resize it, so we'll make the default window bigger when you turn off fullscreen mode.

As for the balls not spinning when you wanted them to: From the looks of it, you may have been getting shot when you were trying to rotate. When shot, you'll actually detach from whatever you're clinging to, but because of the angle you were shot at, you immediately clung back on. Those couple frames would be overriding your input. Honestly, that's mostly intended - getting shot is supposed to mess you up. That whole interaction, starting with enemies charging shots, needs a lot more audio/visual feedback. Hopefully that will keep this from feeling like a bug!



I've been struggling with how to explain the powerup system concisely. Here's how it works:

You have 2 passwords in the top right corner of the screen corresponding to the pink and green data nodes (the circles/balls).
Hacking a pink node will decode part of the top password, the green nodes decode the bottom one.
You can see the passwords slow down as you hack, eventually turning pink or green and stopping entirely.
When a password is completed, as in all pink or green, you gain access to a powerup, but the powerup doesn't activate until you get through a gate. And that means getting through the opening - you don't get the powerup if you get squished against the top.

After watching jbarrios, I realized we could at least have a message like "password incomplete" across the screen if you get through a gate but didn't complete a password. Right now there's 0 feedback, so that could help players understand the system.


Thanks again for taking the time to play and respond, guys!
-Drew

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8Points
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« Reply #4 on: April 19, 2019, 12:32:49 PM »

We got a new build up! Check it out on 8points.itch.io/eves-drop






What's new:

The art is the most noticeable change. We hired Kyle Templeton aka supajackle and he has already injected some real personality into the enemy and node designs. We got a rough version of our cityscape/circuit board background art going too. We're working on picking a color scheme.

We simplified the power up system, but are still working on making it more readable. Now, you get a powerup as soon as you complete its password.

Getting squished by a gate always kills you. It's harsh, but it makes threading the needle more satisfying, and focuses the rest of the mechanics.

There's a combo system and local highscores now. There's not a lot of visual feedback for these systems yet, but basically you get points for hacking or destroying stuff, more points based on how high your combo is, and going fast keeps the combo meter from dropping.



Feedback of any sort is greatly appreciated! We do need some notes on a few specific topics:

Do you understand the basic mechanics? Is the learn-as-you-play tutorial effective?

Does the powerup system make sense? Are the powerups effective/desirable? What other powerups would you like to see?

Your thoughts on general game feel. Is it fun to control? To hack? To jump?

Are the gates too punishing? Do you want to quit after dying or try again?

Is it fun??? Please tell me it's fun.



We spent the better part of a month experimenting with a more involved hacking mechanic. It was a lot like what Vallar described; slow motion when you land on a node, a short series of inputs to manipulate it, and then boom your back into free fall.

We tried a few different methods for the inputs. Since there's only four buttons in the game, we didn't have a lot to work with. We tried a Simon says style that only accepted one string of inputs, and a freeform one where different combinations would result in different things.

At first, we used all four buttons. We realized that resulted in way too many potential combinations to check for. So, we dropped the left and right buttons and changed it to only up and down. This was more manageable, but it still wasn't fun.

Eventually we came to the conclusion that allowing players to get on and off nodes quickly was more important to the gameplay, and it was too jarring of a mode switch. Eves Drop is about what it's like to be an extreme 90s hacker, not what it's like to actually hack. It's about the adrenaline and freedom that those cheesy movies depict, and is similarly unconcerned with the details of how it all works. Besides, the entirety of the gameplay is supposed to represent you hacking into a machine as shown in movies like Hackers and Johnny Mneumonic.

So sorry if you're looking for more of a puzzle game! But we hope that you will enjoy our little action roguelite!


If you want to see what's up before our next major release, you can join our new discord channel: https://discord.gg/dtrmgQB

Thanks again!
-Drew
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8Points
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« Reply #5 on: July 26, 2019, 09:05:55 PM »

Hey! We just released the beta 1.0 version of Eves Drop!!

DOWNLOAD HERE!

This is a huuuge update. I don't want to rehash the updated op, but suffice it to say there's a lot of new art and atmosphere and game feel in general.

We're basically finished?? I've never given a game this level of polish, and it's kinda scary being this close to completion.  Tears of Joy There's still some art to do, more sound effects, finishing up a couple systems, redoing the tutorial, tightening up the graphics on level 3, that kind of thing.

As always, we're open to all kinds of feedback, but now we have a feedback form with some more specific questions. You can check that out HERE

Anyway here's some shots:







Thanks for playing!
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Clikin Games
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« Reply #6 on: August 04, 2019, 02:40:38 PM »

Hi! So, I played your game and I think that it is very nice. It is very creative and playable. However, you should implemente a tutorial explaining how it works. The mechanics can be a little bit difficult for new players.
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8Points
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« Reply #7 on: August 05, 2019, 02:56:15 PM »

Thanks for playing! Glad you liked it!! We're working on the tutorial, should be finished soon.
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