EDIT: Holy shit thanks so much whoever made the $19.17 donation
nice! This must have taken a lot of hard work.The artstyle rules. It makes me nostalgic for DOS games like Quest for Glory
Thank you! It was a lot of work, but it was worth it. I drew most of my inspiration from SNES aesthetics, but I'll gladly consider being compared to Quest for Glory a compliment.
Also, I'm putting this on my document of media that has been made by communists.
It's a document for Notion I've been working on for a while.
Shall I do so? @BeamBrain@hexbear.net
The demo was really fun! The music has very Binding of Isaac vibes (good thing!).
Thank you, glad you enjoyed it! I sadly can't take credit for the music, though. It was (aside from the title/credits theme, which I commissioned) all kindly provided for free.
Everything about it was cool. Using the dive ability to charge the lil wall guys felt very satisfying.
I just singled out the music because I didn’t see anyone mention it yet.
The lore is cool as well.
All around very excited for the final release when it’s ready.
Nicely done! Some minor suggestions to make it even nicer:
- add a grace jump/coyote jump/ledge forgiveness mechanic (different names for the same thing). This means that when there is a platforming section, you get a few frames of "grace" when walking off a platform to actually perform the jump, making platforming less frustrating. I constantly accidentally ran off platforms before jumping on the way to the "second" emblem haha
- consider adding a boss health bar. This is more of my own personal preference and not a "must", and many games thrive on not showing this kind of information to keep the player guessing, but I personally would have enjoyed the fight more by knowing how well I am doing (my own health loss vs the boss's health loss), and how close I was to beating the boss on my failed attempts.
- on the way to the boss, one of the chambers (4th one if you take the fastest route) requires you to wait for the flames to disappear before you can proceed. While good for teaching the player how the flames work (and in general, the dungeon is nicely built to teach the player the mechanics and enemy types without a tutorial), it stops the flow when you have to rerun from the beginning back to the boss and you need to idly wait to proceed without losing health. No other chamber requires that at that point, and it's only like two seconds, but if you die constantly like I did, it'd be nicer to just keep the flow going.
- transition from the chamber with two arrows and all the blocks that need to be moved out of the way, back to the previous chamber puts you immediately next to a snake enemy, making avoiding getting hit extremely difficult, I think this is a slight oversight.
- consider making the invulnerability window after getting damaged slightly longer, as it's easy to get thrown off the flow and damaged a few times in a row as it is now.
But these are just some suggestion, it was a cool experience reminding me of old DOS games, and congrats on the work!
Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed the game. I've made some redesigns to the dungeon since the demo that have addressed most of the points you've brought up. Still not entirely sure how to handle ledges, but you're far from the only person to have trouble with them, so I'm sure I'll try to come up with something.
Also just so you know, I accidentally went into the temple without a tutorial at all, and did just fine, the temple design was great for teaching different mechanics on its own, very organic
As usual I am stuck on the part where it teaches you how to play because I am extremely shit at games. Can someone give me a clue?
Show
how do I get past this screen? I need to press the second button but can't jump across the black area because it's too far. A box popped about diving. How do you do that?
thanks! i got through the tutorial. the hardest part of any game (I assume).
Nice, some of my favorite indie games are Zelda like. (Blossom Tales, Little Dew, Turnip Boy)
Oooh, by the way, don't call this a "zelda clone". This is not a clone, it's its own thing. Inspired by Zelda sure, but still your own creation. A clone implies you ripped off the other game, just swapped assets etc, all of which is untrue. "Zelda-like" is sufficient and sounds much nicer.
Neat! I'll be honest, I'm probably not the target audience for this game (I thought about it and I've never played a game like the traditional top-down Zelda titles for more than an hour or two), so I didn't expect to actually finish it, but I ended up beating it and had fun along the way! I died a fair bit (maybe a half dozen times?) on account of being a scrub, but there wasn't anything that felt unfair.
I'll echo what's already been said about making the platforming a bit more forgiving and adding some kind of indication as to the boss' health--the latter wouldn't necessarily half to be a health bar, but maybe some visual indication when certain thresholds are passed. Here are my additional suggestions:
- If it's feasible and fits the style you're going for, consider making the enemy pathfinding a bit more intelligent (from what I can tell they just head straight for the player ignoring any obstacles). There were a lot of places where I ended up just cheesing the enemies through a wall which didn't feel like the intended strategy. There was one room towards the end where you mitigated this by adding the little wall-shooter guys on the opposite end of the room to make this strategy more difficult than just engaging normally, so that's another way of dealing with it!
- Adding color-coded doors to the map. Seeing an unexplored path is certainly a clue that there's a locked door there, but it doesn't necessarily tell you whether the path is blocked by a standard key door, a boss key door, or a non-keyed door.
- Making the fire for puzzles non damaging, or arranging them/giving them smaller hitboxes such that it's less easy to bump into them. I think I died at least once from clumsily handling the puzzles (probably on the one where there's a complete square fire fence around the four arrow blocks)...maybe that's just on me needed to working on my jumping skills, but it did feel frustrating to die on a puzzle like that. Again, this might also be something intrinsic to the style that I'm not used to. I know the fire in Binding of Isaac damages you when you walk over it, but you're also never required to do that so
- Along the same lines, it'd be nice if there were a way to manipulate individual arrow blocks besides swinging your sword, or if their hitboxes were smaller to make accidentally triggers less likely. I never quite got the hang of how far I needed to be to only hit one block, so probably half the time manipulating the blocks was spent going, "[slash] Aw man, I accidentally hit two blocks... [slash x7]. Okay, this time I'll get it for sure! [slash] ...dammit."
Keep up the good work! I'm genuinely in awe of anyone who can follow through on any large project like this because I have trouble doing anything that requires more planning and perseverance than writing a few hundred lines of a Python script (and even then, I definitely don't do enough planning...). I'll have to hone my skills on some top-down adventure games so I'll be ready for the full release and not die quite so often and so pitifully.
Thanks for playing and taking the time to give such extensive feedback.
If it's feasible and fits the style you're going for, consider making the enemy pathfinding a bit more intelligent (from what I can tell they just head straight for the player ignoring any obstacles). There were a lot of places where I ended up just cheesing the enemies through a wall which didn't feel like the intended strategy. There was one room towards the end where you mitigated this by adding the little wall-shooter guys on the opposite end of the room to make this strategy more difficult than just engaging normally, so that's another way of dealing with it!
By this point I've finished all 4 of the main dungeons and balanced them around the bad enemy navigation, so I don't think that's going to be viable unless I'm willing to add a lot of dev time. Not sure if that's something I'm prepared to do, since this is already a very ambitious project for my means and skills, though it's something I'll definitely look into going forward.
Adding color-coded doors to the map. Seeing an unexplored path is certainly a clue that there's a locked door there, but it doesn't necessarily tell you whether the path is blocked by a standard key door, a boss key door, or a non-keyed door.
I agree this would be a nice quality of life feature. Definitely something to look into for the final polishing phase.
Making the fire for puzzles non damaging, or arranging them/giving them smaller hitboxes such that it's less easy to bump into them. I think I died at least once from clumsily handling the puzzles (probably on the one where there's a complete square fire fence around the four arrow blocks)...maybe that's just on me needed to working on my jumping skills, but it did feel frustrating to die on a puzzle like that. Again, this might also be something intrinsic to the style that I'm not used to. I know the fire in Binding of Isaac damages you when you walk over it, but you're also never required to do that so
A lot of people complained about the jumping/platforming in the early builds, haha. It turns out that there was a problem with the collision detection for pits/floor hazards that I didn't discover until fairly recently. I'm hoping this makes those sections forgiving enough that retooling a lot of the puzzle elements won't be necessary, but I guess future playtesting will determine whether that is the case.
Along the same lines, it'd be nice if there were a way to manipulate individual arrow blocks besides swinging your sword, or if their hitboxes were smaller to make accidentally triggers less likely. I never quite got the hang of how far I needed to be to only hit one block, so probably half the time manipulating the blocks was spent going, "[slash] Aw man, I accidentally hit two blocks... [slash x7]. Okay, this time I'll get it for sure! [slash] ...dammit."
You're not the only tester to have this problem, so that's definitely a valid concern. That's another thing to iron out when it comes time to polish. Not sure exactly how I'll handle it yet.
