Hey! Just finished beating the troll! Figure I give some initial thoughts and some potential glitches. I'll make another post once I get to the end of the demo.
The game window for the windowed screen mode doesn't conform to the correct resolution, it seems. I can see the game leaking on to my second monitor. Had to play the game in full screen to avoid this issue.
It appears the jump reaches the same height, no matter how long or how short it's held.
Already mentioned this, but LOVE the atmosphere built up and the little environmental effects, such as when I run by a bush and it slightly shifts around. Are those all animated? Shader applied?
Experienced one enemy falling through the map. It's the next enemy you see after acquiring the throwing axe.
Enjoyed the initial fight with the troll. Excited to see what's gonna come next.
:[ I was really sad to see my level up got from 50 stamina to 51 stamina.
I feel like adding some subtle footsteps to the playable character would really go the long way.
Thanks so much for checking it out and taking the time to give some feedback!
Some responses:
1) Were you running windowed at the resolution of your monitor and seeing the game be wider than it should have been? What resolution?
2) Thanks for the report, will take a look.
3) Awesome to hear! Since you've beaten the troll I hope you'll move at least to the next area, I think the presentation takes a pretty big step up there personally. The moving foliage isn't a animated or a shader, it's a rendering trick where the vertices of the sprites are pulled when an object is in contact with them.
4) This is actually a... feature. Some enemies have the ability to leap long distances to the player to engage in combat and when they do so they ignore level geometry. But It definitely presents as a bug a lot of time (I didn't say it was a GOOD feature) so I'll need to revisit this and either make it more polished or remove it.
5) Again, awesome to hear!
6) Understandable, especially since stamina is so low to start! Character leveling and attributes is a fairly new addition and I need to think more about how that curve will work. Consider that "in progress"
Hello there, I tried your demo and let me tell you I just loved the art, particularly the Gorgon so congrats on the work!
I'd like to offer you some of my impressions, and suggestions:
1. I found the mapping somewhat odd, I get it that the area isn't added until it has been fully explored but these huge vacant rectangles seemed ugly for lack of a better word. Personally I think that a heavily shaded preview of a visited area or smaller rectangles would look better.
2. Given how huge the map is (despite it being just a demo, its breath really surprised me) the character indicator is rather hard to see at times.
3. I found a bug in one of the slopes, it's next to some stones of The Mire, I think, since the game doesn't allow you to walk off ledges the animation kept clipping until I jumped off it, in my whole playthrough this was the only instance of this that I found.
4. The lightning that begins in The Mire is rather jarring, having the whole screen turn white also hampers the combat and platforming, perhaps doing it only once or twice and then just a slight flash?
5. I didn't like the vibration on grabbing ledges.
6. I found that if I jumped and the character was spinning it would fall through the ledges despite having clearly jumped high enough.
7. I'd like it if you were able to pick up thrown axes that hit nothing to recover them.
8. There is a transission of areas, I think it was from The Hollow to the next one were the whole screen has some fog and then abruptly it's gone.
9. After beating the Highway Man I came to a sign and when I tried to read it it caused the game to abruptly close.
10. Consider adding the chance to change the direction of an attack, I had to do a full stop before being able to change the side, this made dodging and then attacking or attacking multiple targets much harder
11. Lastly, perhaps ease a bit on the damage done by those flying water spirits? Those felt unfair rather than challenging.
Thanks so much for giving the demo a shot and giving so much feedback! That's really helpful.
I'm curious how far you got into the demo?
Some quick responses
1) the map is very much "placeholder" it's awful and needs a complete rework :)
2) I really like the lightning personally, I find it very impactful... but it's a pretty common thread in feedback that people find it jarring, so I have a few ideas I'm playing around with tone it WAY down. I hope to have a much more "friendly" implementation in the next update!
3) Thanks for pointing out the bugs! I fixed the sign/crash bug already and will try to hunt down the level bug and jumping bug you mentioned. Being my own QA rough :(
4) Will be taking a look at the rest of your suggestions and feedback as well.
friend, I tried your game and I am aware that it is not a final product but you should consider the weight of the game, almost 350mb, considering that it is a pixel art game. the weight should be on the music, you should consider converting one music format to another.
Yep. 319 of the 354 MB are .wav files. That could be knocked down to 32MB if it were all oggs (it's SDL, so you get ogg for free). Smaller, if you drop stereo for the sound effects. Everything else appears to be pretty tight.
Still, like you said, this ain't final. I'm sure it's already on the dev's radar.
Being in active development the assets are a bit unorganized and are definitely not optimized. I have quite a bit of sound and art that is included in the game that will wind up not being used I will need to remove in the final version and the audio will all need to be optimized and renamed.
It's not a big priority for me to optimize the content size at the moment, but I can probably cut a good chunk off the install size without too much effort by just removing unused music and optimizing the tracks that are left as well as some of the larger sound effect files. I'll work this into a future patch release.
Probably won't be swapping to .ogg for sound effects, but definitely something I'd investigate for music and longer ambient soundscape tracks.
Hey again, here is another episode since you asked for it! I will be making more probably soon, hope to have time for it. Just be sure to take a look to your game name Playlist on my channel in the future, I will not be able to post here with each episode I do. Hope this helps on general.
Hi there, I am a YouTuber focusing on Indie Games and I also do other things! Been testing your game for a while now and I have also started recording some Gameplay Walkthrough:
Here is some of my feedback for now, contact me for a faster way for communications, I would like to help you and test the game further more:
♦ Game Idea: The idea is not eniterly new but from what I am able to play right now it looks like you have put the idea of 2D side-scrolling games into a good use! Would love to see more from you for sure!
♦ Gameplay: The game runs smoothly and had fun actually playing the game, having that double jump is nice! I also would like to know if it is possible to play this game using Keyboard, some inputs are not supported and I have explained one of them in this video (related to changing the weapons).
♦ Story: I know you have that written above, and I know this is still early in developement, but it does not hurt to let you know that the story side (in-game) is missing, the focus in on the gameplay which is really fun, you can add up some story elements to the game through certain notes with items that tells the story or parts of it.
♦ Artwork: The artwork of the game is a style that my little brother loves! It has that pixel art style which is very common and loved by most players nowadays! I also like the characters design! However, the items have only one color and shape to be picked up, even though that they are different when collecting!
♦ Audio: I love that thunder and lighting going on, having the sound effects early done in the game is always a plus! The game could use some background music, I see that you have it during the boss fights so far!
♦ Bugs & Constructive Criticism: I believe the video and what is written above is what I have for now! I would like to add also that the boss fight with the Ogre was pretty easy! Some other enemies were harder than him to be honest (I will have more footages soon as I have played more than it is shown on this Gameplay video).
♦ Things to Double Down on: What you have here is a very good game and I would love to support those who work hard or have a talent! This is what I am capable of doing as a show of support, hope this gelps! You should really make the demo shorter though, around an hour! The full game can have the best of what you have planned! I would love to see more of this content, keep it up sir!
Hey, thanks for checking this out! I *really* enjoyed your video, your enthusiasm is awesome and really sets your content apart. I'll be keeping an eye on your channel! I'd love for you to play further into the demo to see what you think of some of the other areas.
Thanks for the feedback as well, lots of good stuff there. Full support for keyboard controls has been a common request, so I've moved that up in my list of features to add in the near future.
Glad that this up to help for you! That enthuisasm is not stable though haha, sometimes I get tired for having too much work outside in my job but will sure to try out more of your game! I still have some footages left for the same version that I have played! Will try to edit and upload that soon! Your game is really good, for sure I would like to play more of it.
Hey I tried this, over all pretty good for what I tried, although the game quits on the screen transition after the first checkpoint, so I only played around 3 min.
Hey, this is really nice for a first attempt at developing a game.
UI is very good. I was able to figure out what all the buttons did and how to play just on the first screen, which is great.
The movement feels a little janky. Hard to describe specifically why, but I did notice that releasing horizontal movement buttons don't slow the player down in mid-air, which felt odd. Also at the beginning of the game I would always jump at max height for some reason, but I think this stopped once I got the double jump.
The ogre boss felt a little strange too. Getting knocked away by the boss's attacks looked awkward, and sometimes the player's damaged animation would play inside the ground. And for a game that's clearly inspired by a lot of souls design discussion I'm surprised the boss didn't have better tells for attacks. Personally I'd prefer checkpoints next to bosses, a shorter input buffer duration, no fall damage, actual background music, etc. but that's just me.
I think I heard the music transition into an "ending" theme when the boss died? If so that's a cool touch, I really like when the music changes like that.
I used the "dive" attack a bunch after discovering it because I thought it was fun to use. I'd talk about combat more but I honestly found myself jumping and ignoring over a bunch of enemies. Once the game said I levelled up, but I checked the menu and couldn't find a level or exp listed? I think it could be more satisfying to have a meter or something displayed.
This was pretty cool, I just think that movement and some enemy behavior could be more polished. I recommend closely watching someone play A Handful of Dust if you can, you may be able to pick up on issues better that way because I'm having difficulty describing them. Good luck!
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Hey! Just finished beating the troll! Figure I give some initial thoughts and some potential glitches. I'll make another post once I get to the end of the demo.
Thanks so much for checking it out and taking the time to give some feedback!
Some responses:
1) Were you running windowed at the resolution of your monitor and seeing the game be wider than it should have been? What resolution?
2) Thanks for the report, will take a look.
3) Awesome to hear! Since you've beaten the troll I hope you'll move at least to the next area, I think the presentation takes a pretty big step up there personally. The moving foliage isn't a animated or a shader, it's a rendering trick where the vertices of the sprites are pulled when an object is in contact with them.
4) This is actually a... feature. Some enemies have the ability to leap long distances to the player to engage in combat and when they do so they ignore level geometry. But It definitely presents as a bug a lot of time (I didn't say it was a GOOD feature) so I'll need to revisit this and either make it more polished or remove it.
5) Again, awesome to hear!
6) Understandable, especially since stamina is so low to start! Character leveling and attributes is a fairly new addition and I need to think more about how that curve will work. Consider that "in progress"
7) Good suggestion!
Hello there, I tried your demo and let me tell you I just loved the art, particularly the Gorgon so congrats on the work!
I'd like to offer you some of my impressions, and suggestions:
1. I found the mapping somewhat odd, I get it that the area isn't added until it has been fully explored but these huge vacant rectangles seemed ugly for lack of a better word. Personally I think that a heavily shaded preview of a visited area or smaller rectangles would look better.
2. Given how huge the map is (despite it being just a demo, its breath really surprised me) the character indicator is rather hard to see at times.
3. I found a bug in one of the slopes, it's next to some stones of The Mire, I think, since the game doesn't allow you to walk off ledges the animation kept clipping until I jumped off it, in my whole playthrough this was the only instance of this that I found.
4. The lightning that begins in The Mire is rather jarring, having the whole screen turn white also hampers the combat and platforming, perhaps doing it only once or twice and then just a slight flash?
5. I didn't like the vibration on grabbing ledges.
6. I found that if I jumped and the character was spinning it would fall through the ledges despite having clearly jumped high enough.
7. I'd like it if you were able to pick up thrown axes that hit nothing to recover them.
8. There is a transission of areas, I think it was from The Hollow to the next one were the whole screen has some fog and then abruptly it's gone.
9. After beating the Highway Man I came to a sign and when I tried to read it it caused the game to abruptly close.
10. Consider adding the chance to change the direction of an attack, I had to do a full stop before being able to change the side, this made dodging and then attacking or attacking multiple targets much harder
11. Lastly, perhaps ease a bit on the damage done by those flying water spirits? Those felt unfair rather than challenging.
Hope seeing of your game soon!
Thanks so much for giving the demo a shot and giving so much feedback! That's really helpful.
I'm curious how far you got into the demo?
Some quick responses
1) the map is very much "placeholder" it's awful and needs a complete rework :)
2) I really like the lightning personally, I find it very impactful... but it's a pretty common thread in feedback that people find it jarring, so I have a few ideas I'm playing around with tone it WAY down. I hope to have a much more "friendly" implementation in the next update!
3) Thanks for pointing out the bugs! I fixed the sign/crash bug already and will try to hunt down the level bug and jumping bug you mentioned. Being my own QA rough :(
4) Will be taking a look at the rest of your suggestions and feedback as well.
friend, I tried your game and I am aware that it is not a final product but you should consider the weight of the game, almost 350mb, considering that it is a pixel art game. the weight should be on the music, you should consider converting one music format to another.
Yep. 319 of the 354 MB are .wav files. That could be knocked down to 32MB if it were all oggs (it's SDL, so you get ogg for free). Smaller, if you drop stereo for the sound effects. Everything else appears to be pretty tight.
Still, like you said, this ain't final. I'm sure it's already on the dev's radar.
Yes, it's on my radar.
Being in active development the assets are a bit unorganized and are definitely not optimized. I have quite a bit of sound and art that is included in the game that will wind up not being used I will need to remove in the final version and the audio will all need to be optimized and renamed.
It's not a big priority for me to optimize the content size at the moment, but I can probably cut a good chunk off the install size without too much effort by just removing unused music and optimizing the tracks that are left as well as some of the larger sound effect files. I'll work this into a future patch release.
Probably won't be swapping to .ogg for sound effects, but definitely something I'd investigate for music and longer ambient soundscape tracks.
Hey again, here is another episode since you asked for it! I will be making more probably soon, hope to have time for it. Just be sure to take a look to your game name Playlist on my channel in the future, I will not be able to post here with each episode I do. Hope this helps on general.
Hi there, I am a YouTuber focusing on Indie Games and I also do other things! Been testing your game for a while now and I have also started recording some Gameplay Walkthrough:
Here is some of my feedback for now, contact me for a faster way for communications, I would like to help you and test the game further more:
♦ Game Idea: The idea is not eniterly new but from what I am able to play right now it looks like you have put the idea of 2D side-scrolling games into a good use! Would love to see more from you for sure!
♦ Gameplay: The game runs smoothly and had fun actually playing the game, having that double jump is nice! I also would like to know if it is possible to play this game using Keyboard, some inputs are not supported and I have explained one of them in this video (related to changing the weapons).
♦ Story: I know you have that written above, and I know this is still early in developement, but it does not hurt to let you know that the story side (in-game) is missing, the focus in on the gameplay which is really fun, you can add up some story elements to the game through certain notes with items that tells the story or parts of it.
♦ Artwork: The artwork of the game is a style that my little brother loves! It has that pixel art style which is very common and loved by most players nowadays! I also like the characters design! However, the items have only one color and shape to be picked up, even though that they are different when collecting!
♦ Audio: I love that thunder and lighting going on, having the sound effects early done in the game is always a plus! The game could use some background music, I see that you have it during the boss fights so far!
♦ Bugs & Constructive Criticism: I believe the video and what is written above is what I have for now! I would like to add also that the boss fight with the Ogre was pretty easy! Some other enemies were harder than him to be honest (I will have more footages soon as I have played more than it is shown on this Gameplay video).
♦ Things to Double Down on: What you have here is a very good game and I would love to support those who work hard or have a talent! This is what I am capable of doing as a show of support, hope this gelps! You should really make the demo shorter though, around an hour! The full game can have the best of what you have planned! I would love to see more of this content, keep it up sir!
Hey, thanks for checking this out! I *really* enjoyed your video, your enthusiasm is awesome and really sets your content apart. I'll be keeping an eye on your channel! I'd love for you to play further into the demo to see what you think of some of the other areas.
Thanks for the feedback as well, lots of good stuff there. Full support for keyboard controls has been a common request, so I've moved that up in my list of features to add in the near future.
Glad that this up to help for you! That enthuisasm is not stable though haha, sometimes I get tired for having too much work outside in my job but will sure to try out more of your game! I still have some footages left for the same version that I have played! Will try to edit and upload that soon! Your game is really good, for sure I would like to play more of it.
Hey I tried this, over all pretty good for what I tried, although the game quits on the screen transition after the first checkpoint, so I only played around 3 min.
I prefer moving in air while attacking.
Also health bar on enemies.
Oh, so sorry it crashed on you! I'm not sure what would have happened there and I don't seem to be able to reproduce it :(
Thanks so much for giving it a shot!
Hey, this is really nice for a first attempt at developing a game.
UI is very good. I was able to figure out what all the buttons did and how to play just on the first screen, which is great.
The movement feels a little janky. Hard to describe specifically why, but I did notice that releasing horizontal movement buttons don't slow the player down in mid-air, which felt odd. Also at the beginning of the game I would always jump at max height for some reason, but I think this stopped once I got the double jump.
The ogre boss felt a little strange too. Getting knocked away by the boss's attacks looked awkward, and sometimes the player's damaged animation would play inside the ground. And for a game that's clearly inspired by a lot of souls design discussion I'm surprised the boss didn't have better tells for attacks. Personally I'd prefer checkpoints next to bosses, a shorter input buffer duration, no fall damage, actual background music, etc. but that's just me.
I think I heard the music transition into an "ending" theme when the boss died? If so that's a cool touch, I really like when the music changes like that.
I used the "dive" attack a bunch after discovering it because I thought it was fun to use. I'd talk about combat more but I honestly found myself jumping and ignoring over a bunch of enemies. Once the game said I levelled up, but I checked the menu and couldn't find a level or exp listed? I think it could be more satisfying to have a meter or something displayed.
This was pretty cool, I just think that movement and some enemy behavior could be more polished. I recommend closely watching someone play A Handful of Dust if you can, you may be able to pick up on issues better that way because I'm having difficulty describing them. Good luck!
That is extremely helpful feedback! Thanks so much for taking the time to check the demo out and give me your impressions.