Chitin Conquest

odrez 2017-12-04 14:37

Nothing too exciting but well use of the theme. I like the graphics, but the gameplay is too chaotic to experience the game without frustration. There are too many enemies right from the start and the bullets don't do enough damage to clear them. In addition to that, the enemies are following so close that turning around and shooting them is hard and causes all kinds of camera issues when walking against walls, trying to move away from them. Not very fun to play, but mostly based on the tuning. With some changes and stronger weapons, this could be a nice arena wave shooter.

zac-mcdonald 2017-12-04 14:47

I definitely know what you mean by it being chaotic. I was going for a target audience of people who play twitch shooter style games, I love them. Hence the difficulty. I find myself always moving and just mowing them down from a distance, once they damage you a bit you can just instagib them. It is supposed to be brutal, but could be toned down for a wider audience. Thanks for the feedback!

odrez 2017-12-04 14:50

Giving the player more destructive weapons to work with should make it possible to make this more accessible without having to tone it down. :)

akryllax 2017-12-05 02:04

Controls are a nightmare to be honest... But graphics and mood are on spot!

b34k3rm33p 2017-12-05 02:13

Same as Odrez. @zac, I was not able to get far enough away to shoot from a distance. Also, after death I was unable to start a new game, had to restart game entirely. I really liked the graphics and how the enemies shredded the player at death.

zac-mcdonald 2017-12-05 02:18

Thankyou. Could you tell me what aspects of the controls bothered you? I know shooting from the orbit camera is disgusting, it is played much better by aiming most of the time and orbitting only while running away. @Akryllax

@b34k3rm33p yeah, you really need to be moving constantly. Were you using the Linux build per-chance? I know it has some issues. It worked as intended about 50% of the time for me. It also wasn't tested until the very end, so didn't do much to fix bugs for it.

b34k3rm33p 2017-12-05 02:46

@zac-mcdonald Mac actually. I might try it out again tomorrow with my windows machine and see if there is a difference. :)

finlal 2017-12-05 11:48

Graphics are great, but controls awfull( Very laggy even on i7+1070 :-\

zac-mcdonald 2017-12-06 00:56

@Finlal may I ask what part of the controls were awful. I had about 5 people try the game and only got complaints about shooting in the orbit camera which were resolved in the final build.

raphael-huot 2017-12-06 02:58

I really liked the blocky graphics! Had a hard time with the controls but overall a fun experience. Geat job :)

bbrown 2017-12-06 03:15

Neat little game. The issue with trying to use the aim camera mode is that it clips through containers and walls so turning around trying to shoot and move away from the enemies, VERY OFTEN left the camera clipping through a container and left me not able to see anything.

sarrixx 2017-12-06 06:41

A simple concept, a few bugs here and there. I found the mouse controls to be pretty bad though, I think it's just the movement animation that makes it feel so bad. Aiming with the mouse and shift button also causes clipping at the edges of the map. But kudos on a cool entry.

bluemirror 2017-12-06 07:27

The animation of the player should not be connected to the mouse movement. The best way to play it was to just walk backwards shoot in that direction and not move the mouse at all (pray and spray :D ). Also the zooming in could be a bit faster. If I could hit enemies backwards when I hit them it would help, and also if I could see their health. Ammunition was hard to see XD could be a bar just like the hp.

I really liked your graphics and I liked the general gameplay. Here and there a little clunky because of the aiming but still a lot of fun :)

jeffchen 2017-12-06 08:06

I like the voxel art style,and the gameplay fits well with the theme.

savepoint 2017-12-06 20:19

great characters nice cube-pixel shibs. The camera was really the wonkiest part. I would have played it more and probly again later if it were smoother. But great job for 72 hour none-the-less congrats!

drazil100 2017-12-07 04:02

The game is unnecessarily difficult both in balance and in controls. Enemies move way too fast and I was not a huge fan of firing direction locking itself to a direction in the default controls.

Despite of this I had fun playing it and an overall positive experience! I really like the voxel style. Good job!

radmccool 2017-12-07 09:56

were you trying out a particular control scheme with this? it played so weird...maybe with time i could get used to it. i liked how by holding down had the character runs towards the camera but you could still shoot in the direction the camera is pointing. Though it didnt seem entirely consistent which made me feel like there was something i wasnt getting. This is only annoying because i really liked the look of this, the voxel characters look good and the small level looked like it would have been fun had i been able to feel more in control.

chinykian 2017-12-07 10:03

Love the graphics! That said, I think the game could benefit from slower enemy movement. I experienced great difficulty when trying to get far enough from the enemies to shoot them down with ease.

arputikos 2017-12-07 10:07

Graphics looks great, but gameplay should be tweaked a little bit - when I aim, often the camera is behind obstacles and containters, and then I can't see anything. When you aim camera should be closer to the gun, like COD or CS. Shooting is weird, I was shooting then it was shooting faster and super-fast with no bullets. Should it behave in this way? Next thing is, level restart doesn't work. Audio is little crappy, you could add some weird noises coming out the aliens all the time. Shooting should be massive, like, loud sound, big particles, etc. but instead it's very 'shy'. Not so bad but the aiming makes it unplayable for me

skipyc 2017-12-07 10:22

The controls are akward at first, you do need to get used to them. As @chinykian said the enemies could be a little slower or maybe get faster as you advance in the game. The sounds are to the point and the visuals are great. The environment is kept simple and enemies stand out. Nice work!

zac-mcdonald 2017-12-07 10:45

Thanks @drazil100 was awesome to get some live feedback too on stream, glad you liked it.

@radmccool glad to hear everyone liking the art, it was very fun to make. Regarding the control scheme, I was going for a difficult game but I wanted it to still be goofy to fit the art and mood I wanted, hence why the orbit camera is there so you can see the madness and watch as the critters hunt you down. Likewise the swaying of the crosshair was to make it harder but also highlight some fun with the animation. Glad to hear someone liked the snap-aim with the orbit camera, I added that because a friend wanted to be able to kite while seeing where he was moving, so glad to hear it got used.

I do agree @chinykian that the enemies are quite fast, but this was quite intentional as I really wanted the player to experience a sense of urgency in killing them off, just to see more pile over the shipping containers :yum: It also happens that you move faster diagonally, so that helps immensily if you want to cheese it.

I would have liked to fix the aim camera clipping @arputikos however my first solution just didn't work well so I just left it as is; time limit and whatnot. Regarding the gun fire-rate, as stated on the info board, more ammo = slower firerate, with the inverse being true also. That was 1 of 3 ways the theme was incorporated. That level restart bug does annoy me a little, it works like 80% of the time, relaunch seems to fix.

Thankyou again for the praise @skipyc I think most things you commented on should be addressed.

Thankyou so much guys!! It's been awesome to get your feedback. Almost at 20 ratings too :smile:

adroitconceptions 2017-12-10 14:45

Game bugs (sometimes) after the death screen and doesn't correctly switch back to proper controls/camera on restart.

Couldn't see much but the character's head when aiming... couldn't shoot anything when not aiming.. Camera was having issues in multiple ways with viability. You need to setup a 'no clip' script to keep the camera from going into the walls and make the character go (semi-)transparent when aiming so you can actually see the combat around you.

If there were ammo levels, the UI didn't give that away. Some splatter/death effect when you kill a bug would have been good.. things got overly chaotic and I couldn't tell if I even killed anything.

zachary-shah 2017-12-10 14:53

Incredible! graphics are great, game play is enjoyable. But since you always have to move shooting is hard even when aiming do too his hilarious wobble. Please play my game at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/rush-hour

6smith 2017-12-11 00:38

very difficult to make any progress whatsoever since the camera rocks back and forth making it very hard to see when you're trying and failing to shoot backwards and defend yourself. if this wasn't the case, i probably would have had a much more positive experience. other than that, the visuals were pretty great.