Good Boy vs The Bad Boys

captaindreamcast 2018-04-24 01:47

"If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." - Admiral Flopsy, shortly before leveling a building due to a lack of turn cards.

I think the lowpoly art style went well with the cartoon plot of a robot saving the city from UFOs. It felt very bright and energetic, the laser looked awesome and the enemies threatening, invoking some Metroid vibes. The music fits the mood as well, it's a real high-quality piece, whoever made that can feel proud. The voice acting was a bit goofy, but I think it actually fit with the mood the game was going for. The RNG based gameplay is both the game's biggest strength and weakness, I think. On the one hand, it can be really frustrating when you only get turning cards and straight shots while enemies move behind you, on the other hand, it adds a level of strategy to the game that the protect-thing genre usually doesn't really have. Like, do I use my spiral shot card now, or do I use something else and hope I get a turn card. Those kinds of moments make the game exciting. I had fun with it, although I absolutely suck, I can't make it past 2:30 no matter what I do. Good job.

strato 2018-04-24 06:19

The style worked well and I like the concept, but the slow pace and high spawn rate of enemies made it harder to enjoy. Attacks seemed to randomly stop affecting enemies and red rocket didn't seem to do anything at all. Good voice acting though 👍

articulated9 2018-04-25 07:35

I seem to have encountered a bug on the x86_64 windows version...apparently every time I start the game is lost and restarting doesn't fix it.

Image1d.png

axe 2018-04-25 07:38

AW CABBAGE PATCH KIDS, ILL GET RIGHT ON IT

patrickgh3 2018-04-25 07:38

Unfortunately, for both Windows versions I just downloaded, the "Press R to restart" popup is stuck visible in the middle of the screen, even when I press R again. I'd like to play if you fix this! asdfasdff.png

axe 2018-04-25 07:43

@Articulated9 please try again pushed out a new little buildy boi

articulated9 2018-04-25 07:53

@Axe Sorted! Working now.

The first thing I thought of when I started playing was the old net yaroze games that used to come on Playstation Magazine demo discs. Anyone else remember Net Yaroze? Does anyone remember demo discs? No? I'm old.

I especially liked this entry because it was one of the few games I didn't immediately die from. In fact, I lasted quite a while, and RNGesus held off on screwing me til things got really hairy.

The assets are neatly modeled given the time constraints, and the music/sfx is fun and fits the style. And there were definitely times when the card/defense themes felt incompatible.

Overall a nice entry! :smile:

axe 2018-04-25 07:54

@patrickgh3 i pushed a fix for that build like 5 minutes after you posted that sorry! massive oversight on my part. please try again!

axe 2018-04-25 07:57

@Articulated9 thank you very much for your feedback we worked very hard on this we hope you enjoyed it >.<

patrickgh3 2018-04-25 08:19

Great thanks for the buildy boi!

My first round I realized halfway through that I probably wasn't supposed to be destroying all the buildings LOL I went ahead and finished the job though, in 2:13.

I lasted 5:42. The last minute was spent defending one building, and that was quite intense and fun. This idea is really cool and pretty well excecuted! One change that I suspect would help is to weight Attack cards to be more common to draw the more Movement cards you have in your hand, and vice versa. I often found myself with a hand full of the wrong kind of card (both ways) and I had to just click them all and wait till I drew the kind I needed. Another note is not allowing more than 2 of one card type in your hand. And another note: possibly normalizing the RNG of "hard to aim" weapons - burst shot and laser, versus "easy to aim" weapons, red rocket and spray shot, since too many "hard to aim" in a row when you're in the wrong direction feels like there's nothing you can do.

The voice acting was great: it sounded good, wasn't repetetive, and was funny. Graphics are very well done. The fast-paced decisions about aiming your weapons and moving in a certain direction are quite fun and interesting. Great job!! One of my favorite entries so far!

Another possible design improvement: It's frustrating not being able to see what's happening on the other side of your city. Some ideas are: arrow indicators for faraway enemies, a minimap, or just making the map smaller.

axe 2018-04-25 08:26

if only we could add new features! thank you so much for your feedback @patrickgh3

rs11s21n 2018-04-25 10:12

very positive game! 3 rockets rule!

aumbra 2018-04-26 05:10

I got to about 5 minutes in and only had 3 buildings left so I thought I would try just spamming cards as they appeared and got to 8 minutes when Admiral Flopsy decided to go left 5 times in a row and was overrun. Very cool game. I thought everything worked well together and was pretty polished. Well done!

axe 2018-04-26 05:15

@Rs11s21n @Aumbra TY SO MUCH , we are so glad you enjoy it!

a-a 2018-04-26 06:44

Only got through 3:29. Not sure how card games play, but it seemed like almost all the attack cards were stacked in the beginning and I ended up with a bunch of turn cards with no weapons by the end. Again, I probably just don't know how to play card games, or the RNG isn't working very well or something. Overall, good presentation, polish, cohesion and style. A good amount of features to show off the possibilities for future gameplay.

cygnus 2018-04-26 06:56

I really liked the sound effects and general aesthetics. A bit hard to control and would have been nice to see where the enemies were off screen.

axe 2018-04-26 07:03

@a_a ahh sorry for the feeling! at the moment we didn't have a proper deck implemented and the cards are randomly assigned. the current premium strategy is to spam cards as fast as you can, the idea of the game is that you're supposed to be quite clumsy and the mesh should be hard to control so i think that's working well but for the wrong reasons. Thank you for your feedback! same to you @Cygnus !

maxklimenok 2018-04-26 07:23

Hey! It was 5:48 of pure fun!

I decided to guard only one corner of the map (to minimize the damage done by me to the city). Spiral shot and rockets - is my weapon of choice. Laser and linear burst - have been disposed instantly to free up card slots.

It would be nice to have a minimap/radar to see general presence of enemies in the city. Pretty hard to control: having more cards at hand or seeing a few next coming cards from the "deck/card pool" to plan for the action would be nice to have.

Great soundtrack and voicing!

In general: great job!

axe 2018-04-26 07:27

@MaxKlimenok thank you very much for your feedback i'm glad you had fun!

rs11s21n 2018-04-26 08:44

@axe more funny that i try to destroy town first time XD and really cool voice-over btw

yanni 2018-04-26 14:11

Enjoyed the art style, the vivid colors, and the sound effects. I think I may have clicked things too fast because my health bar was at like 500% haha. I think my favorite asset/part of the game was the UI for the cartridges. I thought this was a clever way of doing a card system, but still making it relevant for the style.

I also wish the robot bobbed up and down a little. There was a lot of movement on the screen and seeing him move linear took away from all the character that was put into the game. Overall, a fun experience!

dovakla 2018-04-26 22:26

I lasted 4:41. The graphics match the tone of the game perfectly (especially the excellent cartridge cards) and I think the concept is solid. Unfortunately I feel like the cards are too clunky for it to really work as it is. There's a lot of delay before the robot takes the actions and it's really hard to hit any enemies with most of the weapons. Only being to turn at 90-degree angles is also pretty limiting.

It also didn't seem like red rockets did anything at all?

minikinkay 2018-04-27 12:05

Sound effects are amazing and fit very well into the game! At the first try I destroyed the buildings that I can hit the enemies better - oops. Then I played the correct way and it was very funny :) good job

dyoni 2018-04-27 23:31

I loved the voice over the actions! It's funny! I found it hard to aim at the aliens. Sure had fun! I lasted 6 minutes and something. Sometimes there were too many directions cards, so I had to use them and run around over the buildings to be able to get an attack card. LOL

axe 2018-04-28 02:48

@Dovakla i'll look into the missile problem now!

axe 2018-04-28 02:51

I can't seem to find the missile problem @Dovakla but maybe you just downloaded an earlier build! please try to play the game again @Yanni i'd assume your loading bar bug was a similar situation of people bulk downloading games for review. please try an updated build!

dovakla 2018-04-28 03:28

@Axe I just downloaded the Windows version from Itch and the red rocket cartridge still doesn't do anything.

axe 2018-04-28 03:45

aw man i'm very sorry! ill give it another look to see if i find anything that could cause it!

alchemic 2018-05-08 01:59

A bit frustrating sometimes, but the audio makes up for it.