dawnreaver 2023-01-09 22:14
Hey there :) Good Job!
Love the art style and the animations ^_^ For some reason the unity player didn't load on this page, but it was fine on itch.io.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD52 → Soul Harvester
By accatosh
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 703 | 2.98 | 32 | |
| Fun | 540 | 3.13 | 32 | |
| Innovation | 808 | 2.19 | 31 | |
| Theme | 607 | 3.36 | 31 | |
| Graphics | 659 | 2.84 | 31 | |
| Humor | 656 | 2.03 | 29 | |
| Mood | 709 | 2.85 | 30 |
Hey there :) Good Job!
Love the art style and the animations ^_^ For some reason the unity player didn't load on this page, but it was fine on itch.io.
Had a good time, I like the tension of trying to push everyone back to be able to take the time to absorb the soul. With a little balance tweaking and some sound design this could become a pretty nice one!
Really like the idea of a twin stick shooter where I have to find room/time to collect resources. I love the fact that we can't shoot while collecting. I think the shop could be implemented better though, and I think the difficulty is a little high at the start of the game. I found myself dying over and over to the second enemy type at first
fun little game , very interesting concept very nice game
looks really great. The difficulty curve seems to be a bit off though
Hey! good job! Very interesting, I liked how collecting souls interrupts your attacks - It adds difficulty in a good way. The art style is very cute as well :) I was missing sound to really get into the mood thou
The art style and overall graphics were great, controls lacked some feel to them, at least a screen shake or jiggles could've made it feel a lot fun. Also first enemies attacks were too punishing for me, bc they had pretty big ranges and hitting my character from far. Other than it was great! Keep up the good work!
@Dawnreaver, @bloodfin, @hfsevans, @floata3, @heho, @shay-kopf and @vaizaragorn, thank you all very much for playing my game and giving me constructive feedback. It is very much appreciated.
Aesthetically (other than audio) I think this is strong. Could definitely use some sugar in terms of visual effects/feedback though!
I actually really like how fast and direct the gameplay control feels. Generally this style of game is bit slower and more forgiving, but I actually think it's pretty interesting for it to feel closer to Quake or something in terms of fast movement and the characters near-hit-scan projectile.
Good work!
@nick-saulnier, thank you!
Decent game, I liked the idea of going to pick up your reward as a bit of a risk. Only complaint is those goblins have way more reach than they look like they do!
Cool game, figured out healing is the best option since increasing harvest time doesn't affect the time significantly, I had fun ty :)
@upcharlie, yeah. The goblins' range is a bit unbalanced. Thank you for your feedback!
@aes1, thank you for playing! Cool that you have found an effective strategy. I probably need to balance the other options in the future.
Good work on releasing the game! Some thoughts as I played the game: - The action component has quite a lot of potential! Having to balance between keeping yourself safe and gathering souls for upgrades is a nice twist. However, the reaction time required in order to avoid hits is rather on the low side, especially if the hit is coming from above or below(I suspect it's because I can't see as far vertically as I can horizontally). If you're also moving into the hit(which can happen quite often!), reacting in time is extremely difficult. Nevertheless, it's quite fun! - The shooting is okay, but it can get tiring when there are a lot of enemies around since you need to press the shoot button for every shot. I wish I could simply hold the button to shoot, even if it comes with a reduced fire rate! - Most, if not all, enemies appear to spawn in the corners of the arena, with no warning. I ended up simply sticking to the centre of the arena, only moving away to gather souls, since there wasn't much pressure for me to move otherwise. The enemies can press you to move, especially in the beginning, but it tapers off rather quickly. - The goblins feel like their hit-box is twice their size! Maybe it's because they're swinging their swords at me, but it still caused me a lot of grief, since it's nigh impossible to dodge out of their way if you're running into them from above or below. Very interesting movement pattern, though, you never know if you have an opportunity to collect a soul with them around. - The slimes often end up shooting at me from outside the screen. It certainly keeps me on my toes, but it's also frustrating to just run into one of their projectiles by accident. - The warlocks are fine. I think they're the most "fair" enemy in the roster, while still being quite threatening. I wish there was more indication of when they're going to teleport, though; not knowing if I need to shoot a warlock or anticipate their movement peeves me a little. - At some point, the game difficulty has stopped increasing. At that point, the fun evaporates quite quickly. More enemy types, a higher enemy density, and perhaps even a lower wait time between waves will definitely fix it, though!
All in all, there's a lot of potential hidden underneath! Keep working on it, and I'm sure the game will shine by the end of the jam! Good luck!
Soul Harvester - LD52 by Accatosh — Mozilla Firefox_230113000728.png
Fun game, I like the pixel art and the little animations.
@zyak, thank you very much for your detailed feedback! It is extremely appreciated. Regarding the soul harvesting time, I will probably increase the upgrade limit. The idea about holding to shoot is great! I might also put an enemy spawn point in the center and move the current spawn points. I am glad that you noticed the goblins' weird movement pattern! As for the last point, I only made seven waves of enemies manually and the rest are randomized, and the fun disappearing is understandable. I want to try adding more enemies while also increasing the difficulty. Finally, good job on the score!
@popman-yes, thank you for your kind words!
Difficulty is enormous to me :) My record is 5 souls.
Nice little game. It is definitely hard to stay still long enough to harvest without a monster killing you, especially when the ranged enemies appear. Solid shooter for a game jam, thanks for the game.
@brainles-etertainment, thank you for playing! The game is pretty difficult right now, so I will improve this in the next version.
@recursiveanomaly, thank you for your feedback!
Interesting game! I think there's a ton of potential here for sure. Unfortunately, a lot of that potential is snuffed out by the difficulty of the game. It takes a really long time to harvest souls (maybe this should happen by simply walking overtop of them), which makes it really hard to gather them. Also the enemies move really fast and erratically, and also have really large hitboxes for hitting the player, so dealing with them is really tough. Maybe slowing them down to around half their speed and doubling the speed of harvesting and time for souls to decay could help alleviate a lot of the difficulty?
@orhu, thank you for playing. The feedback is appreciated! I am planning to make an improved version of the game later where I have changed the game according to everyone's feedback.
**Great!** At first I thought "what the heck do I do with the souls", but then I read the description and discovered there was a **shop** xD.
I see the player have the problem of going **faster when walking diagonal**, to fix that you could use **".normalized"** when passing the axis input.
Also, I would be really **grateful** if you could explain me how to do the **life bar** beneath the enemies, I tried to do it in my game and didn't find a way... (Oh, and it could be inserted **beneath the player** too, it would be great to know how much hp is left to decide whether or not I should **buy life**).
@oiluuuj, thank you for your feedback!
It is weird that the player walks faster diagonally since I actually use ".normalized". I will have to investigate this problem further.
As for the health bar, I learnt how to create one through a video called "2D Character Hitpoints in Unity / 2022" by Distorted Pixel Studios. It is very clear and I hope you find it helpful.
@accatosh **Thanks!**
As for the problem of normalized this is what I've done for mine: imagem_2023-01-14_172040796.png
Hope it helps!
@oiluuuj, thank you!
You've got a nice mix of interesting mechanics in this one! The enemy variety is good, and switching between combat and absorbing souls is a great challenge. I like the shop and the upgrades that increase over time while healing remains relatively affordable. The new caster enemies that show up after a while keep things fresh, and I really like how you give the player time to relax after each wave to collect souls and upgrade.
If you add more to your game after the jam, I'd love to see more "quality of life" upgrades in the shop. Maybe things like being able to hold down the fire button, absorb souls automatically or at slightly longer range, shoot faster, learn new damage spells, and maybe even dodge ranged attacks. You've done a great job designing some very cool ideas here!
@chompdev, thank you very much for your great feedback! I really like your ideas and would like to implement them into my post-jam version of the game which I am currently working on.
Nice simple game. I liked the harvesting mechanic, I felt it added a lot more tension to the game. Enemy variety and upgrades were nice too. I think more content for later on it the game would have been nice, though. That and letting the player hold down Left Click to fire.
@baconinvader, thank you for your feedback!
I don't really like how the difficulty of the game is handled
@dimesto52, thank you for playing. Hopefully you will like the new version more.
@Dawnreaver, @bloodfin, @hfsevans, @floata3, @heho, @shay-kopf, @vaizaragorn, @nick-saulnier, @upcharlie, @aes1, @zyak, @popman-yes, @brainles-etertainment, @recursiveanomaly, @orhu, @oiluuuj, @chompdev, @baconinvader and @dimesto52, it may be a little late and I do not know if you will read this, but I want to inform that I have released a new version of the game that improved things in the original based on your feedback. I have linked the game above. Thank you all very much again and I wish you a good day/night.
Hey, good to see you working on it! It's a stark contrast from the LD days! Once again, my thoughts:
* The addition of music and sound is quite nice! The music and the sounds fit into the game okay. My only issue was that the sound of your own shots is different depending on which direction you're going and which direction you're firing. I suspect the game's trying to see where the shot appears relative to the character and then balances the audio to indicate that. It's not bad, but the sounds can get quite cluttered and (in the case of your own shots) a little bit disorienting.
* Now that there's a re-spawn point in the centre, it's harder to simply stand in roughly one place while fighting off mobs! I like being on the move most of the time!
* The new enemies certainly pose a new challenge! The crystals tend to cover a slime while it shoots me, while fireballs need to be harvested before they re-spawn. I do think there are some kinks with their design, however:
a) Sometimes, more than a single crystal spawns, and they end up covering each other as well. In certain situations, this leaves little room to get inside the shield to kill one of them, and I shudder to think what havoc _three_ crystals, arranged in a triangle, can wreak. I was thinking, maybe the shield could shrink a little bit as it absorbs shots?
b) The crystals only ever seem to cover slimes(and sometimes goblins, when they stumble inside). Why not warlocks as well? You'd have to take their teleport ability away while they're inside a shield, but surely it'd be a step up in difficulty?
c) A small issue I had with the warlock is that their teleport conceals their destination now. However, if you tag them with a shot(so that the health bar shows), the bar will not disappear, making the stealth virtually useless after the warlock is damaged. Granted, in later waves, one shot was all it took to bring one down, but it's noticeable in the early waves.
* The addition of a dash is quite welcome, but I wish I could dash in the direction I'm going, not towards the cursor. My cursor is usually pointing at an enemy I want to kill, and getting closer to an enemy(and, thus, risking to just get hit by the next attack anyway) is probably something I don't want.
* Attacks have scaling damage now! It can get quite tough to survive later waves when a stray shot can take off 5 HP when you have about 20. I'm not too sure how to feel about it, though. The damage scaling will certainly outstrip my capacity to upgrade health eventually. Since mob health seems to scale too, it can potentially outstrip my own damage, as well(though much later than health).
* Only having the shop open between waves is a nice touch. However, the conditions for a wave to end seem rather finicky. I'm not sure if I have to kill every mob or if it just happens after a period of time, but often I'll get the pop-up in the middle of fighting mobs, or it'll appear just as the fireballs spawn. On that note, shouldn't red graves be considered enemies if they spawn fireballs?
* The time between waves felt too long. Perhaps you could add a button to start the next wave?
That's about it, I think. It's definitely come a long way, and it's quite a bit more fun now! It just needs a few kinks ironed out now!
Soul Harvester - Post LD by Accatosh — Mozilla Firefox 27.04.2023 11_10_51.png (I could've sworn I harvested that grave!)
@zyak, thank you very much for playing. I appreciate your feedback! It is very helpful. The ideas for the crystal are really interesting. I will also have to remember your feedback on the dash for future games. I will also to be more clear about the waves being time based and a next wave button is a great idea. Unfortunately, I think there is a bug with the red grave, which makes them spawn if you harvest them at the last second.
Anyway, I am very impressed by your score and it is the highest I have ever seen. Good job!
Once again, thank you!