ulziton 2024-04-16 01:27
Pretty fun, interesting interpritation of doomer shooter games, like it
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Boots Of Summoning
By detectivelosos and Annie Owl
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 757 | 3.42 | 28 | |
| Fun | 746 | 3.28 | 28 | |
| Innovation | 776 | 3.15 | 28 | |
| Theme | 428 | 3.86 | 28 | |
| Graphics | 552 | 3.76 | 28 | |
| Audio | 466 | 3.41 | 26 | |
| Mood | 655 | 3.48 | 28 |
Pretty fun, interesting interpritation of doomer shooter games, like it
Fun retro vibe, feels like I oughta be playing quake on a CRT in my buddy's basement in 1999! Overall I had a good time playing it, but I thought I'd leave a couple of suggestions in case they help for next time!
I struggled a little bit with the default sensitivity, though I'll admit playing an FPS on a trackpad on a web-publish is perhaps not my finest moment. The demons are a little bit spongier than I might've hoped — I think it might feel more satisfying if you could clear them faster, but maybe keep the same "just on the edge" feel by balancing that with having more of them and getting less reward from each?
Love the mechanics on this, great work!
Good vibes, audio and art all mesh well together. The gameplay was a bit bland, shooters are difficult to play on a trackpad
These boots were made for ripping and tearing. -Doom guy 2024
what a novel way of using the theme, good stuff
The good: - Like the visuals, the gun model looks really cool and I like the samurai look on the demons themselves. - Love the guitar riff in the music, very cool. - Has a good classic shooter feel.
The less good: - The mouse sensitivity was way too high, it was nearly impossible for me to aim. - The environment is not particularly interesting to look at.
Some design thoughts: - The summoning mechanic is interesting, but the fact that demons are summoned where you walk encourages you to walk backwards, which resulted in me walking off cliffs several times. If the mouse sensitivity issue wasn't a problem I would be better able to turn around to watch where I'm going, but as it is I kept falling off, which resulted in minor frustration. - The death timer is interesting, but seemed to move really quickly. This also might be because I was really bad at aiming and killing demons. - The powerups didn't seem super clear to me, but this also might be because of my earlier walking backwards problem.
TL;DR Pretty fun, good models and music, some clunky controls and an interesting idea.
@bearcage Hey! Thanks for giving our game a try. And also thank you for your suggestions. Seems like for quite a lot of people the default look sensitivity makes the game simply unplayable, so we went back and added this setting so that people can actually play it and not close it rightaway out of frustration. As for the enemy sponginess we added this pictogram to our itch page so that people know to chase those damage ups. PickupInfo.png The problem with reducing enemy HP (even if you reduce the reward as well) is that the game inevitably starts dragging on for longer. And there isn't enough content in it to keep things interesting. If only we had time to finish that second enemy type...
@iellswo Thanks for playing our game and for your feedback! It seems like the default sensitivity completely breaks the game for quite a lot of people. We felt it's critical enough so we went back and added this setting so that people can actually play it and not close the game right away out of frustration. As for the speed of the death timer, we wanted to keep it quite tight because otherwise the game was starting to drag on. And the gameplay doesn't really have anything new to present to you, so there isn't much interest in keeping the game session longer than a couple of minutes. Glad you liked the oldschool aesthetic we were going for :) Wish I had more time to decorate the level a bit more so that it's not just the same texture repeated over and over again, but alas. Hopefully something we can improve on for the next jam.
Neat take on an endless wave of foes. That's neat! I wish I had more feedback on 1) enemy HP scaling over time, and 2) the locations of nearby power-ups. I generally have to walk backwards towards powerups and that's not the most fun, so some kind of directional hint would be helpful.
Doesn't the use of stock SFX disqualify you from the Audio category?
@koboldskeep Thank you for your feedback! Indeed, most of the time you have to walk backwards through the level, I guess we became so familiar with our level layout during development so we failed to spot the issue there. Good thing to keep in mind for future designs. And that is indeed a good idea to add a directional hint, like an arrow around the crosshair or maybe even an audio hint. As for the audio we recorded/synthesized quite a lot of the sounds ourselves and remixed some of the downloaded ones, plus we made the music ourselves, so we thought it's enough to have a go at the Audio category. But we listed all of the stock sounds in the description so that people have a clear picture of what exactly they are rating.
The game is great, the graphics are very beautiful and the gameplay is interesting but I would like more speed
I liked the graphics and audio, but the gameplay felt a little bit empty. I wish there was more to do. Good job though, the samurai animations were great!
Really liked the gun and enemy models, music felt frenetic, which fits the mood of the game. I felt like i had to walk backwards way too much but i loved the feeling of kinda having no way to go. Maybe giving some more though to the way enemies spawn while keeping the concept would make it feel better. Also had fun trying to bug enemies out, which i couldn't hehe.
I, well I was very stressed out trying to play this. I did a couple of attempts and at least managed to get more than 2 slain in the end.
The sound was a very good fit for the genre of the game and the graphics was clean and fancy at the same time. Though it would have been nice with more effects hitting the enemies and some positive feedback (with bonuses) if you managed to kill say 5 without taking damage, and perhaps every 10 kills you got. Stuff like that.
I didn't get super far, so I don't fully know how the game works. But it would also have been nice with some progression. Perhaps if at every minute mark all enemies are wiped clean, but what comes spawning after that includes more dangerous enemies. What I'm trying to say is that if there were more ups and down dramatically that naturally came from the game, it would be much more enticing to stay focused.
I also felt like the mouse sensitivity was set very high from the start though I did notice by chance that I could adjust it. So perhaps it would have been good to lower initial sensitivity and/or actually include it in the start menu.
There could also be parts of the world that changes, or falls off battle royal style. More drama, more progression.
And I want a big "YOU BROKE YOUR OWN HIGHSCORE" flashing over the screen when having stayed alive longer than before or slain more enemies. Online highscore would be nice too.
So I enjoyed playing it for a while. But the genre isn't really for me, and very much not for my wrists. It was nice that it could keep fire pressed though!
Movement made me feel like I had a jetpack and perhaps a bit of a spacesuit on. Which I think was fine with the environment the game was set it. But perhaps it should either lean in heavier towards that in the environment/story or make the controls a bit more snappier.
I must also admit, I'm not sure what killed me in the end, so perhaps there needs to be stronger visual and/or auditory feedback when things are going south, and in what way.
All in all, a great entry.
Playthrough: https://youtu.be/qVdmFa2RrCM
Fun! I think with a little more balancing it could be great.
Balancing, like some others have mentioned, would be a good focus. The movement felt sluggish and weird for sure, but also kinda like Unreal tournament almost. Overall it was interesting in concept, but needs some more work for sure.
Only sluggish for me at the start, got smooth after a bit. Like the quake feel. Nice one!
Cool shooter game!
I enjoyed running around trying to collect as many damage powerups as possible. I ended up running backwards quite a lot though! After a while I had learned the layout so I didn't have to look much where I was going. Managed to get 50 kills in 3 minutes, at which point there was so many enemies it froze the game :sweat_smile:
The enemy behavior is neat, being able to charge you from any point of the map jumping over obstacles. Fun lore with the boots too :)
An idea would be that by running in a direction, you're creating a trail. The longer the trail the more dangerous the enemies will be.
Then if you reach the trail limit or manually finish the trail, it'll spawn enemies in the path you've made. You then have to backtrack to the start, not allowed to stray from the path. The more you kill, the more pickups are spawned in the trail creation phase. Still would have to figure out a way to make the trail creation phase engaging though :thinking: Excuse the rant, hehe.
It's a solid entry, great work! It's always great to see what you guys create :)
I really enjoyed this game. I disagree with comments saying the movement was "sluggish", it felt very smooth and reminded me a lot of games like quake. I love score attack games, and one thing I find very annoying is when each run is very long, then you end up spending like 15 minutes on the "easy part", waiting for the last challenging 2 minutes. This game skips the boring part and throws you into action instantly. You manage to create that "Oh, I just want to try one more time"-feeling which is the hallmark of a good score attack game.
A lot of things were very satisfying, the enemies have cool animations and I appreciate that they have a smart enough AI that they will follow you well regardless of the path that you take (jumping etc). In the end this was my best result (probably not that good, but I did my best :smile: )
score.png
I liked your take on the theme, I have played quite a few entries already but I have not seen anyone implement the theme in a similar way, so plus points for that!
Overall a fun experience, great job!
Its really a polished game. The animation of the enemy is so smooth. I enjoyed playing it a lot.
Alright, this is an actual nice game. This is one of those games that make you press 'restart' a lot.
I really like the basic idea of enemies summoning on where you walk and you needing to kill them to stay alive. It feel like a cunning subversion of typical fps.
Really like it. No critical feedback to give. Maybe the game could benefit from some polishing of movement system if you wish to actually ship it.
Maybe also I'd recommend working on the enemies AI so that they actually run away from you. In that way the player would be forced to chase them and feel very pressured about it ahah
Thanks for the game. It was funny to play it. Nice job)
Thanks a lot to everyone for your feedback! We are currently working on a post-jam version, so it helps a lot with figuring out what works with the concept and what not.
@local-minimum Thank you for such an extensive review! I agree that the game lacks progression and has pacing problems. We spent too much time fixing small problems and didn't spend enough time on polishing the gameplay loop. The endgame score was slapped on at the very last moment, so it lacks many features.
The issue with mouse sensitivity was partially caused by a bug in the camera smoothing code - we noticed it too late and, unfortunately, had no time to fix it.
The thing that killed you is the fact that your Blood Rage Meter filled up (it slowly fills up over time + taking damage adds to it). We should have added some visual cues and balanced the audio so you could hear the audio cues when it gets dangerously high, but alas, we had no time for that :sweat_smile:
But I'm glad that the game was still enjoyable, despite all the problems you've had! You even recorded some gameplay for us - it's always helpful to see how others play our game! Thanks a lot for the feedback!
@jefvel Thank you for the feedback! That's a very neat idea; maybe we will try it out in our next iteration :smiley: Right now, we have decided to add a "boss" enemy that you have to chase around the level and have reduced the number of enemies your boots are spawning. It fixed the problem with constant backward movement, and there are no more hordes of enemies that freeze up the game :sweat_smile: Hopefully, we will finish the reworked version by the end of the JAM.
@simon-rahnasto Thanks a lot for the feedback, I'm glad you've liked the game :smiley:
@phanelly Thanks for the feedback! We are actually reworking the game loop so that you have to chase one boss enemy, while spawning a horde behind you. And it does fill more fun that way! :smile: