First off - great polish!! Like dang, impressive. Some of the sounds - haha, love it. Love the overall humor. Love the chatty npcs.
Now to the feedback that you as fellow dev probably also want:
Enjoyed the first run coz everything was new, but also didnât really want to replay much after. My thoughts on what you can do to fix that:
A single screen that sets the context/story. âIn a galaxy far, far awayâŚâ Just a single sentence a la âGrow stronger and stronger and become the hero of the galaxy as you help the Cozyzens (or w/e their name) survive an alien attack/invasion.â I now VS doesnât set up context/story, but itâs also built on top of giant Castlevania IP.
The movement⌠I think the type of movement you have now is good for when you pick up some badass weapon that requires a tradeoff in maneuverability due to its power. Otherwise, it quickly becomes annoying to not have agile movement. Maybe a tiny bit inertia, but whatâs currently there feels punishing. Obvs enemy attacks would need to be adjusted if you change movement agility. Generally choosing to differentiate gameplay by making player control harder (moving, shooting, sliding, etc.) leads to worse experience. Note how modern games all lean toward very agile characters with wall runs, climbing, vaulting, etc. - it just feels damn good to have super good control of your char. Itâs a lot more rewarding to win with good mechanics than with constant easing curve math in your head.
The music, imho, should be faster paced / more energetic. I just added hard tracks to my own VS clone and it made such a difference. The universe can be cozy and funny and cute, but the game is about shooting, destroying, killing!!! mwahahha Make me feel like a superhero on an epic mission. You can look to VS soundtrack and note (I think) all those tracks go pretty hard. I know you want space stuff probs but just a few examples of direction Iâm thinking: Press X Twice and Tiger Tracks, both by Lexica and found on Endemic, Electronic Disco Nights (on Envato website), the 80 (Envato), and Surf (also Envato). When you can just pause the game and dance to the music, you know youâve found the right tunes! (Also volume was too quiet to start with, I mean thanks for not blasting my ears, but should be equal to special effects as music is a core element or should be anyway)
Number of upgrades felt lacking, or maybe just they werenât randomized? In just the first 2 areas I picked up duplicate lasers twice. Plus the powerup was just more range and 1 more?
After first death, a screen that reminds you to spend your chocolate to upgrade maybe? Or maybe I missed something. I felt like I collected a ton of chocolate but when I started another run, I saw the price list but everything seemed unavailable?
Quests were unclear to me. As in, I destroyed the mines around the first home and it said I completed quest (awesome! love the concept) but I had no idea I had the quest in the first place. Also when I was told to find all the moos or w/e, I like had no idea how they look exactly or I immediately forgot coz they didnât seem different enough? Or maybe just add some pulsating effect or smth around them so I know these are my quest items.
The âyou failed to do xâ didnât feel great/right. Iâd honestly just make quest feature more prominent/obvious and then kill this âyou failed to do xâ thing at the end. Just reward player for finding easter eggs/finishing quests, have achievements menu like VS, but donât throw it in their face what they havenât done. It makes it more of a chore than a discovery moment.
Ofc all just opinions of a pleb, feel free to ignore! Cheers <3
Oh, nice catch! In fact, I hide the button for Fullscreen in the Web-Version as thereâs already one in the HTML5-Player. But I forgot to hide the label as well
Wow, thank you very much for the kind words and taking the time to write such extensive feedback!
AboutâŚ
I agree 100%, I hope I can add a tiny cutscene which sets up the mood.
Interesting, that you find the controls hard to maneuver. Did you play with Mouse, Keyboard or Controller? Because a long time ago, I had different controls where youâd always fly forward and only control âturn leftâ or âturn rightâ. Now you can press a button into a direction and the shippy will fly almost immediately into that direction - except when you play with a mouse. In the latter case, itâs still âfly forwardâ all the time and the mouse cursor dictates the direction.
I will check out different tracks. Itâs important that they stay in the background and donât get annoying, but I agree, that the current one is VERY chill
The position of the little boxes is randomized, so yes, it can happen that you find the same laser twice if you have bad luck. The level up upgrades are also randomized and here, as well, it can happen that youâre offered the same things twice.
HmâŚyou should see the collected chocolate in the buy-menu and then, if youâve enough, should be able to buy upgrades. One thing I want to add: A chocolate counter in the endscreen to show how much you gathered. This should feel like a little reward.
Yes, thatâs a design question: If you donât talk to Margot (the quest giver) but you still destroy the mines: Should the quest stay silent? Or maybe it should only be completed when talking to Margot afterwards? Regarding the MooMoos-There are always little (!)-Icons at the edge of the screen, but they can be too subtle to notice. Need to work on that.
I know what you mean, and I got the feedback already from other people that it feels âsadâ when the list tells you what you didnât do yet. My problem is, some people donât even notice that there are quests because they donât move much and never discover anything. For these people, I needed a way to tell them âthere is more out there, than you discoveredâ. I also planned it as a motivation to replay the game Ă la âOh, thereâs a little Moo Moo somewhere? I want to find it!â - It was meant as an Idea to help with the issue you mentioned before "but also didnât really want to replay much after. "
Thanks again for your feedback! I will let it sink in and hope I can come up with good solutions.
hey @simonschreibt I searched for your game on Steam and the result was being filtered by the store. I checked my preferences and donât see anything different than adult content related filters enabled. Did you marked your game as sensitive or something?
Thatâs weird. I just tried with Firefox and Private Tab and I have no Problems finding the game. Iâm pretty sure I did not set any adult ratingsâŚ
I had this issue before with other games. In my case it turned out that the games had no support for German which is preselected in the filters because I use Steam in German. So maybe your language is not English or German in this case?
Are you searching in your Steam Client or on the Website? With Chrome it shows me the website in German and also shows the game. But maybe it doesnât work with the steam clientâŚ
Yeah, of course- only hope to get direct and plain feedback once I post my game! Praise is great but doesnât move sales numbers.
To clarify: the controls arenât hard. Iâm on a Mac using trackpad. The high level of inertia in movement is what becomes annoying. The ship just isnât agile. Itâs more realistic (yay physics) but everything must be subservient to gameplay imho and in this case it doesnât feel great. Ignore the fact that weâre in space and think if adding inertia to movement in any other rogue-like would help or hurt.
Music only gets annoying when it sucks, I find. Plus the game has music volume control. Your call, but I think music is a big, big deal. Itâs good to user-test with no music tho coz it puts focus on the gameplay (if gameplay is addictive without music, you struck gold.) But by release time, music can cover for a lot of deficiencies and turn a good game into crack. Quake 2 would be okay without OST, but the way those tracks made you feel badass and wanting to go ham was just chefâs kiss. Itâs def not easy to find just the right track(s) tho.
Makes sense but rational explanations donât change game experience. Iâve been analyzing VS/others hard lately since Iâm also making a clone and I think constant progression and feeling of empowerment is one of key pieces that make rogue likes addictive. Randomization is great re: which upgrade I get, but itâs not good re: whether I get an upgrade or downgrade. As always, just my 2 cents.
Chocolate counter on the end screen is a great idea.
Ahh ok, maybe I didnât talk to her. I do think itâs good that quest counts regardless of talking. Hmm. Maybe she should say, âHey, come over here for a sec!â or smth? If you play a few times youâll know to fly to NPCs, but for that first playthrough⌠maybe see if you get more feedback about this, could be just me.
Makes perfect sense. In addition to âCome over hereâ idea above, maybe you can add a temp text at the top or w/e when player enters an area, smth like â3 quests left to discover in this areaâ? Or just an always-on checkbox list⌠MMOs come to mind when I think of this, there too you can enter an area, do 5 quests or 30, but youâre not told youâve missed quests when you leave the area. Instead, the game ensures you know how to do the main questline. So perhaps the question is, do you want the quests to be easter eggs? Or do you want them to be key part of the experience? And then other things would be easter eggs. Only you can answer this, hope my word spaghetti helps somehow >.<
If anything I say comes off too direct, apologies, I was born in Ukraine hehehe. 20 years in the states, but man⌠the direct way of talking is near-impossible to completely overcome. Cheers!
I was first to finish Find the 3 Space Moo-Moos. I found #1 and brought it back. I found #2 but after that I didnât know the way back, I couldnât find [!] symbol. Maybe a bug or they were overridden by other missions. Switching between missions might be good.
Donât worry, I appreciate that you take the time to write honest feedback. By the way, I was wondering if you game is somewhere playable already? Couldnât find a post about it.
Regarding the controls: Iâd love to hear what you think about controls with keyboard (or better gamepad). Mouse/Track-Pad is indeed a bit indirect. Maybe I ca tighten up the values when mouse control is used. Need to check that!
Now that the game has become a little more difficult, I think I know what becomes obvious for me again: the power curve does not really overshoot the enemy strength on any point. Youâre always just strong enough to beat everything but you seldom/never have the feeling of being overpowered due to your latest improvement in throughput or load out.
I think this feeling of occasionally being overpowered is part of the survivor like genre and is part of what keeps you(me) hooked.
I was not able to pinpoint this feeling or lack of feeling in the past. But now with the addition of the portal dogs it became clear.
Itâs just my personal opinion and others may have a different feeling altogether.
Overall I like the game a lot and I will be among those whoâll purchase it, regardless of what the direction will be. (Pay to win excluded from this regardless )
Thanks for the feedback! I will definitely work on the balancing later. Right now I just add stuff and eyeball the values I was thinking about adding an âfrequencyâ upgrade so that you can shoot faster - this would switch the whole difficulty curve again. Will need more tweaking.
Yep, Iâm using the keyboard; trackpadâs only for menus.
Iâm honestly not sure how much clearer I can be that itâs the shipâs movement inertia - regardless of controls used - thatâs the problem (to me). Happy to get on a call if youâd like hehe, maybe Iâm just bad at explaining. My 2 cents (which ofc feel free to disregard) is that it would be more pleasant and allow for more precision/higher skill ceiling if the ship turned instantly and physics didnât exist at all or were reduced 10x. I.e. if Iâm moving right at speed X, and I then press left, I want to be moving left at speed X instantly/near instantly, not have to slow down and then accelerate again. Many reasons why games have generally all moved (in my observation) to fast, fluid movements over the past few decades, from us living in ADHD times to it just making players feel good/more powerful due to more total control. Exceptions exist for puzzlers, but this isnât a puzzler type of game - this is a rogue-like shooter. Complexity should come from enemy count/power, not from the hero being slow and unwieldy.
All comes from love, just making sure my feedback is clear, excuse any wording that may be too direct. =)
PS: my game is a proof of concept at this stage, doesnât even have a main menu or tileset yet, just char, enemies, and some weapons. But in 2-4 weeks I can send you a link to an export so you can deliver your revenge by tearing it apart. Iâm a middle-aged lifelong gamer and have had a career in development but not in game development. Iâve dreamt of game dev since teen years, then life happened⌠so I just started game dev a month ago.
Oh, sorry! I thought youâd play with mouse-only Thanks for the clarification!
p.s. looking forward testing your game!
p.s.s. Iâve used Kenneys assets at the beginning to focus on gameplay/code first and then replace the sprites over time. This is how it looked at the beginning: https://i.imgur.com/qZwwJj1.gif
Hah, nice. âSlightâ improvement in todayâs version for sure!
Yeah, my current assets are all from google image search and Midjourney Iâm waiting on an pixel artist friend to free up⌠The good news: heâs hella good. The bad news: heâs hella good so his schedule is packed.
So, I just played it once (got to level 8), but hereâs my small feedbackâŚ
I liked the overall vibe. It did feel surprisingly âcozyâ. (Maybe the music did it?)
I like the art style. I want my niece to play it.
I kept getting the same upgrade options. I wish there were more variety (like more weapons, shields, bombs, warp drive, more gadgets that do stuffâŚ)
I like the movement (with inertia), but wish I could have found upgrades to make me move faster or with more agility.
I had no idea what the MooMoos looked like or how to find them.
I also didnât like the list of thing I didnât do (at the end). Maybe show something like âQuests Discovered: 4/10 ⌠Quests Completed: 4/10â (or something like that - it tells the played thereâs more to discover, without sounding negative, or giving away secrets/surprises.)
I hope there will be a way for multiple people to play, each having their own saved progression.
D O T ] mission 
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Iâm a middle-aged lifelong gamer and have had a career in development but not in game development. Iâve dreamt of game dev since teen years, then life happened⌠so I just started game dev a month ago.
Iâm waiting on an pixel artist friend to free up⌠The good news: heâs hella good. The bad news: heâs hella good so his schedule is packed.
