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playing_games_13313

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A member registered Jan 05, 2024

Recent community posts

One easy way to add support for multiple input keys is to use Godot’s “actions”, https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/getting_started/first_3d_game/02.player_input.html#creating-input-actions . There you can for the same action add multiple input keys. For instance, if you have an action for moving horizontally, you could add “A” and “left arrow key” for negative input, and “D” and “right arrow key” for positive input. That may also decrease the need for adding support for input key rebinding.

I chickened out, and played this in a virtual machine. I did make a recording of it, but I am not certain if it would be of any value to you, the recording’s quality is not great, and the game is a bit repetitive.

I did not complete the game, even though I played for more than 30 minutes, I saved and quit since I was bored, and I was not certain how many levels were left to complete.

It took me maybe more than 10 minutes before I understood why my characters were walking some of the time - apparently, you have to double-tap a direction key to make a character run. Would it make sense to let the characters always run and never walk?

I tried using WASD keys, but they did not work for me. Only arrow keys and the 1 and 2 numpad keys worked for me.

For the gameplay, I ended up spamming shots, since I did not know if there was any downside to just spamming shots, there is no way to cycle shots without shooting from what I could tell. I could be wrong, but some of the time, a shot of one color (not including the “kill-all” shots) killed an enemy of a different color.

One enemy was hidden by Pacifica’s left hand in one level, which cost me some time, but I figured it out before running out of time. The character art is very pretty.

Some of the game felt nice, it was a bit like being in command of an artillery battery and destroying targets. But it was too repetitive in the long run, there needs to be more variation.

I never figured out what the collectables did.

The game is at an early stage, yet some of it was fun.

I only had a few unlocks that I had not unlocked after playing for a very, very long while before starting to try to unlock those specifically. The Spades symbol (unlocked by having enough blue symbols in your deck) and the item making mini-games easier (play enough mini-games) were some of the unlocks that I had to do specific runs for. I also had to do a specific run to get the 100 maximum health unlock, I got it by grinding the bouncers with a deck that included the Apple symbol, life steal, and money gain, a green-yellow deck (I have a screenshot of the deck in the posts below). I do not remember what other unlocks I had to do specific runs just to unlock them.

Also I am ashamed to say that I have all implemented unlocks, unlocked.

Good feedback, I agree with it. Other cool combinations are the Bar item with the Eagle symbol, or the Brand New Suit with the symbols that give extra turns.

In my opinion, the game primarily needs to get people into playing it, since it is great fun once you do get into it.

Really nice. In my build/deck when going up against the tinkerer, I had 5 non-dissolve symbols (Shield, Bitcoin, 2xMidas Touch, Punch), instead of 4 as in the starting deck (Shield, Bitcoin, Midas Touch, Punch), which meant that the probability of getting matching Fists was significantly lower, and even when I timed the first reel correctly, it more times than not did not match the Fist.

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Very nice. What does your deck/symbol set look like?

It is a minor thing, but it makes it easier to describe which enemy you went up against, such as if you encountered a bug or an issue with that specific enemy, or if you died and want to describe your run and how it ended.

A request: When in a battle, please give some way to see the name of the enemy, names such as “tinker” or “queen of diamonds” or “DJ”.

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I went specifically for a starting deck that could grind the blue dice. In a previous run, I had bones, the green symbol that has dissolve and gives health, bitcoin, shield, and midas touch, and I ended up with over 2800 chips after two battles with blue cubes.

In this run, I got a starting deck close to what I wanted like the above, except I got fists instead of bones. The blue dice were defeated too quickly, but it still generated a good amount of chips from red dice. But then I stupidly decided to go up against the tinker, which was blocking a hole in a wall on the map. As it turns out, bones would probably have been better in this case, since bones would probably have worn down the shell accumulation.

It is the same bug as the pachinko one. It may be a mini-game bug where you get the “run won” screen showing as if you had defeated the final boss, even though you just completed a mini-game.

Played a game of space invaders, and again got the “you won” screen bug. Pachinko also has the issue that if you click on “View Reels”, you can accidentally drop the ball.

Strange bug report:

I had gotten to room 3 of the game, and played a game of pachinko. Once the ball hit the bottom, I got the “you won” screen that normally happens when you defeat the final boss.

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Confirmation that bouncers can be grinded for both maximum health and for chips if you have the right deck and items. I did not have all the symbols and items shown below when I started grinding the bouncers.

Maybe the right kind of green deck could also grind the bouncers, in order to get an arbitrarily high maximum health. But that kind of deck might be viable for winning the final boss either way.

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For blue, I also did not try it a lot and did not go for it really, which contributed to not getting a pure blue win or substantially mixed blue win. The removal of rewards of symbols for common enemies made the game harder. For blue, after you wrote this reply, I tried specifically to unlock the Spade symbol, and only succeeded after some time. Most everything else was unlocked before I tried unlocking the Spade symbol. I may have wrongly assumed that one strategy would not work, which I may have employed in a previous demo day some of the time, namely to get to a point where your defenses are strong, your money making is strong, and then just go to weak enemies and have the battles last for a long time and get lots of money. It is not easy, but you can actually get to a point where you can grind the bouncers for money without taking any damage in return. At that point in time, you have probably already almost guaranteed a win, of course, but I feel like the bouncers should get more powerful every time you defeat them in a room, even if they only get a bit more powerful each time you defeat them. But this is mainly yellow decks that may have some blue mixed in.

I did not succeed in finding a good combination of blue using the Spade up and running, though I have only played a smidgen after unlocking the Spade symbol. I can see it being powerful, since it does not consume Block, and there are blue symbols that either builds up a lot of Block or persists block between rounds. And the Ace of Spades symbol only get stronger over time, even when facing the final boss.

Bones can be powerful if you get a very large amount of Power, but that is difficult to get in the first room, and defeating enemies effectively is helpful in getting money in the first room to try to clap together a viable game-winning deck, or at least one that can defeat the boss of the first room and then try to clap together something good in the second room. And even if you have a mediocre amount of Power, bones may not be worth it. For the early game, if you have 3 matching Bones, you get 2x2 + 1x2 + 0x2 = 6 damage. Not bad, but not amazing either. If you compare it with the Fist symbol, you get 3 + 3 + 3 = 9 damage. Now, if you have both Bones and Fist, and you match 3 Bones and then 3 Fist, you get 6 damage total. Making the Bones worse than useless, apart from matching. Each bone can potentially make every subsequent hit 1 worse. So if you have Bones first and then X hits from subsequent symbols, you maybe deal damage for (2 + Power)*2 - X. If Power is at 2 and X is at 10, you potentially lose out on 2 damage compared to if you did not have Bones. And you can have multiple Bones match early. On the other hand, if you have huge Power, like 15, the multiple hits of Bones are worth it. But that is often in the late game and when you likely have a powerful build already, not in the early or mid game.

But I do not mind Bones being weak or a drawback early, it is a part of the challenge to figure out whether and how to use Bones. Just please enable rerolling at the start or some other way of avoiding or dealing with Bones.

The map generation for some levels can be very punishing, with long vertical walls ending in dead ends or mini-boss enemies before the passage, and other issues with the map generation.

Avocados having a brown core: My brother in Christ, what in the world are you saying? The RGB code for the brown core of an avocado symbol is 0Xa96521, the RGB code for the core red color of a Chili item is 0Xd74646. These values are not far from each other, in particular when looking at them at a glance. Almost all other symbols are great at avoiding ambiguity in colors. [Imagine an image of a crying, sad and cute cat here]. Please do at least tweak the color to reduce the risk of confusion and ambiguity, thank you.

I personally almost never tried timing the reel, and I would not have cared about colors there if I was color blind, except for the sake of learning and understanding the game and what is going on. But I do care about the color of the symbols when I am picking and selecting them, and which color(s) a symbol is when picking or buying is in my playtester-role-opinion (which is basically worthless, I have no stake in the game, always be careful with the opinions of others) significantly more important than matching them on the reels. Though being able to see which color(s) a symbol has, is helpful for learning the game at the start, and people have already had problems with understanding the game. Maybe let the player have an icon in the hover UI that shows the color(s) of a symbol, maybe right below the “SYMBOL” text in the top-right corner, both in the shop, when picking in the room, and when viewing the symbols in the UI? You could honestly get inspired by the color icons from Magic: The Gathering. To me, as long as the color-blind player can learn which colors a symbol has, the silhouette of the symbol should help, many of the symbols in the game has more or less mutually-distinct silhouettes. But if you really want color-blind players to see it, maybe add small tiny icons in some corner of each symbol on the reel, each of them having an easy to differentiate silhouette? It would require testing either way.

There are many fun and sometimes surprising combinations. Like the Star symbol with the Brand New Suit item.

A tutorial is a good idea, even a brief one should help. I would personally not care about getting the timing right with the reel spinning, it is perfectly possible to play without timing, and some people may want to play the game without any timing or reflexes at all, like a pure turn-based game. I did not personally pin the game as having timing be important, to me it is all just deck building, predicting and picking fights, exploring strategically, and having the right strategy, and learning the game mechanics and discovering funny and interesting combinations, and stuff.

I just discovered that the eagle symbol and the bar item are a very strong combination.

Also, the trial and error of learning what enemies do can be a bit annoying, it lengthens the duration of the game. This can be solved in-game, or by the game having a (maybe user-made) wiki. Though enemies "not revealing their hands" and not being described up front is a part of many successful games, such as FTL, in particular its final boss.

Sorry, I thought at the time that it was the easiest approach to winning. I experimented much more later on after the stream (but I still rerolled a lot of the times, even when trying different stuff), and got wins with a variety of runs, including (some of these overlap):

  • One or more wins with red or red-mixed decks (the "angry meal" symbol with lots of extra dissolves is really powerful, and a red deck with good power increases is really powerful against most bosses and several enemies).
  • One or more wins with yellow or yellow-mixed decks (both with greed, one run I got the money bag symbol (or two of them) as well as two wallet items, though several runs with yellow or yellow-mixed decks failed against the final boss, the "greed" of the final boss can hurt if you do not have defense, and I failed to get that in one run).
  • One or more wins with green or green-mixed decks (green has gotten significantly nerfed it feels like, and the game has gotten harder, but symbols that deal damage as a proportion of health can work well against bosses and the final boss if you ensure that you engage the bosses with full health even if you have to avoid any and all fights. Also, the symbol that deals 1/5 to you and 1/2 to the enemy as proportion of health is extremely powerful, but will not guarantee you the win by itself).
  • Maybe one or more 3+ color mixed decks. I might have won, or gotten really far, with a deck with bananas (extra damage per dissolved symbol), lots of dissolved symbols (maybe green, maybe yellow, I think at least the darts, maybe red), and the "angry meal" symbol, and maybe some purple.
  • In some of the runs above, I mixed in purple symbols with success, but I have generally avoided most purple symbols, which I bet was correct in most cases, they are often interesting traps (which I like). In one run I decided to take a purple symbol, just to get confirmation that it was basically a trap (the eagle symbol), and I was confirmed in it being a trap, though I might have reached the final boss with it, due to mixing in the "blood orange" symbol. In another run, one specific purple symbol might have been the key part of the run, but I do not remember its name or its function, sorry.

I do not believe that I ever succeeded with a blue deck, one time I might have gone far, but messed up and attacked the wrong non-boss enemy in room 2 or 3. The first bosses, and many enemies in general, require strong offense, their attacks will get stronger and stronger (which they have to, otherwise you can farm them with yellow decks), and will eventually outscale your defenses. The key may be blue symbols like the one that converts defense into power, but that I never really experimented with that (and it might become risky, since with a blue deck, you might be relying on defense for protection instead of items). Mixing in money shield works, but money shield works really well in a pure-yellow deck.

The game can be very frustrating, and the last boss in particular is daunting, even if you have a strong deck. The "deflation" ability can quickly destroy the offensive potential of a deck, and then it is all but over. Even power-increasing symbols can be wrecked by deflation. The "greed" of the boss can be lethal for yellow decks, at least if they do not have sufficient defense. I began prioritizing symbols that were "resistant", like dealing damage proportionally, or dealing huge damage without relying on power. The "ace-type" symbols are also attractive for this, the red ace is automatically resistant and only slowed down by deflation, the yellow ace (a proportion of earned money dealt as damage?) deals enormous damage quickly as long as your money generation, the green ace dealing damage equal to half of health lost in current battle makes it for most decks excellent, at least if you ensure that you go into battle at full health. But how frustrating the game can be, including the trial and error, also makes it nicer when you do manage a win, even if getting a win is often up to chance.

Money costing symbols that cost money even when never hurt (the money shield/"Midas touch" symbol is not one of these, since it costs nothing if you do not get hurt), are interesting, even though they are dicey, unless your money generation and efficiency (like if you have the item that decreases cost) is so high that you gain money on any battle. If your money generation and efficiency is not sufficiently high, it may be best to avoid all battles and preserve both money and health, and only pick battles with great care, which is interesting and a kind of challenge.

When rerolling, I often avoided lemons and bones. The lemon symbol is not bad, but it makes it really difficult to get cost-efficient battles unless you pick up a cost-reducing item or get good money generation. I can see it being good against the first room boss however, even without cost reduction or money generation, if you save up, even by scrounging money off the floor. Bones is just weak almost always, both in theory and mostly in practice, but that does not make it bad, it is a nice puzzle for the player to figure out, and rerolling is quick (even if the player has to go into the menu to discover that they have the option of rerolling by restarting). I also often avoided some other symbols, typically the "fifth" symbol. I do not necessarily think these symbols should be removed from the start, it is part of the challenge to figure out what might and might not work.

The money generation of the game makes it harder to balance, but also makes it different and interesting.

The game is difficult to "balance", but it is also interesting.

Should the current mode be "Hard mode" or "New game+", since it is substantially harder than before I believe (not getting a choice of symbols from enemies makes it much more important to pick your battles well, and randomness plays a large factor)?

The boss battles in the first room are rather dangerous, and decreases the viable decks you can build early. Which is not necessarily bad, figuring out which decks are viable, and balancing long term vs. short term is interesting. I dislike the broken machine boss however, it felt too much like a "you get this boss, you lose even when you played well". Unless the purpose is to artificially increase how much of the player's time is wasted, it is frustrating. The only real strategy I found to be effective against it was the "banana" symbol, since "banana" is multi-color and the broken machine boss repeatedly introduces a huge number of "dissolve" temporary symbols, but you cannot easily get the "banana" symbol. I am tempted to suggest that you rework this boss or something, though it may just be a skill issue on my part.

I never timed the reels.

I tried a few mini-games, but the skill-based one, space invaders, was rather difficult and also felt random. But the whole game is about risk and reward and chance, it is fine for the arcade mini-games to be unfair.

The map generation has issues at times, and learning it includes trial and error, but the random nature of it and risk and reward fits the theme of the game.

Is the avocado symbol a pure green symbol? It has a red core in it.

Will a color-blind mode be added to the game, which specifies the "colors" of each symbol before picking or buying?

The game is fun in my opinion, but I remember it being difficult to understand and get into, and another poster here described how they like me in a previous demo day took a lot of time before they grasped the in-combat click-button mechanic. I do not have a good suggestion on how to improve this issue, however, but it might be really helpful if you figure out a good solution to it. My feeling is that a pure UI solution that does not change the gameplay might work.

(do not ask me how much I played this game, I spent more than a few hours off-stream).

I recorded this and uploaded it here: https://mega.nz/file/xb9EmQzI#qKrLV-IC4ip6Q9se2K3ji2H_fipsLIzQNnDZxzi-YMM .

Nice game, I liked it, only real complaint was that the crosshair was difficult to see against some of the backgrounds.

Do you seek to sell this game? I have no idea how well it may or may not sell. Have you done market research, seen how well similar games sell? Though your game is just a short demo at the moment and at an early stage of development.

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I enjoyed this game a lot, I uploaded a video of it here:  https://mega.nz/file/BTsyRAKS#lq-wqi2IUDxpx4traORBiOdjLn3gFCmKBxCbUPNR8_c . Sorry about the failed stream earlier, I need to fix those internet connection issues, I encountered them last demo day as well. The VODs should be up for 7 or 14 days depending on Twitch:  https://www.twitch.tv/demo_longrunner_99 .

What is new in this version compared to last demo day?

If I decided to play this for some hours and complete the main story missions and maybe some side missions, would you like a recording of it (at a decent quality level)?

Was my stream of the game useful? Is there anything I could have done better for testing the game?

The life insurance in these parts is really robust, I can strongly recommend it, great return on investment.

Small but fun game, I streamed it for a few minutes: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2026108854?t=1h23m21s

I streamed this a little bit, link to the VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2026108854?t=0h54m39s

I streamed this a little bit with Plunderground_fixed.exe/Plunderground_less_lethal.exe : https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2026108854 . It is rather rough around the edges. Are there two mine levels in total? It would be nice with a button for the level overlay, I guessed at some point that pressing the tab key would show it. The gameplay was not all that fun in the beginning (also with technical mishaps), archery duels later on were a bit fun, but the game is also early in development, and it is starting to take shape.

Is it intended that Red Wine permanently doubles negative power?

I forgot to mention that I streamed it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2024480033?t=4h0m21s

Great game, lots of fun.

Ricken the axeman had a sniper rifle, and wrecked my party :) .

Nice game. I was a bit confused by the UI, but figured it out eventually. Will it be possible to control with the mouse in the future, or will it be keyboard only?

Nice game, commenting here to not forget it: The axeman attacked a rock or something, and hit Ashe who is far away, is that a bug? https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2024480033?t=6h5m30s

Great game, substantially easier than before  (or maybe I just played it too much previously). I completed it at its hardest difficulty, and it took much less time to complete than earlier. I wish it was longer, though. The manual entries are nice. I only noticed the second variants for each monster manual entry by accident. Removing time slowdown gives it a bit of a different feel.

Great game, I streamed it. Substantially harder this time around. I found one blocking bug:https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2024480033?t=1h54m46s . Arrow keys did nothing, the Bandit walked off the screen, maybe she sobered up.