- Apr 29, 2017
- 93
- 157
Great potential! But yeah right now a bit too difficult to be super enjoyable. The premise is fun though! This can work!
Others Stranded on Santa Astarta [v1.1.0 Beta] [Doc Badonk]
- Thread starter Supreme_Evil
- Start date
Doc Badonk
Jank engine aside, I like what I see of this game, and here's some of my observations, feedback and what I hope to see in the future, with a mind for hopefully not adding too much workload (which may already done in the dev build, but I didn't read any updates)
While I normally only expect to like a small amount of content in any given game, I feel like most of the content available in the demo feel very tailor-made to my tastes, and if future content follow suit then I will definitely enjoy them. I like how the enemies have different dirty talk dialogue based on their current defeat number, though it seems to have stopped in stage 2. The new mechanic on stage 2 where the streetwalkers would take you home for a second go was very hot though, and if you could add more dialogue during the "take home" scenes, I would certainly enjoy it.
The main concept that the girls are trying to make you lose thrice to "marry" you is also good, but game over just being an animated gif of the girl is a bit lacking to fulfill the concept IMO. I hope you consider a special "game over" scene where each girl "enjoys" their married life. I'm fine with just additional dialogue with the same animations, to save you the workload of having to create exponentially more art assets.
The current weakness "numbers" are a bit too harsh compared to non-weakness attacks - no matter what method you use, escaping from a weakness attack just feels like it takes too long and is very tiring on the hands. Also ironically, if you're choosing weakness based on your favorite kind of content, losing health faster actually makes you experience the content less - I can barely read some of the dialogue with how fast your health drain when being hit by weakness attacks. Toning down the number of button presses for weakness attacks would really help tone down the frustration.
Boss fights also go on for way too long for the content they provide. Since both current boss fights are very slow-paced where you're waiting for things to happen to hurt the boss, I think you could probably cut down their hearts from 5 to 3 and it would be at a more palatable spot than their current length.
Assorted bug observations
- The blue bikini lady and the wine glass girl in stage 1 don't seem to actually grab you. The blue lady certainly tries but I guess her hit box isn't set up right because she never does. You can only see their animations by dying to them from contact damage.
- The black clothes streetwalkers seem to have a bugged charm attack, which I believe is intended to move you automatically towards the charmer, though for some reason the one in the boss fight does seem to work. Unlike the previous two, you can still watch her animation if you time and jump in right as she's about to fire a heart, but it's tough because if you mess up the timing you'll get her combo attack grab instead.
- Losing to her combo attacks, both the blue and orange enemy version, all seem to softlock the game - I think it might have to do with bugs in the "payment" mechanic, because it always states you have not enough money
(Still my favorite enemy in the game)
I hope you take these suggestions into consideration, eager to see a new version, whenever that may be.
Jank engine aside, I like what I see of this game, and here's some of my observations, feedback and what I hope to see in the future, with a mind for hopefully not adding too much workload (which may already done in the dev build, but I didn't read any updates)
While I normally only expect to like a small amount of content in any given game, I feel like most of the content available in the demo feel very tailor-made to my tastes, and if future content follow suit then I will definitely enjoy them. I like how the enemies have different dirty talk dialogue based on their current defeat number, though it seems to have stopped in stage 2. The new mechanic on stage 2 where the streetwalkers would take you home for a second go was very hot though, and if you could add more dialogue during the "take home" scenes, I would certainly enjoy it.
The main concept that the girls are trying to make you lose thrice to "marry" you is also good, but game over just being an animated gif of the girl is a bit lacking to fulfill the concept IMO. I hope you consider a special "game over" scene where each girl "enjoys" their married life. I'm fine with just additional dialogue with the same animations, to save you the workload of having to create exponentially more art assets.
The current weakness "numbers" are a bit too harsh compared to non-weakness attacks - no matter what method you use, escaping from a weakness attack just feels like it takes too long and is very tiring on the hands. Also ironically, if you're choosing weakness based on your favorite kind of content, losing health faster actually makes you experience the content less - I can barely read some of the dialogue with how fast your health drain when being hit by weakness attacks. Toning down the number of button presses for weakness attacks would really help tone down the frustration.
Boss fights also go on for way too long for the content they provide. Since both current boss fights are very slow-paced where you're waiting for things to happen to hurt the boss, I think you could probably cut down their hearts from 5 to 3 and it would be at a more palatable spot than their current length.
Assorted bug observations
- The blue bikini lady and the wine glass girl in stage 1 don't seem to actually grab you. The blue lady certainly tries but I guess her hit box isn't set up right because she never does. You can only see their animations by dying to them from contact damage.
- The black clothes streetwalkers seem to have a bugged charm attack, which I believe is intended to move you automatically towards the charmer, though for some reason the one in the boss fight does seem to work. Unlike the previous two, you can still watch her animation if you time and jump in right as she's about to fire a heart, but it's tough because if you mess up the timing you'll get her combo attack grab instead.
- Losing to her combo attacks, both the blue and orange enemy version, all seem to softlock the game - I think it might have to do with bugs in the "payment" mechanic, because it always states you have not enough money
(Still my favorite enemy in the game)
I hope you take these suggestions into consideration, eager to see a new version, whenever that may be.
I would agree with the first boss, but the second boss I didn't have any issue with the time. The method to damage the first boss is slow, and you just have to jump around and avoid the hearts after each bit of damage, once you know what to do it's tedious. The second boss though felt fine. They don't currently have a scene of their own, but constantly dodging the blade, aiming it at the chickens, and as time goes on more threats are added in the form of other enemies... the second boss felt good to me, aside from the current lack of animation.
The blue bikini lady works fine for me, though the wine glass lady doesn't seem to do anything unless you take that last bit of damage, as you said.
The black clothes lady I assumed was meant more for the duo grapples, which is why the temptation thing didn't seem to work outside of the boss. Slightly disappointing, though maybe that will change/be fixed in a later demo or release.
I've softlocked to losing to a duo attack once, but the first time it happened I got through it fine. I think it has to do with being hit by the temptation attack before being grabbed or something.
- Jun 8, 2024
- 11
- 2
First, let me thank you all for your input to date. When I found out my demo got uploaded here I was anticipating a lot of trolling remarks and flat criticisms but so far the vast majority of the feedback has been constructive or reasoned as well as a whole wealth of suggestions to improve and tailor the game.
Gina (the drunk lady with the martini glass and the pink one-piece) only grabs you if you get charmed by her hearts (I might need to doublecheck if certain conditions with contact damage interrupts this)
If all goes well, the next build will be in Unity, I will try to have a version for Mac and maybe even iOS/Android, if possible. I can't fully promise that though and I'm not sure how long this could take if I had to be real about this specific point.
Ah! There will definitely be more 'take home' type scenes to come when losing to certain enemies under certain conditions.
I definitely will consider changing up the Game Over Pixel Animations to be different from regular attack animations on repeat.
Point taken; I might add difficulty levels to allow Health to last longer. Part of the issue is that your Health is supposed to expand as you play through the game and beat bosses, or purchase upgrades, so you would be able to withstand certain attacks a lot longer. That said, when I initially designed these situations, I deliberately wanted to make getting caught, especially with a weakness, somewhat hopeless; understandably I'll have to refine this. I will also think about decreasing the overall damage rate for balance, but increasing the 'hold' time (meaning weakness based attacks will be more difficult to escape from)
I agree. I'll make some adjustments for the initial bosses. I also want to add more dynamics to the boss fights with additional phases and maybe even different types of attacks through each phase. I've just started adding phasing to the newer bosses and I plan on making the third boss a bit more interesting in terms of the arena.
Alarice (the blue bikini lady) only grabs if you try to carelessly run up to her too quickly. Though, this function may have been interrupted when I added contact damage.
Gina (the drunk lady with the martini glass and the pink one-piece) only grabs you if you get charmed by her hearts (I might need to doublecheck if certain conditions with contact damage interrupts this)
I'll look into that, it might indeed by bugged.
You have good taste!
Actively so, though given what I might have to sort through dev-wise it might be a while, I will try to keep plugging along with new animations in the meantime that way once the dev issues are sorted out I will have all the animations ready.
The duo attacks might not have been completely implemented in that particular version. I have the animations, but scripting the whole thing and then implementing the consequences of losing to those two has been a task.
I'm already considering trying to rebuild the game in Unity when I am able to; I'm very much fed up with some of the issues I've been encountering with the current engine; while making a prototype from a new project is very quick, certain tasks like building a dialogue tree or programming the consequences to losing to a new type of enemy take forever... and now the cross platform compatibility issue and no guarantee that a Steam Deck can play these games have become pressing issues.
If all goes well, the next build will be in Unity, I will try to have a version for Mac and maybe even iOS/Android, if possible. I can't fully promise that though and I'm not sure how long this could take if I had to be real about this specific point.
The lady lounging in a chair seems to work like that, though the lady standing around with the glass I haven't seen shoot out a temptation heart at all.
I'd throw a similar remark back at you. I can't imagine being happy about your game ending up on a pirate site. There's a game I can think of that the dev threw in some malware or something after finding out, Tunnel Escape I think. I'd say the community here is generally pretty civil. I imagine we're all here for a reason, you know? That said, while I'm not a fan of monthly payments for things like this, should the game reach a full release I would be likely to buy a copy of this game. I do like to show my support, especially to the smaller devs.
I tested with Alarice some more and yes the contact damage might be affecting things. In order to get the grab to trigger, you need to take contact damage by one of the other enemies to gain invulnerability, then trigger her grab so that invulnerability ends. Otherwise, the invulnerability from taking contact with Alaric herself will stop her grab from landing.
Gina has never shot any hearts from what I've seen.
I tested it some more (though if it's going to be rebuilt in Unity then maybe it won't matter), and observed the following.
- I was mistakenly believed that the cost for losing would be 25 coins, but it turns out that duo attacks take 50 coins, because there's two of them, makes sense, but looks like a bug if you didn't know.
- If you have 0 defeats and have 50 coins, you'll skip the take home scene, as intended.
- However, if you have 2 defeats (different numbers might work, but I never tested), what happens is that the money deduction keeps triggering repeatedly, until you drop below 50 gold, which triggers the take home scene.
- The take home scene for any duo attack scene still causes softlocks once this happens, so it probably has to do with the defeat tracking functionality.