Love the movement and combo possibilities. The pace at which you can move and fight is well-balanced in my opinion (fast but not overwhelming). Some things I noticed:
1.: I feel like the lock on camera could help make it easier to land the moves, but right now It's way too weak. If you move past the bag, it takes forever to change sides. I think it would work better if it would be a hard lock on like in souls games.
2.: The hit boxes could be a little bigger in my opinion. That obviously kind of depends on the direction of the game. But if it stays singleplayer there is no reason why it has to be so strict, I think. It would also help to make it easier to hit the target. Another little thing that would help is if you would allow the player to turn a little while in attack animation.
3.: the dash-cancel-jump attack is extremely fun, but I find myself often stuck in the move while traversing the map because you can't double jump or dash out of it.
4.: I kinda wish the fastest movement option on flat wasn't just spamming dash, but instead a more technical and satisfying input, maybe chaining jump dash to slide.
5.: I think WWE like grabs and slams like in Rumbleverse would be a perfect fit for the game. I want to grab the bag midair and choke-slam it back down.
Anyway, I love the Game so far and can't wait to see what it will become in the future.
edit: If u throw the sign on the ceiling (high up at no wall or ledge nearby, there is a chance you can't get to it anymore. Maybe there needs to be a way to recall the sign? I wouldn't remove the ability to throw it at the ceiling because I think it would be sick if you could use it to swing on it basically like the sign-jump but forward.
This is really cool, and control feels really nice, but often i find myself whiffing hits because the character keeps swinging in the same direction, rather than towards the beanbag or even in the direction im holding the movement keys in.
super fun and feels bad ass to play on my arcade stick. just wish that there was an option for a fixed camera to where it faces where ever the character is looking since my arcade stick is limited to only one stick
This game is super cool so far. The only issue I'm having is the camera, I dunno if its me but when I start the game it moves on its own I'm not moving the mouse for it and I can't move it with a controller for some reason.(Using ps4 controller). Does anyone else have that issue? I had to turn the camera sensitivity to 0 just to move about normally.
I really wish I could try out your game, but for some reason the player character moves diagonally to the left without my input, and I can't seem to get this to stop. Has anyone else experienced the same problem?
Having played your previous games as well- you are an amazing gameplay designer/programmer! I don't think I've seen any indie games with gameplay as good and as polished as this!
Gamepad camera controls didn't work for me, couldn't move the camera with the right stick. I think the directional input system you have would feel way better on pad, but even playing on keyboard felt great and was super fun to play around with and experiment with combos. Definitely a huge step up from the previous demo I played in terms of game feel!
So cool to be playing this after watching the game develop, everything plays just as well as it looked! It is immensely satisfying to chain actions together, especially movement. It's all intuitive and fun!
The amount of refinement put into everything is apparent, nothing feels janky or clunky. Different actions effortlessly bend from one to the next.
The animation work is great too, I can definitely see the inspiration from smash bros, particularly in the use of scaling to emphasize attacks. The screen shake and hit stop are well-tuned as well; they are chunky but don't slow down the pace of the game. I was especially impressed by the aerial animations; the backflips and jumps are really smooth and visually appealing. Having that subtle stretching while jumping, or the sudden squash when reversing direction makes it easy to follow what’s happening on screen.
In terms of feedback, I noticed these things while playing:
General movement:
(I played this using mouse and keyboard)
The general movement feels good in broad strokes, but the controls start to feel sluggish when trying to precisely adjust what angle your character is facing. The feeling of sluggishness mainly came from the turning speed being so slow. I can only guess that this is in place to make directional attacks possible on the ground, but then you are still able to get these attacks by inputting attack then a direction, so I can't really say. The best method I found for getting around this (without jumping) was inputting a direction and crouching at the same time to turn instantly.
The edges of platforms can feel slippery because you are immediately considered airborne when you walk off an edge. A possible solution is a mechanic called "coyote time" where the player isn't considered airborne until 1-3~ frames after dropping from a ledge.
The current control layout feels a bit limiting. Trying to use dash and crouch in quick succession/at the same time, which is needed for some advanced movement, when both are only in reach of the pinky is difficult and wears down my hand. I know that there’s not many options when designing a keyboard layout, but if there's a way to map one of these actions to the mouse it would make these actions more accessible.
One possible layout could be:
Dash on M2, lock-on on E, and aim on M3. This would allow the player to dash and crouch as much as needed. The downside would be having aiming assigned to M3, which might be awkward. There are probably much better solutions, this is just what I could come up with.
When trying to pick up the stop sign by sliding into it you often get polespin when at medium range.
I feel like a ledge drop option when ledge hanging would be cool.
Combat:
Hitboxes seemed inconsistent when not used from a standstill. Low poke and floor scraper were harder to hit if the target was on the character’s left side and had some blind spots when they were used point-blank. This may be the sandbag just barely flexing out of the way during recoil animations or my alignment veering during combos, because when used from a standstill they felt more consistent.
I didn’t really get any mileage out of the lock-on system throughout my play. It seemed to disorient me more than help in most cases. The only time I used it was when I wanted to aimbot the sign throw.
In the middle grassy area, I kept bouncing off the interior edges when trying to do floor scraper. I don’t know if this behavior is intentional as there is a small lip in that area, but it is an incredibly small lip.
Levers can be activated and then immediately deactivated when using multi-hit attacks like cross slash.
Bugs:
At certain times the UI would be out of frame when the player is at the edges of the screen.
There is extreme slow down when using any spin move.
When using throw as soon as the player touches a wall, the sign will be thrown through that wall. Occasionally, the sign will stick inside the geometry instead of going through it, making the sign irretrievable.
You can wedge yourself underneath the big pink cube.
Cool stuff I found:
-When holding crouch before air dashing you instantly move straight down.
-Normally when you crouch after air dashing you slide no matter what, but if you input an attack just before landing you can prevent the slide and instantly return to idle. Additionally, you choose which way you are facing by doing a forward air or back air before you land.
Examples:
-You can use the down dash to cancel your jab strings.
-You can cancel the first hit of jump kick by aiming to preserve your double jump.
-You can cancel the jump kick into spin.
I hope this is useful feedback. Good luck with the rest of the development!
Was extremely excited to finally get my hands on this! With at least the analogue stick working by default, I was actually able to get the rest of my controller working with an input wrapper, so that was neat.
You've done a fantastic thing with the combination of 3d platformer and smash design influence, along with your own sauce, and it pans out into something very fun!
The character controller feels pretty spot on, the level of control feels like it services both combat and platforming well. And the actual feel of hitting things and jumping around is just great, the animations playing a huge part in that of course. Everything is very snappy and responsive, sounds are punch and satisfying, etc. I really, really love how almost every single move has a hitbox. The long jump(jump kick?) being one of my favorites.
I am curious to see how it tests against actual combat and platforming challenges, that said. It wasn't anything too bad, but I occasionally found myself slipping off the very small blocks in the first target test.
This was definitely partially just me getting used to the game, but if the game ends up requiring precision jumps with any sort of commonality i would like something to indicate exactly where you're going to land.
Typically 3d platformers have a blob shadow underneath the character, but anything that gets the job done is fine. Just something to help gauge the character in 3D space. Honestly, putting one under enemies wouldn't hurt either, it'd probably be way easier to figure out where there gonna land from those really high launches.
One other thing is some way to actually stop dead in your tracks in the air- i always like to put in one of these. I know there's the Dash Dive which "technically" serves this purpose, but I couldn't get it to consistently launch me down instead of down-forward, and it putting you into a slide every time you land also doesn't help here.
I wouldn't change the move(other than making the directions more consistent?) but you have a free input in air crouch + jump, IMO you could just make this some sort of ground pound, divekick, etc move that just brings you straight down, and leaves you in a state that doesn't immediately push you forward like the dash dive.
All that said, if the platforming isn't planned to get too intense then it's not that big a deal- but also, another move..........
Aside from that, It'd be nice to see enemy health bars, but I'm just gonna assume that's a demo thing. I'd also be nice to see the actual context and input for moves on the moveset menu- after they've been discovered, of course.
There was also a couple of straight up bugs. A couple of times, I got kinda stuck in crouching state, though I'd always be able to find a way out. One time it happened near a wall specifically?
Sandbag also got caught in a wall? I was just able to kind of push him in.
The frames fucking DIED if i held a spin for more than a split second. Down from 60-> ~20 fps, i'm assuming it was the distortion effect?
And finally, the detection for walls/ledges seems a little over eager. Getting the ledgedash to come out on the tiny lip around the grassy green rectangle was funny, but bumping into it with the sign's dash attack charge and getting it canceled is something that could definitely mess me up.
anyway WOW i wrote a lot, but i hope there was something useful to you in there? If not, then just keep doin your thing man, it'll probably be sick either way.
Absolutely stunning, having this style of moveset in a fully 3d game is so much fun. I found all but two of the moves, the one after ledge dash, and the one after pole jump.
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found a bug where if you time it perfectly you can dash heavy one direction and then switch directions and the attack continues
Love the movement and combo possibilities. The pace at which you can move and fight is well-balanced in my opinion (fast but not overwhelming). Some things I noticed:
1.: I feel like the lock on camera could help make it easier to land the moves, but right now It's way too weak. If you move past the bag, it takes forever to change sides. I think it would work better if it would be a hard lock on like in souls games.
2.: The hit boxes could be a little bigger in my opinion. That obviously kind of depends on the direction of the game. But if it stays singleplayer there is no reason why it has to be so strict, I think. It would also help to make it easier to hit the target. Another little thing that would help is if you would allow the player to turn a little while in attack animation.
3.: the dash-cancel-jump attack is extremely fun, but I find myself often stuck in the move while traversing the map because you can't double jump or dash out of it.
4.: I kinda wish the fastest movement option on flat wasn't just spamming dash, but instead a more technical and satisfying input, maybe chaining jump dash to slide.
5.: I think WWE like grabs and slams like in Rumbleverse would be a perfect fit for the game. I want to grab the bag midair and choke-slam it back down.
Anyway, I love the Game so far and can't wait to see what it will become in the future.
edit: If u throw the sign on the ceiling (high up at no wall or ledge nearby, there is a chance you can't get to it anymore. Maybe there needs to be a way to recall the sign? I wouldn't remove the ability to throw it at the ceiling because I think it would be sick if you could use it to swing on it basically like the sign-jump but forward.
This is really cool, and control feels really nice, but often i find myself whiffing hits because the character keeps swinging in the same direction, rather than towards the beanbag or even in the direction im holding the movement keys in.
This completely nails the satisfying character control that I wish every game had.
Bravo, Erik.
This is so absolutely cool. I am in love with this and would love more
that's a masterpice of creation thx
super fun and feels bad ass to play on my arcade stick. just wish that there was an option for a fixed camera to where it faces where ever the character is looking since my arcade stick is limited to only one stick
This game is super cool so far. The only issue I'm having is the camera, I dunno if its me but when I start the game it moves on its own I'm not moving the mouse for it and I can't move it with a controller for some reason.(Using ps4 controller). Does anyone else have that issue? I had to turn the camera sensitivity to 0 just to move about normally.
yeah im usin a ps4 controller too and it constantly moves itself down
Try putting the game folder in the Steam 'steamapps\common' folder. Then in the Steam library, add the game's .exe as a non-Steam game.
Launch the game from Steam after that, and it should fix the issue.
this is some sick stuff, excited for the full project :
I really wish I could try out your game, but for some reason the player character moves diagonally to the left without my input, and I can't seem to get this to stop. Has anyone else experienced the same problem?
Having played your previous games as well- you are an amazing gameplay designer/programmer! I don't think I've seen any indie games with gameplay as good and as polished as this!
Gamepad camera controls didn't work for me, couldn't move the camera with the right stick. I think the directional input system you have would feel way better on pad, but even playing on keyboard felt great and was super fun to play around with and experiment with combos. Definitely a huge step up from the previous demo I played in terms of game feel!
So cool to be playing this after watching the game develop, everything plays just as well as it looked! It is immensely satisfying to chain actions together, especially movement. It's all intuitive and fun!
The amount of refinement put into everything is apparent, nothing feels janky or clunky. Different actions effortlessly bend from one to the next.
The animation work is great too, I can definitely see the inspiration from smash bros, particularly in the use of scaling to emphasize attacks. The screen shake and hit stop are well-tuned as well; they are chunky but don't slow down the pace of the game. I was especially impressed by the aerial animations; the backflips and jumps are really smooth and visually appealing. Having that subtle stretching while jumping, or the sudden squash when reversing direction makes it easy to follow what’s happening on screen.
In terms of feedback, I noticed these things while playing:
General movement:
(I played this using mouse and keyboard)
The general movement feels good in broad strokes, but the controls start to feel sluggish when trying to precisely adjust what angle your character is facing. The feeling of sluggishness mainly came from the turning speed being so slow. I can only guess that this is in place to make directional attacks possible on the ground, but then you are still able to get these attacks by inputting attack then a direction, so I can't really say. The best method I found for getting around this (without jumping) was inputting a direction and crouching at the same time to turn instantly.
The edges of platforms can feel slippery because you are immediately considered airborne when you walk off an edge. A possible solution is a mechanic called "coyote time" where the player isn't considered airborne until 1-3~ frames after dropping from a ledge.
The current control layout feels a bit limiting. Trying to use dash and crouch in quick succession/at the same time, which is needed for some advanced movement, when both are only in reach of the pinky is difficult and wears down my hand. I know that there’s not many options when designing a keyboard layout, but if there's a way to map one of these actions to the mouse it would make these actions more accessible.
One possible layout could be:
Dash on M2, lock-on on E, and aim on M3. This would allow the player to dash and crouch as much as needed. The downside would be having aiming assigned to M3, which might be awkward. There are probably much better solutions, this is just what I could come up with.
When trying to pick up the stop sign by sliding into it you often get polespin when at medium range.
I feel like a ledge drop option when ledge hanging would be cool.
Combat:
Hitboxes seemed inconsistent when not used from a standstill. Low poke and floor scraper were harder to hit if the target was on the character’s left side and had some blind spots when they were used point-blank. This may be the sandbag just barely flexing out of the way during recoil animations or my alignment veering during combos, because when used from a standstill they felt more consistent.
I didn’t really get any mileage out of the lock-on system throughout my play. It seemed to disorient me more than help in most cases. The only time I used it was when I wanted to aimbot the sign throw.
In the middle grassy area, I kept bouncing off the interior edges when trying to do floor scraper. I don’t know if this behavior is intentional as there is a small lip in that area, but it is an incredibly small lip.
Levers can be activated and then immediately deactivated when using multi-hit attacks like cross slash.
Bugs:
At certain times the UI would be out of frame when the player is at the edges of the screen.
There is extreme slow down when using any spin move.
When using throw as soon as the player touches a wall, the sign will be thrown through that wall. Occasionally, the sign will stick inside the geometry instead of going through it, making the sign irretrievable.
You can wedge yourself underneath the big pink cube.
Cool stuff I found:
-When holding crouch before air dashing you instantly move straight down.
-Normally when you crouch after air dashing you slide no matter what, but if you input an attack just before landing you can prevent the slide and instantly return to idle. Additionally, you choose which way you are facing by doing a forward air or back air before you land.
Examples:
-You can use the down dash to cancel your jab strings.
-You can cancel the first hit of jump kick by aiming to preserve your double jump.
-You can cancel the jump kick into spin.
I hope this is useful feedback. Good luck with the rest of the development!
Was extremely excited to finally get my hands on this! With at least the analogue stick working by default, I was actually able to get the rest of my controller working with an input wrapper, so that was neat.
You've done a fantastic thing with the combination of 3d platformer and smash design influence, along with your own sauce, and it pans out into something very fun!
The character controller feels pretty spot on, the level of control feels like it services both combat and platforming well. And the actual feel of hitting things and jumping around is just great, the animations playing a huge part in that of course. Everything is very snappy and responsive, sounds are punch and satisfying, etc. I really, really love how almost every single move has a hitbox. The long jump(jump kick?) being one of my favorites.
I am curious to see how it tests against actual combat and platforming challenges, that said. It wasn't anything too bad, but I occasionally found myself slipping off the very small blocks in the first target test.
This was definitely partially just me getting used to the game, but if the game ends up requiring precision jumps with any sort of commonality i would like something to indicate exactly where you're going to land.
Typically 3d platformers have a blob shadow underneath the character, but anything that gets the job done is fine. Just something to help gauge the character in 3D space. Honestly, putting one under enemies wouldn't hurt either, it'd probably be way easier to figure out where there gonna land from those really high launches.
One other thing is some way to actually stop dead in your tracks in the air- i always like to put in one of these. I know there's the Dash Dive which "technically" serves this purpose, but I couldn't get it to consistently launch me down instead of down-forward, and it putting you into a slide every time you land also doesn't help here.
I wouldn't change the move(other than making the directions more consistent?) but you have a free input in air crouch + jump, IMO you could just make this some sort of ground pound, divekick, etc move that just brings you straight down, and leaves you in a state that doesn't immediately push you forward like the dash dive.
All that said, if the platforming isn't planned to get too intense then it's not that big a deal- but also, another move..........
Aside from that, It'd be nice to see enemy health bars, but I'm just gonna assume that's a demo thing. I'd also be nice to see the actual context and input for moves on the moveset menu- after they've been discovered, of course.
There was also a couple of straight up bugs. A couple of times, I got kinda stuck in crouching state, though I'd always be able to find a way out. One time it happened near a wall specifically?
Sandbag also got caught in a wall? I was just able to kind of push him in.
The frames fucking DIED if i held a spin for more than a split second. Down from 60-> ~20 fps, i'm assuming it was the distortion effect?
And finally, the detection for walls/ledges seems a little over eager. Getting the ledgedash to come out on the tiny lip around the grassy green rectangle was funny, but bumping into it with the sign's dash attack charge and getting it canceled is something that could definitely mess me up.
anyway WOW i wrote a lot, but i hope there was something useful to you in there? If not, then just keep doin your thing man, it'll probably be sick either way.
!! Thank you so much imma note everything down. Have a great idea for a ground-pound now that you mentioned it
this is very cool
Love this! Is controller support coming to this version?
Yess next build will have it
Absolutely stunning, having this style of moveset in a fully 3d game is so much fun. I found all but two of the moves, the one after ledge dash, and the one after pole jump.
! Damn im suprised people found the moves this fast
The last two are meega tricky, its the sideflip and the tech that are left! Latter one you have to manage to take damage to find.