itch.io

thank you nash, very cool

Multiple enemies sounds cool but I feel like setting the target enemy for each weapon might be a bit too complicated compared to the rest of the game. If I do it automatically tho, then it's just gonna feel weird so idk about this.

The other stuff you said will probably be in the full version!

❤️

Thank you so much! ❤️

I generally agree with the strategy being very linear and I'm working on a few different ways to fix this and one of them is the "randomized buffs based on the area" which you mentioned. The other one is adding a few "objectives" to the player at the start of each area which gives you tasks like "deal X damage using Y weapon" and rewards the player with global buffs and coins.

The difficulty scaling is designed the way it is on purpose although I would definitely agree that it ramps up way too slow later in the game. The early game jumps are rough so that "weak" runs die off early and they act as a knowledge check as well so the player cannot just pick random weapons and get through the game.

Thanks for your feedback! ❤️

The rest is better level design and camera work but I can't really help out with those since I don't really make platformers anymore. Just play some larger games in this genre and try copying what they did!

Good job!

Most of the main menu/settings bugs are due to buttons being able to be pressed multiple times. These will be fixed pretty soon!

I'm also planning on adding a bunch of features to make each run more "skill based", although the game is supposed to be luck based just like its inspirations: Balatro and Luck be a landlord.

I hate webgl... it always causes issues! The loading times take so long because I need to precompile shaders to avoid stutters later in the game when a new particle is loaded for the first time. My solution isn't perfect because it causes a long freeze at the start, but it's a lot better on the desktop builds.

Thanks for playing!

Would recommend looking up "coyote time" and "jump buffer" for platformers. These two mechanics are present in almost all platformers and they are really necessary to make jumping feel responsive. 

I already added this! For the rest a tutorial should do the trick.

Hi there! The Steam page just released today!  https://store.steampowered.com/app/3499540/COMBOLITE

Make sure to wishlist if you'd like to stay updated 😉

Hi there! The Steam page just released today!  https://store.steampowered.com/app/3499540/COMBOLITE

Make sure to wishlist if you'd like to stay updated 😉

Hi there! The Steam page just released today! 
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3499540/COMBOLITE

Make sure to wishlist if you'd like to stay updated 😉

Hi there! The Steam page is out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3499540/COMBOLITE

Make sure to wishlist if you'd like to stay updated 😉

Hi there! The Steam page is out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3499540/COMBOLITE

Make sure to wishlist if you'd like to stay updated 😉

Hi there! The Steam page is out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3499540/COMBOLITE

Make sure to wishlist if you'd like to stay updated 😉

Hi there! The Steam page is out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3499540/COMBOLITE

Make sure to wishlist if you'd like to stay updated 😉

Hi there! The Steam page is already out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3499540/COMBOLITE

Make sure to wishlist if you'd like to stay updated 😉

Hi there! The Steam page is already out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3499540/COMBOLITE

Make sure to wishlist if you'd like to stay updated 😉

Maybe not mobile release, but the Steam page is already out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3499540/COMBOLITE

Make sure to wishlist if you'd like to stay updated 😉

Sick 🔥
Just don't get caught :D

There is a way to change game speed! 
It's in the settings menu!!!

Sick, I love banana runs 🔥

Holy shit add some roguelike elements to this and you got yourself the next Steam hit release!!!

Ah yes, it's time. I'm gonna be mean sorry 😭

First impressions: 
Very cute main menu!
Small UI issue here tho: most people don't know what "BGM" stands for,  just use "Music" instead. In the grand scheme of things it's a very minor thing but yeah.

So the whole thing is very cute and stuff, I like the small storyline you made, graphically and audio-wise it's pretty good...

BUT THE GAMEPLAY?
Hell nah we have a lot to talk about here.

Firstly the controls.
This is the most outrageous set of controls I've ever seen; it barely follows the common control schemes of all other games!

• WASD: for movement ✅
• Inventory: 1/2/3/4/5 ✅ (would like scrolling as well but oh well)
• Rotate camera: middle mouse button??? ❌❌❌ 
  • Terrible! It's really hard to press down constantly and you're required to look around for the majority of the game. Would recommend just unbinding this and making the camera move around freely all the time!
• Interact/Loot: Space Bar 🟨 (I'll give it a pass but I'd like to see [E] or [F] a lot more)
• Consume Item - LMB 🟨(I'll give it a pass once again, but if you're picking up items using the keyboard, you should use them with a keyboard keybind as well! For me it feels weird to switch between input devices for the same item here)
• Drop Item: RMB or backspace ❌
  • If you don't make camera movement constant, you should at least bind it to right click which is really common for third person games. RMB should not be a secondary action for this kind of a game!
  • Would recommend using Minecraft's [Q] instead since it's already close to WASD.
• Call to location ❓❓❓
  • What does this do? It's never explained at any point of the tutorial and when I tried it ingame one of the guys just came to my location and did nothing...

Ok I'm done with rambling on controls... Let's talk about the gameplay.

The gameplay is well... repetetive. But I think enough people have said that by now. I have multiple issues with the game design of this:

1. Non-animal "ammunition" is practically worthless as ammo. This makes the game 100% about trying to find the closest animal and removes all strategy from the game since the animals just one shot everything.
2. There's no real danger in the game. Since all non-animal items are edible and regenerate health, you're basically unkillable because there are so many items everywhere, you just won't ever run out of them, and the cannonballs hit you so rarely anyway that there's almost no tension.
3. The level design is ALMOST good, but it needs a few things IMO: 
   1. The first thing being a second cannon. Splitting the map into two points of interest would basically double the amount of strategy in the game.
   2. A shortcut from the cannon to the lower island would drastically speed up the game and would add an aditional fun moment to the game (because who doesn't like jumping off a cliff?)
   3. More spawning spaces with different routes to make collecting animals more interesting.
   4. You already added those extra islands to the map, why can't we access them? You could add special items to each one of those islands and reward the player for taking that extra journey! Would once again add more strategy to the game.
4. Add more interesting attacks to the enemy pirates. One of the cooler ideas I have right now is if the pirates would shoot a literal skeleton on your island which starts running towards you and dies after about 10-15 seconds. This would once again spice up the current "running around collecting stuff" gameplay by introducing extra obstacles!

That's about it for gameplay. Overall this is a very cozy and graphically well designed game, however the gameplay and controls need a lot more work for the game to continue being fun after the first 5 waves. I don't know if there's an end to this but I went until the 12th wave, where the animals stopped spawning for some reason so I just gave up.

Thanks for the suggestions ❤️
Hope you had fun with the game!

Hello there, I uhh yes feedback! woo! Steam? maybe? idk I'm writing this intro before looking at the game. Also I'll be extra harsh because of the Steam thing, the people are wild out there it's insane!!

Gonna start with screenshots: It's hard to tell who the main character or characters are? I think it's the scientist looking guys? But then there's multiple of them? idk... Graphically the screenshots do look nice although the environments don't have that much variance in them, indicating that this will be quite short (from a Steam shopper's POV on a Steam game). (after playing the game: please choose screenshots with different environments because YOU ALREADY HAVE THEM LMAO)

Alright let's start playing...

I like the "intro", it's a nice way to introduce game mechanics. The sound design was also pretty good, music is bangin'. 2nd level is already giving me trouble because of these controls. I don't understand why I can't slow down since trying to go the opposite direction seems to keep accelerating me weirdly. Somehow the 3rd level was easier, so I'd say there's definitely stuff to tweak in terms of difficulty progression. (I managed to understand how it works in the later levels which gave more room to move around in. Would definitely make the 2nd level a lot larger in size!)

So far the mechanics has been easy enough to understand, let's keep going.

I don't like the sudden camera changes in lvl 8? 9? idk I lost count and there's no UI that would tell me. I would make these more dynamic by slowly moving the camera towards the player once they start reaching that new area, and keeping it focused on the player while reaching the new area, then finally moving to the intended position. Just a bit cleaner and the player won't get as disoriented.

Would definitely like to see some UI showing the level count and maybe a unique name for each level. It's the sort of thing most puzzle games have. 

Also there's a mix of elevator and door exits for levels. I feel like the elevators should be open and have a sign above them that say "EXIT". (in later levels the elevator was open? so there's some inconsistencies here, shouldn't be that hard to fix I'd assume)

So there's definitely more platforming than puzzles. The puzzles being very easy but I'd rather have easy puzzles than hard ones and get stuck. The Steam audience would probably appreciate more harder puzzles tho and less platforming, otherwise I'd consider this closer to the platformer genre than the puzzle one. I don't really play that many puzzle/puzzle platformers but I'd recommend looking into Mind Over Magnet's devlogs/game design videos since those seem to be very valuable for puzzle platformers.

(this is a playlist, would recommend watching from the linked video

Overall, it's a solid, bit too easy puzzle platformer with great graphics and sound design! Another game without many design flaws other than difficulty.

Ok so I have no clue what is a Scratch limitation and what isn't, so I'm just gonna look at this like any other game to remove bias. Ignore anything that's not possible in scratch!

First impressions:

I hate the font choice. 5x7 is the minimum font size that "readable" but it's far from ideal and I had a hard time reading the text (especially some upgrades with "()" in them, they look like "C"). I like a bit of story as the intro, it wasn't too long, nor too short.

I love the artstyle and have no complaints there.

At first I didn't understand what I was supposed to do, it was probably explained somewhere in the story but you should always assume that players don't focus on what they are reading. The best is to explain what they're supposed to do when the game actually starts. Just a simple "kill all pieces" is enough. If we're talking about UI already, then I'd definitely add a counter that shows how many pieces you killed and how many remain on the map.

Another UI related thing is seeing where the enemy can move to so the player doesn't accidentally move onto a square that results in a death. I guess you can say that this is so that the game is harder, but I feel like it's an important QoL feature. If not all the time, then definitely show it while hovering over an enemy piece.
(or maybe I'm just bad at chess and seeing these moves is the fun part idk)

The kill chaining upgrade is insanely overpowered but makes the game so much more fun! I was quite overwhelmed on the final wave and did die unfortunately. I don't think I could have made it that far without this upgrade.

Not really sure what else I can say about the game, it's very linear and most of it is just well made! Of course it's a bit short, more map choices would be nice etc. etc. but I think we both know that so there's no reason to talk about it.

Overall, it's a well made, really short and simple game without any major mistakes. Kinda makes sense since it's using the rules of chess, which is a pretty well balanced game. KEKW

Finally! Some actually helpful insight! ❤️

The lucky clover, donut and lucky dice do all stack! However luck is handled in a weird way so that a 5x multiplier doesn't make it exactly 5x more likely. It's mostly because I made the system in a dumb way but also to keep it somewhat balanced. It will be getting a remake post jam.

I definitely agree with the gameplay not being too interesting. It is one of the main things I want to improve during the rating period and the Steam demo release and I set the game up in such a way that I won't have to do much polishing, only more content and gameplay.

Thanks for giving feedback, I need more of this! ❤️

The lucky clover, donut and lucky dice do all stack! However luck is handled in a weird way so that a 5x multiplier doesn't make it exactly 5x more likely. It's mostly because I made the system in a dumb way but also to keep it somewhat balanced. It will be getting a remake post jam.

The huge load times are mostly a web limitation. It's not as bad on the desktop versions.
Thanks for playing!

I'm rating based on the windows version because nobody likes WebGL. Also, no sugarcoating in my feedback as always, trying to help in making this game the best it could be.

First impressions:
Pretty decent main menu, it's definitely more than what I'd expect for a game jam game!
Would definitely add some SFX for the sliders, buttons etc. but otherwise I like it.

So first of all I think the gameplay is both too slow and too fast at the same time. The enemies and cube resupplies spawn really slowly with a large cooldown between them. I would increase spawn rates for both of these, especially the cubes since currently if you run out of cubes (which doesn't take too long) you just end up running around in circles until a new one spawn. This really breaks the flow of the game!

You can also mitigate this by adding shop upgrades that increase the amount of cubes you get per resupply.

Not sure if it's intentional, but the piercing upgrade lets the player hit the same enemy multiple times.

Uhm, why can you fall off the map? I feel like this is the most unnecessary and evil feature you added and it adds nothing to the game only pain and suffering... This is the reason why I quit early (just after the first elite where I died like this twice).

The hitbox on enemy projectiles is absolutely diabolical. I've never truly felt like the bullets actually connected with the player. Would definitely make them smaller, or make the player's projectiles bigger in order to make it more consistent.

I don't really like the sound design of the game, I think it's something that definitely has room for improvement. The first step would be to not use SFXR or other sound effect generators since those don't really fit the game that well. Some more futuristic, a bit glitchy sounds would fit this game a lot more. 

I would recommend digging around in these sites for SFX and most of the are free to use!
https://www.zapsplat.com/sound-effect-packs/
https://99sounds.org/cinematic-sound-effects/  and other packs from 99sounds
https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/

Would definitely add sounds for when the enemy's shooting and when a bullet is approaching. Helps judge what's happening around the player while trying to look for cube resupplies. Don't be afraid of layering, shortening, fading these sounds in something like Audacity or some Digital Audio Workstation like FL Studio. It's definitely tough but once you wrap your head around it and with some creativity it can get really fun!

Balancing is a bit interesting as there aren't any upgrades that are just purely positive. This kinda forces the player to upgrade all of the at the same time, otherwise they'll have a weak point. I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this? It's both a good and a bad idea...? Kinda ruins the fun of breaking the game for the sake of a balanced build, but that doesn't really fit this game all that well.

There are a few UI improvements that I'd like to see. The first one is replacing the crosshair with a line on the ground which shows the direction of where the player will shoot. Not 100% sure if this is better, I just feel like it would be. If not that, then I'd definitely make the crosshair smaller and thinner in general. Currently it covers up a large portion of the screen and I don't think that's a great thing when you're trying to see what you're aiming for. (nvm ignore this since the bullets come out from the center of the camera which I find a bit weird but it's fine I suppose)

Secondly, I would definitely add some sort of health bar to the enemies. Currently there's no way of judging how much damage the player is doing to the enemies which is really not ideal.

There's also a bug when using Buckshot, the UI shows (-1 cubes) when in reality it's taking away 2 or however many you're shooting.

Please add [ESC] a keybind for pause menus even for WebGL! I almost missed this and I wanted to adjust volume stuff ingame. Having it bound to [ESC] doesn't do any harm on browser builds although yes it's a bit weird for fullscreen stuff. Would also recommend binding it to [P] as well.

For polshing I'd say you just need more animations for UI. A lot of polishing is basically UI work afterall.  Here are some ideas that you could do to improve stuff:

1. Add hitmarks to the enemies (show damage dealt)
2. Make player stretch a bit when they are moving fast
3. Make enemies shake when hit (or any animation works here tbh, the red flash is a nice start)
4. Make screen shake JUST A LITTLE BIT when you hit the enemy
5. Add a vignette or some other effect that shows when you're out of cubes
6. Add white anime speed lines to when you're moving quickly
7. Add scraping particles to cubes when they are gliding on the ground
8. Add a trail (need to find an addon for that via the AssetLib)
9. Add some effect to when cubes spawn (small explosion?)
10. Add stretch to cubes as well since they are travelling at high speeds

Also, study https://yollie.itch.io/ 's games. They are FULL of insane VFX stuff and you can learn a lot from him. (he's also one of my long time friends but that's irrelevant here)

Overall, it's an OK prototype that is a great base for practicing a bunch of fields of gamedev such as VFX, SFX and UI. If you have the time, I'd definitely try playing around with my suggestions to see how they affect the game!

Best of luck Cookie man! ❤️

The game has speed settings...
Thanks for playing!

I'll add a dark mode for the background! Thanks for the insight ❤️

❤️

Yep it's a bug that's on my radar!
Will be fixed after the game jam ends. Thanks for playing!

❤️

Thank you! ❤️

Thanks for playing!

You're the 1% of gamblers who didn't quit before they won big 🔥

❤️