You play as a test subject escaping from an underground lab. You have two phase abilities - phase-dash and phase-wave. Phase-dash is a forward semi-teleport which also damages enemies and negates damage while active. Phase-wave is a projectile attack. As the game progresses, more defences will spawn in each room, including laser tripwires, mines, turrets and drones - and, of course, there’s always the omnipresent laser grid advancing from behind, getting ever faster. The goal is to reach room 100, beat a final wave of defences, and escape.
Now pretty much all the core mechanics are in place, I thought I’d share some footage and ask the community for your thoughts on the look of the game as it is. You know how it is: you stare at your own project so long, you lose sight of what might be glaring issues to an outside observer.
So, Godot lemmy - what do you think? 😅
EDIT: we’ve decided to share a build with you guys, if you’re interested in testing it out. We have Windows, Linux and Mac builds. Have fun! https://irmoz.itch.io/phase-killer
So far, that has the feel of a good tutorial level - like it’s the first challenge faced by the test subject when they first get their abilities, before they realize what’s going on and they have to escape.
If that’s the starting environment, I could imagine occasional pauses where you describe the next challenge and how to overcome it.
Then, once getting through this area, things start to get faster and more chaotic.
Are you planning on having different speed settings, so the game can be approachable to different kinds of players?
Hmm, you put me in an awkward position. We were planning on simply having this environment ramp up in intensity toward the final room. (The game should really only take about 10 minutes to complete. Something of a proof of concept for us.)
But you throwing out the idea of other environments does tempt me to suggest increasing the scope!
By speed settings, are you referring to player speed, laser grid speed, or some overall speed scale? You raise an interesting point.
Also, if you’d like to try it out, we have builds of the current state of the game to test out: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jsOXz3Isfp6CTGfL7PfKGCqF4xxdMJjV?usp=sharing
Any feedback is welcome, however incisive, scathing or negative. Positive is nice too, but we can’t be too presumptuous :P
Really, any speed settings would help make the game more accessible and approachable.
Some people may enjoy the parkour elements but not have the motor skills to handle high-speed reactions.
Other folks may be great at the fast paced movement, but get frustrated by the number of enemies or the speed of projectiles.
If you are able to offer sliders (or even just low/medium/high) options for things like movement speed, enemy frequency, damage taken, and grid reaction time? If you can do that without having to remake your code or game engine? It’ll mean a much wider potential audience for your game.
Speedrunners and streamers can have fun setting everything to the fastest and hardest difficulties. Casual players can have fun with it without getting frustrated.
And sweet, you’ve got a Linux build. I do most of my gaming on Linux now. I’ll try to check out the demo.
These have all been great suggestions! Thanks so much for the feedback, it will certainly help inform our next moves. And also, thanks for checking out the demo :)
Also - if you do increase the scope, you could totally, like, intend the game to be ~10 minutes segments. Maybe release the first segment once you think it’s polished enough, see whether you want to add additional areas or environments with more levels and options.
Basically, don’t get burned out with scope creep. If you have something that works, release it. Even if you want to add more later. :)
And you know what could be cool? If you manage a perfect phase-dash (i.e. dash at the exact instant a projectile would hit you), it creates a shockwave that deflects all nearby projectiles back at whatever fired them.
That is an incredible idea! That’s definitely going on the pile. Thanks for that.
(Ignore the slow-mo that totally isn’t to compensate for my lack of fast reflexes!)
Sweet! I doubt I’ll be good enough to manage that but it’s cool that you were able to implement it so quickly.
Haven’t had a chance to check out the demo yet, maybe tomorrow night.
It was a pretty easy implementation, actually. The bullet already checks for collision with the player, so I just get the player’s state when that happens, and if it’s phasing, the bullet faces its creator. Its usual “go forward real fast” code takes it the rest of the way.
Has potential to be cool. The art is on point. But from what I’m seeing in this video I have to be honest the obstacles do not look challenging or interesting. I’d also say it needs to be even faster.
If I may be so bold - I have added download links, if you’re interested in testing it out.
I’ll give it a try so you can have some true feedback on the game and not the trailer. I’ll just need an hour or two to get to my pc and play it.
I’m simply happy a stranger is willing to give it a try! I hope the “tutorial” isn’t too vague. But in any case, that will definitely get some work, soon.
Very fair criticism! May I ask what you think might make for more interesting obstacles? Different shapes, maybe stuff that moves?
Just from the video:
I couldn’t really see the obstacle lasersMost rooms looked the same
All of them looked rather trivial in difficulty
With the mechanics you do have, you could design some pretty complex obstacles. The showcase video looks mostly like empty rooms. I see promise in the movement, it just needs to be faster.
One important aspect I cant tell from the video is controls. They will most definitely make it if they are silky smooth and intuitive like Mirror’s Edge or absolutely ruin the experience if they are clunky.
The simplicity of the obstacles has been mentioned a few times now. We’ll definitely take that on board and try to exploit the movement mechanics.
Also, I’m definitely biased, but I think the movement is quite fun! I hope you agree, if you test out the demo.
I’ll give it a try when I get to my pc. The movement did look good.
Hey friendo! Did you get a chance to try it out? :)
Yes! Theres a lot of potential. The movement was good though. Definitely take some time to make challenging obstacles
That seems to be the major takeaway. And, as I expected, it’s obvious in retrospect haha! I’m considering remaking the levels around actual platforming, with large drops and no easy path. Thanks a ton for your feedback!
The first ten to fifteen levels look like they’d be tedious to replay after every death. Maybe have them only occur the first run per play session and the timer/restart point begins after that?
Technically it’s all random - only the first 2 are set in stone. Though the way the defence generation works, lasers etc only start to phase in after about 10-15 rooms, so that might be what you’re picking up on. I could bump those numbers up so defences start spawning earlier, perhaps. It gets genuinely chaotic after a couple dozen rooms!
