Thanks for playing! Sorry about the default controls. You can change the controls via the pause menu by pressing escape and going to “options” -> keyboard controls.
I would say buff banana even if it is quite spammable, it feels kinda hard to use, or maybe it is high skill cap(also it is ONLY better against swarm of at least 3 enemies lol). Sword best spell(high damage and pierce), some reload and ammo slots and it can be spammed a bit, if you are good at dodging then sword can be the go-to with those fast kills
9.5/10 game, the buttons were kinda messed up and annoying until i found i could change them(and had to read comments to find out btw), maybe you could mention that in tutorial i guess)
You're one of my favorite creators on this site, and I just wanna say I love this game. The controls are pretty good, the final boss is hard but not hard enough to put you off the game, and the limited amount of spells are all pretty cool. Anyway, im gonna put some tips here.
Tip 1: Build your "deck" around a specific weapon type, such as orbital, and frost. Upgrade your chosen weapon type and choose mainly that kind of weapon, along with frost, since most frost spells are just better than the flame ones
Tip 2: Use the dodgeroll ALOT, especially when fighting the final boss's second phase.
HOW TO BEAT THE BOSS
During the attack when he flies aboce you, just run from one side to the one side of the arena to the other whilst dodgung. When he comes down jump over the wave and attack him, he's really vulnerable there.
When he starts smashing into the walls, dodge him and be wary of the projectiles spawned when he hits the wall (during the second phase you want to spam dodge roll during this attack since it causes his orbitals to shoot way faster)
When he goes into the middle and spews out projectiles, go under one of the platforms as they will block the projectiles.
A thing that could make this just a little bit better is if there was a settings button that opened the settings on the title screen, and also a setting that changes the sprites of bullets. I don't think it should be something custom but, (just looked up some references, this was written like 20 mins after ---> ) something like "The Binding of Isaac: Repentance" where the enemy bullets have a slight white aura that flashes 'behind' the bullet, I assume that when the setting is on, enemy bullet sprites are just changed to ones with the animated white aura? (IDK)
Thanks for the feedback, I'll take a look at the binding of isaac setting to see if I can do something similar in my game to improve bullet visibility!
Loved the demo and I'll definietly buy the full version when It comes out, besides it would great if there was be an achievement refferencing TRYH4D, like "Shreya would be proud of you - Have 10 bouncing frost waves on the screen at the same time". A neat little easteregg for those who played Your other games.
Hahaha that’s a great idea, you’ve convinced me! I’ll probably put at least a couple achievements referencing past games in there. Thanks for playing the demo, glad you enjoyed it!
Ooh nice! I’ll check it out! Also it looks like the demo version you’re playing isn’t the updated one, the version should be 0.3.0 in the bottom right corner, did steam let you update the demo? You might need to check the downloads tab in steam
Awesome video, great first win! Loved watching all of it, I left a comment on the video but in general I really appreciate your videos and hearing your thought process behind the upgrades you choose and the way you play, it's super helpful as a dev!
Ah sorry about that, I'll fix that soon, thanks for reporting the issue. Also thanks for playing, glad you liked it! I'm really excited for the full release, got a lot of fun features planned.
The only big thing i'd recommend changing is making enemies and enemy projectiles stand out more. It can be hard to keep track of all of the enemies bullets in the later stages. Luckily it sounds like you're already working on it!
Thanks for playing! Will definitely try to make enemies pop a little more. I'm planning on resorting some of the draw layers to make sure the player and enemies always appear on top of everything else (currently explosions and particles go on top of enemies, which can make them hard to see).
omg I love love2d so much literally 8mb for the whole game plz unity is giving me nightmares.
First off, the game title is maybe a bit long. Shortening it down to just PUTRID SHOT would work (I did a lil google and noone else seems to use it). If there is a reason to have it so long then sure run with it :D
Actually starting the game now. Oof settings menu doesn't scale when you change to fullscreen. Music is such a bop! Maybe work a bit more with stereo, having just some elements hop in and be super stereo is a bit odd. (I think I've said it before) DDRKirby is really good at 9bit, so giving them a peek could be nice.
I love how the game evolved from pico8 to love, nicer aspect ration, better music and MORE PARTICLES!
SO FRICKIN POLISHED. The transitions and everything just look so incredibly smooth.
I think I talked about this on planet d4rk. Wait lemme just pull a new term straight out my ass. SO, let's call it information prioritization. Information which has more value to the player should be more prevalent to the player. I had a lot of problems with no really being able to see the enemy and what was going on, and Information Prioritization™ could solve that. Basically, make things more important stand out more, and things that are less important stand out less. This happens in art and animation as well (mostly 2d), more important elements get more details. This is so you don't overwhelm the viewer with information, but also so the information that matters gets seen. In the game, sooo many things are happening at once, and after stacking a few orbiting ice things the screen begins to get really cluttered. And with fireballs and such the effect is even stronger and therefore, the enemies get even harder to see. When you are playing and trying to keep track of 10 enemies at once, then having those vfx everywhere (even though they look really nice) makes it impossible to keep track of everything. This goes into something I think the celeste devs talked about (maybe on gmtk), the player should always feel like they are the ones responsible for messing up and taking damage, otherwise they feel powerless. So for example, when getting hit by a bullet that was covered in a huge blast just before it hit you feels a bit meh. This goes into the color scheme as well, stronger color for the things that need to be seen. This is how I think about it anyways.
Ok there is a thing with infinite stacking I will absolutely not exploit this at all (i exploited it and still died. Twice).
First death now, aaand I'm back at the start. I love rougelikes.
It's really nice that the first thing you do is to choose your active ability, it spices things up from the getgo. If you want to make it just a bit more interesting, being able to choose an upgrade as well would give you loads more combinations in the start, giving each run even more individual flare.
So I'm having a bit of problems with the flying enemies. It's hard to jump up to deal with them because they will slap you, since you can't really dodge well when you are shooting. Standing on the ground and then firing at them is also not that much fun, it's pretty slow and you only hit one or two shots before you have to reposition. Letting the run after and "track" the enemy could be more fun. Maybe something to experiment with?
There are a lot lot of buttons to press. I have about six braincells, and each keeps track of one or two buttons max. So using the active ability while rolling and hopping kind of overloads, and I usually just end up ignoring the jump or the active ability to keep myself alive. Maybe holding down the button to use the active ability could be a thing, or having just the jump / roll or combining them. Combining two things could be really cool, like jumping and firing to use active ability, or rolling and firing. It would add more complexity without having me fumble over my keyboard, and could lead to more interesting and complex ideas, since you'd be able to combine inputs. Having the gun being able to fire upwards is a good start, but I wonder what happens if you dig deeper.
I really like the box before you get an upgrade, it builds some anticipation.
After listening to the song a bunch of times I'm really impressed by how good the composition is! It switches itself up and keeps moving constantly, did you use anything as inspiration or did you just come up with it all from just bleeping things out in your daw?
Ono I think I'm at a boss. It is. And I'm dead. Maybe having some checkpoint would be nice, look into how you can make it work in a fun way that doesn't ruin the stakes though. Shovelknight can be something to look into.
Question, how authored are the upgrades? Do you just pick a bunch at random or are they decided by some algorithm?
I've started getting close to the shooting birds and it's a bit frustrating that they shoot straight at you no matter how fast you go. Making them a bit slow to target you would be interesting, since then it would be really fun to hop around them, dodging their aim.
Got to second phase of the bosssss. But I'm dead and I need a break so I'll take a break. Will probably attempt more later today / tomorrow.
be aware of overscore / adding too much stuff
A word of warning I guess, be aware of adding too much stuff. Especially be wary of adding new systems, use the ones you have but make them as interesting as possible. In music it's usually way better to make something which has fewer elements but they are all more interesting, than to add lots and lots but have them all be kinda meh. I think the same applies to game mechanics, try to add few, but make them really good. Just as an example, in 3hos I initially was going to add a selection menu for picking up new clothes. Which I tried. But it took a lot of time to get it sorta working (this was super early in dev) and it did feel a bit like you got ripped out of the game to select the clothing. So when I got further down the line with the combat system (the old picking system was gone) I tried to add the clothes in by having them be part of the game world. And (in my very humble and unbiased opinion) it works great! It's a lot more intuitive and it saved me a bunch of time. It also kept the codebase clean, which is a huge huge plus.
That's "all" I got for now at least. I really like this so far, the boss is really interesting, them music a bop and the gameplay is pretty fwooshy and fast. Great work!
TOOK ME THREE SESSIONS BUT I GOT THE DAMN BOSS OH YEA BABY FEELS SO FRICKIN UHEHEHEHEH. So some feedback on the boss, it's a bit frustrating to have it reset the level after you have built up a good stash of storms and snowballs, so you have to begin from zero on those.
That honestly was amazing, the rush you feel when you manage to get it down is so incredible, wow. A thing I noticed was that I needed those breaks to be able to actually finish the games. So maybe encouraging breaks could be a thing? I don't really know to be honest.
Um, if you are interested in making b-sides (looking at celeste here) with remixes of the songs, I'd be up for it :D. Same with playtesting / more feedback, just give me a headsup and I'll get on it :>.
Ooh congrats! The first boss is really tough, I'm likely going to nerf it in the full game / add an "easy" mode, since I really want people to be able to actually progress without spending tons of attempts.
hahaha to be honest, the boss resetting the level is kind of by design for the exact reason you mentioned: Frost builds sort of melt the boss otherwise, and I didn't want to have to balance the boss around that, so resetting during phase 2 was the cleanest way to avoid a complete sweep of phase 2 for frost users.
I'm glad you liked it! I think the roguelike formula really lends itself to taking breaks and coming back to things. I'm hoping people feel motivated to commit multiple runs to this game.
I'll be sure to reach out if I make any B-sides like that! Same goes for playtesting, I'm planning on setting up some kind of group for playtesting the full game, so I'll reach out if that happens and you're interested. Thanks again for playing!
On the title: Yeah I think Putrid Shot would have worked too, but unfortunately my illustrator is already working on a steam capsule with the logo PUTRID SHOT ULTRA, so I gotta commit to it now haha.
I've never experimented with stereo stuff and panning, I should start looking into that for music.
With respect to clutter / information: I agree, I'm working on trying to make the most important things (the player, the enemies) "pop" a bit more on screen. For now in the next patch I've just made some of the elements a little more faded so they don't create as much visual noise. All that said, I also think this is something players will get better at navigating as they do more runs.
Glad you like the active spell selection! That'll probably be the main 'replay value' for the game: trying out different active spells over different runs (I have 7 total active spells planned for the final game right now).
I'll definitely experiment with allowing moving while shooting up, I agree dealing with aerial enemies is tougher.
The high number of buttons making things complex is definitely something I've heard before about this game (and my other games too). Re-using buttons / combining things is a cool idea! One thing I like to think about with these types of designs is: How quickly can the player build 'skill expression'? In a game with a lot of buttons, sometimes just remembering to press your buttons can be an effective way of 'expressing mastery'. My idea with this game is: new players will probably just pick 1 or 2 things to focus on like you mentioned (shooting/doding, casting / dodging, jumping/shooting, etc) and as they get more experienced, they start to remember to weave in their active spell in between shots, or roll through attacks instead of just tanking them, etc. I still totally hear your feedback, something I need to think about.
Hahaha glad you liked the music. I'm really happy with the way it came out. I didn't have any specific inspirations, this track kind of just came together.
On the upgrades: The "type" of upgrade you get is hardcoded (passive spell vs stat reward vs spell upgrade), so you're guaranteed to get a passive spell after the first level, guaranteed to get an upgrade after the 2nd, and so on. The actual "contents" of the rewards are randomized a little: Passive spells are broken into tiers, where "Tier 1" are spells I think are really fun and 'playstyle-defining'. You're guaranteed to get at least 1 tier-1 spell in the first reward room, but after that the spells are entirely random.
Overscoping is basically at the top of my 'fear' list right now. The more I build for this game, the bigger my task list grows. I have a hard deadline for myself to more-or-less finish development by the end of August, but it still feels like I'm scope-creeping the hell out of this game. I like your idea of making menus and stuff "in-game" vs creating a separate menu system. The treasure chest enemies in this game are a good example of that, I kind of want to add more of that.
Thanks again for all the feedback and for playing! I'm really excited about this game (even though, statistically, it'll probably flop on steam lol)
About it flopping on steam, if that happens I think it’s ok. You could maybe check if armored games would like to show off a demo / help you release and market the game. Really hope it all goes well :D
I'm planning on supporting multiple active spell mods in the full version, so in the 2nd zone you'd get another weapon mod and in the 3rd zone you'd get a 3rd mod. I'm also planning on adding reload time upgrades!
Loved this lol. I do have a few critiques, but I definitely loved this
Everything about putrid s4nd which was great works beautifully here. Although, I'm not entirely sure if some of the changes you made for this version work as well they should. Though take some of these issues I had with a grain of salt cus most of them are because I felt that putrid s4nd was perfect as it was lol.
I kind of wished that the indicators for which ability fires after a given number of bullets was similiar to putrid s4nd where you had it next to your current bullet count. Having them to the left is fine, though in the heat of battle I hardly looked at the left side instead of checking my right for the bullet count.
The larger levels are great and allow for more mobility, though it makes the earlier sections of the game a little boring since you have only enemies which move around rather than the ones which shoot at you. Maybe the first level could have no platforms, incentivising players to actually learn to dodge better, and also aim upwards for flying enemies since they probably won't do it much in later levels as the levels allow more mobility as I said before.
I also feel there needs to be descriptions for mods for weapons between levels. Mostly because I wasn't really sure what the icons actually meant. Again, this might be just me and with repeated playthroughs a player will remember of course, but for initial playthroughs, it may cause frustration choosing a mod you didn't really want, mostly because you didn't know what it was lol.
No complaints about the elite fights though, very well designed and fun to fight. As you can see, I died in the second phase of the boss lol, though I felt that even it was designed damn well and was fun to fight. I have one complaint about the boss though. His vertical smash was well indicated, but I sometimes couldn't really see the waves sent in both the left and right direction from that smash. They were also the prime reason why I actually took any damage in that fight. Maybe making them bigger and more noticable would help here because I wasn't really sure for a good chunk of that fight why I was taking damage until I looked a little closer lol. Again, this might just be me, but something to keep in mind.
As a whole though, fantastic bite-sized rogue-lite and a great expansion of putrid s4nd.
P.S You honestly make some of the best boss-fights I've found in any game on itch.io lol.
The new spell indicators is something I was mixed about too. Putrid S4nd's restrictions with pico 8 is what resulted in the really elegant design of showing the spells on your ammo counter. For this game, I wonder if I could double-up and show both the spells on the left and show a mark on the ammo counter. I could also experiment with having them on the same side of the screen, or even just make this all into some kind of game option (like an option to show spells on ammo counter or something). Either way, this is exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for, I'm sure in the heat of battle it's tough to keep switching between both sides of the screen.
I like your idea of removing the platforms in the early levels. Like you said, it'd incentivize players to practice shooting up and also practice dodging enemies.
Ah yeah the weapon mods text was something I was being strategically lazy about, but I got the same feedback from others during initial playtests. I was originally keeping it minimal with the hope that players would, over multiple runs, learn the mods based on minimal text / icons. But like you said, it feels pretty bad to pick a mod only to realize it does something you don't want it to do. I'll look into adding some contextual text that appears when you move under the mod so players know what they're getting into.
Boss battles are usually my favorite part of development, so I'm glad you liked them! The shockwaves for the zone1 boss's slam were the most common thing to hit everyone who playtested initially too, so I definitely need to make them a bit more visually prominent.
Glad you enjoyed the game! I'm really excited to continue working on this and release it, though it might take some time. Thanks a ton for the feedback, this is exactly the type of stuff I was looking for.
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"magic pistol"
pretty good,but the controls on the keyboard are not the best
Thanks for playing! Sorry about the default controls. You can change the controls via the pause menu by pressing escape and going to “options” -> keyboard controls.
thank you!
i always love a game that lets me rebind
I would say buff banana even if it is quite spammable, it feels kinda hard to use, or maybe it is high skill cap(also it is ONLY better against swarm of at least 3 enemies lol). Sword best spell(high damage and pierce), some reload and ammo slots and it can be spammed a bit, if you are good at dodging then sword can be the go-to with those fast kills
9.5/10 game, the buttons were kinda messed up and annoying until i found i could change them(and had to read comments to find out btw), maybe you could mention that in tutorial i guess)
I absolutely loved Putrid Shot Ultra, it's minimalistic, fast paced and challenging.
Btw, I made a microreview in spanish of the full version I played on steam.
You're one of my favorite creators on this site, and I just wanna say I love this game. The controls are pretty good, the final boss is hard but not hard enough to put you off the game, and the limited amount of spells are all pretty cool. Anyway, im gonna put some tips here.
Tip 1: Build your "deck" around a specific weapon type, such as orbital, and frost. Upgrade your chosen weapon type and choose mainly that kind of weapon, along with frost, since most frost spells are just better than the flame ones
Tip 2: Use the dodgeroll ALOT, especially when fighting the final boss's second phase.
HOW TO BEAT THE BOSS
During the attack when he flies aboce you, just run from one side to the one side of the arena to the other whilst dodgung. When he comes down jump over the wave and attack him, he's really vulnerable there.
When he starts smashing into the walls, dodge him and be wary of the projectiles spawned when he hits the wall (during the second phase you want to spam dodge roll during this attack since it causes his orbitals to shoot way faster)
When he goes into the middle and spews out projectiles, go under one of the platforms as they will block the projectiles.
Good Luck!
I'm so glad you enjoyed it! Awesome guide by the way, good tips. The dodgeroll is key to making it past the toughest parts of the game.
Also just a heads up, the full game is out on steam now!
A thing that could make this just a little bit better is if there was a settings button that opened the settings on the title screen, and also a setting that changes the sprites of bullets. I don't think it should be something custom but, (just looked up some references, this was written like 20 mins after ---> ) something like "The Binding of Isaac: Repentance" where the enemy bullets have a slight white aura that flashes 'behind' the bullet, I assume that when the setting is on, enemy bullet sprites are just changed to ones with the animated white aura? (IDK)
Thanks for the feedback, I'll take a look at the binding of isaac setting to see if I can do something similar in my game to improve bullet visibility!
finally beat boss, great demo!
Thanks for playing!
the controls are VEEEEEERYYYYYY bad, i wish i could change them
You can change them! Press escape and go to "options"->"keyboard controls" and remap them however you like!
oh sry now its good
watch this
Great video! I liked the spells that you chose, orbital flames and bouncing frost wave are both great! You almost got the boss down, nice job!
Loved the demo and I'll definietly buy the full version when It comes out, besides it would great if there was be an achievement refferencing TRYH4D, like "Shreya would be proud of you - Have 10 bouncing frost waves on the screen at the same time". A neat little easteregg for those who played Your other games.
Hahaha that’s a great idea, you’ve convinced me! I’ll probably put at least a couple achievements referencing past games in there. Thanks for playing the demo, glad you enjoyed it!
Super polished game!
Thanks for playing!
Super fun roguelike1!!!
Loved the pixel art style too.
Thank you!
Check this out!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQmC94KXHQ4Xzs9T_QIaE6V6lleXiolC8
Ooh nice! I’ll check it out! Also it looks like the demo version you’re playing isn’t the updated one, the version should be 0.3.0 in the bottom right corner, did steam let you update the demo? You might need to check the downloads tab in steam
I record videos a week before, next week's video will be the new update
Ahh gotcha, my bad! Thanks for the clarification
Awesome video, great first win! Loved watching all of it, I left a comment on the video but in general I really appreciate your videos and hearing your thought process behind the upgrades you choose and the way you play, it's super helpful as a dev!
Also extremely fun game, keep it up!
Ah sorry about that, I'll fix that soon, thanks for reporting the issue. Also thanks for playing, glad you liked it! I'm really excited for the full release, got a lot of fun features planned.
Legendary game, as always.
The only big thing i'd recommend changing is making enemies and enemy projectiles stand out more. It can be hard to keep track of all of the enemies bullets in the later stages. Luckily it sounds like you're already working on it!
Other than that, awesome game!
Thanks for playing! Will definitely try to make enemies pop a little more. I'm planning on resorting some of the draw layers to make sure the player and enemies always appear on top of everything else (currently explosions and particles go on top of enemies, which can make them hard to see).
Glad you liked it!
You can reach me at abhisundugames@gmail.com!
Made a video
(Be aware, waterfall of words incoming)
omg I love love2d so much literally 8mb for the whole game plz unity is giving me nightmares.
First off, the game title is maybe a bit long. Shortening it down to just PUTRID SHOT would work (I did a lil google and noone else seems to use it). If there is a reason to have it so long then sure run with it :D
Actually starting the game now. Oof settings menu doesn't scale when you change to fullscreen. Music is such a bop! Maybe work a bit more with stereo, having just some elements hop in and be super stereo is a bit odd. (I think I've said it before) DDRKirby is really good at 9bit, so giving them a peek could be nice.
I love how the game evolved from pico8 to love, nicer aspect ration, better music and MORE PARTICLES!
SO FRICKIN POLISHED. The transitions and everything just look so incredibly smooth.
I think I talked about this on planet d4rk. Wait lemme just pull a new term straight out my ass. SO, let's call it information prioritization. Information which has more value to the player should be more prevalent to the player. I had a lot of problems with no really being able to see the enemy and what was going on, and Information Prioritization™ could solve that. Basically, make things more important stand out more, and things that are less important stand out less. This happens in art and animation as well (mostly 2d), more important elements get more details. This is so you don't overwhelm the viewer with information, but also so the information that matters gets seen. In the game, sooo many things are happening at once, and after stacking a few orbiting ice things the screen begins to get really cluttered. And with fireballs and such the effect is even stronger and therefore, the enemies get even harder to see. When you are playing and trying to keep track of 10 enemies at once, then having those vfx everywhere (even though they look really nice) makes it impossible to keep track of everything. This goes into something I think the celeste devs talked about (maybe on gmtk), the player should always feel like they are the ones responsible for messing up and taking damage, otherwise they feel powerless. So for example, when getting hit by a bullet that was covered in a huge blast just before it hit you feels a bit meh. This goes into the color scheme as well, stronger color for the things that need to be seen. This is how I think about it anyways.
Ok there is a thing with infinite stacking I will absolutely not exploit this at all (i exploited it and still died. Twice).
First death now, aaand I'm back at the start. I love rougelikes.
It's really nice that the first thing you do is to choose your active ability, it spices things up from the getgo. If you want to make it just a bit more interesting, being able to choose an upgrade as well would give you loads more combinations in the start, giving each run even more individual flare.
So I'm having a bit of problems with the flying enemies. It's hard to jump up to deal with them because they will slap you, since you can't really dodge well when you are shooting. Standing on the ground and then firing at them is also not that much fun, it's pretty slow and you only hit one or two shots before you have to reposition. Letting the run after and "track" the enemy could be more fun. Maybe something to experiment with?
There are a lot lot of buttons to press. I have about six braincells, and each keeps track of one or two buttons max. So using the active ability while rolling and hopping kind of overloads, and I usually just end up ignoring the jump or the active ability to keep myself alive. Maybe holding down the button to use the active ability could be a thing, or having just the jump / roll or combining them. Combining two things could be really cool, like jumping and firing to use active ability, or rolling and firing. It would add more complexity without having me fumble over my keyboard, and could lead to more interesting and complex ideas, since you'd be able to combine inputs. Having the gun being able to fire upwards is a good start, but I wonder what happens if you dig deeper.
I really like the box before you get an upgrade, it builds some anticipation.
After listening to the song a bunch of times I'm really impressed by how good the composition is! It switches itself up and keeps moving constantly, did you use anything as inspiration or did you just come up with it all from just bleeping things out in your daw?
Ono I think I'm at a boss. It is. And I'm dead. Maybe having some checkpoint would be nice, look into how you can make it work in a fun way that doesn't ruin the stakes though. Shovelknight can be something to look into.
Question, how authored are the upgrades? Do you just pick a bunch at random or are they decided by some algorithm?
I've started getting close to the shooting birds and it's a bit frustrating that they shoot straight at you no matter how fast you go. Making them a bit slow to target you would be interesting, since then it would be really fun to hop around them, dodging their aim.
Got to second phase of the bosssss. But I'm dead and I need a break so I'll take a break. Will probably attempt more later today / tomorrow.
be aware of overscore / adding too much stuff
A word of warning I guess, be aware of adding too much stuff. Especially be wary of adding new systems, use the ones you have but make them as interesting as possible. In music it's usually way better to make something which has fewer elements but they are all more interesting, than to add lots and lots but have them all be kinda meh. I think the same applies to game mechanics, try to add few, but make them really good. Just as an example, in 3hos I initially was going to add a selection menu for picking up new clothes. Which I tried. But it took a lot of time to get it sorta working (this was super early in dev) and it did feel a bit like you got ripped out of the game to select the clothing. So when I got further down the line with the combat system (the old picking system was gone) I tried to add the clothes in by having them be part of the game world. And (in my very humble and unbiased opinion) it works great! It's a lot more intuitive and it saved me a bunch of time. It also kept the codebase clean, which is a huge huge plus.
That's "all" I got for now at least. I really like this so far, the boss is really interesting, them music a bop and the gameplay is pretty fwooshy and fast. Great work!
TOOK ME THREE SESSIONS BUT I GOT THE DAMN BOSS OH YEA BABY FEELS SO FRICKIN UHEHEHEHEH. So some feedback on the boss, it's a bit frustrating to have it reset the level after you have built up a good stash of storms and snowballs, so you have to begin from zero on those.
That honestly was amazing, the rush you feel when you manage to get it down is so incredible, wow. A thing I noticed was that I needed those breaks to be able to actually finish the games. So maybe encouraging breaks could be a thing? I don't really know to be honest.
Um, if you are interested in making b-sides (looking at celeste here) with remixes of the songs, I'd be up for it :D. Same with playtesting / more feedback, just give me a headsup and I'll get on it :>.
Ooh congrats! The first boss is really tough, I'm likely going to nerf it in the full game / add an "easy" mode, since I really want people to be able to actually progress without spending tons of attempts.
hahaha to be honest, the boss resetting the level is kind of by design for the exact reason you mentioned: Frost builds sort of melt the boss otherwise, and I didn't want to have to balance the boss around that, so resetting during phase 2 was the cleanest way to avoid a complete sweep of phase 2 for frost users.
I'm glad you liked it! I think the roguelike formula really lends itself to taking breaks and coming back to things. I'm hoping people feel motivated to commit multiple runs to this game.
I'll be sure to reach out if I make any B-sides like that! Same goes for playtesting, I'm planning on setting up some kind of group for playtesting the full game, so I'll reach out if that happens and you're interested. Thanks again for playing!
Always great to hear from you!
On the title: Yeah I think Putrid Shot would have worked too, but unfortunately my illustrator is already working on a steam capsule with the logo PUTRID SHOT ULTRA, so I gotta commit to it now haha.
I've never experimented with stereo stuff and panning, I should start looking into that for music.
With respect to clutter / information: I agree, I'm working on trying to make the most important things (the player, the enemies) "pop" a bit more on screen. For now in the next patch I've just made some of the elements a little more faded so they don't create as much visual noise. All that said, I also think this is something players will get better at navigating as they do more runs.
Glad you like the active spell selection! That'll probably be the main 'replay value' for the game: trying out different active spells over different runs (I have 7 total active spells planned for the final game right now).
I'll definitely experiment with allowing moving while shooting up, I agree dealing with aerial enemies is tougher.
The high number of buttons making things complex is definitely something I've heard before about this game (and my other games too). Re-using buttons / combining things is a cool idea! One thing I like to think about with these types of designs is: How quickly can the player build 'skill expression'? In a game with a lot of buttons, sometimes just remembering to press your buttons can be an effective way of 'expressing mastery'. My idea with this game is: new players will probably just pick 1 or 2 things to focus on like you mentioned (shooting/doding, casting / dodging, jumping/shooting, etc) and as they get more experienced, they start to remember to weave in their active spell in between shots, or roll through attacks instead of just tanking them, etc. I still totally hear your feedback, something I need to think about.
Hahaha glad you liked the music. I'm really happy with the way it came out. I didn't have any specific inspirations, this track kind of just came together.
On the upgrades: The "type" of upgrade you get is hardcoded (passive spell vs stat reward vs spell upgrade), so you're guaranteed to get a passive spell after the first level, guaranteed to get an upgrade after the 2nd, and so on. The actual "contents" of the rewards are randomized a little: Passive spells are broken into tiers, where "Tier 1" are spells I think are really fun and 'playstyle-defining'. You're guaranteed to get at least 1 tier-1 spell in the first reward room, but after that the spells are entirely random.
Overscoping is basically at the top of my 'fear' list right now. The more I build for this game, the bigger my task list grows. I have a hard deadline for myself to more-or-less finish development by the end of August, but it still feels like I'm scope-creeping the hell out of this game. I like your idea of making menus and stuff "in-game" vs creating a separate menu system. The treasure chest enemies in this game are a good example of that, I kind of want to add more of that.
Thanks again for all the feedback and for playing! I'm really excited about this game (even though, statistically, it'll probably flop on steam lol)
About it flopping on steam, if that happens I think it’s ok. You could maybe check if armored games would like to show off a demo / help you release and market the game. Really hope it all goes well :D
nice game (;
fun
This game is awesome!
Thank you!
What if I could have multiple possible effects on my arrows in one run? also, where is my reload time upgrade?
I'm planning on supporting multiple active spell mods in the full version, so in the 2nd zone you'd get another weapon mod and in the 3rd zone you'd get a 3rd mod. I'm also planning on adding reload time upgrades!
cool
WOAH REALLY COOL
you basically took the original pico version and expanded upon it, well done...
Thank you! I really liked the original pico 8 concept, so it's been fun expanding on it so far.
Very cool! Love it!
Thanks!!
Game feels great, fantastic job! Wishlisted on Steam, good job!
Thank you!
Loved this lol. I do have a few critiques, but I definitely loved this
Everything about putrid s4nd which was great works beautifully here. Although, I'm not entirely sure if some of the changes you made for this version work as well they should. Though take some of these issues I had with a grain of salt cus most of them are because I felt that putrid s4nd was perfect as it was lol.
I kind of wished that the indicators for which ability fires after a given number of bullets was similiar to putrid s4nd where you had it next to your current bullet count. Having them to the left is fine, though in the heat of battle I hardly looked at the left side instead of checking my right for the bullet count.
The larger levels are great and allow for more mobility, though it makes the earlier sections of the game a little boring since you have only enemies which move around rather than the ones which shoot at you. Maybe the first level could have no platforms, incentivising players to actually learn to dodge better, and also aim upwards for flying enemies since they probably won't do it much in later levels as the levels allow more mobility as I said before.
I also feel there needs to be descriptions for mods for weapons between levels. Mostly because I wasn't really sure what the icons actually meant. Again, this might be just me and with repeated playthroughs a player will remember of course, but for initial playthroughs, it may cause frustration choosing a mod you didn't really want, mostly because you didn't know what it was lol.
No complaints about the elite fights though, very well designed and fun to fight. As you can see, I died in the second phase of the boss lol, though I felt that even it was designed damn well and was fun to fight. I have one complaint about the boss though. His vertical smash was well indicated, but I sometimes couldn't really see the waves sent in both the left and right direction from that smash. They were also the prime reason why I actually took any damage in that fight. Maybe making them bigger and more noticable would help here because I wasn't really sure for a good chunk of that fight why I was taking damage until I looked a little closer lol. Again, this might just be me, but something to keep in mind.
As a whole though, fantastic bite-sized rogue-lite and a great expansion of putrid s4nd.
P.S
You honestly make some of the best boss-fights I've found in any game on itch.io lol.
Wow thanks a ton for the feedback!
The new spell indicators is something I was mixed about too. Putrid S4nd's restrictions with pico 8 is what resulted in the really elegant design of showing the spells on your ammo counter. For this game, I wonder if I could double-up and show both the spells on the left and show a mark on the ammo counter. I could also experiment with having them on the same side of the screen, or even just make this all into some kind of game option (like an option to show spells on ammo counter or something). Either way, this is exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for, I'm sure in the heat of battle it's tough to keep switching between both sides of the screen.
I like your idea of removing the platforms in the early levels. Like you said, it'd incentivize players to practice shooting up and also practice dodging enemies.
Ah yeah the weapon mods text was something I was being strategically lazy about, but I got the same feedback from others during initial playtests. I was originally keeping it minimal with the hope that players would, over multiple runs, learn the mods based on minimal text / icons. But like you said, it feels pretty bad to pick a mod only to realize it does something you don't want it to do. I'll look into adding some contextual text that appears when you move under the mod so players know what they're getting into.
Boss battles are usually my favorite part of development, so I'm glad you liked them! The shockwaves for the zone1 boss's slam were the most common thing to hit everyone who playtested initially too, so I definitely need to make them a bit more visually prominent.
Glad you enjoyed the game! I'm really excited to continue working on this and release it, though it might take some time. Thanks a ton for the feedback, this is exactly the type of stuff I was looking for.
I will Generously playtest this for you ;)
(also, will totally make some videos of it)
Hahaha I'd love that! Definitely looking for feedback/testing, the game is still very much in development.