AGDG Demo Day 9

Foreword
Hi!
I've went trough all games submitted to Demo Day, well, at least I hope so. Just search for the title of your game to read my two cents about it. If you can't find your game, let me know it some way or another, and I'll try to find some time for it.
However, first, I would like to have a small summary up here about the overall Demo Day experience I've had.

Summary
Really minor issues which could have been prevented
- Zip the game's folder, and not the game's files.
- Implement at least one quit option, especially if you force full screen. If you have an event listener for mouse movement and key presses, adding [ESC] as the quit button is not a huge thing. relevant to this: if the player dies, reset the game for him.
- Make sure the player sees what you want them to see. If you promise some action on your game's page, make sure the player won't end up in your testing chamber.
- Please, name your game only once. Let the game has the same name everywhere: on the page, on the zip, on the window.
- Don't make the player use the mouse when otherwise it's never needed in the actual game.

Suggestions to everyone
I've been part of other amateur creative groups before, and it looks like what I have learned there could be applied to other craftsmanships also, game development included. Not counting some exceptions, most of the games I've played could be much more better if you would do the following two things:
- Play more.
- Let others play your game more.
Allow me to elaborate.
- Play more:
Playing more doesn't mean actually playing more. Yes, sit down and play games, but also analyse them. Understand why the controls feel good in one game, and why does it feel crap in another for example. Try out as many games as you can. Many of the demos I've played has major issues in the controls, which just ruins everything else which comes afterwards. There's one way you can read a book, and there's only a handful of ways to play an FPS or a platformer. You can reinvent the wheel in your code by finding a new way for detecting collision, but stick with what feels natural for the player in terms of controls. The controls are just an example, but it can be applied to other things: difficulty curve, level design etc.. Learn from other's successes and mistakes. Don't try to be original where it's not needed. Don't fear to adapt things which proved to be already working.
Which leads to the second topic:
- Let others play your game more:
It's nice that Demo Day is called, well, Demo Day, but what it's really should be called is 'Free play testers day'. Which is perfectly fine, but you really have to let as many people try out your game as you can. Don't stuck with a handful of levels, waiting for Demo Day to come hoping to get some feedback on them. No. It's just slows down your progress. Why would you wait months for something, if you can just let the nearest person to you have a try at it? Force your mother to play, let your co-workers take a look, show it to the guy sleeping next to you during the lecture. I can not stress it enough: let people play your stuff and learn from it, analyse the shit out of it. What decisions do they make? Why? Do they enjoy it? What do the enjoy about it? Why do they struggling on the first stage? Are the in game instructions clear? And so on…
These leads to a kinda sad conclusion:
We, at /agdg/, talk too much about the looks. We wait for games which looks good or awesome, and we talk so little about what makes a game fun, how to create a well design level.
Yes, game development is like making a film. It requires artistic skills, story telling abilities, sound design etc., but what fundamentally makes a game a game, is, well, the fact that it can be played.

Frogs Life
- Cute concept, a humble and comfy game overall. There's no clear goal yet, but the mechanics implemented so far seems to be working.
- Nice animation.
- The day and night transition is a little bit off. First I thought there's something wrong with my monitor. I think it can be done better.
- There's an error in the frog's room. Occasionally a green line appears on the screen.
- When you start the game, you're stuck, you can't move. You have to enter the house in order to make it run.
- When you fish before the door of the merchant's tent, and walk in without calling your fishing blob back, your movement gets stuck.
- It would be nice to have some tool tips about the items.
- The camera following feels too slow, but maybe it's just my taste.
- Nice music.

Jelly
- Amazing graphics. I'm mad jealous.
- Fun concept.
- Good sound effects.
- The secrets are fun to find and the puzzles are good.
- The dark places are too dark.
- Getting stuck on edges (where you have to jump over small pieces of land) is annoying.
- I needed some time to get used to the controls. I wanted to control it like this: W for forward, A for turning left, D for turning right. Maybe it's just me.
- Some check points would be nice.

Vampire's Bit
- The bug regarding the controls have been fixed.
- The AI is much much better. Now I had to use every inch of the map to get away from him.
- Good visuals, however like the other's have already said, the garlic is not recognisable, yet it's a good idea. Maybe show the hunter from the side when he holds it up?
- Nice sound effects.
- It's really hard to explain, but I always felt like I get stuck all the time, the controls are kinda stiff.
- Indicating how many girls I need to catch would be good.
- Thank you for the bonus screen!

Idol Comm@nder
- I really don't understand why you've chosen these keys for controls. It feels uncomfortable and unnecessary. I could hardly play the game because of this, but hey, I'm a guy who asked for a refund for Crypt of the Necrodancer because I could hardly past even the first stage, so maybe it's just me and I'm not the target audience.
- The mapping of the song is amazingly well done.
- The visuals are cute and nicely done.
- The girl should be somewhere else, since it's nearly impossible to watch both the upcoming keys and her at the same time.
- The turns on the line feels unnecessary.
- The secret costume is a nice little extra, I wish I could unlock it.

Muteki
- For this, I would like to cite from the game's page:
This physics sandbox demo showcases the advanced 'free cutting' damage system, which lets you carve up enemies any way you like-- they'll break apart dynamically, and orphaned equipment modules will cease to function. In the next demo, you'll also be able to attach them any way you like.
- This demo does exactly that. No more, no less. It's hard to add anything else. Maybe this:
- It looks cool and feels good to peel pace ships like a banana.

Clarent
- Amazing visuals. Very good attention to detail.
- Hard as fuck.
- Good sound effects.
- I like the new demo level.
- The controls are better.
- The action has became much faster and better, it feels fun to slice the enemies.
- The jumping feels weird, it's hard to explain.

Travelers
- Switching between the top down view and the FPS view is an interesting concept, yet I don't see the point for it.
- The lights are nice, yet most of the map is too damn dark. Maybe implementing a flash light would be an interesting addition.
- Good sound effects.

Dungeon faller
- Holding down the left mouse button does nothing for me.
- With that said, I was just rocket jumping the whole time.
- Nice animation.

Ctesiphon
- Now we are fucking talking!
- Excellent controls.
- Awesome music.
- Good old '90s FPS action.
- Good level design.
- I wanted to say some suggestions, but I'm not here to idea guy the game, and what's in it is just perfect as it is.

Zero Quest
- This game has the most amount of content so far.
- Nice graphics, good attention to detail.
- Good humour.
- The music should fit the tone better. It's good, but, for example, when the Skull explains the mission, a different tune would be better.
- Interesting battle mechanics.
- When I jumped into the abyss on the first level (with the ninjas) the game crashed.
- Moving to 8 directions feels unnecessary. WASD would be more than enough.

Skeleton Boomerang
- Nice graphics.
- Fun gameplay.
- Simple yet entertaining.
- Is the song a remix of this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33o32C0ogVM or maybe it's more familiar from this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-reAa2ushQ Just double check if everything is legally ok with the score.

Shmoop
- Intense action.
- Fitting music and sound effects.
- Fun game overall.
- The graphics are a little bit on and off. Some parts are very detailed and nice, some are just place holders, which is fine, however some fall in between the two, and I don't know if it is intentional or not. I mostly think about the shooting boxes.
- I've died more times than I dare to admit. Thank you very much for the very easy mode!

Tender Arms
- It's good that I can choose my character.
- Little details like the heart beat, the texts etc. really add to the immersion.
- The controls feels good. Attention to things like 'press B to breeze trough text' is nice.
- Everything feels well thought trough.

Project Wingman
- The 'Retry' button does nothing.
- It looks nice.
- I know it's just an alpha, but some in game explanation would have been helpful.
- It was fun to shoot and fly around.
- I just want to warn you that this is a game where you'll really have to play test on other machines. It felt a little bit slow on my rig. (8GB RAM, GeForce GT 730, AMD Athlon(tm) X4 750K Quad Core)
- I don't know what's your goal. For a fun shooter the controls and the overall feel of the environment is just too 'formal', however it's not serious and complex enough (yet, I assume) for a simulator.

Dungeon Break
- Punching bats right in the fucking face! Hell yeah!
- The game freezes at the game over screen. Maybe it's too much of a punishment.
- Very good and detailed animations.
- Maybe a little bit too hard.
- For some reason, when I hit an enemy, I feel like my hit not always counts.
- Has some good humour.
- The music is nice.

ComfyVille
- Maybe because I couldn't figure out the controls, but at this moment, I found no game play other than walking around.
- I couldn't rotate the camera.
- Since you use Unreal engine, I have to tell you the same I wrote in case of Project Wingman: I just want to warn you that this is a game you'll really have to play test on other machines. It felt a little bit slow on my rig, the walking animation I think were lagging. (8GB RAM, GeForce GT 730, AMD Athlon(tm) X4 750K Quad Core)
- It is, indeed, a very comfy game.

SNEK
- Interesting and promising concept. Hope you'll work on it in the future.
- Currently some things are unclear. What's the difference between hands and crosses? Why do I have to move tile by tile?
- Good job on the path finding for the enemies.

Unnamed platformer
- Cute and humble concept.
- Perfectly delivers what it promises. What's in the game is well polished.
- Good level design.
- Amazing job on the slopes.
- Nice animations.
- A score counter would have been cool.
- Good controls.

Phantom Hack
- As I see it's an alpha version of a 2D platformer shooter.
- Promising.
- It's nice that the character automatically climbs on some blocks.
- Good graphics where it's not place holder grey rectangles.

Ordinary platformer life
- Cute concept.
- Nice animations and textures.
- It's unclear what purpose does the circle in the top left corner have.
- I don't know if it's intentional, but if you jump next to the enemy, they die. Let me explain: 1) you stand next to the enemy 2) jump 3) but also press the button in the direction of the enemy 4) you don't jump over it 5) but instead, your leg touches its head (like when you accidentally hit the stairs with your foot) 6) it dies, however in most platformers you expect the opposite, which is, you take hit.
- It's very good progress considering the fact that you've just started it a few weeks ago.

Giant knight
- Interesting idea.
- The fact that jumping also drains your energy requires the player think more about the decisions he has to make during combat.
- I love that the menu gives so much information. How many +dmg will I have, etc.
- Some animations are weird. When you do the roll on the ground, for example, it doesn't seem to be right, and sometimes the big wolf did interesting things. It feels like the usual time between frames are shortened, and movement doesn't seem to be continuous.
- Don't forget to remove the developer stuff from the final version (hit boxes etc.).

Bokube
- I was on the first level three times in a row. Once it even froze for a short time.
- Good puzzles. It's good that camera rotation is not only there for show, but you must use it in order to solve said puzzles.
- Sometimes the text bubbles does not appear fully inside the window, but I guess you can just rotate to see it.
- If you can't jump while moving, don't play the sound effect of jumping.
- I really like how it's cute and child friendly, yet maybe you might want to change some of the texts if that's your goal.
- The sounds are too low.

Skull Chainz
- Pure, concentrated fun. No more, no less.
- Perfect mobile game (I guess that's your goal), however it might get boring after a while.
- Excellent pixel graphics.
- Ear blowing sound effects (in a good way).

You are a torpedo AI
- Dude, just, give me a break, okay? The last time I was this frustrated from a game was when I was playing with Super Meat Boy.
- On a serious note: good level design.
- Maybe a little bit too hard, but maybe I just need to practice more.
- There's not much to say what hasn't been said already on previous Demo Days. If you want us to test the new levels, don't lock them.

Ball Run
- The physics work good.
- It can be a fun Mouse Trap clone.
- With that said, the game has a promising concept.

Tactical RPG
- Promising FFT clone.
- I know we are all devs here, but next time you should let us have the release version, and not the debug version.
- After I've selected my party, the game just froze on the battlefield. The characters were still moving, yet I could do nothing.
- Lag Detected: 1 was the last message in the log.

New New Sorpigal
- Your Unreal Engine game was the least laggy for me so far. Here's my specs: 8GB RAM, GeForce GT 730, AMD Athlon(tm) X4 750K Quad Core.
- Why do I have to press E for attack, while every other interaction happens with the mouse? Shouldn't it be the other way around?
- The nights are too dark and the torches give nearly no light.
- Some concept decisions doesn't make sense to me. Why do I have a party? Why do we attack in turn? Why there's scrolling text? Why isn't the enemy health just displayed as the player health? It feels like you want to create a classic RPG game here, yet the action does not feel turn based or slow for a game like this. However for a fast paced hack 'n' slash FPS there's just too much other things going on.
- I'm not familiar with the Unreal Engine, so I don't know how many of the graphics are place holders or original, but they are nice.
- The forest is comfy.
- Make sure in the final version that players can not jump out of the map.

Essence Tactics
- Clever AI.
- The AI's movement should be slowed down. They move so fast when it's their turn, that they often glitch than walk.
- I love that terrain elements are destructible. Maybe it could be a nice game play element? Like there's an archer who can not shot at someone, but you destroy the bush in sight with another character so now he has a clear shot. Sorry for idea guying.
- With that said, everyone has clear vision in his reach. It's not an issue, it's just unusual, but I wonder how it'll feel in the long run.
- Fun abilities.

God is a Cube
- It's good to finally see a game which teaches algorithmic thinking, yet has this much content.
- The game could have a very interesting theme with trippy visuals, yet you ruin the immersion with meme dialogue. I really not see the point of it.
- The girl's look just doesn't match the rest of the game.

Tier1
- I just couldn't control it. I couldn't even pass the tutorial. I was just floating around in space. The instructions were no help.
- The concept of the Polish Space Programme is interesting.
- Good music and nice graphics.

Clean Slate
- I guess it's a technical demo for a box pushing game. Maybe it'll be a puzzle?
- The music is too low by default.

Crystal Chrysalis
- The game looks nothing like on the picture.
- I was in limbo, with a train and with items in straight line on the ground, enemies coming at me, and I saw all this from third person. It felt like a testing room for mechanics. I don't know if it's intentional or not.
- The sprites look good.

Vital
- I guess it's an island I can walk on. The only Unreal game so far which ran smoothly.
- I don't know if the assets are original or not, but they look nice.

BN Clone
- Interesting battle game.
- The enemies in the later stages are much more interesting.
- It gets a little boring after you learn the attack pattern of each enemy. Basically it becomes a rhythm game after that point.

Untitled ARPG
- Basically an ARPG with a twist. The twist is that the player has to charge the attacks before unleashing them. It works good so far, I wonder how it'll turn out to be when there's more content.

Ad Steroids
- An Asteroids clone. No more, no less, done good.

Berserk Kusoge
- Jumping on the wall is nice.
- Interesting combat mechanics. The delay of the attack is good, since it's in chemistry with the rest of the game. The enemies also have slow attacks, and they warn you when they are using it, so you can jump away.
- Maybe it gets a little bit repetitive after a while. I guess when the game is complete, there'll be some story or some scenery to look at and more types of enemies to fight with (even tho you already have a handful of baddies).
- Don't make the user use the mouse when otherwise it's never needed.
- I've played in 800x600.

hair receive bullet
- I couldn't shoot.
- The jumping felt weird. It's like the movement was faster when I get to the top of my jump arc instead of being the slowest at that point.
- Happy Demo Day to you, too!

UAMOU Invasion
- Good challenge, I hope you're working on a mobile port.
- Cute sprites, nice music.

Cool Shooter
- You've lied to me. It's not a cool shooter. It's a radical shooter! Cowabunga, dude!
- It's a basic top down shooter. Wonder where will it evolve.

Shape Souls
- It is a really promising puzzle game, reminds me of Thomas was Alone.
- Hope to see more content in the future!
- The fact that the level editor is actually working is wonderful.

2D Dogfighting
- I don't understand the name of this game.
- I couldn't use the machine gun.
- Nice touch on the usual shooting with planes genre with the bombings and such, wonder where you'll go with it.

Light Game
- The in game menu didn't work.
- If I pressed the arrow keys on the level selection screen, well, interesting things happened. Like the screen suddenly jumped to the top or to the left.
- On the third level some strange creatures gang raped me, then the level did not restart automatically. Why do the player has to press the restart key on some occasions, but not in others (like falling to a pit)?
- I like the idea behind the mechanic, yet the visual representation is just weird, and on many occasions unexplained. Sometimes there's a city in the background, but we are basically going from bed to bed. Who are these people? I guess the story will be implemented later? Currently, the fact that you are a dog (or a plushie of a little child?) seems to be unnecessary.
- Like I've commented on You're a Torpedo AI: you've uploaded this game before, so there's nothing new I can say about it, but if you want us to play test the new levels and mechanics, please, unlock them for us.

SuperStock
- I don't know what went wrong here. I've pressed every single button on my keyboard and I couldn't start any of the levels.
- I loved the game previously, tho.

Charlotte's Dream
- The 'dream' scenario always leaves room for creativity, and I'm happy to see that you've done just that. The special moves with the guitar are fun, the enemies are fun, the facial expressions are fun. Well, what can I say, it's a fun game.

Falling
- The angels respawn too slowly.
- Their physics are nice.
- It's a shame that it's a meme game. With an original theme it could be a fun mobile/browser game.

Raiders buggy
- The game doesn't reset when the group dies.
- Good work on the path finding.
- Nice art.
- I like these kind of RTSs, where you control a small group rather than an army. Much like the Dawn of War series. It's good to see something like that in a fantasy environment. I'm looking forward where the project will evolve.

Card Tactix
- It's an easy to understand tactics game.
- The difficulty would need some balance. If you stand next to two enemies, you almost die instantly.
- If there's nothing else to do other than getting to the exit, why do you make the player walk there turn by turn? It's just tedious.

Spin/Flip
- I'm in for the idea of a minimalistic top down shooter, yet the game is all over the place.
- The controls are way too fast, and everything is just happening too fast that it's hard to grasp what's happening.
- I believe the Arena Mode is broken, or I just don't understand how the camera following works.

[Placeholder Title]
- As I see it will be a fun game when it's finished.
- It's hard to explain, but try to polish the current mechanics more in order to make the action more dynamic. Jumping felt a little bit stiff sometimes.

Directive
- I'm flying around and shoot.
- It's weird that you can move forward with the arrow keys, but you can only turn with A and D. At least W works also for forward movement.
- Nice graphics.
- The line after the spacecraft gets behind the other obstacles.

Stellar Jets
- A love child of Asteroids and a shmup.
- I couldn't do any damage to the first boss. Is that intentional or am I just bad at your game?

When It Hits the Fan
- A fun top down shooter, almost like Crimsonland.
- Good sounds and music, nice animations.

Deeplinks
- Very clever concept. The only games I know of which are similar to this are Hacknet and TIS-100. The new element you bring into the picture is the GUI. In TIS, you are basically repairing a computer, while in Hacknet you are mostly relying on the command line, yet you let us use the some Windows like interface.
- In the Windows tutorial, after I sent the letter from the drafts, nothing happened. I don't know what I did wrong. I sent both of the drafts with the doc attached. In the command line tutorial you've made it perfectly clear when the tutorial ended.
- For the command line, I was quite surprised that you've went with the DOS commands and not with the Unix ones. (No 'ls', only 'dir', you can open a file simply by typing in its name and no 'cat' or 'less' or whatever was required.) It was quite refreshing.
- Even if the password is typed in, I have to retype it and press submit or otherwise it will send me back to the front page.
- It's annoying that the browser forgets what was the last visited page on a given site, it was not easy to use two browers tabs.
- I had no idea what to do after I've logged in to the police.
- I don't want to idea guy your game, but if you don't know Hacknet, give it a try. What I want to suggest that instead of giving us a tutorial, teach us how to play via a simple mission. Like there's a tutor, a well known hacker who teaches us, since we are his apprentice or something.
- When you want to select your name from the shop, you can not press the arrow to open the drop down list.

Illuminants
- When I die it doesn't resets.
- I like the environment and the monsters, but I don't feel like the hand and the UI matches with it.
- Don't forget that in most games green liquid (along with red) is a bad thing. Especially since your enemies are also green, like they live there and it gives them power or something. It felt like a bug first that I didn't get hit by it.
- I don't feel the impact of my hits. I don't know that in game space how far my hands are from me, and since I don't see my hands actually touching the enemies when I hit them, fighting becomes a gambling.
- With that said, it feels too hard now. Maybe adding some health regenerating stuff would be nice, or just adding simple regeneration.
- If you implement puzzle elements like the rock pushing, make sure the player can't fuck it up by pushing it in a corner making it unable to get it out.

VIPLIKE
- To have a diagonal and a traditional list menu at the same time is good.
- Looking around while holding X didn't worked for me.
- I wouldn't let the player cross through objects which he can interact with, if said interaction requires to be at some distance with said object. What I mean is that after I've killed the first girl, I could only pick it up if I activated the menu while standing next to her. First I thought I can do that while standing on her, since, well, I could stand on her.
- The game doesn't resets when the player dies.
- I couldn't figure out how fighting works. I just pressed the arrow in the direction of the enemies and that's it, but I kept on dying since they always attacked back at that instance, without giving me any chance to run away.
- I like the look of the girl, and the fact that her portrait changes when she gets hit. Maybe her facial expression should also reflect her current stance like in Doom and Wolfenstein 3D (where your face gets bloodier as you loose health).
- Many things are not explained, like why are all the girls the same expect the color. What are these spirits? Or are these just place holders currently?
- Your enemy path finding is good. At one occasion I thought I can lure them to somewhere to get past them, but some of them had chosen another route to me, which led to a situation where I was just surrounded and get killed. With that said, I couldn't get so far in the game.