AGDG Demo Day 13: AttaBoy's feedback A-L
(If I didn't cover your game let me know)

Cybervania:
Pretty cool, though there are some major issues with the feel of gameplay (as there will be with any somewhat early demo)
Things I liked:
The gun menu is really cool, and you've clearly put a lot of work into it. It will be really cool when all the combos work, and I like the idea of a Metroidvania where upgrades are crafted instead of just found. Also the enemy behavior, especially the spear head thing, was pretty cool. I also think the animation for melee has potential
Issues:
Movement feels pretty slidey, not satisfying. Also the melee animations were too long and clunky to feel useful, I just ended up using shotgun config exclusively. Your run animation also has same arm/same leg movement, which is the opposite of what it should be. I assume mappable controls will eventually be put in, but I would prefer arrows to move, space to jump, up to go into doors, and F to attack. Also door detection was a bit spotty
Overall:
Liked it, it has some really cool ideas and setting, but there's a ton of polish that needs to happen, especially in combat timing

XenArena:
This was awesome, even though I didn't have a room with anyone to play with. Testing the characters felt pretty good, my only complaint was that it all felt a little slow, but I suppose in a room that size it would turn out to be fine. Animations could probably improve that. Xen was fun but Xevil's downward shot felt really nice for pressure. I'm excited to see where this goes.
Quick note, I don't like that idle animations have the character's feet moving up and down. Those should stay planted
Overall: This seems fun with multiplayer. It was a bit slow, but I don't know if that's by design. Just keep tightening up movement and improving art, looking forward to more!

FinalBoss:
Wow this is lots of fun! Simple, cool Gameboy-esque graphics, great music and concept. I don't know if the enemy behavior is changing between stages, but it almost seemed like having more pieces of armor was making it a bit easier because I would basically mine free time by shooting that. Really fun though, you could put this up on any flash game/html5 site and probably have it be pretty successful

23 Prometheus:
Crashed upon launch, following message
Variable obj_srs_fireball_particle.screenzoom(100295, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Script_scr_loadoptions
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Script_scr_loadoptions (line 0)
gml_Room_rm_start_Create

:( I might try again later if I have time

AGDG Bowling:
Simple and nice. Sliders for spin and power aren't very satisfying, but the simulation is good. Although sometimes the ball would stop dead if it was slow enough. This would benefit greatly from nice sound effects, but good work

Apotheosis:
So clearly this is incredibly polished and very juicy. Good music, gameplay is good, I like the progression and gaining of abilities between levels. There's a lot that's really good here, and it seems almost ready for retail so I'll tell you what I had issues with:
The game over screen seems weirdly centered on the room, not the view, so it would sometimes appear off centered or cutoff, which was not good. Similarly the controls screen on the main menu was half cutoff, so I couldn't select anything or even get out of it, I had to restart the game. Also, while I get the artstyle of the game, a silhouette character that is very small is hard to make out in a room full of silhouette enemies. Maybe consider a bolder outline? And also, while I love the art style and environment, I think you could put a few more frames into making that run animation smoother, that's basically all the player sees.
Great work, can't wait to see it release!

Black Valentine:
There's a lot I like here and some I don't:
Good:
The atmosphere here is really nice, I realy like the style. Apart from the >mixels you have a really nice art direction for something so simplistic, and the music and palette helps a lot. The story is cute, though I don't know if I got to the end, I got stuck after the coffee bit (I chuckled at the coffee mug). I really like the hidden paths, things like that in New Super Mario Games and Donkey Kong Country are always a treat
Issues:
Secrets are great, but you shouldn't have to be willing to kill yourself to get them. The best one you had was a fake wall that you had to slide on in order to get out of a pit, which made the secret inevitable but surprising, which was great. Fake spikes on the other hand are dumb unless there's a way to identify them.
I was wondering why movement felt off to me and I realized it's that you keep your momentum in midair after you release the key. This makes it feel really imprecise which doesn't suit your game well. It's fine to have some easing into starting and stopping, but this just felt bad.
This is small, but I think the back leg in the walk sprite shouldn't become darker, it makes it look invisible which looks strange
Overall:
I liked it, especially the atmosphere and art, but tighten up the movement and don't try to fuck over the player with secrets that require you to try and kill yourself. Risk taking is a good thing to force, but straight up jumping into spikes is hard to justify. Keep up the good work!


Blade of Blood
There's some cool concepts, but it's really hard to play. The platforms and backgrounds are so dark I'm basically blind, the controls feel very laggy, and everything seems to die in similar numbers of hits (though I didn't get very far because I really couldn't see the platforms) so the awesome massive blade was never really useful. I couldn't get a sense of your main mechanics, which I'm sure are cool, but are impossible to learn because you just can't see. Also for some reason I could only move with a controller using the d-pad, not the analog stick. All this being said, good 3D/2D platformers are cool and I like the tone youre going for, youre just not there yet. I'm excited to see this polished up so I can give it another try!

City Nights:
Holy shit what a spookfest. The music and atmosphere is great here, I was really unsettled by the following man, and I knew that if he had a full animation set that would have been tenfold. The first two rooms have a really cool vibe, very DOS (obviously), but even after you get into the untextured block rooms it still retains a good feel. I never felt the need to use items, but maybe I never found the right places, I just played until I died a few times. Submenu made me kek. Can't wait to see this develop more, with some art passes this will be really really nice

Consecrated Rampage:
Good:
Hits felt satisfying, which is critical for a game like this. I wish combos flowed a little more smoothly or intuitively, but there was a nice amount of weight (but not enough to be distracting) to the hits. I also thought the camera was nice, but it could lerp a little more slowly when you enter a level.
For placeholder art I like the enemies, especially the not-Starman enemy.
Issues:
Attacks feel like they take a little too much time to go, like it's just passed the point of having satisfying weight and into the territory of feeling almost unresponsive.
Sound effects were a little oppressive, especially the jump one.
I get that art is placeholder, but >mixels. Also, I like the satisfying bisecting of the enemies, but their corpses still look similar to living enemies and it can be really hard to differentiate living from dead enemies.
Overall:
It's a lot of fun, can't wait for art to get in there, but tighten up the combat feel, weight is good but so is responsiveness

Ctesiphon:
Jesus christ this is good. Gunplay feels fun, music is great, sound effects are appropriate but not overbearing, and holy shit your level design floored me. I kept finding new ways to get places and little rewards for doing so. Well done, can't wait to see more enemies and levels. Shotgun best gun

Ghost Knight Victis
My shitty laptop couldn't run it well, but it looked really pretty at 4 fps. Models and environment seemed nice

MMBN Clone:
I never played Battle Network but I really liked this game. The art could use polish but what they're conveying is really clear and I love the player character's animations, especially the warp between tiles. Cool mechanics implemented well, with nice music too. I'm shit at it, but it was fun and I kept trying. Only complaint mightbe the controls, but I probably would get used to them pretty fast. Nice work!

GunCat:
Really cool demo!
Good:
Music is great, as is the artwork. Gave the whole thing a fun atmosphere. The starting guns felt very satisfying to use, which was awesome. The levels are simple and intuitive. And this is just clearly a well-put-together demo
Issues:
Annoying that you can't shoot the ground (like to hit pots) when youre right over them. The shotgun felt hard to use, I never got the hang of it. Also it's annoying to switch keyboard controls to controller every death.
Overall:
I was really bad at this, but it was fun. I haven't beaten it, but I'll definitely go back and keep playing. Something about the way you get hit made this really hard for me. Probably because I'm a fucker who spams iFrames in games so the lack of iFrames is getting me. I'll git gud though. Can't wait to see more

Hack the FBI:
This was short but really impressive. I know you've been working on it for a long time, and that time really shows with how immersive the interface is. Little touches like "typing" and dialogue paths help to make it feel nice. My only complaint here (besides that I wanted more) was that I knew what a tilde was, but didn't know how to operate the command line, and there was no path besides the endlessly long tilde path that taught me how to use the command line. Overall, great stuff, the timing on correspondences felt snappy but not instant, and I could see how this could be really satisfying when you have to figure stuff out for yourself.

Hemoglobin Project:
I really like this, I think the tone of your story, the environment and the pacing are all well done. Sound effects are really fitting, but not overpowering. When the door opens after getting the fireaxe I got a chill. This is headed in a real nice direction so here a few nitpicks:
It's weird that collisions with the wall occur at the top tile on the floor and not with the wall itself
When you hold the axe and run slower the sprite gets sort of jittery
The drop shadow can overlap with objects that are in front of you by 1 pixel
This might just be me, but I felt that some of the hallway sections were too long and samey, which could get a little boring and/or confusing when navigating. The environments were nice and varied, but it was tough to tell where you were sometimes
Overall really good demo, fun and with good atmosphere and pacing. Puzzles were satisfying, and the environments and art were really good. Can't wait for the next part!

House Cleaner:
Cool demo, unfortunately my laptop has a super shitty mouse so I could barely shoot well. I did run around all the levels and try my best though, here are the notes
Good:
I really like the time slow mechanic, though I couldn't utilize it too well due to my shitty mouse. But bullet time's one of my favorite types of mechanics, so it's nice to see it in action here and I can see how it might be really cool to mow down a bunch of baddies with it
I like the protag, he's pretty cool looking
The bottles being interactable could be lead to great interactables, like the classic explosive red barrels, good call having the environment be interactable (After Nuclear Throne many people will expect interactive/destructable environment)
Issues:
The movement is really slippery, which I saw you talk about in the thread; saying it makes a player think about their decisions, but there are better ways to implement that. Even just toning down the acceleration/deceleration would be a big help (this might suck, but maybe try eliminating acceleration during bullet time?)
Enemy bullets can be pretty hard to track onscreen, grenades espeicaly, as they are the same color as bottles and really small
The environment generally has two different pixel scales, but I'm sure you can improve that over time
Overall: Cool mechanics that you should keep expanding while tightening up the gameplay

International Bounty Hunter:
I liked the aesthetics of this, but the gameplay was sort of off-putting for me. I liked the idea of hunting around for tidbits of information, but I just felt like I was going in and out of the computer and clicking the three locations until I got what I needed, it didn't feel really investigative. Also, twice I went to the city that was the correct one and clicked on the tavern to get information for a warrant, then it told me I had failed because I had found them without a warrant. I just didn't know how to win. I like the idea and look of this, and the interface is clean and well done, but I didn't find it very compelling to play. I'd love more investigative work that's a little deeper. It also ran consistently struggling to get 30 fps, but that may be my laptop. (This game doesn't suffer from a bad framerate anyway.) Art is great, I'd just like the gameplay to be a bit deeper. Looking forward to more!


Infraction:
This had a tendency to crash upon losing. This is pretty rough, but it's stuff that you're probably aware of
Good:
Level design is cool. There is a lot of potential in this despite the problems I'm about to mention, many behinds the scenes things are well implemented like keycards and sliding doors
There's also a lot implemented in this demo, which is great. Even if it it isn't polished, there's a lot here that gives a good idea of what the final game might be.
Issues:
First thing, the controls are atrocious. The human hand shouldn't contort to have all controls mapped to WASD, LAlt, LCtrl, LShift and space. And navigating menus with arrows while WASD is movement is just as dumb
I couldn't get body dragging to work, though it didn't seem that necessary. Enemies were pretty easy to kill, apart from the fact that I couldn't seem to shoot while changing direction which was annoying.
Corpses didn't spawn where I killed the enemies, and I could see enemies spawn out of the level
It needs sound
Overall:
This has the makings of a very cool and classic game, a lot is already implemented. It just needs a ton of tightening up and heaps of polish and fixes

Jinzo:
This was really nice
Good:
Story was cool, though the first scene was kinda out of place.
The gameplay was tight and fun. I didn't fully get the shield breaking/helmet mechanic, but I realized pretty soon when I started to get hit. The art was simple but fine for this stage, I really liked that you could move along the ground and up ramps and such and also just jetpack everywhere.
Issues:
The only main issue I had with this was that you couldn't change your aim direction while shooting. I would experiment with some sort of strafe key, just because it was annoying having to release fire and change direction
Overall:
This was a lot of fun gameplay, and the story seems well thought out, can't wait to see it be polished more and more

Less Click:
This was a very cool idea. Obviously I'd love to have enemies and such, But I really liked the idea of gathering and disseminating energy. The art is really basic, but there are little juice things already there that I like, like the energy moving through the wires. Excited to see where this is going!