I love the game, I think it's incredible and you should continue working on it, I think this game has a ton of potential. I'm going to recommend this game to all of my friends. Keep up the good work!
If you are interested in certain parts of the code for learning-purposes and how to do some stuff, sure. Even though the code became a mess. But I won't give away all of the code (and assets). Sorry!
I really enjoyed the game, and it felt kind of like Enter the Gungeon to me. Also, I think you should consider having a patron account to help with developing the game.
One thing that I think would be kind of cool, is that when a player finishes the campaign, they could unlock different game-modes. Such as an endless mode with randomly generated levels, monsters and items. Or an all new difficulty you could get from beating it on hard.
Sometimes it can feel a fairly slow.. I think that if you made the AI for the enemies "smarter", and added a few more attack animations, it would make the game feel a bit faster. Also, if you added different enemy types that look different, sound different, and have seperate attack animations would help the game not feel as repetetive.
P.S. - Making it so that the spawn locations of enemies, type of enemies, and drop rate of items is partially random for each level, could help with replay-ability.
I have not played much of the game, but I do like what I see so far. I have not been playing Souls games for very long, but I have quickly become a huge fan. Your game has all the core elements that make these types of games great and it has a respectable level of polish to it. I'm sure I will spend a good deal more time at some point playing Seal Breaker.
Now as for the main reason why I have only play maybe 10-15 min of the game so far is the reason why I am writing this as well as why I even created this account. There is a huge bug I have run into multiple times already in my brief play time. Some bug occurs causing me to be unable to attack. Both mouse buttons do not do anything. I can consistently fix this by simply using an item. When I use an item while experiencing the bug, the melee attack animation goes off immediately and it even damages an enemy if one is near.
I am not entirely sure what causes it, but it happened enough to be a problem. I'm guessing there is some problem with the attack animation being interrupted. I tried to reproduce it by either walking backwards while attacking or getting hit while while attacking, but I could not purposefully initiate the bug (not that I spent much time on it). I hope this helps you make the game better better.
My only other criticism is the general feel of playing the game is rather sluggish. I'm not sure how best to describe this, but it just does not feel as responsive as I would like. Making everything a bit faster might give it a better feel.
Overall, I do think you have made a good game here. I could even see using rogue-like elements with procedurely-generated areas and random monsters/loot being fun with the gameplay you have already created. I look forward to delving through what you have already created once I have the time.
I have played through this and thought I dump what I have in my mind... I hope you pick up something useful from it. BTW, you are talking about 15 to 60 minutes gameplay, but for me on hard mode it was more than 2 hours for sure. 15 minutes sounds impossibly quick.
First of all, I liked the game very much! Of course, considering that it's a prototype. After some polish, maybe you can capitalize on the guys hopelessly waiting for Eitr to come out. (-;
To me, the most important issues are with the AI:
Enemies often stuck behind objects when they try to walk towards you. They just try to walk towards you without trying to go around. (Even if I don't want to exploit that, its sometimes not easy to get to the place where they unstuck.)
If they are very far away, they just stand there while you are shooting them with fireballs. An relatively easy solution could be if they they dodge them if they aren't in attacking mode. (Ideally the should advance to attack instead, but then the whole group has to do that at once, or else you can exploit this to lure individuals.)
There are some ergonomic issues as well, which aren't that big deals, but hopefully easier to improve:
When the manna is lower than what's needed for dodging, it should be well visible. For example, there could be a blue haze at the border, similarly to when your HP is too low, or some icon on the character. Otherwise next time you try to dodge and nothing is happening, you get a hit, and it's annoying. (Also, when I fail to cast or dodge because of low manna, there should be also some feedback, like some sound effect, otherwise it feels as if I pressed the key while still doing the attacking animation, or something like that.)
When some of the assigned Q-able stuff runs out, do not remove it from the lower left, just keep it there with count 0. Otherwise I will have to re-assign it every time from the tab menu.
I would also recommend not switching to the next Q-able stuff when I ran out of the current one, because you may not notice that, and will just use something you aren't intended to use.
Especially when back-pedaling from enemies, it's a bit too easy to stuck at the edge of trees, fences, etc. After all, it's not visible where exactly the edge of those and of your character are. (A possible approach to solve that: Instead of treating the "base" of the character as a rectangle, you could imagine it as an ellipse with infinitely slippery edge. So if you push that against an obstacle near the corner of it, it can move, sliding along the corner of the obstacle, as then it not only moves in the direction of your intended movement, but sideways to go around the obstacle.)
The description of Dark Blessing and Arcane Essence should tell how much they refill. Is it the percentage of the maximum HP/manna for example? (It matters when you decide which attributes to increase.)
Other gameplay notes (based on hard mode - I haven't tried the others):
Right now, there's no big punishment if you die, in fact, it can be exploited for framing XP and items. I guess some better rules has to be figured out there.
Daggers seem to be very weak compared to swords. Also it seems to me that the axe wins hands down even against the regular (non-short) sword. While it's slow, its damage easily makes up for that. Especially as you don't hit enemies repeatedly with sword for too many times either, as that's too risky, the average damage output won't get high enough. But it's maybe a problem with my game style, I don't know.
I think the "skeleton army" (was that the name?) boss is too difficult (in hard mode as I said). Maybe I'm just lame, or maybe it's just Dark Souls philosophy. Personally, while I have no problem with spikes, in fact, bosses should be spikes, a too huge spike just leads to endless retries until you get lucky. In this case, the type of the skeleton spawns is random, and I managed the get through when I got lucky (basically, not too many mages in the final wave), and not because I have become better or figured out a new trick.
Obviously, content, equipment types (and skills maybe) need to be expanded, but that's well known any maybe not the priority now.
Thank you very much for your time you put into your comment! It's really welcome and helpful.
You are right with the AI.. basically there is no "AI". I tried to implement some sort of pathfinding in a later version, but I wasn't satisfied at all and left it like this. It will be improved for sure in a newer version. I also agree with all the other issues you mentioned. Most of them I already noticed and noted. But some of them are actually pretty smart and will go directly to my todo-list.
Unfortunately, I can't currently put the effort into this game as I wanted to. But there will be a new/better version for sure. It's just a matter of time. :)
Awesome game. Had a ton of fun playing this. I think this game is headed in the right direction, for the content it offers right now, the combat felt intuitive and fun. The enemies were quite different from each other, offering a nice challenge. The only thing this game is missing really is more content, cause it's a ton of fun to play. Hope you're still working on it and planning to add more! :D
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you should make it a rouge-like, or at least an endless mode
Very good game I played it for hours
Are you planning on returning to this game once drova is done?
Great game. I recorded my playthrough and put it on my youtube channel. Keep up the good work!
Great game with a lot of potential - sadly, the developer has not updated this in a year.
Exact thought
THIS IS AMAZING
Great Game! I would LOVE a full release someday...
I love the game, I think it's incredible and you should continue working on it, I think this game has a ton of potential. I'm going to recommend this game to all of my friends. Keep up the good work!
This game is amazing and deserves to be finished!
Possible To get source code?
If you are interested in certain parts of the code for learning-purposes and how to do some stuff, sure. Even though the code became a mess. But I won't give away all of the code (and assets). Sorry!
Alright, Thank you anyway!
I really enjoyed the game, and it felt kind of like Enter the Gungeon to me. Also, I think you should consider having a patron account to help with developing the game.
One thing that I think would be kind of cool, is that when a player finishes the campaign, they could unlock different game-modes. Such as an endless mode with randomly generated levels, monsters and items. Or an all new difficulty you could get from beating it on hard.
Sometimes it can feel a fairly slow.. I think that if you made the AI for the enemies "smarter", and added a few more attack animations, it would make the game feel a bit faster. Also, if you added different enemy types that look different, sound different, and have seperate attack animations would help the game not feel as repetetive.
P.S. - Making it so that the spawn locations of enemies, type of enemies, and drop rate of items is partially random for each level, could help with replay-ability.
Nice idea :D
I have not played much of the game, but I do like what I see so far. I have not been playing Souls games for very long, but I have quickly become a huge fan. Your game has all the core elements that make these types of games great and it has a respectable level of polish to it. I'm sure I will spend a good deal more time at some point playing Seal Breaker.
Now as for the main reason why I have only play maybe 10-15 min of the game so far is the reason why I am writing this as well as why I even created this account. There is a huge bug I have run into multiple times already in my brief play time. Some bug occurs causing me to be unable to attack. Both mouse buttons do not do anything. I can consistently fix this by simply using an item. When I use an item while experiencing the bug, the melee attack animation goes off immediately and it even damages an enemy if one is near.
I am not entirely sure what causes it, but it happened enough to be a problem. I'm guessing there is some problem with the attack animation being interrupted. I tried to reproduce it by either walking backwards while attacking or getting hit while while attacking, but I could not purposefully initiate the bug (not that I spent much time on it). I hope this helps you make the game better better.
My only other criticism is the general feel of playing the game is rather sluggish. I'm not sure how best to describe this, but it just does not feel as responsive as I would like. Making everything a bit faster might give it a better feel.
Overall, I do think you have made a good game here. I could even see using rogue-like elements with procedurely-generated areas and random monsters/loot being fun with the gameplay you have already created. I look forward to delving through what you have already created once I have the time.
I have played through this and thought I dump what I have in my mind... I hope you pick up something useful from it. BTW, you are talking about 15 to 60 minutes gameplay, but for me on hard mode it was more than 2 hours for sure. 15 minutes sounds impossibly quick.
First of all, I liked the game very much! Of course, considering that it's a prototype. After some polish, maybe you can capitalize on the guys hopelessly waiting for Eitr to come out. (-;
To me, the most important issues are with the AI:
There are some ergonomic issues as well, which aren't that big deals, but hopefully easier to improve:
Other gameplay notes (based on hard mode - I haven't tried the others):
Thank you very much for your time you put into your comment! It's really welcome and helpful.
You are right with the AI.. basically there is no "AI". I tried to implement some sort of pathfinding in a later version, but I wasn't satisfied at all and left it like this. It will be improved for sure in a newer version. I also agree with all the other issues you mentioned. Most of them I already noticed and noted. But some of them are actually pretty smart and will go directly to my todo-list.
Unfortunately, I can't currently put the effort into this game as I wanted to. But there will be a new/better version for sure. It's just a matter of time. :)
This is an amazing game. A few more stats, a few more weapons/spells, and some more replay ability this could be confused with a AAA game.
Thank you. I really appreciate your "exaggerated" comment :) Makes me kinda proud.
Awesome game. Had a ton of fun playing this. I think this game is headed in the right direction, for the content it offers right now, the combat felt intuitive and fun. The enemies were quite different from each other, offering a nice challenge. The only thing this game is missing really is more content, cause it's a ton of fun to play. Hope you're still working on it and planning to add more! :D
Cool editing of the gameplay. I really like it :)
by far the one of the best games on itch
Thank you so much :)