Vorpal Florist - Hamster Republic Productions

[chicgamer]

I played this a little over the weekend and enjoyed it a lot. I do have to say that it feels a little weird not having a double jump (guess I've gotten accustomed to having one in games like this), but one wouldn't make sense in this game as-is due to the level design.

Thanks for making this available!

[darkfalzx]

Hey!
Tried it again on Xperia. Thanks a lot man - the button controls work really well now. I know it hinged on me being able to provide you with that information - but I really wish there was a way to hide the touch controls even manually for now.
I played the game for only about fifteen minutes, and didn't reach the boss yet, but it seems pretty great so far. In other notes - the segmented snake-flower monsters lag the system up pretty badly, as do the sparks in the save room.

[bob-the-hamster]

chicgamer: Thanks! I am glad you are enjoying it! I do plan to have a double-jump available later in the game. That will probably be the reward for beating the 3rd boss.

darkfalz: Yeah, I am not surprised about the lag on the death-tulip, and the save-embers. The Xperia play probably has less processing power than the OUYA does. I'll let you know when I figure out how to auto-hide the virtual gamepad I was able to find some documentation about how to make an app identify when it is running on an XPeria Play

[darkfalzx]

Played the game some more - damn, it's hard! And not like it has any particularly difficult spots - I always end up just dying a death of thousand cuts, as the enemies move fast, take many hits to kill and some of them respawn endlessly, while the player can't heal herself, and the save points are few and far between. I found a few items, but their function wasn't apparent, and in the end nothing made a difference - I kept dying and dying and dying no matter what path I took.
Haven't found any real powerups either.
Speaking of the paths - they lead you on for quite a distance only to put you in a dead end or give you a cryptic item that doesn't help you much, and then expect you to track all the way back to a save point.

I understand that the game is still under development, and things are always in flux up until the very end. I am a fan of games teaching to play themselves without a tutorial of any kind - Perhaps you could work in a small zone in the beginning that would be mostly linear, or at least wouldn't feature long dead-end branches, with simple enemies to practice game's mechanics on, and perhaps an item or two - just to force the player into a situation where he or she would be forced to use them - if that's even a thing in the game.

[bob-the-hamster]

darkfalzx: Thanks for the feedback, that is very helpful. It tells me I have a lot more work to do on difficulty balance, and that I need to address the issue of reward/punishment in dead end areas.

I definitely need to get "Normal" mode operational with randomly dropped healing items. Then the current difficulty can become "Hard"

All those flower items that enemies drop are effectively money, but nobody guesses that, and there currently isn't any place to spend them, so I need to figure out how to make that a little bit clearer. At the moment only items that are ever usable are used from the "Equip" menu.

I know just what you mean about the dead-ends and items that don't help much. You must have found the "Living Abacus" and/or the "Randomizer Sigil", both of which are more or less novelty items. I should add a few more strategically placed save-points so that trekking out to get those minor items doesn't feel like punishment.

Some of the other places that currently dead-end are actually meant to be interconnections with later parts of the game, but of course they will still be dead-ends the first time you reach them without ledge-climbing, or double-jump, or whatever is needed to get past, so again I need to think carefully about my save-point placement.

Your feedback also gives me the clearest hint why nobody has given any feedback about the bosses yet-- it is entirely possible that nobody has beat either of them yet!

I have been playing a lot of Ansimuz's Elliot Quest, and I am really impressed at how perfect the difficulty is balanced. It always seems challenging, it never seems frustrating, and it never engages in anything that resembles hand-holding. I have really got my work cut out if I want to get anywhere near that kind of polished play experience

[darkfalzx]

Played the game some more and actually reached the first boss. The path to the boss from the save room is annoyingly tricky. Not only is there a scripted event that freezes the character for 5-10 seconds, but the three mushroom guards have difficult to avoid attack patterns that pretty much guarantee you arrive at the boss with at least a quarter of your health gone. The boss itself has absolutely no problem with killing you as cheaply as possible, as it seems its attacks and movement don't really communicate and simply repeat on a timer. This means that sometimes the boss backs you into a corner, lowers the flower-lady to the very bottom, and uses the thorn whip attack while the lady fires her spores. That right there kills you outright even from full health, and there is no way to avoid it - it eventually happens every time.
I re-fought the boss about a dozen times. Came close to killing it once or twice, but no luck so far.

I've got to say though - floaty controls, large hit-boxes, short attack range and enemies that damage you on impact and bounce you off all come together to make the game pretty frustrating.

[bob-the-hamster]

Thank you very much for the feedback, and I apologise deeply for inflicting so much frustration on you!

I'll definitely add a save point closer to the boss.

This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for. I never realized how bad it was to get pinned in the corner by the boss. Since I programmed it, I know that if you duck and stand your ground, it will always back off, so I have rarely if ever been pinned in the corner-- but why would anybody ever guess to duck and stand their ground? I realize now there is absolutely no reason anyone should ever guess that. I can change the boss's movement so it will always stop and reverse direction before completely pinning you.

...its attacks and movement don't really communicate and simply repeat on a timer...

This is true, the attacks are just on a timer, but this makes me realize that I could pretty easily change the attacks to happen at specific X motion intervals. That would make the attack/movement patterns much less chaotic, and therefore easier to learn. Thanks for mentioning it.

Beating the boss is all about memorizing its patterns, so it is all the more important that those patterns are good and consistent, and that a player who has never seen the pattern before gets a chance to learn the pattern without too many deaths. Whenever I playtest, I already have the pattern memorized beofre I even start, so it is easy for me to miss glaring stuff like this.

The Mushroom knights are the same deal. I can usually get past all of them without a single point of damage, but that is because I already know to run-in-attack run-away-jump-over-the-shield run-in-again duck-attack-to-make-it-jump-over-me turn-around-hit-it-in-the-back.

...I re-fought the boss about a dozen times. Came close to killing it once or twice, but no luck so far...

I think it would be best to just stop playing for now. I really appreciate your input, and I would hate to burn you out with frustration so much that you don't want to play future updates anymore! Hopefully I can address some of these issues in a new copy of the demo in about a month or so. I am feeling excited and motivated to work on all this stuff now, but sadly I have a bunch of non-game work I have to focus on first.

I've got to say though - floaty controls, large hit-boxes, short attack range and enemies that damage you on impact and bounce you off all come together to make the game pretty frustrating.

I can't do much about the floaty controls, and the short attack range and knockback damage are design choices I want to stick with, but at the very least I could shrink some hit boxes. Were there any specific enemies with overlarge hit boxes? Was it more a problem with run-in-and-attack situations? or more a problem with jump-over situations?

[darkfalzx]

Since I programmed it, I know that if you duck and stand your ground, it will always back off, so I have rarely if ever been pinned in the corner-- but why would anybody ever guess to duck and stand their ground?

I tried ducking under the boss when it advances into the corner, but if the flower/lady are at the lowest point - you get hit anyway. Plus - you also get hit by the spores.

Beating the boss is all about memorizing its patterns, so it is all the more important that those patterns are good and consistent, and that a player who has never seen the pattern before gets a chance to learn the pattern without too many deaths. Whenever I playtest, I already have the pattern memorized beofre I even start, so it is easy for me to miss glaring stuff like this.

While I didn't realize that the boss would reverse direction if it got close enough to me, I believe I got most of his pattern memorized. It just didn't help me much as the patterns kept changing due to timers.

A lot of times I got hit when the boss changed direction - you have to chase the boss, jump and hit the flower, when suddenly it reverses horizontal speed on a dime, resulting in an instant hit. Maybe it could pause for half a second between starting to move toward you?

The Mushroom knights are the same deal. I can usually get past all of them without a single point of damage, but that is because I already know to run-in-attack run-away-jump-over-the-shield run-in-again duck-attack-to-make-it-jump-over-me turn-around-hit-it-in-the-back.

Yeah - I'd say enemies like that are cool, but for much, much later in the game when the player feels much more at home with the controls of the character. Same for the orange guys with a shield - as it is, they pretty much always hit the player. I realize there is a way to jump over them, then quickly run back and hit them before they turn around - but 90% of the time I get hit either when they throw a rock, I hit their head when trying to jump over them, I over-compensate and collide with them when landing etc, etc - so it's easier to just run past them and get hit once instead of say, three times while trying to deal with them.

I think it would be best to just stop playing for now. I really appreciate your input, and I would hate to burn you out with frustration so much that you don't want to play future updates anymore! Hopefully I can address some of these issues in a new copy of the demo in about a month or so. I am feeling excited and motivated to work on all this stuff now, but sadly I have a bunch of non-game work I have to focus on first.

Having it on Xperia makes it much easier to play the game whenever I'm stranded waiting for something. BTW - if you can give me a PC version, I could try and give it to a friend of mine who is a much, much better player than me. If he has issues with difficulty - then you definitely have a problem: )

I can't do much about the floaty controls, and the short attack range and knockback damage are design choices I want to stick with, but at the very least I could shrink some hit boxes. Were there any specific enemies with overlarge hit boxes? Was it more a problem with run-in-and-attack situations? or more a problem with jump-over situations?

It just seems that I get hit a lot of times whenever trying to jump over most enemies. It might be a good idea to make the collision smaller overall.

Edit
After learning that the boss turns around when it reaches the player, another 20 or so attempts and with only a pixel of health remaining I have finally defeated the first boss... wait, nope... it has a second phase - never mind: ) So far this game is far too hardcore for me.
Has anyone else been able to kill this thing yet?
Does the player level up her abilities at all - my save file keeps saying Level 0.

[bob-the-hamster]

I am glad you mentioned the hit sensitivity when you are jumping over enemies.

I had been using the same rectangle for both wall/floor detection and enemy hit detection, so I had been reluctant to make the player's box any smaller because I had the wall/floor working just how I wanted-- but when I visualized it, I could easily see that rectangle was way to big for enemy hit detection. Today I updated my code so that it uses a different smaller rectangle for hit detection, and jumping over enemies is *much* more forgiving now

After I have redone the first boss AI, added some savegames, and implemented "Normal" difficulty, I'll post a fresh demo here.

Thank you all for your feedback, darkfalzx!

EDIT: Oh, yeah, there is no experience level implemented. The "Level 0" is an unused vestige of the game engine I am using. I'll remove that later. I haven't ruled out the possibility of experience levels, but haven't decided exactly how they would work.

[bob-the-hamster]

I have been making progress. I finished implementing Normal/Hard/Nightmare difficulty (with the old difficulty being equivalent to "Hard") and I made a bunch of tweaks to the AI of the bosses and some of the more difficult enemies so hopefully they will be a little more fun and a little less frustrating.

For anyone who has already tested an old version, I strongly recommend starting from the beginning on "Normal" difficulty rather than using your existing save slots.

I added a map item, more save points, and I re-did the loading screens to just show useful information, and remove the confusing/unused stuff like "Level 0"

The ↓↘→U fireball attack pictured above is not yet in the playable demo. I am working on making a sort of skill-tree of special attacks that you can unlock as you collect flowers (flowers = money/experience)

Also, darkfalzx, I made a change that should cause the touch-controls to be hidden when playing on an Xperia Play device, would you mind testing it for me when you have some free time?