wow, just WOW. Excellent game. Very addictive. I have been playing for about 15 minutes now and haven't found anything to point out.
Great job!
Reviews for "Hyperskill"
RaveryNet responds:
Thanks!
Awesome game! It's definitely a very difficult game, but it is pretty fair. Although, there was one level that I felt you had to just charge through and get lucky to complete, but other then that, great level design!
RaveryNet responds:
Thanks for the review. Some of the levels are designed to be easier to pass through, but harder to get the upgrades or kill all the enemies, so players can have a challenge or come back later with more upgrades.
p.s.: Cool music in your soundcloud!
1. The standard RMB attack is not as beautiful as the others.
2. When I went to the embedded pages (Twitter, Ravery) I couldn't go back.
3. The bullets and beam should stop when they leave the gameplay area.
4. Is it right to assume that, with 0 upgrade points put on recharge, some attacks don't ever become active?
5. There a giant (bad, IMO) difficulty spike on "challenges" when you put the big square roaming around the level. Also wasn't clear tome if it was destructible or no.
I loved the game, mostly the effects and general visual. Only played the challenges and on mute.
I like the game, fun concept and retro design.
You even pitched in the scenario part. So we won't just run around randomly blowing things up.
The only qualm I got with it, are those passages between zones.
I don't know..perhaps others love them this way..easily accessible and so on.
But I find it to be frustrating rather in bad way, when you are working through a tedious room, and have to hug walls to avoid swarm of dots, just to accidentally brush against portal and leave the place. Obviously re-setting whole work.
Over and over again.
Past that, rather nice experience.
Cheers
RaveryNet responds:
Good point. It happened to me a few times, but I've learned to avoid this problem after I've spent ~100 hours of level testing and forgot about it. I'll add an option in the next version: Press E to talk with NPCs (on/off), Press E to use Gates (on/off)
Honestly, the game seems to rely less on skill as you progress and I'm not just talking about the upgrades. You even state in the description that if a level is too hard, then get more upgrades to make it easier, but during my time playing, I never reached a point where I beat a level feeling a sense of accomplishment: it was either too easy or too hard to where I needed more luck than anything else. I will explain in points:
- Sometimes, there are just too many bullets on screen and this honestly seems more like a cheap attempt at difficulty (of course adding more things that can kill you onscreen will make the game tougher. Trying to make a hard game that doesn't follow this trend is tough, but it isn't impossible). There are so many and they are moving too fast to the point where you are overwhelmed within seconds (I'm referring specifically to the count down challenge that has two doors leading into it). If they are moving faster than you, there are fifty of them and you can only take five hits, then what are the options for the player (you can only teleport two times, basic evasion is useless, and your bullets may only kill 3 of them before you are overwhelmed)? Instead of increasing the number of bullets, organize the level to create a sense of difficulty, such as making fewer enemies, but make them harder to kill or make the spawn points harder to reach (you did this in one room where you needed to destroy the inner most spawn points before being able to take a crack at the outer ones.
- The speed of the bullets changes for the SAME towers as you move forward. The first thing you do when you enter a room is see what kind of towers they have. A player might say "oh, these towers. Their bullets are slow, but there are a lot of them." only to find that the bullets are moving faster than the previous ones. Why not create brand new enemies with different insignias to identify the faster moving enemies or, a better idea, have a device that encompasses an area where a spawn point in its area of affect gets its bullets speeded up. Destroying the device slows the bullets. This gives players a sense of strategy and choice "should I go after the speed devices or focus on the more powerful spawn points?"
- I don't think the towers provide any indication of when they will release an enemy. This is a big deal because there's already enough going on onscreen that a player can't be counting down the time until the spawning takes place. They might be standing right next to one shooting it when an enemy releases one and boom, they're dead. Perhaps add a pulse indicator, where a small circle increasing in size can be seen in the spawn points and once it reaches the outer edges, an enemy appears.
- Options are very limited. You have four options when taking on the enemy: shoot, evade, release the blast attack, or dash. Yes, you can mix these, but two of them need to recharge and there is only so much you can do with them so for most of the game, you are moving and shooting. even worse, the area is so small that some bullets are impossible to evade, meaning you are meant to take damage during the game. From the menu, it is apparent that you will add more upgrades, but you should do more with what you have, like make it so the blast attack can be further charged up to release more damage, have the auto-bullet bounce off the outer walls, have the dash ability allow you to destroy objects you pass over (more strategy with players trying to evade while also lining up the dash with an enemy. Yes, I know that this is included already, but the affects are minimal). Other suggests for powers: a weapon that will take all the bullets in a specific area, pull them into the center and explode them, taking out whatever was in the center and getting rid of the bullets (needs to charge), shield that when activated reflect bullets and lasers for a short time, but does not defend against tougher enemies.
There are also other suggestions I have for the game:
- There is a bug where you can end up on the outside of the level (I'm guessing this might happen if you are moving in the direction of the door moments before death or something. I'm not sure). It has happened to me at least three times.
- The warning for the laser ray needs to be bigger. Also, it is one of the most annoying parts of the game because it is the only thing that a reset will not reset. Sure, it makes each attempt less the same, but it could also hit you just as you restart the level, making you have to restart the level again.
- Make it so you can only talk to NPC when pressing a certain button because running into them during battle and having it paused like that is annoying and throws you off.
- Going off of the previous comment, please make it so you can go through the dialogue faster.
- How much the shield protects you is unclear and how much damage each enemy does is also unclear because there is no time to be keeping a close eye on the health bar when you're in battle (also, with the enemies jumbled together, how could you determine who hit you first?) Have an info section that explains how much damage an enemy does. This can help with strategy because then a player can say "I'm moving left to get hit by this enemy to dodge the other because the other would cause more damage".
- I like the art style and the story a lot. The character portraits are also cool.
- For the shockwave, have the misty circle that surrounds the player be more apparent when the player still has the shields (it pretty tough to see when the player still has shields).
- There's no indicator on the range of the dash and I don't know what you could use as an indicator, but is this pretty important.
Please excuse my temper in this post as I wrote it after having tried the 8 count room with the twin lasers. I'd gotten close a few times and then failed, usually because of that stupid laser. I wish you luck in your game endeavors.
RaveryNet responds:
Thanks for this very elaborate review. You have mentioned many good points.
- The bases spawn enemies as soon as they are touched by the spawn line. (It's the purple line, which moves upward)
Knowing when those bases will spawn enemies can be very important in thinking of a strategy to clear the level. e.g. In one of the north-east levels you can destroy a spartan base (enemies with shield) by using dash twice in a row and ramming the spartan base, which reduces the difficulty of the level immensely. The order in which you destroy the bases is very important and will turn an insane enemy-filled bullet-hell into a more reasonable challenge.
I think Ash should teach the spawn line mechanic in the beginning.
- Different speed of enemies. The levels have different difficulty levels. I should display the difficulty as it changes the speed, behavior and hitpoints of the enemies.
- The countdown level with two entrances: Maybe I shouldn't have added this level in this version. It is indeed very difficult, when you do not have e.g. the Lightray or higher movement speed. It can be done, but it is indeed frustrating.
"have the dash ability allow you to destroy objects you pass over (more strategy with players trying to evade while also lining up the dash with an enemy. Yes, I know that this is included already, but the affects are minimal)."
In the story mode you don't get the benefits of the dash damage yet, but in the challenge mode you can upgrade your beam damage and kill most enemies with one or two dashes. The challenge and story mode will feature a lot more abilities and upgrades, but I have to do more balancing before I can release them. (If you are interested, you can see some upcoming levels and abilities in a gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqOfi6DdGKQ )
- Out of the level bug: Thanks! I'll code a fix in the next version.
- Regarding the shockwave indicator: I have to think about a good solution. Right now one can hear a sound, when the shockwave is ready, you get the glow and there is an icon on the right hand side of the screen.
- NPC talk button: Yes. I agree. A button, at least in the battle levels, is a good way to go.
- Faster NPC dialogue button / skip dialogue button: Yep, will come.
- Enemy and damage information screen: Yes. Planned and will come soon.
- Indicator dash: I'll add some subtle line, which indicates the max distance.
Regarding "too easy or to hard": I wanted to have some non-linearity, but maybe I should reduce it instead. It can decrease the challenge too much, when levels are done in a strange order. If the levels are too easy, the player won't get the necessary muscle memory to complete the later levels, which is frustrating. I need to think about this.
The restart bug regarding those light rays (warning indicator) is actually a feature, which will become more relevant later on: Some objects are "outside" of Persephone's control and are not affected by the restart ability she grants you. This will be part of puzzle rooms in a later version of the game and will allow a bit of sequence breaking.
"auto-bullet bounce off the outer walls" - Won't happen, sadly. I'd have to add more collision detection, which would be to computationally intensive for slower CPUs.
"blast attack can be further charged up to release more damage" - Good idea. I'll look into that.
Very constructive criticism. Kudos!