Graphics are good, cartoon fashion is good. As a game being brought into the Construct 3 Jam, and many of these are just like clones of stuff already with barely and thought into them. However, this one stands out a bit from the average games like 3 heroes and swap positions stuff. The thing is, shouldn't there be optionally a keyboard input for movement? That would make it optionally easier to control and strafe. Looks so far could be a decent game but somehow why am I invincible from the normal enemies? Is that intended?
Reviews for "Dust Bunnies In Space"
Piggybank12 responds:
Hey, thanks for the feedback! Great to see you're liking the graphics and concept!
Giving keyboard movement to the player is something I wanted to get around to putting in, but I ran out of time. Maybe using the WASD keys to move might work as an alternative? At the very least, I was able to put in an option to press the space bar to jump, which helps for anyone that maybe has a broken middle mouse button or just wants to use the keyboard a little bit.
Bunnies can't hurt you in Normal mode, which means the only thing you gotta worry about is clearing them out before time runs out. They're made of dust after all, so they don't do any real harm to you. Hard mode, on the other hand, lights the bunnies on fire, which means if you touch them you die instantly and the level resets. And you still have the clock to worry about, so you can't mess around either.
In other words, if you're looking for a challenge and want the enemies to hurt, give Hard mode a try! Hope that helps! :)
★ When you first open the game, the first thing you're greeted with is this LOUD, FACE PACED, EPIC MUSIC was gratefully given to us by BiTSTER as you mentioned in the description and I honestly just thinks that fantastic. The art seemed a little rushed and reminds me of myself when im rushing and making sloppy sketches, but because there are a lot of things in this game and you had to make it within such a short amount of time i'll give you a pass on it ! The game is fun but a little bit tedious and hard to grasp the controls of. I'd suggest providing keyboard options ! Also, it got to a point where the game kind of felt like an infinite mouse chase with having to chase down so many dust bunnies (which is a really cute idea , by the way !) in every nook and corner without the risk of dying (from what i can see).
So in review ;
PROS ;;
◆ amazing music,honestly.
◆ interesting game play idea
◆ fun character and level designs
◆ unique controls (despite said uniqueness proving to be, in its own way, somewhat of a downfall)
CONS;;
◆ after a while gameplay tends to get a little repetitive (i'd suggest adding levels and making dust bunnies actually be somewhat of a threat!)
◆ lack of options when it comes to controls (WASD is godspeed, but i applaud you for adding the spacebar as a jump button for laptop users)
◆ no mute option (as great as the music is , its good to have a choice !)
all in all, everyone that worked on this game did an amazing job !
i usher you to work out the kinks and bugs if anybody finds them, this deserves to be on the front page ! >:0c
Piggybank12 responds:
Woah, thanks so much for the in-depth review! You bring up a lot of really good points here!
BiTSTER definitely knocked it out of the park with the music! I do agree that giving the option to have a mute button would be nice, or even better, control the volume of the music.
In fact, if there's at least one thing I'd like to update in this, it's giving more options in general, especially with controls. Including the WASD keys as an option would be interesting, as I'm kinda curious to see how they change the feel of the gameplay by giving the ability to strafe.
Despite including Hard mode (which kills Zenny at one touch of a bunny) and the time attack stuff, I was worried that the game would be kinda dull on Normal mode. That's probably something I should've paid more attention to, as that's the mode I assume most people end up playing. Adding at least one bunny that could hurt you would've been nice, or even better, impede progress by hijacking a door or stealing a key from you or something. Hmm...
As for the unique controls, this whole game started out as a ham-fisted excuse to get people to try out this weird control idea and see what happened, haha. Looking at it now though, I think the game has potential to be much more than that. Adding keyboard controls and some more interesting bunnies could easily turn the game from having a unique, yet limited control scheme into being a fun platformin' run and gun with an interesting set-up.
Anyway, thanks again for the great review and for checking out the game! I'll keep all your notes on hand if/when I get to work on this thing again. :D
Decent enough, but the controls feel strange. I'd recommend allowing players to press "w" for jump instead of needing to use spacebar.
I didn't notice a difference between normal and hard mode - is there one?
There wasn't much use for the grenade or wall - pretty much just getting back up from the bottom of the level and removing pink barriers in a couple of spots. Requiring the player to really switch it up a bit could flesh it out and make it more interesting.
Overall, nice start! I gotta knock points off for the strange/uncomfortable controls, but that's my biggest qualm considering it's a jam, and I appreciate that you listened to reviewers and added options. The mouse-only controls would have made it completely unplayable for me, since I'm using a laptop trackpad (though I do appreciate that you tried to include them!).
Piggybank12 responds:
Hey, thank you for the great review!
Thanks as well for the suggestion with placing the jump button on the W key. I honestly should have put that in when I implemented WASD controls, but it ended up slipping my mind before I compiled the build.
Normal mode should only have a few bunnies in the level that are on fire, while Hard mode should only consist of flammable bunnies. That seems strange that you're not seeing a change though, like a flag isn't being tripped somehow. Maybe clearing your browser's cache so it redownloads the game might do the trick? It's hard for me to say what could be causing that, as the few machines and browsers I was able to test the game on didn't have that issue, and Construct 3 is also still in beta as well, so that can also carry some weird bugs with it.
I agree that convincing the player to switch up their weapons more would be a good thing to do. It's interesting though: I've had some players who only used the grenades, some players who only used the main weapon, and some players who use both. They seem to be split mostly down the middle. The one weapon I think a lot of players don't seem to use much (myself included, lol) is the holo-wall, which would probably need some adjusting or replaced if the game got more development.
And it's fair enough to knock off some points for the controls, haha. This experience was a very good lesson in why it's so important to make a game as accessible as possible, even if you want to try something a little out of the box. I'm glad that the updates kinda allowed those with a trackpad to get a feel for the game, although if the game gets more development, I'd probably choose to gut out and rebuild the entire control scheme instead so it played much better for more people from the start.
At first the single-mouse controls were tolerable but not desirable, but then when I noticed you had alternate control schemes in the menu my opinion of the game shot way up. Having some control over your gameplay experience is always a plus and speaks well of a designer who thinks to include them.
Music is pretty good and there's some good art, however the graphical glitches (the flashing black boxes) with the running dust bunnies and the lady in the tutorial is very jarring compared to the rest of what is otherwise quality artwork. I'm not sure if it's an animation problem or if it's something to do with masking, but it's worth looking into; while I've always been a "gameplay first, aesthetics second" kind of guy, obvious graphical problems like that can take you out of the game.
I'd like to wish all game designers and artists good luck in the Construct 3 Game Jam!
Piggybank12 responds:
Thanks for the review! I'm glad I went through the trouble of adding some different control options to the game, even though I kinda wish I had done that in the first place instead of rushing to do it in an update, haha. I know I appreciate having those kinds of options in a game, so it made sense to put them in here too.
There is a noise effect applied on purpose to the lady in the tutorial (I thought it helped sell the idea of her being a hologram, heh) but I did notice the noise effect affect things it shouldn't on some machines. The effect is a WebGL effect, which this game also has quite a few of. I'd have to play around with the effects and see if I can either get rid of some of them, or even make an on/off switch for the effects to help the game run on slower machines.
This is all stuff I wish I had known or done in the first place, but since this is my first published original game, I guess I could only know so much before jumping in for the first time! Again, thank you for taking the time to let me know about this stuff!
The graphics are decent enough when they are working. However, they did glitch at times, and that was really distracting. Controls were wanky, if you included a way to remap the key, that would be helpful.
Piggybank12 responds:
Thanks for the feedback! This game is long abandoned, but if I ever had the chance to revisit this project I would love to at least optimize the graphical presentation (there's a LOT of wasteful memory/effects usage in this game that I'm pretty sure is primarily responsible for the bugs/glitches/slowdown you may have seen) and add in more control options like remapping.
Honestly though I think this game is still flawed at its foundation with its weird choice of play style, and I'd rather pay forward the lessons learned with future projects instead. Still, the thought is appreciated and I thank you for your time! :)