GAME DEV: I Played Your Games. (Again.)

hey this is Jonas I'm an indie game developer and in this video I will play your indie games the ones you've sent me and I will give you my feedback I just thought as I've spent the last four weeks talking about my indie game with your snail now would be the perfect time to spend some time talking about your indie games as well so that's why I wanted to do let's go here's an email I have to admit resonated quite a bit with me I am a solo developer who has created a job to do game development full-time and I have launched my game on Steam but no one is interested I think what you need is actually just a little bit of brutal honesty you asked for it I'm willing to give it to you first of all quitting your day job to do game development bold move but I respect that decision and I want you to succeed I want this to work out for you let's have a look and before we go any further I want you to know that you have my utmost respect you manage to finish a game you manage to upload it to steam that is not an easy task you pulled it off and I realize that in the upcoming section I might come across as a little cocky please don't take it personally I mean well the problem I see here is that at the very first glance it instantly looks like an

essay flip everybody who doesn't know what an asset flip is an asset flip is basically a game where you don't make the graphics yourself you just type tree for example in the unity asset store and then basically you some of the tree somebody else made instead of making the assets of your game yourself you're just putting them together from assets that already exist and that other people made to be honest there's not really anything wrong with that procedure you should save time wherever you can but you have to be aware that essa' flips have a little bit of a bad reputation which is why looking like an asset flip is not necessarily something that helps your sales how do you recognize an asset flip there's a very big red flag that helps to identify asset flips and that is if the quality of the user interface the UI is significantly lower than the quality of the in-game assets and that is absolutely the case you're like the the in-game screenshots and I have to give you that they look very nice doesn't even look all that acid philippi you know blends together really nicely however what gives you away is the user interface I'm not crazy right you can see what I mean here there's just a massive difference between quality of game and

quality of UI secondly the target audience what you have made is basically a hunting simulator have fun hunting down the vermin who are destroying the farmers crops and livelihood at bested as a hunting simulator problem with that is there a couple of really big flagship games out there that do pretty much the exact same thing here hunting simulator which by the way looks very nice and immersive as you can see it's not cluttered up with you I probably does everything your game does so it's I'm not sure if it's a smart move to compete with games like that you're essentially competing with with these games as you can see here if I type in hunting simulator the list is very long there are ton of hunting simulators already out there some of them a very competitive pricing as well that is why a hunting simulator that looks like this doesn't really stand a chance on the steam marketplace so next up let's have a look at the fantasy of this game because what you've made here it's not exactly a hunting simulator the game's called vermin hunter and what you do in this game is you basically hunt vermin so if you like that is a very very niche audience as a hunting fan I

don't know I'm not a hunting fan at all but as a hunting fan I or somebody who wants to play a hunting simulator I would not be very turned on by the screen shot this is this is not what I want to see as a as somebody who's looking for a hunting simulator and everybody who's not looking for a hunting simulator is probably also not interested in your game because they probably don't like hunting so that is a big issue right here you don't really have a target audience you don't really cater towards people who want a hunting simulator but you also don't cater really to anybody else and then the last thing I unfortunately also have to say it just really comes off a little bit creepy let's let's have a look at the trailer and then you'll probably understand what I mean see you here you see somebody oh no you're not aiming at cow okay thank God I was already super confused when I saw that the first time is it's basically somebody standing in the field shooting at rats or something is that really the way you deal with with rats like have you ever seen a farmer that is like haha damn rats I'm

gonna hire somebody some creepy dude with a rifle who'll just go around my my property and shoot rats like I don't I I don't think that is the way you deal with threats and also like if you if you have a game called vermin hunter then perhaps on here don't know you don't want to put a mouse that looks the cute like nobody wants to harm that Mouse that makes it that just makes it even more more creepy because that Mouse you just looked so cute I want to pet it I don't want to want to shoot it you know that shot here of that dude creeping through the field that is creepy as hell like who does that once again just trying to be brutally honest here not trying to judge you my main intention is to help you out with your next game what I would do with your next game firstly go far away smaller game don't make something with an inventory and thousands of upgrades and rifles you can buy as a solo developer you have to

keep it small you have to keep it simple because that allows you to put a lot more effort into the quality and into the look of the game lean into your strengths if you're not able to create nice-looking UI then just don't make a game that requires any UI you really have some talent here you can make some really nice-looking 3d stuff as s it seems and you can see here like the in-game graphics looks really good like even if this is an asset flip even if you took those assets from the asset store honestly I don't care if you can find a way to make your game look good go for a G in-game graphic is very well put together then find a clear target audience if you want to cater to hunting fans then cater to hunting fans let's go to Google Trends hunting simulator so that's people searching for hunting simulator nobodies searching for vermin hunters so maybe that is the the kind of fact-checking you should do next time before you get started and then of course making a hunting simulator honestly wouldn't have been a great idea either if the competition for that is too strong what I'm trying to say is

don't try to make a triple-a game as a solo developer be aware of the fact that you're a solo developer and you just have to make games that you can make as a solo developer I honestly really wish you the best of luck I really hope you succeed as a solo developer fingers crossed and I hope this was a great learning experience for you good luck next time hope you make it next game is called cupcake cocoon which clearly looks like a mobile game buttons look a bit low resolution and I can also see that they are cut off here so perhaps you can increase the resolution of those a bill to make sure that the shadows not cut off at the left side no you actually put my face in there ah okay so I have three jumps and then I need to recover somehow it's a pretty fun one-button gameplay I dig it okay when I jump against a cloud from the bottom I also gain my jumps back so pretty

excellent sound design pretty pretty beautiful graphics as well except for the giant Jonas face now the sky has a different color it's beautiful this is pretty epic for a one-button game the comedian is also just so cute the last jump is always a bit higher that's cool I mean the trail shows me what I did in the past so perhaps it makes it a bit easier to learn and see the effect of my my jumps and my actions maybe include away here to get back in damnit one thing I'm wondering about is why you show my remaining jumps in the bottom left corner wouldn't it be better to have the amounts of jump somewhere near your character so you don't have to look back and forth as much you know perhaps the amount of cream on your cupcake or something like that could represent the amounts of remaining jumps you have Felix you could have some sort of clever visual representation here on the cupcake that just shows me how many

jumps I have remaining you're almost there please don't fall now maybe that one level at the beginning of the game was a bit too long I can see that being a bit frustrating especially if you have to replay long segments like that I feel like you could shorten that level down a little bit just to make sure nobody gets stuck there if people get stuck that early into the game it's a little bit of a shame so maybe just don't take the risk and make that level a bit shorter overall very well designed very well optimized for mobile and I also feel like I have to show you the trailer here we have wind rainbows Thunder snow overall just some pretty creative stuff the game looks great the setting and the theme definitely pops out like when do you see cute cupcakes flying through clouds very good choice also very good choice for a casual game I think similar to games like candy crush if you like the setting has a very general appeal

that appeals to pretty much everybody everybody likes cute cupcakes bouncing around on clouds that is just something that is instantly captivating and then that cute little chameleon at the end just tops it all off I wanna keep playing actually but I'll play something else now you need to get home before you get hurt can you see any way to get the door open where am i okay I'm this tiny little figurine right here I actually thought this gray area is the area I walk in and these darker things are here are the walls usually you assume that the darker things are closer to the camera so I just thought as these things are darker this is probably the walls this is what's closer to the camera so perhaps you can switch that around also I'm not quite sure about that strong of a contrast in the background that's one one more reason why I thought this is the air you move you move and pick up the gun left click to fire don't worry Dex I'll see if I can get it open from here look around and see if you can find a weapon and maybe that's a bit too much text you

to switch your gun to the other hand then I can fire through here to destroy that and that only works if I have the gun in the correct hand so that is pretty that's actually pretty smart I see the stairs but there's a really scary looking robot statue a petrified that bought years ago just hurry and get to the stairs where it's safe right-click to springe camp I did not survive cool that's actually pretty cool intro I like that now why do I play that character again did I survive this right here probably still has some placeholder graphics this does not look finished this seems to be the easy hub area okay now why am I suddenly not a character anymore about a bot first thing I'm noticing when rotating this bot is that the bot is not rotating around its center the pivot seems to be somewhere in the front here and it just doesn't feel right it should be rotating around the center of its mass and that center of mass is definitely further than the back of the bot first impression is pretty cool i really like this you I

don't here this canister which I assume is my health or something the bot looks a little more sci-fi and less steampunky and then the walls here the texture of those walls looks pretty great I really like that the only thing that makes these walls feel a little weird to me is the fact that they have straight edges usually for rocks I'll expect them to have a little more of a curvy outline here so perhaps there's a way to make that happen give them a little more of an interesting silhouette and not just a straight line let's see what we run into and I assume as this is a roguelike that's probably randomly generated here [Music] Oh quite a ton of enemies here okay seems like that down here is not my health because that goes up when I'm shooting I assume I can overheat or something and maybe that down here is my health I have to say enemy projectiles feel very slow which is a good thing in the fact that I can more easily dodge them but all the fields with strange

which probably has to do with their sprites with how they look they don't look like slow projectiles the sprites look like they're pretty fast so perhaps if you want them to be that slow they should have a sprite that allows them to be slow for example just a circle I like the fact that there are a lot of different enemies and they all die relatively quickly which I guess is somewhat necessary for making me feel powerful ah that's a trap okay things at the mode I don't really know what I'm looking for I don't really know what my objective is so I would maybe make sure layers know what they're looking for and wasn't there a way to sprint all right sprinting once again although it seems to increase my heat level I'd expect my bot to have the same color as this health bar thing what is that little red dot doing that boosting or healing enemies or is it helping me to destroy them then why can I shoot it so some things don't communicate themselves quite properly yet apparently this game is about finding new guns I haven't really found anything so far which means perhaps the pacing of that is a bit too long I think that's missing for me personally

right now is like having a little more interesting combat ship just probably revolved around abilities and guns I've already seen that this game has abilities this game has guns if you want to capture my attention then perhaps you should give me access to those tools a little bit earlier that is the main advice I would give for now Oh or finally found something I know that it is tempting to make your game a little more grind in order to stretch out the playtime but before you can stretch out the playtime the first thing you must make sure that players have the urge to grind your game now maybe this flame here is my health actually have no idea what my health is that flame here is my health right but then what is this down here that is that is actually a bit unclear maybe you should add a little heart next to that flame or something that indicates what is the health even though there are a lot of enemies I have to say that they kind of feel a bit samey and I'm wondering why that is broad because I can defeat all of them with the same strategy which is just touching their bullets and shooting them

straight to their face so even though you have a lot of different enemies these enemies don't force me to switch up my playstyle right I can all defeat them with the exact same playstyle which makes them feel a bit samey even though they're not really the reason why usually you put a lot of different enemies in your game because you want to force the player into mixing up the place I don't think you've achieved it here provide yet those enemies that come straight at you they should probably have a little more HP because then they would force me to back up and flee from them a little bit that is something that would force me into a different playstyle and of course you're these bullets that are flying over the walls or something that forced me into a little bit of a different playstyle the times but for example this snake right here doesn't really force me to do anything differently than for example this enemy here Abbott I lost and when I lose I'm unfortunately the game crashes okay so unfortunately I didn't manage to uncover everything this game has to offer which would be my critique point number one if you have some cool stuff in your game give players access to that cool stuff as quickly as possible so

they can start enjoying your game if they don't enjoy your game then basically all of the endgame content you have in your game becomes completely useless because people will just quit playing the game and then secondly I think it's really cool that you have a lot of different enemies in your game what I'd like to see is modifying those enemies in a way that they force you into different playstyles cause at the moment I can beat all of the enemies by just dodging a couple of very slow bullets and firing at them like if every enemy can be defeated with the same playstyle then what is the point of having multiple enemies what why then not just have one enemy it's actually interesting I haven't really thought about this before playing this so pretty eye-opening for me as well and then of course there are the visuals some of the things cast shadows some things don't cause any shadows for example those chests if you want them to look more three-dimensional you need to make sure they cast a shadow because if Walsh cast a shadow that looks pretty cool but the flipside of that is that of course that everything that doesn't cast a shadow now suddenly looks very very flat and two-dimensional like it's just flat

plain on the ground wanna chest look like a Chester's actually standing out of the ground it needs to have a little bit of a shadow otherwise it just looks like a pattern on the ground yeah I feel like that's quite promising I like the premise of the game could become quite a fun roguelike perhaps you could think a little more about what differentiates this roguelike from other rock likes because they're already of course a lot of pretty good top-down shooter roguelikes out there I feel like I haven't made it far enough into the game to really judge if there's anything specific that sets you apart for example the fact that you can hold two guns in your two different hands stead of thing in your game like if I haven't really made it that far into your game which is a little bit of a shame something like that you need something that sets your game apart I feel like the the steampunk thing more than anything is probably what sets your game apart the most right now if I were you I would try to lean into that steampunk setting as much as possible and the way you handle health and overheating of weapons at the moment is already a good way of doing that so for all of the abilities and upcoming corner of the game just lean into that steampunk setting as much as possible

for for all of the mechanics that you still put into the game cause I feel like that is the number one thing that sets your game apart at the moment I don't think there are any steam punk rock likes out there at the moment yet not that I'm aware of steampunk steampunk all the way there will be my advice very nice I like it let's move on okay now this next game right here is called single Tron which looked interesting let's try endless mode let's see if I can figure out what I need to do you it's like this green area here is where I can spawn lines and then I have a ton of stats right here which feels really overwhelming and apparently whenever two of those lines collide they create a rectangle and then it starts zooming back okay because if I just shoot them out into nowhere they'll eventually create a rectangle that's how it works so things like there's an X resource and a Y resource and the line cost increases

as well is that correct I feel like this UI here is the first thing that I would probably improve if you want to keep working on this first of all the zoom is something I'm not sure you need on the screen or example instead of having the zoom here you could Hall also just have a grid in the background that zooms out with you and then perhaps there could be a couple of small numbers next to the grid or something just get rid of that giant pile of numbers here the time may be somewhere in the center here just separated as well just break this up a little bit and then your production resources can be combined for example you can just put the production in brackets behind the resources numbers are already so high that I can't really read this properly anymore so perhaps at a certain point it should be rounded to K or something like that maybe there should just be 700 K and then here line cost 100 K and that would make it a bit more readable then once again here last rectangle value that is just something you could show directly on the rectangle whenever I place it so if I pay per line then probably the best reduced to just

place a line here and place a line here or maybe not even to place that line down there because we know if I just let that line run into the abyss over here he'll eventually turn into a square anyway into a rectangle which feels to me like a back if that just runs out of the screen it shouldn't turn into a rectangle that makes it a bit too easy but in general it's a very interesting concept and very intrigued by this and now the numbers are starting to get really really high what I also have to say is the game looks really a gleam which is mostly down to the colors I can see that all of these squares they they pretty much look like the colors have just been chosen randomly fall of these squares the easiest way to fix the low of your game or to improve the look of your iam is to just pick a decent color scheme for example you can go to color mine dot IO and just take one of these color schemes and then just apply that color scheme to your game I'm not even sure if that vignette inside the squares needed T something like this I feel like would work just fine for your game or a

simple game like yours a simple look is totally fun this looks like programmer art no offense maybe you can give those red blocks a little bit of a different color as well in order to differentiate them from one another just to make sure you can see where they start and end I'd go for something like this if I were you then in terms of gameplay as I've said it feels a bit abusable even though I really like the simplicity I like the concept like this way of playing is not seems not to be the best way the best way seems to be just placing a line here and waiting until it forms into squares so that is the first thing I would fix if a line goes out of bounds should not form a rectangle automatically and then secondly I feel like even though I really like the simplicity perhaps this needs a bit more complexity in certain areas and perhaps it can also be simplified in other areas for example I'm not sure if we even need all of those resources because honestly while playing this game I don't even look all that much at the resources I just place the line and most of the time I have

enough resources anyway so don't really I don't really care about the resources maybe placing these lines should just be a cool down based ability I don't think this game gains all that much from resources and it especially doesn't gain a lot from having to resources that just feels overkill so I feel like there's definitely room for simplification in terms of resources etc etc and then in other areas perhaps you could use a bit more complexity because at the moment the best reg is just to place a line as far out as possible right if you can place a line here you'll always place the line here and if you can place a line here you'll always place the line here so if you like there needs something that encourages you to make smaller squares just as a counterbalance and one thing for example that could do that is having some enemies if one of these enemies collides with the line perhaps it will break the line else that would make sure you have a little bit of a risk reward system if you place your line very far out and try to make a very big square then you have a higher risk of it being destroyed by an enemy if you place it further inwards yes your

returns will not be as high but the risk of the lines being destroyed is not as high either just a little bit of a risk reward system that stops you from always placing your lines as far out as you possibly can because that is a little bit of a boring strategy and the advantage of doing that is probably also that you can just allow the player to place these lines a lot more liberally perhaps you don't even have to restrict the area where the player can build perhaps you can just allow the player to build these lines wherever the hell you want because you already have that risk reward system in place you know you don't have to artificially limit the space where I can spawn these lines if I already have an incentive not to be too greedy like that that could be a nice nice addition I really really dig the main concept of this game I really hope you invest some more time into this I see some serious potential here if you simplify some of the unnecessary elements of this game and add a little bit of just a tiny bit of complexity to the correct parts of this game I can really see this becoming a really really good one very well done hope that helps you out of it very very

nice next up let's play fun time first thing I noticed is that there's a feedback button right in the menu which is something I always appreciate if you press that you go right to a feedback form should give you some nice Intel from play testers it seems like this is a matter of speed the faster I beat this level the more stars I'll get that is communicated in a very clear and understandable way to me intuitive there was a nice effect Oh where's my mouse oh no I can't see my cursor which makes me think this is probably optimized for being played with gamepad please for us mouse users maybe make this a bit more intuitive because this yeah this does not feel good and for for us Mouse users know all that feels like there's a tiny bit of delay on the arrow key input but maybe M maybe I'm crazy okay what's the set I'm not supposed to destroy that laser or how else am I supposed to get through that how I get that is strange like this is

the first level and I have literally no idea how to get through that oh and just need to I just need to pick up the health pack stat all pick up another health pack which allows me to get through that ok law it's so hard to aim the effects are really sick so much stuff lying around it gets a bit confusing though it's gets a bit hard to read what I'm allowed to touch and whatnot especially these little squares here and all the little projectiles none of this stuff is really easy to miss ok so this is high score based basically press one to get through that and two to get through that or three oh no and then I have to remember the numbers or no audio god doh oh I can still go through

the next level ok so that last level made me wonder what the purpose of that mechanic was because that in itself was not very fun times ok so now watch stalemate what do you want me to do this is interesting I can color the level which seems like an interesting mechanic would be very interesting of changing my color would also change my weapon maybe I need to become blue and now I need to become yellow once again looks very messy which makes it super hard to dodge some of the especially the cubes I feel like they're really hard to see like seeing it I

can't see tiny projectiles like that there's just no way in a mess like this there are so many little dot particles flying around no way here depending on my color the little gear will behind me does something slightly different so here are a couple of things I will tell you listen up first of all I have to say I really dig the neon aesthetic it looks very nice it looks very polished the menu looks very nice the game looks very nice unfortunately it also looks kind of cluttered sometimes it's very hard to see what's going on and I would really make sure that all of the enemies all of the things you're not supposed to touch are very clearly visible and I feel like one way to do that is to just make sure there are not as many tiny objects that you need to dodge because your particles make sure there are tiny dots flying all over the place pretty much all of the time and now if I have to dodge some of these little tiny dots it's just not possible I can't see them it won't happen they need to be more visible same goes for those little cubes they I feel like we're almost too small as it didn't

see them often times especially when they spawned they have a little glowy effect they look kind of similar to the collectible so then I need to collect on some of the levels so these small cubes very hard to see sometimes I just run into them because I didn't see them that being said the effects when you detonate a bomb or when you get hit absolutely amazing feels great next thing I have to say is make sure you have better mouse controls in your game I guarantee you 100% if you publish this on Steam I will not be the last person complaining about the mouse controls now some people just don't have game pads some people just have to play with Mouse and at the moment it feels very unnatural to aim with the mouse usually what you do with them when you control a game with the mouse or a top-down shooters you shoot where the cursor is in a perfect word like I would just consider doing that put a pointer in the game could have put a cursor in the game and just let me shoot in the direction of the cursor I feel like that feels a lot more natural to Mouse users that is something we are used to there is something that allows

us to I'm consistently in the direction we want to aim and I mean if you want to keep it like that you can do that I'm just telling you here I'll hear more complaints by the people I'm 100% sure that will happen if you keep it like this that's all I'm saying the difficulty I feel like was a bit too high for the beginning maybe that has to do with the fact that aiming is a bit hard with the mousepad in general I would say it just makes the beginning of the game a bit easier and yes it was possible for me to get through those levels but what I would argue is you also need to make it a bit easier to get three stars at the beginning of the game because it just doesn't feel very motivating if you play a level and you really try and you get one or zero stars or something like that so you can ramp that difficulty up later on but in the beginning you want to give people a couple of nice success moments where you just basically give them a couple of three stars for free more or less the advantage of that is also that they get into the habit of wanting three stars and then when the levels start getting more and more difficult later on then it'll be a lot more likely that they

replay the levels to basically keep up their three star streak know if I have like two stars in the first level one star in the second level then I'm not gonna try to get three stars in the third level because why should I whereas if I have a streak of how I have completed all levels with three stars so far then of course I want to get three stars in the next one and if I don't get that it's a lot more likely that I'll replay the level to get three stars which of course if you put a system like this in your game where you can get stars that is what you want you want people to replay your levels right if you want your star system to work if you want players to replay your levels then I feel like you have to grant me a couple of three star levels for free at the beginning of the game so I get hooked on the feeling of getting three stars and also that makes sure that new players get into the game a bit easier and don't feel as frustrated and then the last thing that kind of irritated me was the colouring mechanic the colouring mechanics a very cool unique selling point it's definitely something that helps you to differentiate yourself from other top-down shooters so keep it in your game the only thing I feel like is

that follow through with it feels a bit inconsistent because there are a lot of situations in the game where there are red enemies that are not destroyed by my red trails there are a lot of situations there are red projectiles that are not locked by my red trails and I just want to have a little more consistency with that coloring mechanic where I can rely on the fact that red enemies will interact in a certain way with my red trails they don't need to be destroyed instantaneously but like I just want them to do something like maybe their projectiles are blocked maybe they are slowed down by my red trail if you have that coloring mechanic in your game I would really try to get the most out of it just make sure that the color of your ship really matters really has an impact the coloring mechanic is something that differentiates you from other top-down shooters I would highly recommend you lean into it even more and make even better use of that coloring mechanic one thing I really like was in the boss fight we're changing my color also changed the attack pattern of my little

gear wheel companion I feel like there was a very cool idea I want to see more of that maybe you can even change up the attack pattern off the ship entirely when you switch the color so you can basically by switching the color also switch between different weapons that would be a nice multi-purpose mechanic and would definitely make the combat more interesting when you can switch between different weapons as you switch through different colors okay very nice great game ashtec fun time will come out in 2020 the link to the steam store page is down below if you Dickie games like this I highly recommend you check out the steam store page and it's a wishlist button okay next up we will play castle flies which was a game jam game and we played this cute little Knight there seems to be a little bit of a gap in the ground here from time to time which is something that happens when you stitch sprites together those are just some of the little annoying things or often times you don't know how to fix them what did that switch do it opened that door I like that the lighting changes up a little bit here because that makes it easier to orient myself makes this look

less say me Oh snail can't continue do I really have to smash those cute little snail E's no don't make me do that the punch feels a little weak and she of course I have a stick so maybe it's supposed to feel weak but no it doesn't really feel all that snappy cause it feels like there's a little bit of a delay usually what you want to do when you do a punch like this you want it to be pretty much instant without any delay or need to be careful not to be killed by snails that would be embarrassing well that was the combat tutorial that is a button no idea what that button does okay I can push that creepy little figure onto the button no I cannot do that why not they would have been so obvious law no that is not the way okay what am I supposed to do with it this button right here ah that button resets the figure let's not press that button and let just walk

through here obviously take that if it has a higher DPS and even though this is more DPS it still has that awkward delay the animation doesn't even start right away this stuff like that just makes such a big difference every little frame makes such a huge difference like I want this to be way more instant when I click the button quite a long game for a game gym game okay don't touch the ghost there's a button with one second no clue what it does at this point I'm also starting to wonder what's the point of this view cone mechanic here of this light mechanic yes it makes everything a little darker and creepier but maybe if you have a mechanic like this in the game maybe you can do a bit more with it maybe there are some enemies or whatever that are scared away by light I don't drink the poison where am i oh no am I once again at the very beginning no losing that much progress always stinks if the combat were more interesting then okay yes perhaps I might enjoy doing this again the least I can show this level again right because you see this

button it doesn't do anything it doesn't open the door it doesn't do anything with that figure here so you literally have no idea what that button does and then same thing for this button here okay except for the fact that it stays pressed to actually show that the doors open no but then it closes I see so you try to fix that problem by making sure the door stays open however I'm gonna tell you what would have been way smarter what if you add put the button over here so you can see the door put a torch next to the door so whenever you stand on that button you can see that the door open opens and then you don't have that awkward situation see just add a new tunnel appear and then put that button up there that way that puzzle it would be may way more understandable although I think simply by placing those two objects closer together that button and that figure it would be easier to understand that they're connected somehow oh and of course if you want to make it super clear you can have a dotted line that goes respawn field or something like that for a game like this like for a for

a castle context these dotted lines and whatever probably don't make a lot of sense but you could still do something like a rune on the wall and then have the same rune on the figure or something just to make sure that there are some sort of connection that you can make some sort of assumption of what you have to do I mean I'm sure most people will probably figure this out eventually but it just feels more more fair and more fun if you give little clues like that okay neat we're almost where we left off to take the knife and the life and not touch the ghosts and we won't drink that and once again we can't get past that okay hmm okay nice you did something with the light I applaud you for that that is epic and I make it follow me in here come on follow me it's not following me and so that's not the solution damage what do you want me to do I I don't want to do everything over again no I will not drink that maybe I just need to be fast enough oh oh that

actually worked what the hell cake combat bring it on skill in combat unfortunately not super interesting and also not super satisfying due to the fact that it is not very snappy and it's a bit repetitive not gonna lie I'm of course we have to keep in mind that this was a game Jim games oh definitely not judging you just telling you that I think you could probably have gotten an even better rating in this game Jim if you maybe had made the game a bit shorter but a bit more snappy and polished can we leave now no okay why not I miss an enemy somewhere and I'm already once again very low on health I'm scared I'm scared please don't hurt me that was a cool little chamber I like that everything that mixes the lapis always good if you have really wide open rooms like this year then narrow rooms like that with a little switch in them a nice way to switch it up Oh switch switch switch no now the stores are bit buggy that snail tricked me it was not a snail was a cloak mommy no I don't wanna fight

you know oh please I wanna check Forge please yeah just had to find the correct combination give me some health okay we get a different weapon now that's a lot of content in this game but a long game nice I need that now that was so mean that was unfair that was just unfair it seems like there was a checkpoint here I see that's basically a shortcut that's cool this is a common thing as he in a lot of games where the character actually moves faster when you move diagonally if you don't know that you're a bit screwed because the bets are really fast and the reason why that hasn't happened this usually caused a lot of people caught movement in a way where when you press to the right your character gets a certain movement to the right and when you press down your character gets a certain movement downwards so if you basically press to the right and down at the same time then

you are about 40% faster because you're just getting the side words entered downwards movement at once and if you don't compensate for that in the quarter then your characters just straight out faster when moving diagonally a bunch of poisonous drinks I'm not allowed to touch because these drinks are so poisonous they automatically force me to drink them as soon as I touch them Rambam yes refill that ooh it's another batch okay seems like this is a bit of a crazy labyrinth section and unlocked another door in this corridor which gives me a nice feeling of progress and I got some shoes and I get a new Sarge now would have been a good time to make me go up against some of the other creeps so I can feel that my sword is more powerful now that my weapon is more powerful if you give me a stronger sword and then at the same time make me go up against to give significantly harder enemies then I don't feel the increase in power at all very nice okay this is I think this is

as far as I'll play I feel like you could even get a significantly better rating next time if you focus a little less on the length of the game and a little more on the quality because especially for Game Jam games people don't really care if the game's short you can make a 5 min or a 10 minute game and if it's good we'll get a good rating because most people when they play game gem games they'll only play five or ten minutes anyway so for game gem games I would really just try to focus more on the quality and less on the quantity and if you do that if you make sure hitting something with a sword feels a bit snappier if you make sure that the puzzles are a bit easier to understand and if you just put all of your really good ideas into the first 5 to 10 minutes of the game like those ghosts that are stunned when you look at them with the light and then spend a bit more time on on level design or whatever I feel like that can get you significantly better results in the next game jump you told me this one got good ratings in the games room which I completely understands pretty pretty epic game pretty impressive that you've managed to pull that off I completely agree that this is a very nice and solid

game as I said I just feel like you will be able to get even better ratings if you put quality over quantity in the next game jam the links to all of the games you can play yourself are of course in the description so if you wanna play this go check it out this game is called hip Hoxha's what I can already tell us that there's a little bit of delay on the mouse which is probably due to the way you draw the mouse and unit you have to check their their different ways to draw a mouse this seems one that definitely causes a bit of delay which for for a shooter game is not not ideal so I would look into that that looks that actually looks sick the style looks amazing you can also vary your jump height jump feels a bit floaty but I feel like in this space setting it kind of works for me it's nice these yellow particles here in my opinion don't fit in their world they

look like standard unity particles to me the earliest give them different pics large sprite and I get through that no that is locked but this is locked as well that is strange I missed something in fact I did miss something level design is not as linear as I thought at first already feels a little Metroidvania like oh nice gun has a nice feel to it you can see it has just the right amount of screen shake when I fire directly to the side there's no knock back but when I fire at an angle my character is pushed back at a strange this would feel more satisfying if these things up here would just explode and completely destroyed a little recommendation right there the I want this to be I want this to

blow up okay that's creature could shaken the prizing amount of shots it would probably feel might make my gun feel more powerful if these creatures wouldn't take that many shots for something that looks that slimy it resists a lot of laser shots the thing is it also just keeps moving like nothing happened so maybe when I shoot it it should at the very least stop moving for for a brief moment or have an animation where it reacts to being hit I feel like it's just a little too unimpressed by my gun no kidding the art of this game looks really really great okay what does this do I did restart my house let us cool and I collect this No oh no it can't quite shoot this yet I probably need a new ability for that one thing I have to say is that a lot of the rooms look a bit samey perhaps you can find a way to make them look a bit more diverse so it's a

little easier to orient yourself where you are or just in general changing up the colors a little bit just slightly but I can know that I'm somewhere else because this already feels like I've been here before [Music] as that enemy looks more metallic I would actually not be mad if it even could take a couple more shots because that context I feel like it feels like it makes more sense if you can take a lot of shots it looks more stable than the slimes if you know what I mean I like the sound effect when going to an new room you can't really see downwards very well kind of works perhaps later in the polishing phase if you know the player has to go down here perps you can just try a little exception for this room where the players a little further up in the screen so you can get downwards a bit better your rooms like this are definitely memorable help me to know where I am even though I think the levels have become a bit more linear uh-huh

intriguing so we saw somebody down there which means we're not alone a little bit of storytelling there now I'm definitely intrigued to find out more I hope you enjoyed the game yeah I did what's nice so far unfortunately this is the end of the demo I feel like they're not fun to walk around the levels any interesting enemy ideas to make the game a little harder because of the free em mechanic it makes it super easy to kill them and neither one so about the level design I would definitely try to keep up that Metroidvania like level design that is a bit more open and opens up different pathways later on as you unlock more and more abilities I feel like that was pretty cool also well executed at the beginning where you can't proceed unless you go all the way back and pick up the gun that was definitely a cool moment I agree that walking through the levels can feel a bit samey at times so firstly I would really try to make rooms look more different from one another easiest

way to do that is with lighting and then perhaps you can also put a couple of memorable objects into each room that are specific to that room so the rooms just feel a bit more different from one another then in terms of the enemy design I just thought the enemies you chose are probably that easy because it's still the beginning of the game like there there are a ton of ways you can make enemies more difficult and more challenging one that I wouldn't recommend is giving enemies more HP because that makes your weapons feel weaker what I would recommend is you make enemies stronger by making them faster that is literally the easiest way to make them make them more dangerous and stronger just making them faster because if you have some enemies that come at you at a at a fast speed then it suddenly becomes very important that you aim properly and hit them before they reach you more or less so basically as soon as you have enemies that are faster than you can run that's where it starts getting really dangerous and interesting you need some enemies that just come at you at a faster speed but I don't think you need them that early in the game I feel like the enemies you have right now are very well fitted to introduce the

player to the game and to get you going so I didn't really mind the low difficulty so far like those slimes I'm not exactly sure what their purpose is I think their purpose should not to be dangerous so basically punching bags that you can try your guns out on that's what I would turn those limes into and then those rotating guns on the other hand I feel like we're a fitting challenge for the beginning of the perhaps you can even give them one or two additional HP in terms of the look of the game it already looks super nice I really just hope this becomes a nice meet Vania like where you just unlock cool new abilities to use like a little grenade that I can use to bump myself through that wall and stuff like that also the UI appear lens and very nicely looks very very nice I dig this a lot I feel like you're you're right good the fact that you have a ranged rifle is a little bit of an issue cause at this point it is very very tempting to turn this into a bullet hell game because this is pretty much the only way you can are seemingly the only way you can make this difficult at this point if you just

have a ton of enemies that also fire projectiles in your direction over in this case I feel like this would probably not be the correct route to go down because you already have a ton of bullet hell games and I feel like you could make this game and the enemies in this game a lot more interesting if you don't rely on bullet hell mechanics and instead just create enemies that come at you really really fast and you have to kill them before they reach you of course you have can have some edge so I'm shooting enemies as well that is of course a good way to increase the difficulty as well but I don't know how I would feel about bullet l stuff in here Woolsey I'm intrigued especially also by the story the little figure we saw walking down there also a good way to make levels more interesting and diverse is to combine different elements that we have established before that works even better if you have elements that allow for interesting combinations so for example what if you had different grounds for example a ground that is covered in slime and makes you slide or if you had some conveyor belts that influence your movement or water or or a

shield barrier that you oh yeah that is actually cool or do a shield barrier that you can't shoot through and that allows you to combine your enemies in interesting ways with different other level design elements so if you have a turret here and then you have a shield barrier here and then the floor he is covered with slime and then you have a lot more possibilities for interesting combinations and to create interesting level design that is what I would try what I would go for and then ideally weapon switching should also play an important role in the gameplay so some enemies should definitely be more vulnerable to some guns than others like you should definitely try to out officially encouraged weapon switching as much as possible and even better if you can do that in a way where it explains itself maybe you can have some shock projectiles that create a little electric effect whenever they hit a wall that gun can then be used to disable turrets and stuff like that like synergies like that is definitely what you're looking for in a game like this cause this definitely seems to be a game about exploration about figuring out

stuff by yourself I really like the way this introduces you through the game at the moment it is absolutely not hand-holding it just lets you figure out stuff by yourself and I like that I respect it I liked it would be nice if I could switch my weapon with the mouse wheel honestly very well done I'm impressed very well done I'm curious to see the final game hope this helped you out a bit now if you see someone asking the following questions please link them to this part of the video these are questions they come a ball of the time first of all will we do this again yes we will do this again I announce these videos on the community section of this YouTube channel as well as on our discord group link in the description below and then you have like a one or two week time window to send me your games so if you want to send me your game for one of the next videos please wait for the next announcement then another another question that often comes up is why didn't you play more games why don't you spend less time on each game and play more games things I just want to give each game the time it deserves I want to understand a game before I give my feedback so I don't think I can rush through the games any faster than this I'm already trying my best to be as quick as possible you're

sending me a ton of games like unfortunately that means I wasn't able to play the majority of your games you've sent me so many games it's just not possible to play all of them I still appreciate that you sent me your games a lot of them look really really good I'm proud that I have such an awesome and creative community and I don't feel like playing anymore I'm sorry excuses because I'm lazy I know some people always wonder how I pick the game for these videos it's mostly at random of course I pick games that I think would make for a good video that is my main concern to be honest I just want to make an entertaining video so often times if I've already played two platformer games and I click on another platformer game and just like no I don't want another platformer game in this video this is not gonna be interesting to watch but other than that it's very much random the quality of the game doesn't really matter I don't care I play whatever you send me don't forget to wish list will you snail and see Maxim have you ever asked yourself why you're here you taught me how to manipulate that kill on your behalf so that idea

[Music] and everybody is how you catch the bowling ball [Music]