The movement dont let me enjoy this game as it should.
Reviews for "Sanguine 2"
I love this game. Holy mackeral. I has this haunting feel to it like I'm playing Castlevania for the first time.
The music is fantastic, well written and not at all overbearing. The artwork is so good. Nothing gets lost in the scene and the sprites stand out great. Animations and parallaxing are fab and there is a story that is really cool.
What I really appreciate are the hidden parts of the game. They make me want to replay levels.
I do like the controls. There are some parts where the ice makes it so tricky but those spots are not littered all over the place, so they don't feel like they take away from the enjoyment of the game.
For my two cents worth, this game rocks and Eleanor is a bad ass.
I managed to complete the game and found your "here lies" little thing. At times, I really liked the game and, looking back on it now, if I were to go through it again, I'd probably look like a pro gamer. However, I did find some problems with it.
- It's good you included the key configuration function though I think you should have made it more clear and explained it in that menu that popped up. I went in there hoping to change a key and left thinking it was only there to test them (I know the menu said key configuration, but I've played a number of games that had functions that were miss leading or didn't work). Also, why did you set the buttons the way they are? Having the main functions (jump, attack, chain) on the same line of the keyboard seems like a good idea. If this is due to having a keyboard that has the letters in different places, you could always have more than one button for a function to cover your bases.
- Although I'll agree that having a tutorial every 5 steps is annoying and I like the idea of gamers figuring things out on their own, it would be a good idea to design the game in a way that fosters the learning of the game (I notice in one of the early levels, you have two checkpoint straight up and down the map to ensure the player touched them. This is a good idea. I believe you also showed the player breakable walls and, if the player was paying attention, you could follow a little monster at the beginning to where you can get blood and extra lives). However, it took me a while to find out how to use the hit-able objects to propel myself up. The first ones I came across were knobs that turned when you hit them so I first thought I had to hit them to unveil a platform or something. The way some levels were set up, it definitely clicked in me that "somehow these things are supposed to help keep me in the air", but it wasn't until I died and had to maneuver in the underground, where there were a bunch of objects, that I finally got that I needed to hold down jump.
- It's true that slippery controls are in other popular games and that they can add something. However, the games you listed off in Hylarn's comment are games where you jump on enemy's heads to kill them, if there are any. In this game, you need to approach enemies and press the attack button, but since the controls are slippery and you need to be pretty close to land a hit, you're extremely likely to slide into the enemy. If exact positioning in this game wasn't required, I'd agree with you, but with the enemies and the chain hook thing, it made the game frustrating, especially for the bosses.
- the chain was probably the hardest thing I had to learn, not because the concept of using it was tough, but because there was a delay to it being thrown out, meaning you had to time it correctly to make sure it hit the target. This goes back to the slippery controls, but it also has to do with a specific challenge, namely this:
|
fall from here |
| the ledge
|_________
^
place chain here after falling
Trying to do this is frustrating, especially when you keep going back and forth between a slow speed at 0 health and faster one with health. To me, I could never fully get the timing down. I also had this probably with swinging the sword since I believe the swing speed goes down when you don't have any more blood (I just can't switch between those modes of timing in my head).
- The fact that humans could shoot through the walls was annoying, but it could argued that it made getting caught more treacherous and undesirable. The only thing I would have liked would have been a gauge on how far the humans could view (and the fact that when they stop changes their view would have been nice to know).
- Why did you only introduce the "special button" near the end of the game? On the first or second world seems more appropriate. I know the player could have always pressed it, but the tombstone that said to do it seemed very strange.
- Why not make the character automatically grab ledges and have the down button let the player slide down the ledge?
However, there were a lot of things in the game that I did like:
- The enemy designs and attack patterns were all unique and interesting. You had to strategize to take down some of the tougher ones.
- Although there weren't too many collectables, there were still rewards for exploring, namely rest spots for blood, extra lives, and the bonus weapon (the bonus weapon was pretty cool and the fact that it took a hit for the player made it that much more important to have).
- Throughout the entire game, you continued to add new challenges, whether by combining old ones or introducing new mechanics. It was interesting that you made finding secret passages mandatory by the end of the game (or at least for some levels).
- I think my favorite level was near the end, where there were 3 hidden passages that each led to a different challenge (one with poles, one with people, one with chain). It was probably the most difficult for me too. The word puzzle was also cool.
- The fact that you could use humans as shields against gun fire was pretty interesting (I actually didn't figure that out until after I started writing this comment and went back to check). It comes back to the strategy, making sure you grab the person who shoots twice instead of the gun next to them that only shoots once.
- Although I found the weakened state when you are out of blood to be annoying, it definitely added a feeling of vulnerability to the playing experience, making health that much more important.
There was probably more stuff I liked, but right now, I'm tired and it's time to go to bed soon for me. Despite the hardship and frustration, it definitely was an experience, which is not something I can say about a lot of games I've played. I look forward to your future work.
RayBeckham responds:
Awesome review, thank you for taking the time to go into detail!
I put the input keys the way they are because I have a few old keyboards laying around and setting up the buttons in a line was causing ghosting on those. It was a guess that it might reduce issues for people. I'll add some instructions about the key config in the menu.
I'll add in some more tutorial stones in a future update, for both grabbing ledges and bouncing off objects. Holding jump to rise higher just feels like something imbedded in my brain from most platformers ... but I can't expect players to know that.
The sliding stays. Git gud.
I threw the special key tombstone into world 3 so that there would be something just for fun in an otherwise 100% raw challenge zone. I'm not committed to it having to be there, though.
Having to manually grab a ledge means you have the possibility of not grabbing the ledge. A possibility of failure means there's risk... A game without risk isn't as fun, in my opinion.
I'm glad there were many other things you liked. Again, thank you for the review and i'll try adding some things that make the game easier to learn.
This is great! The controls feel very fluid. I love these types of games. A lot of work must have gone into this. I like the artwork. It takes a bit of skill to get through the levels and timing your attacks with the enemies. This kinda reminds me of those old Castlevania games Thanks!
It looks like there's something interesting here, but the awkward controls (how do I ledge-grab, again?), slippery physics, and general lack of guidance make it difficult to get into
RayBeckham responds:
I'm a believer that gamers are smart and capable of experimentation. Rather than place a tutorial every 10 paces, to blatantly spell out every single action you can do, I believe that players would show enough initiative to try out some of the basic inputs of the game next to a ledge and figure out how to grab onto it. Hold jump.
Your frustration is valid. However, slippery physics are not some kind of inherently bad concept in game design. Mario Bros, Meat Boy, Fancy Pants... all these games have far more slippery controls than mine and are very successful. So without further explanation, all you've given me is an opinion on your preferred design. And everyone is going to have a different opinion on that.
For controls, everyone has different keyboards, Europeans have completely different boards and because flash is a plugin inside a browser, I have no ability to detect or setup a keyboard layout that's going to work for everyone. And you have "ghosting" keys on some keyboards as well. It's one of the limitations of building a flash based browser game with any kind of complex key inputs and i'll always get flak for it, regardless of my liberal explanations and workarounds.
Can you imagine the functions of the game working with fewer keys needed? Or can you give me a way to navigate these complex user side issues with the grace that you demand of me?
Lack of guidance? Maybe. I'm sure there are some gamers who love just going off, exploring, figuring things out and enjoy the discovery of it all. Then there are those who want everything to be set in front of them and explained. If that's the case, is the game poorly designed or is this just a case of different strokes for different folks? I'm not saying your rating is unfair, but your review doesn't seem all that constructive for me.