Reviews for Rum & Gun DEMO

[theandykat]

bugs/features:
1. While in combat, players cannot progress to the next level, but, this can be bypassed by the player dying. The dead player can progress to the next level.
2. Checkpoints trigger even when you have enemies nearby and/or attacking you. Players can have twenty guys chasing them, reach a checkpoint, and then respawn without twenty guys chasing them anymore
3. Sword charge spamming is quicker than walking.
4. level up perks can be available for weapons yet to be discovered
5. I think drink rum quicker perk heals teammates with the fiddle faster?

Review: I beat the game normally. I would've liked for it to have been more difficult. I liked the weak/useless teammates, but I felt bad when they died. I tried playing through again with limiting myself to just using rum, fiddle and sword. I could not defeat the final boss, and I discovered the glitch where dead player can progress to next level bug during the 2nd to last level. idk if I could have beaten this level legit or not with the limitations. I like enemies of different factions fighting one another. (for example the reptiles will fight the other pirates).

Suggestions: I'd like for there to be gold as currency and exp as exp because I want to be able to buy allies. I would like a level up perk option that grants healing from sword damage or sword kills. I would like for there to be a hardcore mode.

Borington responds:

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! Glad you liked the demo.

[ultimatum479]

This is a pretty neat lil' brawler aside from a few issues, most minor. Don't take the fact that this review seems long and critical the wrong way; it's just that all the things this game does right are pretty obvious and don't need me to spell them out. It's got solid mechanics, responsive controls, beautiful graphics, pretty good auditory feedback, and -- most importantly -- stylin' hats. So here are the things to improve and make it close to perfect.

Slow movement from place to place makes the game feel kinda sluggish. A non-combat movement speed boost would be nice (ie, you move faster if you haven't attacked or been attacked in the last three seconds), to assist in travel without making kiting too easy. Perhaps the Agility upgrades would help if they weren't glitched. They provide a brief movement boost, but it goes away after some event (perhaps changing weapons or acquiring a different perk); I did a timed comparison of an Agility I + Agility II character against a brand new game, so I'm quite sure.

The Rifle feels terrible, even with its Pierce upgrade, as compared to either the Pistol or Blunderbuss. The latter is obviously vastly better at close- and mid-range, and the former is just better in all contexts due to its fire rate and access to the sword charge. The Rifle needs something unique to differentiate it from the Pistol, and Pierce is insufficient due to the higher fire rate, higher ammo count, and larger projectile hitbox of the Pistol making it better against crowds anyway. Perhaps switching Pierce to "ignore bullet reflection" and increasing the frequency of enemies who can reflect bullets (why don't cannons, for example?) would help, as would increasing the damage and greatly decreasing ammo availability so that it feels more like a proper sniping weapon.

Holding Q to see enemy lifebars is super awkward. Make that a toggle button instead of a hold button, like the fiddle.

Melee allies need a lot more max health (and should heal the same percentage of max health from the Fiddle as they do currently). Protecting your gunners is fine and all, but sword allies seem strictly worse than gunners: they run into massive swarms of enemies and there's no way to protect them as they insta-die, other than playing the Fiddle...which prevents you from helping them dish out damage in the process.

I think that's mostly it. Again, solid work. Looking forward to more from you.

Borington responds:

Thanks . I can'imagine how Agility lost its effect. Maybe it's too subtle? (no agility is 0.09 speed, Agility II is 0.096). Anyways, this has been a very helpful review! Glad you liked it.
Edit: in version 1.0.2 the agility perk has been slightly boosted, and Q has been changed from hold to toggle. Also, the rifle bullet's collision size has been increased. There actually was a coding mistake there.

[Celestial-008]

The gameplay is fun!

The controls kinda need some more work though.

The allied NPCs needs some more upgrade in the AI department.

And I hope there some intros and cutscenes to flesh out the game's story.

Borington responds:

Thanks for the feedback. Could you give more detail on control problems? Did you encounter any bugs? Did it feel unresponsive? Was the key layout inconvenient?

[Conker]

i like it

[jkreimer87]

Colour me impressed. The whole thing is very well animated.
I especially like how the environment reacts to bombs.
Lacks some story elements and the coin pick-up system is a little irritating.
I feel like I'm wasting enormous amounts of time just chasing coins that end up disappearing right before my nose. Doing this at higher levels is especially frustrating, since you also need lots of coins to improve.
I do like the concept and the fast action, though. Very pirate diablo.

In short, I feel like I am running around quite a lot for relatively little progress in plot, or gameplay, but it's still a fun way to pass the time.

I also like that there is no penalty for dying. That opens up ways to grind levels.

Borington responds:

Thank you! These detailed reviews really help me in improving the final game!