Well, it's messy, the gameplay is kind of generic and obviously it feels unpolished. This is still the best LD36 entry I've played so far, so... good job?
Reviews for "Steam Heart"
SinclairStrange responds:
Don't know how it's messy? Maybe it's just the genesis/megadrive grit feeling to it. But I'm glad you enjoy for what it was :)
steampunk gunstar heroes. very nice!
Full of action and hard but fair difficulty, though you might have wanted to add a hard mode that sets the player's max health lower, it's fairly easy to stay alive once you find out you can shoot in 8 directions and get the right weapon(s). Exception to difficulty fairness is that the boss that shoots missiles into the air feels like it can't be dodged, and having attacks that can't be dodged in games where dodging is the key to survival is very, very bad. Other problems include being able to just walk forward and spray and pray through some levels with the flame thrower ezpz and the controls. Arrow keys for movement is fine, but I would have definitely had a different default control setup (and I didn't know you could change the controls until a few moments after reading the controls in the description, about a boss or two into the game).
I personally would have went with Space to fire, S to jump, D to dash, and Q and E to switch weapons, previous and next respectively (or A if it had to be one key only). Switching weapons wasn't really viable for me mid-fight and using Space, Ctrl and Shift together felt rather weird to the point where I felt I couldn't use Space to dash at first. It's good to have a control setup where your fingers can easily reach all the buttons (unlike the default controls) but not have them feel cramped together either (Z + X + C + Space feels like some form of carpel tunnel).
p.s. Not sure if putting game companies' names on games they didn't make is legal... Hopefully no one overreacts.
Excellent for something developed in such a short time, but I'll judge it just as a game in general. In that case it's... decent.
Music is okay.
Hitboxes seem slightly off, especially aroung the player (if standing) and on the Boss "Dragon Breath"s Fireballs.
The fog in the area before Clock Belly flimmers, or gives the impression of flimmering, when you move.
Homing Ammo (E) is, despite its slow speed way too efficent for Bossfights. While I enjoyed using it, I'm not sure if focusing 100% on Evasion whie still doing respectable damage is quite the point.
Overall i think some of the sounds are too sharp.
Octosmash is a bit unfair in how it always knows where to resurface so it can hit you,add a 2 sec delay on that.
And the vine beast's vines need to have a bit less health.
I could not get past the octopus robot,so take this review with some salt.
Also the controls are tanky but, i think this is made like a 16-bit game so i suppose it is made like that in mind.