Feedback Nether: The Dying Village (version 0.2.3) 9/18/17

[Tonydaderp]

Hello, everyone! I recently just finished a newer debug demo for my game Nether: The Dying Village. I have been working on this project for about seven months, but it is nowhere near completion. I am working on it as much as I can.

A Short Description about Nether: The Dying Village
It is a remake of an unfinished gameboy styled game of the same name. It is a metroidvania platformer, with puzzle elements.

Spoiler: Screenshots

Spoiler: Videos

Spoiler: Plot

Plot
So sometime in someplace, Nether's village is slowing dying from an incurable disease. Whenever the villagers try to go to towns and cities to ask for medical help, the guards of the royal palace shoot them dead and then bury them deep underground out of the fear that the disease might spread. Archers are everywhere surrounding the village and nearby escape routes to prevent the villagers from escaping. However, an unsuspecting traveler happens to stop at the village after a long voyage and happens to have a remedy for the disease. He treats Nether, the healthiest and strongest out of all the villagers so he can journey to the dangerous lands where the cure lies deep within.

Controls

• Move/grab walls/climb ladders: Arrow keys
• Jump/walljump: Z
• Use item/interact: X
• Roll: C
• Menu: Space bar
• Options/select option/start game: ENTER

Debug stuff

• Press E to slow down the fps
• Press R to restart game
• Press M to reveal work-in-progress minimap

You can change/view the controls by pressing "change controls" in the options screen.
There are currently only two control schemes for keyboard, and two control schemes for gamepad, however, I am yet to add more.

The sound effects are just placeholders, i am yet to find a way to be able to pay for a composer. (I'm just a really young teen with no allowance) :|

I would really really appreciate it if you gave your feedback, comments or suggestions right here in the comments. It helps me a ton, and of course, makes my game as best as can be. Thank you so much for taking you time and checking my game out! Have a great day!


Latest Version (0.2.2) 9/18/17
You can download it right here on itchio:
https://tonydaderp.itch.io/nether-debug-version-023

 

[RangerX]

woaaaa, you have something really good looking going on there!

 

[Tonydaderp]

woaaaa, you have something really good looking going on there!

Thank you! Did you try it out yet?

 

[MetaSpace]

The pixelart looks very professional, is that your work? The whole layout gives me a GameBoy-kind-of a feeling Keep us updated!

 

[RangerX]

I downloaded the 0.2 and the 0.2.5 and for both games it doesn't work.
I press "Enter" on "new game" or "options" and the game just does something like a room restart. Logo animates again, boomrang comes, etc.

EDIT: oh jeez, I seen the "v" mention now... I will continue editing this post for my feedback. First feedback: have "enter" work for "choosing/proceed/continue, etc"

- Ok I think you have something going on here. The character generally controls fine (by the way, asd+jkl style doesn't work in-game). He might be a bit slow on left-right but that might be because there will be a running power later.

- You have talent on pixel art, keep up the good work. (unless those are ripped and I didn't notice lol)

- For the other controls, its pretty good. Walling work right but there's no "swimming" per see. I hope there would be down the road.

- Nice choice of fonts for your menus. Keep it something clean and visual like that.

- Something about the text boxes. Words are getting drawn outside the boxes for some frames before the textbox adjusts itself. Looks bad.

- You seem to have a good sense of polishing. Keep that. But don't get lost early on, just make a game and polish it along the way, there's alot of time for that.

Its a project I would like to keep an eye on. Continue to make progress and don't hesitate to get me for testing sometimes. We both are making Metroidvanias and I think we both share interest in each other projects so...

 

[Tonydaderp]

I downloaded the 0.2 and the 0.2.5 and for both games it doesn't work.
I press "Enter" on "new game" or "options" and the game just does something like a room restart. Logo animates again, boomrang comes, etc.

EDIT: oh jeez, I seen the "v" mention now... I will continue editing this post for my feedback. First feedback: have "enter" work for "choosing/proceed/continue, etc"

- Ok I think you have something going on here. The character generally controls fine (by the way, asd+jkl style doesn't work in-game). He might be a bit slow on left-right but that might be because there will be a running power later.

- You have talent on pixel art, keep up the good work. (unless those are ripped and I didn't notice lol)

- For the other controls, its pretty good. Walling work right but there's no "swimming" per see. I hope there would be down the road.

- Nice choice of fonts for your menus. Keep it something clean and visual like that.

- Something about the text boxes. Words are getting drawn outside the boxes for some frames before the textbox adjusts itself. Looks bad.

- You seem to have a good sense of polishing. Keep that. But don't get lost early on, just make a game and polish it along the way, there's alot of time for that.

Its a project I would like to keep an eye on. Continue to make progress and don't hesitate to get me for testing sometimes. We both are making Metroidvanias and I think we both share interest in each other projects so...

Wow what a detailed review! First off, I'd like to thank you so much for your critique and feedback. When you said that the asd jkl style doesnt work, did you mean physically broken or just not the right kind of controls for the genre? About the text boxes, i will draw out the text in a surface, while drawing an invisible square above the text to "remove it"(i know, surfaces are weird). And about that thing you said about polish, i completely understand you. At first, i spent about 4 months doing nothing but the smallest of tweaks and these tiny details, and it slowed down development by a ton. So i will now push polishing to the end-core gameplay first. And no, there wont be a running ability, it just wasn't in my conception. I kinda wanted my game to be like the mega man games, a dash or slide instead of a sprinting thing. I could speed up the walking, but ill have to consider that after a few levels are done to see how well it paces. All and all, thank you so guys so much for taking your time to check out my game it means so much to me. Thank you! See ya guys around!

Oh and the funky "v" control thing... ill change that. XD

 

[RangerX]

For the controls its like the game doesn't save it. I go in the option and choose ASD style. After that I press "new game" and in the game am back at ZXC style.

 

[Tonydaderp]

For the controls its like the game doesn't save it. I go in the option and choose ASD style. After that I press "new game" and in the game am back at ZXC style.

Oh! You're supposed to press "o" to get back into the game. Thereafter, "o" becomes "v".....


I know! What the heck was i thinking!?!?!?!? These confusing control schemes deserve to be on an AVGN episode..

 

[Tonydaderp]

New demo!

 

[APigeon]

Hi,
I saw your game a while ago and I thought I should give it a try today.

It's very pleasing to the eye and we already are in a dungeon theme, it's very well made for sure in terms of graphics and animations from my viewpoint.
Gameplay wise, Controls are smooth and I got accustomed fairly quickly to them.

I do wonder about this part:

Spoiler

Have you made this part so we would have to use the wall jump to go back from the right side ?
It may be just me but since I have not played many platformers with walljumps, it felt a bit strange to me ^^' .

I also thought that you could simply jump the wall on the left without using the wall jump as well.
Unless you intend us to be accustomed to this mechanic early on and quickly for a few sequences you would be adding later on.

Since you mentioned the Megaman inspiration:

Spoiler

Will this be some sort of death pit, or will we be still able to get out by wall jumping on the brick block ?

I didn't play the previous version, so I'm not sure if these were already mentioned before and if you added a little section or simply corrected a few bugs.

You could try to add a few things as well:
-In the option menu, "title screen" and "quit game" don't do anything right now (I pushed R by accident at some point, but I find this to be a bit cryptic to guess on my own)
-In the change control menu, I cannot change controls by pressing the option button, it goes back to the "options" menu (with a keyboard).

Instead, I have to press "right arrow" to go to the 2nd controller menu, and "a" to return to the 1st one​

-The map menu controls are reversed, pressing any direction will make me go the opposite way

-as you can see in the last picture, there's no death system, perhaps you could add a death animation ?

-Because of that, the pits are bottomless as well, so I have to restart
-It could be very useful if you want to add a checkpoint system in there at some point or perhaps make the player restart the room​

-Furthermore, on the left side of the same screen, you can see that you can't go back to the left, everytime I re-enter a room, its state will be reset:

The puzzle here will be unsolved, the door that was previously unlocked also gets locked again, and all the gems will reappear in their respective rooms​

One last thing about the "money room":

Spoiler

It's possible to take the green jewels without going the intended way. Maybe the "grass" / "moss" should not be climbable.
I would also suggest to add one or two blocks in height so you can't wall jump from the left

I believe there's great potential to Nether, I will wait for more news .

 

[Tonydaderp]

Hi,
I saw your game a while ago and I thought I should give it a try today.

It's very pleasing to the eye and we already are in a dungeon theme, it's very well made for sure in terms of graphics and animations from my viewpoint.
Gameplay wise, Controls are smooth and I got accustomed fairly quickly to them.

I do wonder about this part:

Spoiler

View attachment 12963

Have you made this part so we would have to use the wall jump to go back from the right side ?
It may be just me but since I have not played many platformers with walljumps, it felt a bit strange to me ^^' .

I also thought that you could simply jump the wall on the left without using the wall jump as well.
Unless you intend us to be accustomed to this mechanic early on and quickly for a few sequences you would be adding later on.

Since you mentioned the Megaman inspiration:

Spoiler

View attachment 12964

Will this be some sort of death pit, or will we be still able to get out by wall jumping on the brick block ?

I didn't play the previous version, so I'm not sure if these were already mentioned before and if you added a little section or simply corrected a few bugs.

You could try to add a few things as well:
-In the option menu, "title screen" and "quit game" don't do anything right now (I pushed R by accident at some point, but I find this to be a bit cryptic to guess on my own)
-In the change control menu, I cannot change controls by pressing the option button, it goes back to the "options" menu (with a keyboard).

Instead, I have to press "right arrow" to go to the 2nd controller menu, and "a" to return to the 1st one​

-The map menu controls are reversed, pressing any direction will make me go the opposite way

-as you can see in the last picture, there's no death system, perhaps you could add a death animation ?

-Because of that, the pits are bottomless as well, so I have to restart
-It could be very useful if you want to add a checkpoint system in there at some point or perhaps make the player restart the room​

-Furthermore, on the left side of the same screen, you can see that you can't go back to the left, everytime I re-enter a room, its state will be reset:

The puzzle here will be unsolved, the door that was previously unlocked also gets locked again, and all the gems will reappear in their respective rooms​

One last thing about the "money room":

Spoiler

View attachment 12965

It's possible to take the green jewels without going the intended way. Maybe the "grass" / "moss" should not be climbable.
I would also suggest to add one or two blocks in height so you can't wall jump from the left

I believe there's great potential to Nether, I will wait for more news .

WOW! Thank you so much for taking the time to not only test my game, but write an essay about it! So first things first:

-The "money room" gives you the emeralds if you take the intended way, but also rewards you for trying out a different path.
-There will be a death system for sure, i just havent got it done yet.
-As for the awkward jump, i will change it and make it easier. However, i will be adding these to late levels, as by then the player will have adapted to the controls well enough to make those kind of jumps.
-About the controls thing... i will look deeper into it and get it working properly.
-The room's persistancy, i will fix it. (so the player doesnt farm coins)

So for the next demo, i will polish it up a lot more and make it easier to test. Thank you so much again for testing my game out, it really does mean the world to me. So yeah... have a great day!

 

[APigeon]

-The room's persistancy, i will fix it. (so the player doesnt farm coins)

Try to focus first on the puzzle room one then, if you want your game to be a metroidvania, it's better to be able to go back and explore than blocking the money farm .
It's still possible that both issues can be solved at the same time though.

However, i will be adding these to late levels, as by then the player will have adapted to the controls well enough to make those kind of jumps.

I thought it would be the idea, that these would not be added at the beginning.

Another bug:
In front of the locked door of the puzzle room, you can activate both conversations and pause menu at the same time, but it doesn't have any consequances gameplay wise, aside from the message box that stays there as long as you don't jump too much.

WOW! Thank you so much for taking the time to not only test my game, but write an essay about it!

*sigh* and here I thought I would be able to write a bit less, now it seems I'm even able to write essays with my eyes only .

Well have a good day.. or night on my end .