itch.io

Hey man, played your game for about 1-2 hours and honestly, from the start it felt great. The UI design is phenomenal, definitely better than a lot of games out there. I love the kind of floaty feel it has - feels great to click on things. Now to be honest, from the start I wasn't really sure what type of game it actually is. And I don't wanna be too critical but I'll just be honest here - by the time I stopped playing I still wasn't sure. When I began playing I got quite overwhelmed with buttons and menus and rewards all in my face at once, it felt like 100% of the games content was being shown to me all at once. After clicking around for a while I found this pretty addictive clicker game thing which from my interpretation it seems like it's the main way to earn money in the game. That's a cool idea but after I maxed out everything in the clicker I wasn't sure what to do next. There was so many options, I genuinely had no idea what I was missing or felt like I had skipped a tutorial or something. I opened a few packs. then found this expedition page and this arena thing? All of this I don't understand and I'm really sorry about this criticism because underneath it seems like a really polished and content-complete game. Again, I love the UI. But there's just too much of it.

So my main suggestions for you would be:

-Introduce the content slowly as the player progresses. If the clicker is meant to be the start of the game, remove everything else at the start except for the clicker and slowly introduce everything as the player progresses.

-I'd also implement a really solid tutorial, something that will carry players throughout most of the game. 

But if I'm being honest, that's probably all. The game is so polished and so well done you could earn some good money off this.

I hope you appreciate my feedback and if you'd just consider doing one thing for me, could you give some feedback on my game Slugger? I'm completely rebuilding it so I want some feedback on the foundation before I do more with it. https://proxyfirewall.itch.io/slugger-neo

Great game, keep it up!
Yours, ProxyFirewall

Any sort of feedback would be greatly appreciated, however keep in mind that it's just a foundation and is in pre-alpha.

https://proxyfirewall.itch.io/slugger-neo

Thank you so much for your feedback! It really helps me out. Before I respond, I would like to just clarify that this version of the game is extremely old and I’m rebuilding the game from the ground up, so this makes your feedback even more valuable.

Okay so firstly, what you say about it being chaotic is kind of the point. I want this game to be the most chaotic. constant-action, flashy game with something always going on. But I’ve always been confused as to why people say it’s chaotic because maybe they don’t understand it’s the point or there’s something I need to do to make the chaotic-ness stop taking away from the game maybe? I’m not sure. What you said about the glow though might be the solution, strong highlights and minimal glow might increase visual clarity while keeping it chaotic. I really want to know if you think it would decrease the chaotic-ness taking away from the game while still being chaotic.

With the movement, that’s something I’m working on in the rebuild of the game and what I’ve done is I’ve simply made it much more responsive and decreased the “slipperiness”. And with the character movement, if you mean that the area is small, I did that to make it feel really chaotic as well, so I don’t know what to do about that. With the dash, that won’t be something you start with, it’s going to be something you can acquire in the new version.

Those squares are all powerups, like the gun is damage and single bullet is increased accuracy for example. I’ll add a clearer tutorial in the new version.

When you say “boss”, there are two. If you mean wave 5, that may have been a bug? But if you mean wave 10, then that is intentional. Let me explain. The way it works is to be able to damage that boss, you need to max out the skill tree to unlock the ancient market, then from there you save up for the ancient bullets or ancient laser, and either one of those allow you to damage the final boss.

Also I’ve improved greatly on the explosion animation in the new version.

And a pause screen is going to be something I’ll add to the new version.

Thanks again for your feedback!

No problem, you don’t need to thank me I’m just trying to help people out!

Turning practice mode into normal mode and normal mode into hard mode is a fantastic idea, but I’d suggest still making a practice mode as that is very helpful for beginners.

Yes, I think your idea of leaving it to the player to decide but making some options better than others is also good, it’s really just personal preference so I’ll leave that up to you.

and with the colours I’d simply just suggest lowering the green value and keeping everything else the same, as that would make it a bit more calm as the green is the most aggressive and bright.

With the ability buttons, maybe I didn’t quite understand it because I probably didn’t have an ability at the time maybe. If they work for you, then I wouldn’t worry. I’m using a regular keyboard and stuff so unless yours is different I would just leave it.

And of course I’ll follow you, I really like your game! And take your time with playing my game, don’t stress. Also I’d really appreciate it if you consider following me as well, you don’t know how much it would mean :)

Okay, so let me give you a bit of feedback. I played for a little bit, and please don't think I'm trying to be mean throughout my feedback, I'll just be as critical as I can while being constructive as well as complementing on what you've already got so far.

Fun-ness
This game has insane potential. I love how similar it is to super smash's adventure mode, but it makes the whole idea a bit simpler and the  roguelike element makes it very replayable. However, what I think you need to improve on is the visual feedback. From what I played, I got close to no visual feedback. This makes the game feel very choppy and a bit bland. From what I can tell, a simplistic style is what you're going for but you can still include particle effects and explosions while still feeling simplistic. So what I suggest you do is really try to work on and refine this, as I think your game will benefit a ton from even just the smallest of particle effects like a small trail after you walk.

Difficulty
Being completely honest, this game is brutally hard in most ways you look at it. Even in practice mode, it felt overly difficult and I found myself beating myself up constantly saying "Why am I so bad at this game??", which is not what you want your players to think. You want to make the game so easy they think they're a natural at it, and they keep playing so they can test out how good they are. You still want to leave room for challenge of course, though. So anyway,  I can tell dodging is the major skill required for all of the battles I played through.  This means that the modifications you made for practice mode have little to no effect on the difficulty as they based around damage and immunity frames. For this game, I would modify the amount of projectiles you need to dodge for practice mode as that would actually make practice mode feel like a practice mode like it's supposed to be. Another thing is, the game was difficult enough that I began clicking random upgrades without really thinking about it because I subconciously kept telling myself "no matter what I do, it won't make it any easier for me", which kind of ruined my experience with this game to be honest. So something you could do about this is have small tips or hints suggesting what you could buy, they could even be random, just something to awaken people from that mindset. ONE more thing for the difficulty section is also you NEED a proper tutorial. Something as simple as arrows and text saying, (go this way, follow me) that takes you down a certain path, so it doesn't leave the player confused as to where to go. One small thing as well, the ability buttons didn't seem to do anything for me.

Art
The art is interesting. Right from the start I felt like I'd been blasted by all of those intense colours. I think you need to make them less intense, or apply a filter or shader because the colour scheme just feels a little bit off. Also with the art, I like the simplistic style but it feels a little sharp and choppy. It needs to be a little smoother, but still keep the pixel art style of course so try and just make the borders and lines a little bigger.

Other stuff
The movement feels a bit strange. I understand the block-jumping style of movement but something you need to fix up is you can't go diagonal which is a bit annoying. One last thing is in the future you'd really benefit from having a storyline as I'd love to know who this weird yellow rectangle is along with the enemies you fight.


All in all, great game, keep it up! The concept is really great, and I'm loving the simplistic yet replayable style. Just make some of these changes and I think you could improve this game by a substantial amount.

And keep me updated, I'd love to see it once you make some updates to it!

And also I have one favour, would you mind checking out my game? It's called slugger and you can play it at https://slugger.surge.sh or from my itch.io profile. I'm completely remaking it in a new engine so play the original game and then check out my latest 3 devlogs about how I'm rebuilding the game. Give some feedback if you can, it really helps, as hopefully mine helped you!

Anyway hopefully I was helpful to you, and ask me anymore questions you have about my opinion on the game.

Happy game dev,
ProxyFirewall

--Slugger State of Game 03/2025--

Hello again everyone! This has been a month of massive progress, and I'm proud to say that the revamped currency is now in the game! Most VFX and SFX are in place, and the GameMaker port is really coming along now.

I've got about 50% of the actual gameplay foundation in place, which means once that gets to 100% (which involves adding hivoxes, multiple waves, powerups and a few more things), the game will be in a semi-playable state! For now though, the game is basically just a slug combat simulator with not much to do except gather as many warped souls as you can.

I'm hoping do get the hivox system implemented in the next few weeks, along with the powerups system and maybe even the elements system. As you can probably tell, I'm almost out of the boring slop of recoding the game's internal infrastructure, as that is being development and refined the more I add new features. That's the reason that now that I've added a good amount of basic features, the more complex and main features should take a bit less effort.

I hope you're excited for when v2.0.0.0 releases, because I sure am!

Happy game dev,
ProxyFirewall

FOOTAGE OF WHAT I'VE GOT SO FAR (Laggy -_- stupid OBS):

Slugger State of Game - February 

Look where we are? v2.0.0.0 is now well underway with a sleek, smooth and magical redesign of not only UI, but basically the whole game!

So far, placeholder enemy spawning has been implemented and VFX and SFX are now being established. So that’s all well and good, but still not really that much to show. I’m still in the deep ravine of the foundation for a much more revitalised version of Slugger, but the time where I climb out and begin created the exciting new “Lair” and Skill Tree is rapidly approaching. I still can’t say when this update will be complete however.

BUT - what I can say is some great ideas I’ve had and I’m looking for some feedback on them.

Firstly, I’ll likely be implementing the framework for a better, more balanced currency system and much LESS generic.

It will revolve around “Quantum Travelling” which I won’t get into too much detail yet but it involves going inside enemies and collecting their Cells and Protons. Now, this is more of a side currency but will still be used for a variety of things. However the main currency I’ll talk about is called “Warp” this is basically replacing XP. And why the weird name? Well I can’t really tell you, I just wanted something unique.

So each time you kill an enemy you will get a quantity of warped souls depending on which enemy it is and you will also get bonus souls for completing waves, damage combos, ect. At the end of a run these are combined to create “Warp”.

So, basically this new currency system will be the basis of many new features I have planned for future updates.

Thanks for reading,

ProxyFirewall

if you go to slugger-snapshot.surge.sh, you should be able to play it there.

Okay, if you go to slugger-snapshot.surge.sh, you should be able to play it there.

Ok thanks for telling me. I’ll get the HTML version up as soon as possible.

Thanks, sometimes I think I am a bit too hard on myself. Your advice is very valuable, so I won’t forget it and I’ll try to remember it whenever I make decisions.

Also I’ll take a look at your instagram profile.

Thanks for the advice!

Hmm, that's weird. Make sure you unzipped the files correctly and ran the correct exe file. I'm not on my computer right now, but next time I am, I'll try to make a simple HTML file and that should be more stable than the exe.

Yeah - I made one devlog video but on the second I spent wayyyy too long trying to make it better than the last one and I was improving as I was making it so I had to keep redoing it, and it got to the point where the same thing that happened to you happened to me, where it was just to exhausting. So maybe what I’ll do instead is make videos of me playing games and then simply try and get popular and use my popularity to promote my game.

Yeah, I'll experiment with it and see what works, and of course, I'll be seeing what potentially you and other people think of it once I've changed things around :)

I mean I could make a video of myself playing your game - what I meant was giving your itch.io username a shout-out in my next general video, which I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do for yet. But I’ll definitely consider making a video of your game!

So I just commented here so no one sees this, this is for your reward for giving feedback on my game, Slugger. So, your reward will be a shoutout on the next video on my YouTube channel, ProxyFirewall. It should come up if you search it up. It's not very popular, but it's the best reward I could come up with XD

Hope you like it though! (When the vid comes out)

Unfortunately my response was too long, so I put it in a public google doc.
Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k_1QeMfyLui0la4W0pq1thPdpkU5wiKgtJRMHvd2o5Y/...

Come on everyone, just two simple steps and then you’ll get a reward!!

As of today, snapshot 10.2024a for Slugger v1.5 has been released. v1.5 is the next MASSIVE update for my game, which isn't even halfway done yet.

So what I'm asking of y'all is to please give some feedback on this snapshot using the survey below, and I'll give you a reward for it ONCE you do the survey. And trust me, it's a great reward, and may just help YOUR game get more recognition!

So to do the survey, all I need you to do is follow these two steps:

1. Play the current version (Slugger v1.4.7) https://proxyfirewall.itch.io/slugger-v1-4-7-shooter-singleplayer-action-fast-pa... and simply press "run game", or download the .exe file called "Slugger v1.4.7", then play it for 5-10 minutes.

2. Then, I'm going to need you to download the .zip file called "[VERY UNSTABLE] [WIP] Slugger v1.5 snapshot 10.2024a.zip". Unzip it, go into the unzipped folder, go into the folder "slugger-snapshot", and run the .exe file called "slugger-snapshot.exe". After it loads, play it for 5-10 minutes. Then, complete the survey below and feel welcome to add in any extra details or comments or things you would like to say as well.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=DQSIkWdsW0yxEjajBLZtrQAAAAAAAAAAAAO__WC1SudUQ0swRTdERU0yQTRUUVkySkxIQzYyTU0xWS4u&embed=true

Thanks!

Thanks! I'll have a look into the crashing. This hasn't happened with any other people, so it may just be you.

Thanks so much! Pretty much all of the things you've said everyone else has already said, so I've already fixed it all up in the next big update, which could be out in 1-3 months.

This is really weird. I got like 50 views but no replies. How have so many people seen this but not replied? Ngl this is really intriguing.

Hey! I was just wondering why I've had a sudden drop-off in feedback. I'd really appreciate any feedback!

What does everyone think of giving enemies the ability to collide, making them solid objects?

Incredible game! So creative!

Hey! Just asking what people think of having a grid in the background, kind of like geometry wars?

Just wanted to ask if people like the idea of having weapons in the game?

Since I haven't gotten any replies, I'll repost if that's okay:

Just wanted to ask if people think I should make the sprites smaller to make the map feel bigger?

Just wanted to ask if people think I should make the sprites smaller to make the map feel bigger?

Playtesters needed!

Sounds good! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with! :)

Thank you so much! This feedback helps so much! I'll take all of your points into consideration. I think I'll make the map smaller, as that seems like the logical choice. Looking forward to what you think of the progression!

Thanks! A lot of people have said that I need to tone down the chaos, but the whole point of the game is that it's fast-paced and chaotic, which I don't think some people realise.

Thanks again!

No problem!

I submitted feedback in the form, would you mind playing my game and giving some feedback? https://proxyfirewall.itch.io/slugger-v1-4-7-shooter-singleplayer-action-fast-pa... It would be appreciated!

Hi, I played your game!


What I Like:
-The simplistic graphics give it a unique look
-The car feels really nice to accelerate
-The variety of different game modes is nice


What You Should Improve:
-The graphics in the main menu feel very clunky and static - I know it's meant to be a retro style, but you still need some kind of feedback for pressing/ hovering over buttons
-Getting stuck on the walls is extremely inconvenient - Still make the car slow down a little, but not get stuck/stop, as it ruins the flow of playing the game and makes it feel like learning how to drive a car rather than racing a car, if that's what you were going for
-Add more sound effects  or even music - The game only has a few sound effects and could do with more
-Add more effects - I really like what you did with the skid marks/ smoke from the car, so try and do more of that (You could add sparks when hitting a wall, or effects depending on your speed, the more the better!)

Overall, great start. Just work on the graphics mainly, and you would've transformed the game just by doing that. I encourage you to do everything else I said though if you really want your game to be great!

As for feedback for one of my creations, if it's okay would you mind playing my game called Slugger? Link: https://proxyfirewall.itch.io/slugger-v1-4-7-shooter-singleplayer-action-fast-pa...
I'd really appreciate it if you could give me some feedback! I'm looking for feedback on all aspects - Graphics, Gameplay, Sound design, level design, pretty much anything you can think of giving feedback on. It'd help a ton!

Have a good one,
ProxyFirewall

Please make sure to give feedback!

I've made a ton of progress on v1.5! It's edging ever closer to release.... If you want to suggest any changes, please do so as soon as possible so I can consider them for the new update!