Comments - DonGiovanni

Now that Zigfrak has been released on Steam will Desura users be able to get their Steam keys soon? Thanks in advance and great game BTW!

I'm getting a 404 - File Not Found error on Diehard Dungeon as well...

Hello,

I'm the owner of i-luv-games.com. Desura is a great way to discover new games which might otherwise fly under the radar.

If you have a game you'd like to submit for review or if you'd like to announce your new game then please let me know.

To help get a bit more exposure and hopefully receive even more feedback, you should submit your game to the indie game stand bundle site: Indiegamestand.com

The idea behind the site was conceived by the staff at indie game magazine. I'd recommend that you try to get your game submitted. The site is brand new but already has an introductory game being offered for free and games will be rotated over a period of time. Over 50 well known indie developers have already signed up. Every 4 days a new game will be up for say using the "Pay What You Want" model. That way people can buy the game for as low as one dollar. It may not sound like much, but it's the perfect way to get your game out there and to receive much needed exposure.

Give it a shot.

My opinions shouldn't ultimately have an affect on the way you want the game to turn out or be designed, but hopefully others will contribute more comments so that there can be some sort of comparison in gameplay sessions, and so that you get more feedback regarding the game.

In the meantime, keep up the good work and don't quit working on it, even if you do need to make a few changes. Keep your original vision regarding the game, but try tweaking, balancing, and playing around with the mechanics. Most importantly, make sure that the game you've developed is a game that you yourself would enjoy, and don't be discouraged by what anyone else says.

I wish you all the best.

Cheers.

I really enjoyed the boss battles, and I could see how a "Boss Rush" mode might be a lot of fun if it became an unlockable mode within the game. Achievements are also a fun addition. Obviously, all shmups should have a high score table, it would be nice to compare scores online with people around the world as well. The problem I had with the scoring was that I didn't completely understand how to best earn points. For the most part you want to shoot everything possible in a shmup, but there are so many orbs to pick up after destroying an enemy, and I didn't know what each colored orb represented in points. I know the red ones allow you to take more damage, but the green ones seemed to only give me 10 points, and I didn't notice how many points the yellow orbs gave. When you finish a level I noticed that the progress report shows the percentage of enemies you destroyed and your total score, but I didn't notice if the amount of collected orbs had an affect on your score, or whether you gained any bonuses from the amount you collected. Perhaps I just missed that info, but hopefully it does contribute to a bonus score in some way, otherwise collecting all of the orbs is more like a tedious chore and mostly unnecessary since the points they give are rather low.

If the game controls were made a little more comfortable, and if there was some sort of gamepad support I could dive into the game for an even longer period of time. It would be nice to see some additional obstacles and graphics in the background and foreground. A few more variations in enemies, and even some a few enemies with patterns would help change up the gameplay a bit. Again, it's not a bad game, but it doesn't feel entirely balanced yet. Based on what I played it felt a bit more like an Alpha or Beta release. You've got something here, but it does need a little more work.

The enemies felt a little repetitive in their approach. Because there aren't any real patterns to follow or memorize, the first few levels in particular, felt like a repetitive practice in simply holding down the fire buttons and simply dodging the slow enemies. It felt like all of the strategy was left to my skill in aiming the secondary weapon, which again became uncomfortable after playing for about 15 minutes straight. Because of the lack of enemy "patterns" I didn't feel that the enemies moved around very much. They seemed to slow down and speed up on the horizontal plane, but there wasn't very much movement on the vertical plane. The bosses are pretty good though. In fact I think they're my favorite aspect of the game, I just wish it didn't take so long to reach them. The basic enemies did seem to attack horizontally for the most part though, even though there were a few enemies that seemed to attack diagonally. I think it might be a little more exciting to have more enemies stop and fire in a radial pattern once in a while being swarmed by some of the more simple enemies.

Based on the way that you've designed the game I think it would help if there was a progress bar so players could see exactly how far they are in the level and so that they have an idea of just how far the boss is. This would encourage players to change up their strategies as well, knowing that the boss is near and that they'll have to play more carefully.

Alright, I just finished playing the demo. I should mention that I do have a lot of experience with Shmups so I'll try to be as constructive as possible.

The game isn't bad but it is lacking in a few areas.

The "How To Play" in the manual does a good enough job of explaining the controls in a simple enough manner, but I just found that between moving, shooting, and aiming, it didn't take very long for this control scheme to become uncomfortable.

I understanding the desire to make a unique control scheme in order to make your game original, but I found that because of the freeform flying (no pathways and the necessity to move horizontally and vertically), just wasn't as comfortable while using the mouse to aim the secondary weapon. I think this is remedied in other shmups by making the secondary weapon fire in the opposite direction that your ship is moving. The problem with that would be that the secondary weapon isn't very strong.

Speaking of weapons, I wasn't able to find any new weapons. The only way I even got to try a new weapon (just a more rapid fire version of the original primary weapon) was by playing the later levels that are made available in the demo. Considering the amount of pick-ups that are released by the enemy, I was surprised that I didn't get any power-ups even after 5 minutes of straight play without dying. Perhaps I missed something, but it just felt too long before noticing any significant upgrades, especially for the amount of work you need to do chasing around orbs after killing every enemy. It may not be necessary to grab every single orb, but I try to go for a high score, and the act of trying to do everything just didn't feel as intuitive as it possibly could feel.

Just bought the game and am enjoying it very much, but I can't download the SetupProjectZomboid_RC2.exe file. Is the link dead? I did purchase the game so there shouldn't be any problems downloading it. Just wanted to check out the newer version and if I don't like it I can always revert back to the older but stable version. Anyone have any ideas?