Comments - purepongage

I went through comments and didn't find a comment that talks about this, but I've purchased the game on Steam and am running on 64-bit Linux (thanks for the Linux support!), and I have a small problem. When using the mouse to look around, the mouse pointer is not frozen, so that if you hit the edge of the display, you can no longer look in that direction. I've tried on various display modes and haven't found one that's stopped the mouse while looking around. Is this a known issue, and is there a workaround?

EDIT:
Checked main forums and learned that it's known to be finicky with Linux. I will note that I'm using a tiling window manager (hlwm), which might be the cause for these issues. Unlike that thread though, everything does work for me, just that the mouse doesn't get frozen. I'll see if I can find a workaround.

Sounds great, I'll wait for the demo and offer more feedback when I can. Cheers on making those changes.

I'm waiting for the demo, but I think you need to be careful when you make "tutorial" stages. It's far better to just throw in a new element that is intuitive and have the player experiment than to explain every detail.

Case in point: Stage 1 gives you the hint that you guide your minion who turns only right to the destination, and yet all the first stage does is tell you what the hint already told you, and make you wait out the stage. This stage really shouldn't exist at all. Stage 2 should really just tell us "You can place obstacles by selecting it and clicking on the stage" (and even then I'd argue this is kind of silly). I enjoyed Chu Chu Rocket so this game seems like a great idea, but please please don't make the mistake of assuming the player is an idiot that so many other games now make. Teach by intuitive design, not intrusive text.

Other suggestions: Take out rewind (leave reset), start the stage paused, and give us the ability to play the stage at 1x, 2x, or 4x speed. If you look at Chu Chu Rocket you'll see what I mean (both by its not assuming the player is unintelligent and by the pausing at the start so we can actually think about the level and then play it out, to make it more of a puzzle game).

Here's a link to a video of Chu Chu Rocket: Youtube.com

Thanks for the info about the Engineering and dropping. Perhaps for the dropping, you can include all non-inventory space as "droppable", or make a button like middle mouse button or something bindable that can allow us a quick drop.

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4. Make item dropping easier to do. We should be able to click outside the inventory to drop, but it seems like you have to click on your health/energy/stealth bar to do so.

5. It'd be better if the initial movement speed were a touch higher, maybe by 0.01 or something. It just feels really sluggish at the start of the game.

6. Weapon balance, just a little. Shotguns seems really useless compared to grenade launchers. At high levels, it's actually more effective to use a low-level weapon that doesn't drain energy quickly in order to attack indefinitely. Perhaps, energy costs for higher-level weapons can be reduced or tweaked (first time I beat the game, I used a level 1 assault rifle the entire game, because when my energy level was high I could use it indefinitely, even with a jetpack).

7. A little continuous background music? It gets a little stale when the music stops playing after the first minutes.

Otherwise, it's looking great, and it's good that updates are actually improving the game.

A couple of comments about the general flow of the game (looking good so far):

1. When you get to a higher level, it becomes clear that you'll need a high level Demon Smiter. Sure the initial quest gives you one, and the final quest pre-quest gives you one, but they're level 1 and 7, which means that you're going to have to get lucky with leaders to get a Demon Smiter of the appropriate level (which can be annoying). I suggest that instead of making Demon Smiters kill in one hit if the level matches, have it do 100% if the level matches, 10% if the demon is 1 higher, and 5% if it's 2 higher (just so that it's not as annoying to progress).

2. Energy levels are gained when energy drains. This is a nice idea but it makes jetpack + stealth a fast way to grind up energy levels (makes the game much easier). Maybe you can make energy levels go up gradually as energy is expended, or something along those lines, rather than having a simple "gain if energy reaches 0" kind of deal.

3. Show us what level engineering we have, because it's confusing when it tells me my engineering has increased several times, and I still fail, when having a +12 engineering item would make crafting essentially always successful.

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