Theatre Throw-Down by Ratbag

[LINK] [Game - WebGL] [ https://ratbag.itch.io/theatre-throw-down ]
[Game Details]
- 2D Arcade Brawler / Rogue Lite
- Small, procedural generated levels, offering engaging close encounters against multiple opponents!
- Fight against increasingly difficult waves of enemies to perfect your skills at swordplay!
- Easy to pick up; Maddening to Master
- note: The game is much more fun in full-screen, I defiantly recommend playing the downloadable PC version available on the games itch.io page in the link above. However the browser version should work just fine.
[Controls]
- Movement: W, S, A, D
- Attack: LMB
[For the Players!]
- Hey everyone It would be really cool if you enjoyed the game to post a high score screenshot or comment on your progress in the section below? Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated! :smile:
Ratings
| Overall | 422th | 2.943⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 356th | 2.941⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 508th | 2.171⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 500th | 2.441⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 333th | 3⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 219th | 3.088⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 370th | 2.129⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 467th | 2.469⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 37🗳️ | 36🗨️ |
To Anyone who has already played this Game. I just did a quick re submission of it after realising I had left out a game breaking collision issue. Problem was a 2min fix, I had just forgotten to uncomment a line of code -_-. Sorry to all, no deception intended. If you didn't notice the bug hats off I hope you enjoyed the game. A big pat on the back for all LD attempts this weekend. Can not wait to start playing all the amazing games over the next week. Im off for some much needed sleep. Here's to LD 38!
- Went through and fixed a few minor bugs preventing animator and collisions to operate properly.
- Sorry for the late attention to the game, had a busy week at work after my LD weekend and simply havent had a chance to look at my submission since. Postmortem coming this weekend.
- Thank you for all the plays so far hope everyone has enjoyed themselves.
@kcreanor : thanks for the suggestion, was something that had crossed my mind. I will be working on this game post jam for some foreseeable time. Multiplayer is definitely on the list :smile:
Funny fact: I played this with the controller in one hand and the mouse in the other. :D
Nice Music, and also nice to meet Solaire again.
cheers~
Good job!
My suggestions would probably be more feedback for when you get hit (Screenshake is the best), and also trying to make the spikes have transparency or a ground tile behind them.
Did you actually go through and code your own collision in a jam? That's quite impressive.
The graphics and sounds effect are pretty good. The music is decent too, but it can get a little repetitive.
My best was 780 points and 8 battles.
@zarkonnen, haha good job man! yeah its a give and take i suppose. Thanks for the play and feedback!
@toestee, I appreciate your persistence. Yes I agree some balancing should be put in place. Thanks for the comments!
@mathijsvissers, really appreciate the feedback, I am generally pretty happy with how relatively bug free the game is. However I can really see some of the flaws in the game balancing, and I will take away some pointers in design im sure. Yes I agree I can really see the potential in the game. Thanks again the rating!
@oxrock, yeah a lot of skill and a generous amount of luck! Thanks for the kind words, haha a god mode? what sort of fun would that be!?
@richard-michael-smith, sorry to hear about getting stuck. I havent experienced that problem myself. There is a cooldown period between each player attack to prevent spamming, maybe it could be your browser? I recommend downloading the pc version it is likely more stable. Thanks for the feedback.
Quite impressed by the music.
It's super-critical to balance a game like this on the edge of dangerous but fair, and it's easy to slip. You held the line, and that's a job well done!
The only aspect that threatens the balance imo is the spawnrushdowndead. Even when I was waiting ready to screenscanATTACK the *instant* the level loaded I could still get swarmed by a gang of four and be unable to swing a second time before taking damage. Occasionally I would have a good run but they would nearly all end this way sooner or later.
Actually maybe I wasn't very good - I only got through 7 battles, and that time I did die to an honest timing mistake.
If you removed that one aspect disturbing the balance you could really get me thinking, wow if I'm careful and fast I could never lose, and that's a great feeling. The random generation keeps this fresh, too.
Also very nice art and music, with a good hit sound effect, too. If it got two more sprinkles of juice, I would put one on the player getting hit, and a second by making the corpses rotate 90 degrees to be clearly dead. The color shift was adequate though.
Overall nice entry, again nice work on the combat balance.
I felt like as a player, the only way I could be harmed was in the beginning before I could react to the enemies position. As soon as I survived that though, killing the enemies was easy. This is a bad thing for two reasons: First of all, my defeat is technically out of my hands. There's no amount of skill or planning that can save me from being hit before I am even allowed to react. Secondly, the enemies aren't enough of a challenge on their own.
Ideally, I should be fearing the enemies for how hard they are to fight, not for how they'll always start with the upper hand because the computer reacts before I do at the very beginning of the fight.
The graphics and the sounds are somewhat redeeming qualities though, they are decent. But as a result of the lackluster gameplay they kind of feel slightly out of place. Despite being a compo, it's almost like the sound and graphics were made by a different person.
So, I think the game could benefit from having the player not annihilate the enemies as easily, but in return let the player be able to get their wits about them at the start of a level before the enemy AI has a chance to bum rush him.
- Balance: 100% agree with you. The game is unbalanced, it was not something i immediately noticed in dev. I spent all my testing on mechanics and really didnt play the game enough to iron out gameplay bugs. I have fixed the issue since but have reserved from uploading the game. I wanted to be rated on the entry i submitted and i felt that fixing this issue seamed to line more up with adding a new feature to the game. Because the game is mechaniccaly sound i felt that fixing it constituted a breach in terms. I will upload the fixed version tonight (it will be seperate from my entry and i will let everyone coming to this page know that they can play a more balanced version however my orignal upload will still be the one voted on). Only because i would like people to enjoy my game without feeling like they have been cheated by balancing issues.
- please note that this is critism i have received across the board and responded too many times.
- i dont understand what you mean by saying sound and music where developed by somone else? I made all assets in the game in the time available. It was my intention to provide immersive and engaging gameplay in a small and minimilistic setting, i apologize if that came off as lackluster.
Thanks again for taking the time to play and rate the game. Sorry if you felt in anyway cheated by the game. I really do appreciate the feedback though. Cheers :smile:
The system easy enough to understand, so even without that I made it to level 5, but then died quickly.
The music is really cool and fits really well into the game!
The path finding of the enemies seemed a bit simple, but I know how there's never enough time in the compo :)
Good entry!