I like the game alot but when i click start it just shows a black screen and stops responding and then i have to close it is it because i didnt allow the game to access my files? [ or something like that i dont remember what said on that thing that pops up] but anyway i like the game im hoping this could be fixed soon :)
Hi friends, we are "Make It". A new community management startup and we really hope work with you.
My partner and I are starting out in the world of work and want to gain experience in the field. We've noticed that your game is very promising and qualitative. That's why we want to help you save time in development by taking care of social networks related to our work.
Your games look so nice and you too, sure it's not finished but it seems funny and very cool, what more could you ask for.
really cool but makes me row when there are a lot of enemies. A lot of bugs also on enemies that glitch. Really really cool, small addition proposal: add more points of interest on the map. and Elementary Competence
Very fun game. I chose this game to playtest on a game console I'm building. Is the difficulty adjusted to how many players are on the map, it felt almost impossible to take down 3 Little Macs on my own.
This is fantastic the amount of passion and hard work is obvious. The gameplay loop is super satisfying and the replayability is crazy wonderful work here.
Maybe endless loop when choosed an upgrade after levelling up and holding a fire with Charging Trigger, I played only with a shotgun, the video game stops.
Also it is braindead that I take damage when they hit the air.
This game seems like its going to be super fun! The movement is fast and fluid, and in combination with the shooting it feels great, I like your powerup system and the graphics are absolutely gorgeous.
I feel like the gun's running out of ammo could do with something like a sound or visual effect, as a lot of the time I accidentally borked the reload minigame (great addition by the way) because I was holding down the shoot button and didn't realise that the minigame had triggered. Additionally, in my personal opinion I feel like its very easy to get overwhelmed at the shop, though maybe that's the feel you're going for. If not, maybe adding a force-field around the shop that keeps enemies out, but also pauses the timer could work?
Other than those two small (and quite subjective) issues, the game is great! I hope you manage to plow on and make the game as big and as great as it can be!
Couple of things, could you hop into your AppData/LocalLow/BitCakeStudio/AtomicPicnic folder? There should be a player.log and a Crashes folder (if not on LocalLow try Local or Roaming plz). Could you zip both and send it to me on contact(at)bitcake.studio?
Also, did you crash after the match began or while you were in the Main Menu?
If so, we’re currently remaking the entire menu from scratch and that should fix most of the crashes and issues players have been having! I’d say wait until next week. But nonetheless please send us the crash report!
optimizations are something of a work in progress, as we develop the game we’ll do optimization patches to improve gameplay quality :) The game is super early in development so we’re currently focused on making more gameplay and more features than optimizing them to run the best, but it’s something we will do!
I've been playing Atomic Picnic with a friend for about a month now and really enjoying what you all have put together so far! I think it has a lot of potential.
I have been having some pretty bad issues with stuttering and, what appears to be lag, since the last patch though. Very often projectiles from both players and enemies will freeze in place, and enemy movement will become very stuttery and erratic. It's made it quite difficult to play the game since the last patch.
I'm sorry to hear that, I'm going to report this to the team and see what we can do about it!
The best way you can help us with issues like this is if you could make a video or a gif showing us your issue, so we can see it happening. But we'll look into it anyways!
Just letting you know ever since the patch the game seems more unstable than usual :\ Me and my friends who usually never have trouble with it, tried playing 4 games today, 2 of them ended abruptly booting us all back to the menu, 1 of them ended in a crash after a massive slowdown for a couple minutes preceded it, and the last 1 managed to complete when the Little Macs at the end didn't spawn in, but also one of my friend was stuttering really badly and unable to move their camera to look at anything.
Sorry to hear that, Ami! We've made a ton of progress on the "Boot-to-lobby" issue! We've identified the issue and it's already being worked on, unfortunately I cannot give an estimate on when this will be fixed since it's a very complex bug, but we're making strides!
Whenever your friends crash, please ask them to NOT open the game again, then go to their %AppData% folder (type that on windows explorer search bar). Go to AppData/LocalLow/BitCake Studio/Atomic Picnic. There will be a player.log file, if you could send that file to us it would be great, you can reach me or [Dev]Bill on our Discord for this.
I really enjoyed this. Thank you for making it! I feel like it has a lot of potential especially with the co-op aspect and allowing people to jump in and out of the game! I'm excited to see the finished product!
It's more akin to a Survivors Game (Vampire Survivors) than Risk of Rain 2, although both are very similar. In Atomic you just need to survive in the same map for 10 minutes. As the game evolves we will add more challenges and more ways to play and more variety.
But right now making a Linux version is not something we're actively doing because development is very very early and we need to focus on making the game. Once we're close to release we can think of a Linux version. Meanwhile why don't you use the Proton Layer to play it? We've had people play the game on a Steam Deck fine and that runs it on Proton :)
hum... That's very odd, occult! We're having some issues with players being booted to the main menu, but not like you said. But maybe it's linked in some way with the problem you're currently experiencing. We are working to find the core of the problem so we can fix it.
We're working on a way to improve this issue! It'll take a bit of time, since the system is VERY complex, but rest assured it's on the top of our priorities!
So, AR 4.8dmg/energy Shotgun 7.68dmg/energy and Sniper 5dmg/energy
But in my opinion AR is the best weapon because it only cost 2.5energy per shot so when hit crystals it's very efficient.
Also, I test the upgrade (not sure too). The upgrade which shot the secondary bullet deal 80dmg. But seems no matter which weapon u use it deals 80 dmg so it behaves better when have a higher fire rate which is AR. Maybe the dmg should base on base dmg?
Shotgun and Sniper seems have little features too. With more pierces AR can use as a shotgun which even have a higher range. And with secondary bullet AR deals more dmg than Sniper sometimes.
Moreover, full health gives too much dmg bonus while low health gives so little. It's easy to keep full health and riskier when keep low health.
In my opinion, maybe every weapon needs its feature?For example, Shotgun can stun enemies when all bullet on it, add more small enemies (low HP but a lot) maybe good for Launcher? Or cluster bombs. Sniper can breakdown enemy's armor (It will be taken more dmg (from all weapons) after shot by sniper) (or just armor which decline dmg it taken which can be removed by sniper?), or maybe a sniper have 2 modes, tap can shot a normal bullet while hold on can charge a much powerful bullet. Also I think it should have more crit chance and dmg, and upgrades add more. Maybe it‘s better to use roller to zoom too?
And about multiplayer, it's discouraged when face a no one lobby. Also add a radar will benefit a lot I think (because often can't find my teammate especially they need help) . And a chat may useful? Or just some commands like "go here" "cover me " can make a good gaming experience.
And it may hard to understand crystal gives money? (After a long time I find out it XD). Maybe some beginner tutorial useful?
Anyway, it's a good game. The future is promising. Recommending it to my friends XD. Also want to know if more language is considered, I can't understand what proc means until now XD (I can help if Chinese localization is needed)
Atomic Picnic looks really good. Best of luck with it. Will sample your demo when PC, Steam Deck etc permits my do so. (In PC upgrade holding pattern) Will be watching the reviews for your game.
not sure if it's intended or not, but by pressing jump at the end of a dash, it cancels into a superjump/dash. PLEASE KEEP THIS IN THE GAME, it made the game WAYYY more replayable, alongside a small learning curve.
As long as you make a Cooldown focused build you can chain it more and more. But infinitely chainable would probably be an exploit, like in Mario. We wouldn't want that.
Man this is some of the most fun I had with a game in a while. Needs music and weapon switching, but super satisfying, can't wait to annoy my friends to play this one so they can get to feel the satisfaction of this marvel! Consider me a sale when the game is done!
Me and my friend have been playing this a lot together and it's really fun. We've beaten the picnic a lot and can consistently do it easily together and alone now (I've soloed it with every different weapon), and I wanted to share some of the thoughts we've had in case they help you develop the game.
- the Assault Rifle is essentially the best weapon because upgrades can make it do anything the other guns can do but better, and it spits out so many shots that procs & damage boosts make it basically broken. I'm a sniper rifle player and I can do really well with it but even I find the AR makes the game so much easier, I can wipe waves before the next one even spawns with explosive shot which turns it basically into a grenade launcher with range. And the damage ramp up from bullet heat makes it better against bosses than the shotgun or sniper rifle.
- the other guns need better bonuses to balance out their weaknesses, the shotgun and grenade launcher are useless against the flying enemies near the end, and don't have enough DPS at close range to catch up to how much damage AND range the AR can spit out. Same with the sniper because it fires so slowly and doesn't do enough damage even with bonuses to catch up to the DPS of the AR. Maybe the bosses and enemies need weak spots that make the Sniper Rifle more useful? and maybe there needs to be damage drop-off at distance for the AR. Similarly, maybe the shotgun should have knockback and the grenade launcher have knockdown or something, so enemies might get stunned by it.
- the Assault Rifle also has an advantage when breaking the little crystals to get money or health because ammunition is much more valuable for the other weapons (especially the grenade launcher), and their fire rate is so much slower that it "costs" a non-AR player more to break a crystal than an AR just having to tap it with a bullet
- the enemy pathing gets easily confused and can be gamed, maybe that's on purpose because it allows the players to use strategy, but we've found it very easy to get the Little Macs stuck to kill them easily, or get them stuck trying to choose between 2 players and just standing there turning around
- since all the players upgrade at the same time and don't unfreeze until eveyrbody's picked, maybe the game should just pause when everybody levels, that way you don't get swarmed by enemies while leveling, it almost makes leveling bad in some situations
- there should be a way to communicate with players quickly, like "come here" "spread out" etc... just simple commands would be pretty effective
- players in the room should be visible on the HUD so we know when somebody leaves the game, sometimes it's hard to know if you just haven't seen a player lately or if they've left and you should change your strategies to accommodate for fewer people
- players in the game should be visible from distance, it's hard to know where anybody is when we're all running around trying not to die and it would help a lot to be able to see where players are with a little marker that's visible even at range or knowing the general direction they're in if you're not looking at them
- it would be nice to have some sort of tank class or protection for snipers so sniping becomes more viable
- a healing/support class might be a nice addition in the future for people who want to help the team but aren't big on shooting? maybe besides healing, support could also buff teammates or debuff enemies, like giving temporary speed boosts to teammates might be pretty cool as an idea for a future power
- the low health damage boost perk should be much greater given that it's much more dangerous to be at low health and you're more limited in optimal moves with it, currently the bonus damage at full health perk is far superior as it gives you the bigger damage boost & it's a lot easier to stay at full health with the vampiric shot perk & picking up health, while to get the bonus for low health consistently you have to never take vampire shot & avoid all health pickups
Anyway, I just thought you might like to know what we thought about the game after playing it almost non-stop together for a few days. Even in this early stage, it's really fun, and the colours, graphics, and character design are really appealing. We can't wait to see what's to come and I've been encouraging everybody I know to play and to support the development of the game.
one more suggestion: either the ability to join games in progress or at least to see games in progress in the team join screen, so at least people know that there's an active playerbase. I worry that a lot of new players are discouraged by a blank game list and assume the game is dead and quit out rather than make a lobby and wait for people to join.
Thanks a ton for the incredible comment, makes us really happy when we see someone take so much time to write what they think about the game :)
First of all I just want to introduce myself, I'm the game's Creative Director :)
I've read both of your comments entirely, they surely are insightful but let me address some points.
- Weapon Balancing: all the issues you've pointed out with AR, Shotgun, Launcher and Sniper we're taking a look at. Weapon balancing is not something that's done in a patch and it's over, it's something that we'll be refining for a long time since gameplay is expected to change a lot as we develop the game. But rest assured that I agree with some of your points and we'll work on them :)
- The same above applies to Upgrades balancing, we will keep rebalancing them as we go :)
- Enemy Pathing is still a work in progress. AI Code, Enemy Design and Level Design. We're still refining these important pillars of the game, and as we work on this I expect issues like enemies being stuck will be solved. But these take a long time to fix and develop so please don't expect one patch and all issues will be over, it's a very very hard problem to solve :(
- Pause system is something we will work on when we get back in the office after the break. It's definitely on the top of the list :)
- Better ways to communicate and see what your team is doing is coming. We've just released a prototype Ping System that works when you ping Health or the Boss. Expect this system to expand in the future. We also have plans to make other players more visible for you.
- Join games in progress is something we can't support due to the nature of the game, but we will improve the UI and make that entire Room experience better. This UI is just very prototypy and will definitely be completely remade from scratch. I completely agree with the blank list of games comment and that's also something we've been thinking; although the game is not really something that's multiplayer only like fortnite or valorant it can feel pretty bad to see an empty list of rooms to join.
That's all!
Thanks a ton for taking time to write a very cool comment like that! :)
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my game freezes for no reason
i think a lower graphics setting is needed
Actually had a real blast playing this and look forward to the final result
why it say virus
I like the game alot but when i click start it just shows a black screen and stops responding and then i have to close it is it because i didnt allow the game to access my files? [ or something like that i dont remember what said on that thing that pops up] but anyway i like the game im hoping this could be fixed soon :)
can i downlaod this is on my windows 10 laptop?
Yes!
yay!
Looking great to me!
Hi friends, we are "Make It". A new community management startup and we really hope work with you.
My partner and I are starting out in the world of work and want to gain experience in the field. We've noticed that your game is very promising and qualitative. That's why we want to help you save time in development by taking care of social networks related to our work.
Your games look so nice and you too, sure it's not finished but it seems funny and very cool, what more could you ask for.
You can contact us with this mail adress:
makeit.entrepris@gmail.com
Have a nice day ! 😁
The game just dont open in my pc :(
hey Nik0n1k0nii! That's a shame to hear. Try coming to our Discord channel (discord.gg/bitcake) so we can help you out!
Don´t worry about it, I just downloaded the Steam version and it works. Thank you so much, nice game
Have a nice day
i really liked the game! 5 stars!! \(*w*)/
Found this: https://nightsetup.itch.io/atomic-picnic
Are you going to get it taken down?
Yes! Thanks a lot for the report! :O
The game for some reason crashes as soon as I want to start it since the latest patch
We just updated the game. Can you try again? Let us know if it's fixed or not!
Cool gameplay! Thanks alot for playing!
Very fun game. I chose this game to playtest on a game console I'm building. Is the difficulty adjusted to how many players are on the map, it felt almost impossible to take down 3 Little Macs on my own.
This is fantastic the amount of passion and hard work is obvious. The gameplay loop is super satisfying and the replayability is crazy wonderful work here.
Thanks a lot! We're constantly updating the game to make it even better! :D
Maybe endless loop when choosed an upgrade after levelling up and holding a fire with Charging Trigger, I played only with a shotgun, the video game stops.
Also it is braindead that I take damage when they hit the air.
Very very fun !!! Instabuy Day One ahah :D
Thank you very much!
Love it, hope that character customization is coming soon.
Thanks a lot! No promises on character customization, but we DO have a lot of cool stuff planned 😉
Super fun and a lot of potential! Hope to watch it improve and grow.
Thank you! We are releasing a lot of updates very frequently. More is coming! :D
This game seems like its going to be super fun! The movement is fast and fluid, and in combination with the shooting it feels great, I like your powerup system and the graphics are absolutely gorgeous.
I feel like the gun's running out of ammo could do with something like a sound or visual effect, as a lot of the time I accidentally borked the reload minigame (great addition by the way) because I was holding down the shoot button and didn't realise that the minigame had triggered. Additionally, in my personal opinion I feel like its very easy to get overwhelmed at the shop, though maybe that's the feel you're going for. If not, maybe adding a force-field around the shop that keeps enemies out, but also pauses the timer could work?
Other than those two small (and quite subjective) issues, the game is great! I hope you manage to plow on and make the game as big and as great as it can be!
Thank you so much for the feedback! We will take a look at the shop mechanic in the future and continue to improve the game in various other ways ! :D
what are the hardware requirements
also this game reminds me of fortnite
Hi!! here are the hardware requirements.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
MINIMUM:- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: i3 4130
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 2 GB available space
RECOMMENDED:- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: i5 6500
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 2 GB available space
i have windows 10 but the RAM is below the minimum
:(
I played it twice and it crashed both times.
Both times was not long after hosting a match.
I didn't notice any connection between the crashes other than the amount of time since entering the hub.
The first time I was messing around in the hub checking out the abilities and the second time quickly after entering the level.
Also I hope the will be optimised a bit more because I changed the graphics to low and still lagged a little bit.
Hey Spectre, thanks a ton for the feedback!
Couple of things, could you hop into your AppData/LocalLow/BitCakeStudio/AtomicPicnic folder? There should be a player.log and a Crashes folder (if not on LocalLow try Local or Roaming plz). Could you zip both and send it to me on contact(at)bitcake.studio?
Also, did you crash after the match began or while you were in the Main Menu?
If so, we’re currently remaking the entire menu from scratch and that should fix most of the crashes and issues players have been having! I’d say wait until next week. But nonetheless please send us the crash report!
optimizations are something of a work in progress, as we develop the game we’ll do optimization patches to improve gameplay quality :) The game is super early in development so we’re currently focused on making more gameplay and more features than optimizing them to run the best, but it’s something we will do!
Cheers!
I sent the zip file.
Thanks
i got the same problem
great game
Thank you so much for making this video! :D
I've been playing Atomic Picnic with a friend for about a month now and really enjoying what you all have put together so far! I think it has a lot of potential.
I have been having some pretty bad issues with stuttering and, what appears to be lag, since the last patch though. Very often projectiles from both players and enemies will freeze in place, and enemy movement will become very stuttery and erratic. It's made it quite difficult to play the game since the last patch.
Hey Maxx!
I'm sorry to hear that, I'm going to report this to the team and see what we can do about it!
The best way you can help us with issues like this is if you could make a video or a gif showing us your issue, so we can see it happening. But we'll look into it anyways!
Thanks!
Just letting you know ever since the patch the game seems more unstable than usual :\ Me and my friends who usually never have trouble with it, tried playing 4 games today, 2 of them ended abruptly booting us all back to the menu, 1 of them ended in a crash after a massive slowdown for a couple minutes preceded it, and the last 1 managed to complete when the Little Macs at the end didn't spawn in, but also one of my friend was stuttering really badly and unable to move their camera to look at anything.
Sorry to hear that, Ami! We've made a ton of progress on the "Boot-to-lobby" issue! We've identified the issue and it's already being worked on, unfortunately I cannot give an estimate on when this will be fixed since it's a very complex bug, but we're making strides!
Whenever your friends crash, please ask them to NOT open the game again, then go to their %AppData% folder (type that on windows explorer search bar). Go to AppData/LocalLow/BitCake Studio/Atomic Picnic. There will be a player.log file, if you could send that file to us it would be great, you can reach me or [Dev]Bill on our Discord for this.
very good anime video game
Thank you very much! :D
Thank you very much! Love watching people's gameplay :D We will keep updating and making the game even better! v0.1_10 just dropped today :D
So the gameplay loop is similar to Risk of Rain 2?
It's more akin to a Survivors Game (Vampire Survivors) than Risk of Rain 2, although both are very similar. In Atomic you just need to survive in the same map for 10 minutes. As the game evolves we will add more challenges and more ways to play and more variety.
Just out of interest: Was this made in Unity or Unreal ?
Atomic is made in Unity with a heavily customized Render Pipeline, with many changes specific for our project.
great game i love the co-op game play
the dash and double jump ad a really good twist
the weapons have very high pros and very high cons
which is good i can imagine some will main in certain categories of play style
i wonder if there will be PVP in the future
Thank you so much for the kind words Davi!
Right now we have no plans for PvP content.
It's REALLY looks good but I'm using linux can you make a version for linux 😭😭
Thanks for the kind words!
But right now making a Linux version is not something we're actively doing because development is very very early and we need to focus on making the game. Once we're close to release we can think of a Linux version. Meanwhile why don't you use the Proton Layer to play it? We've had people play the game on a Steam Deck fine and that runs it on Proton :)
oh i appreciate it, i may use lutris yeah or steam proton then
i really wanted to try the game but when i click on create room it bring me back to the main menu ?
hum... That's very odd, occult! We're having some issues with players being booted to the main menu, but not like you said. But maybe it's linked in some way with the problem you're currently experiencing. We are working to find the core of the problem so we can fix it.
Would be best to have a button to trigger the upgrade choice screen, it's pretty rough to read a pop-up of three choices in the middle of a fight!
We're working on a way to improve this issue! It'll take a bit of time, since the system is VERY complex, but rest assured it's on the top of our priorities!
The gameplay is so fun to play. The Mechanic is good tho.
But can you buff the Shotgun please? XD
Thank you for the kind words!
Yes, we'll be balancing weapons as we go, so you can expect some weapons to be buffed, others to be nerfed, you know the drill 🤣
Really interesting!
But maybe need a little more balance?
I tested some (but not sure)
AR:2.5energy/shot 12dmg
Launcher:15energy/shot 60dmg
Shotgun:12.5energy/shot (8 bullets) 12dmg/bullet
Sniper:20energy/shot 100dmg
Launcher is AOE so we don't consider about it now
So, AR 4.8dmg/energy Shotgun 7.68dmg/energy and Sniper 5dmg/energy
But in my opinion AR is the best weapon because it only cost 2.5energy per shot so when hit crystals it's very efficient.
Also, I test the upgrade (not sure too). The upgrade which shot the secondary bullet deal 80dmg. But seems no matter which weapon u use it deals 80 dmg so it behaves better when have a higher fire rate which is AR. Maybe the dmg should base on base dmg?
Shotgun and Sniper seems have little features too. With more pierces AR can use as a shotgun which even have a higher range. And with secondary bullet AR deals more dmg than Sniper sometimes.
Moreover, full health gives too much dmg bonus while low health gives so little. It's easy to keep full health and riskier when keep low health.
In my opinion, maybe every weapon needs its feature?For example, Shotgun can stun enemies when all bullet on it, add more small enemies (low HP but a lot) maybe good for Launcher? Or cluster bombs. Sniper can breakdown enemy's armor (It will be taken more dmg (from all weapons) after shot by sniper) (or just armor which decline dmg it taken which can be removed by sniper?), or maybe a sniper have 2 modes, tap can shot a normal bullet while hold on can charge a much powerful bullet. Also I think it should have more crit chance and dmg, and upgrades add more. Maybe it‘s better to use roller to zoom too?
And about multiplayer, it's discouraged when face a no one lobby. Also add a radar will benefit a lot I think (because often can't find my teammate especially they need help) . And a chat may useful? Or just some commands like "go here" "cover me " can make a good gaming experience.
And it may hard to understand crystal gives money? (After a long time I find out it XD). Maybe some beginner tutorial useful?
Anyway, it's a good game. The future is promising. Recommending it to my friends XD. Also want to know if more language is considered, I can't understand what proc means until now XD (I can help if Chinese localization is needed)
Hey Liano! Thanks for the feedback, I've seen that you posted the same on our discord so I've replied there :)
I don't know u were on holiday so I think put there may more striking :
Atomic Picnic looks really good. Best of luck with it. Will sample your demo when PC, Steam Deck etc permits my do so. (In PC upgrade holding pattern) Will be watching the reviews for your game.
Thank you so much! We will keep working on the game and making it better and better!
not sure if it's intended or not, but by pressing jump at the end of a dash, it cancels into a superjump/dash. PLEASE KEEP THIS IN THE GAME, it made the game WAYYY more replayable, alongside a small learning curve.
You mean Bunny Hopping? We don't have plans to remove it from the game, please keep enjoying it 🤣
can you make it possible to chain the swingy vine thing so you can get up really high? But maybe fall damage can cancel it out?
It's already chainable, if you use it and use it again it'll work. You just need to see if you have 2 cooldowns available.
is it infinitely chainable? like the acorn hop in Mario Odyssey speedruns?
As long as you make a Cooldown focused build you can chain it more and more. But infinitely chainable would probably be an exploit, like in Mario. We wouldn't want that.
Man this is some of the most fun I had with a game in a while. Needs music and weapon switching, but super satisfying, can't wait to annoy my friends to play this one so they can get to feel the satisfaction of this marvel! Consider me a sale when the game is done!
Thank you so much for the comment! We will continue to make the game even better in the future! :D :D
Me and my friend have been playing this a lot together and it's really fun. We've beaten the picnic a lot and can consistently do it easily together and alone now (I've soloed it with every different weapon), and I wanted to share some of the thoughts we've had in case they help you develop the game.
- the Assault Rifle is essentially the best weapon because upgrades can make it do anything the other guns can do but better, and it spits out so many shots that procs & damage boosts make it basically broken. I'm a sniper rifle player and I can do really well with it but even I find the AR makes the game so much easier, I can wipe waves before the next one even spawns with explosive shot which turns it basically into a grenade launcher with range. And the damage ramp up from bullet heat makes it better against bosses than the shotgun or sniper rifle.
- the other guns need better bonuses to balance out their weaknesses, the shotgun and grenade launcher are useless against the flying enemies near the end, and don't have enough DPS at close range to catch up to how much damage AND range the AR can spit out. Same with the sniper because it fires so slowly and doesn't do enough damage even with bonuses to catch up to the DPS of the AR. Maybe the bosses and enemies need weak spots that make the Sniper Rifle more useful? and maybe there needs to be damage drop-off at distance for the AR. Similarly, maybe the shotgun should have knockback and the grenade launcher have knockdown or something, so enemies might get stunned by it.
- the Assault Rifle also has an advantage when breaking the little crystals to get money or health because ammunition is much more valuable for the other weapons (especially the grenade launcher), and their fire rate is so much slower that it "costs" a non-AR player more to break a crystal than an AR just having to tap it with a bullet
- the enemy pathing gets easily confused and can be gamed, maybe that's on purpose because it allows the players to use strategy, but we've found it very easy to get the Little Macs stuck to kill them easily, or get them stuck trying to choose between 2 players and just standing there turning around
- since all the players upgrade at the same time and don't unfreeze until eveyrbody's picked, maybe the game should just pause when everybody levels, that way you don't get swarmed by enemies while leveling, it almost makes leveling bad in some situations
- there should be a way to communicate with players quickly, like "come here" "spread out" etc... just simple commands would be pretty effective
- players in the room should be visible on the HUD so we know when somebody leaves the game, sometimes it's hard to know if you just haven't seen a player lately or if they've left and you should change your strategies to accommodate for fewer people
- players in the game should be visible from distance, it's hard to know where anybody is when we're all running around trying not to die and it would help a lot to be able to see where players are with a little marker that's visible even at range or knowing the general direction they're in if you're not looking at them
- it would be nice to have some sort of tank class or protection for snipers so sniping becomes more viable
- a healing/support class might be a nice addition in the future for people who want to help the team but aren't big on shooting? maybe besides healing, support could also buff teammates or debuff enemies, like giving temporary speed boosts to teammates might be pretty cool as an idea for a future power
- the low health damage boost perk should be much greater given that it's much more dangerous to be at low health and you're more limited in optimal moves with it, currently the bonus damage at full health perk is far superior as it gives you the bigger damage boost & it's a lot easier to stay at full health with the vampiric shot perk & picking up health, while to get the bonus for low health consistently you have to never take vampire shot & avoid all health pickups
Anyway, I just thought you might like to know what we thought about the game after playing it almost non-stop together for a few days. Even in this early stage, it's really fun, and the colours, graphics, and character design are really appealing. We can't wait to see what's to come and I've been encouraging everybody I know to play and to support the development of the game.
one more suggestion: either the ability to join games in progress or at least to see games in progress in the team join screen, so at least people know that there's an active playerbase. I worry that a lot of new players are discouraged by a blank game list and assume the game is dead and quit out rather than make a lobby and wait for people to join.
Hey Ami!
Thanks a ton for the incredible comment, makes us really happy when we see someone take so much time to write what they think about the game :)
First of all I just want to introduce myself, I'm the game's Creative Director :)
I've read both of your comments entirely, they surely are insightful but let me address some points.
- Weapon Balancing: all the issues you've pointed out with AR, Shotgun, Launcher and Sniper we're taking a look at. Weapon balancing is not something that's done in a patch and it's over, it's something that we'll be refining for a long time since gameplay is expected to change a lot as we develop the game. But rest assured that I agree with some of your points and we'll work on them :)
- The same above applies to Upgrades balancing, we will keep rebalancing them as we go :)
- Enemy Pathing is still a work in progress. AI Code, Enemy Design and Level Design. We're still refining these important pillars of the game, and as we work on this I expect issues like enemies being stuck will be solved. But these take a long time to fix and develop so please don't expect one patch and all issues will be over, it's a very very hard problem to solve :(
- Pause system is something we will work on when we get back in the office after the break. It's definitely on the top of the list :)
- Better ways to communicate and see what your team is doing is coming. We've just released a prototype Ping System that works when you ping Health or the Boss. Expect this system to expand in the future. We also have plans to make other players more visible for you.
- Join games in progress is something we can't support due to the nature of the game, but we will improve the UI and make that entire Room experience better. This UI is just very prototypy and will definitely be completely remade from scratch. I completely agree with the blank list of games comment and that's also something we've been thinking; although the game is not really something that's multiplayer only like fortnite or valorant it can feel pretty bad to see an empty list of rooms to join.
That's all!
Thanks a ton for taking time to write a very cool comment like that! :)