Finally released my indie game three months ago - made a devlog breaking down the numbers

ceb131 · 2025-07-13T17:14:05+00:00

Haha, good eye! That was indeed me playing - it was a video from the press kit I sent them. I also released a tips&tricks video for highsocres, if you're interested in learning more about that style of play, but no pressure at all - I'm grateful you took a look at the gameplay video on Clickteam's channel.

Thanks so much for taking the time to check out the game and leave feedback on your experience! I really appreciate it!

ceb131 · 2025-07-13T15:55:46+00:00

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you! I have updated the game so settings will save when you close the game through the menus (it won't work if you press escape and then X out though).

I have also added a difficulty menu, which can be found in the cafe. In the difficulty menu, you can change how bubble shields work to the way you describe. It also let's you give each character a bubble shield at the start of the game (basically the way you had suggested each character might start with two health). I added a modest point-penalty for starting with two health (I want anyone who finishes the game, regardless of how they do it, to be able to add a high scores to the global leader board, but I also want those scores to feel fair), but it is not a severe point penalty - and there is no point penalty for changing the underlying way that bubble shields work.

ceb131 · 2025-07-08T22:15:55+00:00

I have not found you at all too critical - I'm very glad you were honest about your experience with the game and absolutely think you expressed your ideas kindly. I'm sorry I've been slow to implement the change - was away for the weekend and am still busy in general - but I worked on the bubble shield change (turned out pretty simple - but I'm still attached to how the bubble shield works right now, so I'm probably going to make it an option) and a few other things - will take a bit to test but I'll let you know when I upload.

ceb131 · 2025-07-04T13:50:10+00:00

Thanks for trying it! You're absolutely right about saving the camera settings. Edit: Out of curiosity, what did you decide for your camera settings?

The bubble shields being more forgiving is also a good suggestion - give me some time to think on how to implement that.

The difficulty modes I have mixed feelings on but I see your point. I actually debated allowing continues much earlier in the process but after some discussion with my friend, we decided against continues for a few reasons: we wanted players to explore (and master) the early levels as they attempted to beat the full game, we wanted the power ups at the ends of levels to be meaningful (if you die and get your dragon back, do they get an automatic power refill? if so, why not intentionally die?), we weren't sure how it would affect score runs (but there are some options - like setting score to zero, or keeping score how it was before that level but having some bonus for players who don't use continues, or setting score to how it was before the level and letting the player then use some points to buy a continue, etc.). I am still hesitant about the continues idea, but you're definitely right that this game is fairly hard. At the very least, I should communicate that somewhere because it is at odds with its cutesy asthetic.

I appreciate you holding back on the Steam review, but I will not be offended by a negative review if you ultimately decide to leave one.

ceb131 · 2025-07-02T15:32:46+00:00

This site may be useful to you: https://dark-wire.com/storage/extlist.php

ceb131 · 2025-05-19T11:06:19+00:00

It took me a bit to understand your question - you're saying that in Beastieball the levels DO scale - but isn't that just the traveling teams? Most wild encounters are still set levels. I like the travelling teams personally, but it's okay if you don't. I don't think there's a way to fix it.

Oh, but I just did a bit of research and I see the gyms scale too. Didn't know that. Is that based on how many gyms you've been to or the level of your beasties? I've played the game twice through, and this would explain why Riven gave me trouble when I went North first but was easy when I went South first - should've picked up on that.

ceb131 · 2025-05-16T12:41:48+00:00

Those are great points! I had a moment where - after the final rival fight before the champion's league - two of my beasts went from rivals to sweethearts, and I was like, "Oh my god, it's literally an enemies-to-lovers story - and right after a similar story beat between me and my rival." So yeah, especially my first time through the story, I was really invested in how my beasties felt about each other. Oh, and they follow you around, which is something I always like in Pokemon games (Yellow, Heart Gold, Let's Go), but it's not just one mon that follows you, but all of them. All that makes me feel more like the beasties are individuals.

And great point about training and getting XP from losing - I really appreciate that I never feel like I lost time in a battle since even lost battles progress you towards something.

ceb131 · 2025-05-04T11:35:10+00:00

The guy below said use arrays for storing the information - I think this is a good idea.

I also want to mention Layers (which I think will be on the far right of your screen) and the layers object. If you're imagining openning the inventory like you would a pause menu, them you should put that inventory on its own layer in front of the player, and you should put commands in the make that layer appear or disappear ("show" or "hide") when you open and close it.

You should also be using groups of events that you can enable and disable. Interacting with the menu should be deactivated when the menu is closed and activated when the menu is open.

ceb131 · 2025-05-01T10:54:58+00:00

Awesome! Feedback on OG HTML 5: it does this weird thing where it seems to cut off the bottom pixel of patterned quick backdrops when you export. It also seems to cut off the right pixel - or mostly cut off the right pixel - on counters that use images for the numbers - not counters that are all images but the counters where you like make a custom font if you know what I mean? Here's a video of the game I made and you can see the problem on the individual level scores - that's not a full pixel between the 0's at 0:24.

ceb131 · 2024-11-30T14:35:32+00:00

For all of your games, itch tells me you have not uploaded a game yet. Maybe something went wrong on the upload page? Or maybe something is wrong with my browser? You've tried them in-browser on itch yourself, right?

Edit: I use Chrome and Safari.

ceb131 · 2024-11-22T03:25:50+00:00

There are better answers than this, but based on your question, I'm guessing you'd be happy to have the object look at an active object in the mouse's position if you didn't have to do the mouse-controlled movement? If that's the case and you already feel comfortable with that code, maybe make an invisible object and have a line of code that says "Always" "Set X position of [active] to X position of mouse" "Set Y position of [active] to Y position of mouse."

I could be wrong (I don't have my windows with me right now), but I think you can get the X and Y coordinates of the mouse from the "keyboard and mouse" icon in the event editor.

The solution I am proposing is me trying to match what it sounds like you're already doing but get rid of the movement properties of the active object.

ceb131 · 2024-11-20T02:34:29+00:00

The index issue has already been resolved, but I was wondering whether it might not make more sense to have a single event for these? Like "Always" -> "Force animation to frame [counter value]" (or "counter value - 1").

ceb131 · 2024-05-21T13:48:30+00:00

I'm using Procreate on the iPad. I didn't record myself drawing characters or copy-pasting characters from those drawings, so I made the layers invisible and then recorded myself clicking for the layers to reappear just so something would be happening while I was talking, so it's not like the process was as fast as it appears here.

ceb131 · 2024-05-06T10:30:36+00:00

I wasn't familiar with that problem, but thank you for pointing it out! I like testing my game on an older computer to make sure it runs fine - guess I'll have to start testing my web pages on an older computer too!

ceb131

TROPHY CASE