My Game's Replayability Was Bad, So I Fixed It!
Vložit
- čas přidán 11. 09. 2024
- Wishlist Slimekeep! - store.steampow...
Join the Discord - / discord
Play my games - benbonk.itch.io/
My twitter - / benbonkdev
[Slimekeep Devlog #52]
In this video I reworked the challenge mode in the game, and made it a whole lot more fun. I also made some more small tweaks as usual and added in a bunch of more polish.
About me:
Hey, I'm BenBonk, an indie game developer who uses the Unity Engine. I've made and released many small games before on my itch page, though now I'm attempting to make my first commercial game, Slimekeep. Slimekeep is a roguelike, using a very limited color palette, similar to Enter the Gungeon, though with a few interesting mechanics, such as keeping slimes alive longer will earn you more money, and the ability to capture slimes to power up your slime pet. If you enjoyed anything you saw, please consider subscribing, as it really helps me out.
Music by Pieper Beats
subscribe gamers ( ͡ᵔ ͜ʖ ͡ᵔ)
Hi! Small note. You should add a small low opacity skeleton of the ui behind the question mark for the dictionary. It would make it more clear as to what’s behind the question marks.
This is a VERY good decision. Makes 100% easier, and is just a nice QOL idea.
or rather a small low opacity slime
A silhouette of the slimes being incorporated in a creative way would work well with this idea as well I feel like.
Maybe its just the artwork and the rest is blank
I actually only have one suggestion today, and that revolves around the capture gun. With all the polish that the gun got today I noticed the gun itself during a capture is... prety stale. It would be nice for is to slightly transform into a zoomed in lens or open up to make it look like it was actually going to grab the slime than it just sitting there until its finished. (Among this note there should probably be a capture animation as well)
I agree
Veyr true, never really thought about that.
You should give the player a notification that they unlocked a page in the slime dictionary
I know its the entire theme of the game, but an accessibility setting that ajusts the HUE of the game might make it so player who have been playing a while can adjust the color of the screen and not feel like they are staring at bright green the whole time
I can't for certain, but I do think he has implemented such a feature a few episodes ago
This does exist in the game right now, don't worry.
@@BenBonkShow this off in a devlog, shock viewers AND generate interest from green haters
More color in general is good
Bro he literally added that years ago
Maybe consider making biomes instead of just having a plain green world for the entire game
Its kinda the asthetic and I dont think he is adding biomes this late into the game
He should tho@@endyproductions6209
rn there are a lot of things in rooms but it just seem messy and doesn't work that well, biomes will help a ton, also for marketing
I'm a playtester for slimekeep, and I soooo agree with this
It can still have the same colour palette, but just make some bits have more foliage or something.
The rooms can get soooo repetitive
Maybe make it like pokemon gen 1 where everything changes color the moment you step in a different place
Small suggestion: It would be nice to have some type of notification when the player unlocks a slime in the slime dictionary. I wouldn't have it pop up on screen due to the amount of slimes unlocked early game, but somewhere in the pause menu to give a subtle hint to check out the slime dictionary.
I cant believe you're at 52 devlogs, impressive work!
Thank you! Still remember you from the 20 developers one game video lol.
I get the green aesthetic, but i think it definetly could get a bit repetitive. I think maybe a few biomes to break up the pallete and introduce new but simple mechanics could be nice! I know how annoying it is to be developing something and people going "you should add _!" "Just add _!" But i think biomes could be super fun! Maybe as you go through the days and yet your day count higher, each room has a slightly higher chance to be a different biome, and biomes could have slightly different passive effects(nothing too complex, maybe a bouncy slime biome where projectiles bounce on walls so you can get trickshots and even hit yourself), and they could still torally be *green* while still having different shaders to differenciate them without making new rooms! Biomes with different effects would make the player need to stay on their toes, in a bouncy slime biome theyd need to plan their shots to hit slimes around corners and to not hit themselves, for example
Hopefully this idea has some merit, or leads to a different idea to make the game as good as it can be!
I would love for there to be more color and graphically style in slimekeep because, as you said, the green can get a little stale overtime. This is why I love the rain weather event a ton because it adds in so much more vibrancy and color and life to the game world! But new biomes could also be sick as hell! But I think new weather events could also be a really good choice so every single day the game world feels and looks different, and new game mechanics could also be added to new weather events as well! (if needed)
The green is part of the lore, so the only thing that could really work is changing the wall or ground into something else and adding obstacles unique to the biomes, like a cactus in the desert or bear trap in the forest.
@@cutestcreeper569 I know the green is part of the lore, which is why i said biomes could be different shades of green. even a green corruption could show tints of whatever colour the biome was beforehand in the lore, and that gives a lot of freedom without too much palette break
He has confirmed in another comment that there is a hue slider in settings
@@ghastdude589 That solves the all green problem, but i think biomes have a use in spicing up gameplay interactions too
I think the top texture of walls should change. A giant light green area just looks really ugly
High BenBonk, your the only youtuber I've been watching consistently for 4 years. Your videos are so well made and cut perfectly. Your the reason I wanted to start learning coding. Thank you so much for everything.
I have to things that i noticed. First, i think the slime companion just looks to simelar to other slimes. You fixed this before by adding a white glow around it, but now that all enemies have that glow, i often mistake the companion with enemys (When watching the video). Secondly, i think the missile from the challenge mode looks a bit to weak. I think you could solve this with a bit of screen shake and perhaps a bit faster animation.
This is just my opinon, and you don't have to listen, and i think your game is wonderfull! :)
I like where your going with replayability! I think you don't need to be afraid about stacking challenges. It would be neat if as you progress the days, the chance to have two challenges activate at once increases. Making the challenge mode feel more threatening will make it so people have to spend more time thinking and planning, which I think makes peoples game time longer. In other games I'll find myself thinking about a game more if I'm strategizing, usually if it's something super difficult. But anyway, another great devlog!
Looking sick! Can't wait
Thanks!
I think that it would be really helpful if their was a ui element to show what challenge is currently active. I know that it’s kinda obvious which one you have after fighting for like a second, along with the text at the start of the day, but I think it would help with accessibility if there was something to remind the player what they have to look out for. Love the work by the way, keep it up!
Wow, great! The challenge modifiers make the challenge mode soooo much better. This game is turning out great so far!
Thank you!
Excellent progress! It'll be interesting to see how the modifiers impact each day.
blob (slime sounds)
TODAY IS A GOOD DAY BENBONK UPLOADED
YESSIR
Some advice for polish. I think adding some sorta crater, or large slime stain under explosions, similar to the bullet impact sprites would look good.
Ha, jokes on you, I have had this amazing, beautiful, epic, awesome, enchanting, wonderful game wishlisted for a long time now.
Lets goooo
I would love to see an “ultra” challenge mode for beating the challenge mode that would just have all difficulty modifiers on at all times.
I have a suggestion about that dictionary and the modifiers, I feel like it would be a better idea if you had to capture the slime instead of just killing it, it makes it feel like your actually learning about the slime instead of just killing it for information. And if you do make it so its capturable maybe add like a lore section to it or something (maybe you can show your dictionary to an npc and they can give some lore about the slime you show then and you write it down in the book). And about the modifiers I feel like at the beginning of each day you should be able to pick between 2 or 3 different modifiers and based on the difficulty of the modifier you chose (because obviously some modifiers are more difficult then others) it would give you special slime balls at the end of your run. This just give another way to get special slime balls and not just make them an item you get from beating the slime king. but overall great devlog can't wait for the games release.
The changes in this video made my feelings about this game from "might play it once after purchased" to "getting closer to ETG's level of difficulty and replayability" which is a good thing. Now that you are using custom sprites depending on the weapon, a lot more potential for new weapons has been unlocked
Thanks for taking the time to make this video. I enjoyed it!
Woooooo! New Slimekeep devlog!
You can add an infinite amount of gameplay replay-ability and variety, but the underlying issue of visual variety will still be there; why not add biomes, or randomly place props throughout a room (the latter could also improve gameplay, explosive barrels, randomly placed cover, ect)? I can already think of a few biomes that would match the green colour aesthetic pretty well; a swamp, a pine forest, a slime cave or something. All of these could also use different "values" of brightness to add even more visual variety, the game as is does look good but the issue is that it gets really stale to look at, with each room being unique but visually they look the same.
I think the slime dictionary is a really good idea, maybe when you get a new unlock, you could add a pop-up showing that you found a new slime. Would make it more satisfying in my opinion.
Challenge Modifier:Lazy Bones
Cannot move while shooting
Polish:
Maybe the guns could have a real reload animation not that spinning animation. Its still cool and won't impact much but it's the little things that count
I was thinking about the challenge mode and was thinking... Why not have trophies for all the slime types you fight in challenge mode? It won't spawn all the time but maybe if you kill 10 slimes of a type or when you beat a boss players get rewarded for playing.
Give the player something to work for yknow? The completionist peeps xD
Great updates! LOVING the scythe >:D
The game looks so much more juicy now! The custom particles did wonders.
Maybe you could make walls that rebound projectiles or walls that hide rooms/shops in them that have good rewards in them. You could just recolor the wall to another shade so it gives the player an insentive to look around the room instead of just moving on.
i think it would be interesting to allow the player to choose to get a challenge in normal mode for some sort of bonus like extra slime balls or a small permanent damage buff
Maybe you should consider adding some sort of additional content to the challenge mode to incentivize players to replay the game, like more/optional bosses that could drop special slimeballs in addition to normal slimeballs but have higher difficulty and additional achievements exclusive to the challenge mode
You should add a chance for there to be multiple modifiers on one day that increases every day in challenge mode
I love Slimekeep
Same
Hi! The game looks fun, but i have a couple of suggestions. 1: Add more areas, 2: Add an auto-aim feature for console, and 3: Explosions should have more impact. Keep up the great work!
I really like how the game looks right now but I have one problem. I think the holes dont look like holes. They look more like puddles of some dark liquid. I think maybe making it get darker towards the center will really sell the effect of depth.
really stupid idea for an "alternate mode" of sorts: a gamemode where you have everything unlocked (or just have INSANE levels of slimeball gain), but every modifier is enabled at once. idk what it would give you, but it could be really funny to see how long you can survive the utterly unfair onslaught of modifiers.
or not idk
I have an idea. For challenge mode you could give some slimes or maybe just the boss slimes new, harder to avoid attacks. This could really spice things up.
Also, can you make it so you could fight slimes that are in your slime book? Imagine being able to use this to test out strategys or weapons without the risk of dying. You could make it so you can click something on the page of the slime you fight then it lets you choose a weapon (any weapon you've used before) to fight the slime with. This would be especially cool for bosses.
Also, you should make a book for all the weapons you've seen in the game similar to the slime book you made!
I hope these ideas are helpful!
4:23 Taking inspiration from the way other games do things isn't a bad thing at all... Which leads to my suggestion!
The Risk of Rain games have a challenge system that allows for stacking modifiers. Said modifiers are unlocked by completing some sort of challenge to unlock the artifact corresponding to the modifier - and the modifiers aren't all negative. For example, the Command artifact makes it so all item drops in the game, which are usually random, are replaced with an item that allows you to select an item within the same rarity pool as the game would naturally have chosen from, allowing you to get specific item combinations that would be difficult to obtain otherwise.
Some highly skilled players occasionally play on the highest difficulty with all artifacts on. Why? Just for the challenge, because it can be fun to go for a crazy run (though the remake of the first game ties an unlockable into the challenge which might've been overboard - I don't remember if that was in the original)
But I digress, here's my ideas and suggestions:
First, stackable, toggle-able modifiers, possibly unlocked over time through gameplay, would be really fun. Also, don't be afraid to add modifiers that are just straight up boons - more options are always good to have.
Second, the Slime-pedia looks good so far, but it might be fun if information filled in gradually as you defeated more of that type of enemy (number based on difficulty/rarity of the enemy). I like the idea of the player character jotting down notes about different enemies as they defeat more of them and get used to the attack patterns. (This is a pretty common beastiary design, and while it might feel like padding content, I personally love it every time)
Rambling aside, Slimekeep looks really fun so far, you're doing fantastic, and I can't wait to try the game out!
love how the game is going so far however the zoom out of existance and then re-apear when slimes evolve might be confusing to new players and I feel could look better. The death explosion on enemies also feels a bit slow and clunky rather than smooth.
Now that the enemies have outlines, the slime companion doesn't really stand out and is hard to see at a glance. I dont remember exactly, but when you beat the game, doesnt the world go back to being colored instead of being green? If this is the case and I'm not schizo, maybe the slime companion should be blue or red to stand out and show that it's healthy and uninfected
i also think that when a slime evolves it kinda looks like they die which is really trippy so maybe you could make some fames between evolutions
You should have a death biome, here every single slime you kill goes here, and either the player can travel here or it can be part of the lore
You do not need different biomes. Game is fine. I love how it looks
This game hurts my eyes. (Too much Green)
But green is best
@@BenBonkthanks to overuse of green the world looks just bland. The top comments are right. Biomes could fix it. I would consider making the color palette bigger by adding more shades of green.
For the bazooka projectioes. i would make the target flash 1 or 2 times so that it catches your attention better. Maybe make it light instead of black
the particle update really does improve the amateurish feel. I didn't realize how much I disliked the squares until they were gone
A Boss run would be interesting!
You could add some foreground parallax layers, because borders of your rooms are too thick(and empty). Some trees, or bushes, or...
I think making better animations for the explosions, aswell as making the explosions bigger would improve the game a lot!
I've been following this game's development for 1-2 years, when is it going to release?!
Thanks for your support! The next devlog will touch on that, so just be on the lookout in a month or so.
@@BenBonk Will be looking forward to it. After all, it's been getting hyped up for years now.
Honestly i feel like it would be cool to add more products for the vending machine
Like a protein bar that gives a strengt upgrade
Or chips that make reloading faster
The vending machine is taller than Billy's. Maybe upscale/downscale one of the two?
YOU BETTER make a secret when you shoot the wall when it cracks theres a secret room or sum
I think we should be able to open modifiers outside of hard mode choosing randomly (probably unlocked after beating the normal game)
Maybe we would be able to stack the mıdifiers and maybe more mıdifiers means more rewards (similar to Doors)
maybe add some non-acheivment things that can only be unlocked from challenge runs to give a reason to play it more
i think maybe zooming the camera in slightly would help because everything looks too overwhelming
If it's not fun, make it harder, have a steep learning curve
Hey I know you just did a bunch of projectile reworks so maybe you should go look back in the laser? I just feel like the lasers look kind of off because of how they end. They just end abruptly and it looks strange to me
This whole game reminds me of Enter The Gungeon.
I used to watch you in 2020. How is the game not finished? Every devlog I see the tiniest progress being done. This isn’t hate btw. Are you going to release it or too scared, because you can always update it later.
Please do something about the enemy outline. They are pretty hard to distinguish from the player and pet
Please make an extra challenge mode itd be cool of there was an EVEN harder mode where you have 2 day modifiers each day and enemies would shoot more projectiles and have larger explosions and so on
idea: special version of slimes that are harder and drop more stuff(not a miniboss just replacing a normal enemy)
that would of course be way to much work if you decided to retuxture the slime but just making them faster and hit harder + a darker colour pallete would probably do the job
Instead of '?' for the pages, you should a have a shadow/black profile of the slime instead.
Particle changes were huge
Agreed
Slimekeep Merch when
Looking good! I'm not sure if you've already done this, but I'd love to see a couple of boss fights. And you could make the bosses a lot more powerful during challenge mode.
Is multiplayer already in it? If not that would be great even if it was just 2 player but when you do play with a friend the enemies damage and health double
Get rid of the 50% health modifier. You say it yourself : not exciting. Only keep the good stuff :)
What if you added like a modifier that makes you controllably fast
Why not have modifiers be Applied on random days in normal mode
How much will the game cost? I was one of the first 7 wishlists but i might not buy the game depending on the price
make a mode with all challenge modifiers
Looks fun
Making slimes drop less slime balls in the challenge mode kinda feels wrong, it should be risk for reward where the game gets harder but the rewards get better but make sure to not make it easier than the normal mode with this
Faline san would despise this game 😭
Big suggestion: My eyes hurt, can u make filters for color blind persons?
Make a 1 life hardcore mode
I"VE WISH LISTED, GAMERS! HAVE YOU?
Am I the only one who thinks the slime captures looks really bad?
The "panic" looks like a png of a slime is just being slid around. Maybe give the slimes a scared face, or have a shaking animation
new fun challenge modifier: bouncy bullets. all projectiles bounce off the walls once or twice before breaking and player projectiles after bouncing can hurt you
i lack motivation 😭
NEW VID!!!!!!!!!!!
just put the fries in the bag
i dont think im interested in getting/buying/playing the game i thjink im just here for the problem solving and coding
Those are rockets, not bazookas
wowie
please choose a reasonable price range for third world countries like Brazil!
Yes, I definitely will. I think steam mostly handles this automatically.
@@BenBonk their automatic suggestion is not the best, I suggest you do your research so you can target and sell to more countries easily. Check it out similar games in genre and size and their prices at other countries to evaluate the difference. For example 10 dollars is good price for indie games in US but for Brazilians it would be 50 reais, which is a too high. And it is easy to understand that with a little bit of research, united states annual minimum wage is approximately 15,080 US dollars, while in Brazil it is 3,406 US dollars, so you can really see the difference and why that is important.
eighth
5 minute gang (love your content ❤)
👇
First
Cringiest comment ever 😊
regardless if u reach the 20k wishlist i recommend u still put it on 20% sale to give an email to everyone, if u do a 19% sale u wont gmail everyone about the game/sale and its loss of money/free advert