PyWeek - Death Tower - feedback

Not my style but anyway a good game

Interesting idea, the scrolling shouldn't activate only when you hit the edge of the screen though... forces you to trust to luck around corners.

Keyboard controls are a little cumbersome: some keys seem to block others (using W,A,S,D instead of arrows should help). Wall sliding would also be nice, as would being able to see more than 5 px in front of you after changing direction :-)

my god, i couldn't stand the music :)

Very very uigly graphics discourage me from playing. perhaps simpler less ambitious
graphics but more clear would have helped. The music could be better, also

I have to run too much in this game.. the fields could be smaller a bit

The game works well, and not too difficult (which is a good thing for me). Unfortunately it not very innovative at all; I've seen games like this before, and besides the remark that the door goes a level up in a tower, the theme is not very much reflected by the game.

Production-wise the game is quite nice. Simple and functional graphics. Old-skool music which isn't my favorite, but still a plus for having it in there, and it fits the general old-skool style of the game as well. One thing that I did notice is that the enemies move (or should I say vibrate?) at a very high speed on my computer, and sometimes seem to become stuck. I wonder whether that's a timing issue.

Hugh problem with scrolling and turning. The scroll trigger was far to close to the edge of the screen, meaning that it was very easy to walk into a bunch of bad guys before you had time to see them. Also couldn't turn on the spot without having to move.

The doors seemed to have issues - I could shoot through them, and they didn't always disappear.

The scrolling uncovers too little of next screen. The AI could be better too.

Reminded me of Gauntlet :)

The scrolling really irritated me. The baddies would be right off screen. Just a couple more blocks and all would be righteous. I really liked the sprites for the baddies and the player. You also get props for having health power up, which is something that never quite seems to make it into my game.

Really neat entry! I was impressed. It would have been nice if the scrolling started before I reached the edge of the screen, I kept running into bad guys. Also it ran my CPU at 100% when I was playing.

I personally, did not enjoy this game.

Nice music, niceish graphics, but a few bugs: bullets and ememies sometimes go thru locks :-)

Not bad, but the in-game music is quite annoying.

Nice graphics, The rpg style of old games is quite evident. I loved the menus.

Workable Gauntlet clone - health potions would give me a strategic part of gameplay; do I keep fighting, or do I retreat to heal up.

This could be a beginning for a good Gauntlet clone. As is though, the scrolling is TERRIBLE,
and the enemies seem to often pose no real threat to the player.

DeathTower really impressed me with its description and its polished menu. The rotating
battle axe in the visually attractive menu was quite appealing to me. The music was pumping,
and the promise of multiple levels of action and adventure were quite exciting. All that said,
the game could have been much more fun if it had fixed the camera issues. One's ability to have
fun is severely hampered by not being able to see where one is going, and that cramped my style
pretty hard. It's so sad though, that such a small thing such as the camera could have such a
negative effect on the gameplay, especially when the rest of the game (music, interface, bad
guy AI, map capabilities, etc) were so well done. Still, I had fun and was able to enjoyably beat
the game. However, I would have liked to beat it more on strategy than on the brute force of
blindly running and firing into the direction that I can't see, but it was still fun. Thanks for
the game, and well done! You were 95% there, and I'm sure with a little bit more time to polish it
you could have a real winner on your hands.

Very impressive work in 1 week! There seemed to be a bug in the door algorithm whereby you could walk between two locked doors without a key. It would also be nice to improve the scrolling radius more towards the center of the screen, rather than when you are on the very edge.

The gameplay was pretty fun. I wasn't a fan of the way the level wouldn't scroll unless you were right against the side making 90% of the screen almost a waste.

great graphics, game play is a mite bit simplistic though

Nice attempt, some aspects bring it down however: background tiles bring the graphics down a notch, it's not very nice to look at; scrolling speed is too slow; and the level design feels a bit too open (too much walking, too little fighting).

Scrolling was bad, I couldn't see at all where I was going. And the music was way too loud.

Nice music, and the introscreen gives you the correct feeling for the game. The gameplay whould have been ok if just the camera had been more centered on the player. Now its more luck than skill if you meet the mosters face-to-face or a couple of tiles away.
A bit light on the theme maybe..

Would be much, MUCH better if the screen scrolled with the player mostly in the middle, not at the edge you're walking towards. What happens a lot is that you bump into an enemy who has only just come into view, because by the time you see them it's too late to get out of the way.
That said, I can see what you were trying to do, and it's nice. I like the graphics and the concept. As for the music, I can't decide if I love it or hate it! :)

Keyboard keys are sometimes not responding (pushing up while down is pushed, will not respond even after down was unpushed)
"Game over" was prompted to me at the begginning of a level, for some reason.

Not a bad Gauntlet sort of game. A few small things that I think would make it much better:
Keep the player closer to the centre of the screen, so that you can see what is comming in the direction you are walking.
Make everything slightly slower.
Make it work so that if the player is holding left, then holds right, then releases left, the character starts moving right instead of stopping.

music gives me headaches! scrolling is done too near to the edge, so you cant see where you are going. its too easy, not enough monsters.

Argh, the screen doesn't scroll unless I'm at the very edge of it! I found this to be frustrating as I couldn't see any enemies coming.

The camera shouldn't let the player get so close to the edge of the screen.

Well, having to get all the way to the edge of the screen to make it scroll made what might have been a decent, somewhat of a flop.

It works, but it's not much of a game. What annoyed me a lot is that the screen doesn't move
further ahead of the character - that way I just ran into enemies, hitting me, without me seeing
them in advance and therefore not really being able to do anything about it

This is not a very good game. Slaying monsters is uninteresting, and there is zero real
challenge. The only hard parts come from the horrible scrolling algorithm, which rarely
shows where the player is going. The tileset isn't very good-looking and the level design
isn't much better. I did sort of like the music, though, so I'm giving production a 3. At least
it's a complete game.

The music was ok, but after some minutes it was rather disturbing than supporting the ambience of the game. Additionally, the scrolling would need some fixing, as the inability to see what lies in front of your character did not help to maintain a constant level of fun (and avoid some frustration). Some more days for polishing (graphics/scrolling) and bug-squishing (e.g. the character able to shoot through all [closed] doors and also able to go through some closed doors) would improve some aspects of this game - but for this one week challenge the result is ok and nice to look at ;) - Hopefully the developement of this game will continue after this challenge, as the items outlined in the description ("Bosses, level ups, stores, money, random item droppage") are definitely things I want to see in a later version of this game! :)

It's quite nice for a game that was written within one week, but it lacks overall polish. The music gets on your nerves quickly and the graphics are rather poor.. With another week of polishing and bug-squishing it may be a lot more fun to play.

What really halved the fun factor was the screen orientation. It would have been nice to see what was coming.

I liked this game quite a bit, although I found the scrolling engine to be somewhat frustrating since you couldn't tell if you were going to hit an enemy or not when walking along the edge of the map. I took a look inside the code and noticed the comment in player.py with the bug with self.edge.

As for production quality, I felt the tile artwork could have used some more work and the music seemed a little too 8-bitty to me. If you changed up the artwork I think the game would be even more fun to play.

Also, I did notice a glitch where enemies seemed to be able to come through the blue doors.

Nice idea, but I think I've seen something similar before...

Gauntlety fun! I enjoyed the gameplay but it was hard with the level only scrolling so close to the edges. I was always walking into goblins. Liked the noisy C64ish music!

Nice gauntlet-style game. Managed to finish it and my major issue was the centering of the camera. I would have preferred if the hero was more in center of the camera of all times, since it's impossible to see what's in front of him when running around and the camera is following you.

I had some problem with the scrolling because if I get close to the edge I can't see the enemies just when I run into them. The music is very annoying for me and there's no way to turn it off.

Not bad, although it could do with some more variety.
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It seems you can shoot through locked doors, which is handy.:-)
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The music sounds a bit scratchy.

High production values. nice music, sprites.
However we're basically blind while scrolling, and there's a lot of backtracking.

Hmmm nice game, but not too much challenge...Also the fact it's not scrolling unless you are near the end makes it IMPOSSIBLE to see / kill enemies...Otherwise it could have been fun...

I like the soundtrack on this one. This game can get a bit sluggish once in a while, though and there's issues with screen centering.

It's a fun game. =)

You often ran into enemies because of the way the screen scrolled.