I immediately fell in love with this game the moment I tried the demo. Excellent stuff! The level of polish, charm and detail is on a whole other level. It's clearly unfinished in some areas, but I can tell that this game will be something special once it's done. I have a few criticisms though... Well, first, just some bug reports:
1. I don't know what it is about the first bridge in the final level of the demo "Montes-3", but it seems very prone to bugs. On my first run all the Rangers fell through the floor and later, I had an incident where the green one got stuck on the edge of the slope, causing me to get softlocked since the others kept waiting for her.
2. I don't know if there are language settings? But the first tutorial started in english and abruptly swapped to spanish when the tutorial actually started. Then the rest of the game was in spanish. I'm bilingual so I didn't mind but it definitely felt like something was off.
With that out of the way, I do have some suggestions and complaints-- But keep in mind these are all out of how enamored I am with this game.
1. When the action gets frantic and there's a lot on screen, it's a bit hard to remember what button corresponds to each Ranger. It'd be really simple (and also good for color blind people!) if you had the cursor ring have the corresponding keys right next to the colored dots in translucent form, and then they could light up when you hold that key just as a minor cute gamefeel thing. It could even be an option so it can be disabled for those who get used to it and don't want the extra visual noise. I think it'd make the game far more accesible because as it is right now it's got a bit of a steep learning curve.
2. I think the time limits for these stages tend to err on the strict side. Consistently, I make it to the goal with only a few seconds left. It's a bit tense and exciting, yes, but it also means there's little room for error and it can make some levels very frustrating to do over and over. It also de-incentivizes utilizing the stop button, which in some circumstances felt like it was near mandatory because of how many things were onscreen at once (in the penultimate level, cramped tunnel setups with the enemy that shot projectiles and the crystal enemies at once). In general, I think this game would benefit a lot from having more lenient time limits across the board. Generally, with this kind of score-based games you want the act of beating the stage to be relatively simple so players feel motivated to say "Oh man, I could totally get a higher score than that!" and replay it-- I especially felt the bridge level was extremely tight and basically punished any small mistake so hard you'd run out right before the end. Making the timers more lenient would also lessen the frustration of the occasional messy setup where a lot goes on at once.
3. This is less of a complaint and more of a hope-- In the demo I thought the "melee hit" attack didn't add much to the game and felt rather shoehorned in. You don't even get much of a chance to use it in the next stage after its tutorial. Maybe I missed something but I felt the game already had a robust moveset otherwise. I hope in the final game there's bigger rewards to utilizing the melee attack (such as time bonuses or interacting with level gimmicks). In the bridge level for example I thought maybe utilizing the melee attack would allow Candy to still attack while holding wood or something, but that didn't seem to be the case. It just made the move feel more out of place.
To reiterate, besides these issues, I cannot understate just how impressed I am by this game's charm. The way the characters move, the little drawings at the end of the tutorials, and the gamefeel and music are all spectacular. I just felt like these things could be touched up to make it a far smoother experience. I'm rooting this game on! Keep up the good work!
I really like the idea and style of it, but it’s incredibly confusing to remember which range is for what pattern - I think it’d be very useful to color-code the pattern enemies (at least at the beginning?) so that it isn’t just an immediate knowledge check when you get out the door. It might also be neat, as an option, to switch these colors based on the popular controller configs.
Not that it’s necessary it’s just that otherwise taking out enemies feels “wrong”.
It’s also funny because the color pattern almost matches the PlayStation button patterns, Triangle = Green = Vertical, and Cross/X is Blue but instead it does circular patterns rather than the X shape.
I’d also rebind L3 to just dash and R3 to just brake, there’s no need to make it a hold button.
And selecting a level requiring holding Square/X which was strange to me
The game has a lot of fun potential, however. And I enjoyed playing the levels, other than the mantles since you can get hit by enemies during it without any control other than making sure you killed everything beforehand. It felt like getting on those shoulda killed enemies to keep the score time low.
Yes, a lot of people seem to have a hard time wrapping their heards around the swap mappings.
I'm working on an update that offers input rebinding so players can map the characters to their most preferred button.
Right now the mapping is based on their direction. Vertical formation in the Up button, Horizontal in the right and Cross on the left. The Circle formation is gonna be removed and changed for another formation, which is horizontal but in the Z axis (forwards to backwards), and Candy will only attack on the X axis in return. This is because the circle pattern proved to be very situational and people didn't expect that horizontal could go both ways. Mapping Z axis to down will also make more sense I think.
About the dash/brake. You're right, the current mapping is made to test if it'd work on a single joycon, I'll change that.
Thank you for letting me change the layout of the team. The only addition I’d request is that on the indicators and for your cursor it still matches the initial layout. The color difference worked wonders, but just having that little bit extra would help I think.
The last level in the demo crashes my game for some reason. Estuaries-4. Is that one unfinished?
I’m also not sure what the stars mean, I’ve only kept to 1 star all this time despite increasing my score.
My only thing now is that the scoring can be a bit punishing since, I think, even shooting an enemy with the wrong person resets it (not kill). This works for the most part until you start overlapping a lot and you have to take extra care of your own positioning that I think you would have to p much memorize for. But it was great fun either way I can just see that being a pain point depending.
![Candy Rangers [DEMO]](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzE2ODcyMzQ3LnBuZw==/original/1LABWi.png)
← Return to candy
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
I immediately fell in love with this game the moment I tried the demo. Excellent stuff! The level of polish, charm and detail is on a whole other level. It's clearly unfinished in some areas, but I can tell that this game will be something special once it's done. I have a few criticisms though... Well, first, just some bug reports:
1. I don't know what it is about the first bridge in the final level of the demo "Montes-3", but it seems very prone to bugs. On my first run all the Rangers fell through the floor and later, I had an incident where the green one got stuck on the edge of the slope, causing me to get softlocked since the others kept waiting for her.
2. I don't know if there are language settings? But the first tutorial started in english and abruptly swapped to spanish when the tutorial actually started. Then the rest of the game was in spanish. I'm bilingual so I didn't mind but it definitely felt like something was off.
With that out of the way, I do have some suggestions and complaints-- But keep in mind these are all out of how enamored I am with this game.
1. When the action gets frantic and there's a lot on screen, it's a bit hard to remember what button corresponds to each Ranger. It'd be really simple (and also good for color blind people!) if you had the cursor ring have the corresponding keys right next to the colored dots in translucent form, and then they could light up when you hold that key just as a minor cute gamefeel thing. It could even be an option so it can be disabled for those who get used to it and don't want the extra visual noise.
I think it'd make the game far more accesible because as it is right now it's got a bit of a steep learning curve.
2. I think the time limits for these stages tend to err on the strict side. Consistently, I make it to the goal with only a few seconds left. It's a bit tense and exciting, yes, but it also means there's little room for error and it can make some levels very frustrating to do over and over. It also de-incentivizes utilizing the stop button, which in some circumstances felt like it was near mandatory because of how many things were onscreen at once (in the penultimate level, cramped tunnel setups with the enemy that shot projectiles and the crystal enemies at once). In general, I think this game would benefit a lot from having more lenient time limits across the board. Generally, with this kind of score-based games you want the act of beating the stage to be relatively simple so players feel motivated to say "Oh man, I could totally get a higher score than that!" and replay it-- I especially felt the bridge level was extremely tight and basically punished any small mistake so hard you'd run out right before the end. Making the timers more lenient would also lessen the frustration of the occasional messy setup where a lot goes on at once.
3. This is less of a complaint and more of a hope-- In the demo I thought the "melee hit" attack didn't add much to the game and felt rather shoehorned in. You don't even get much of a chance to use it in the next stage after its tutorial. Maybe I missed something but I felt the game already had a robust moveset otherwise. I hope in the final game there's bigger rewards to utilizing the melee attack (such as time bonuses or interacting with level gimmicks). In the bridge level for example I thought maybe utilizing the melee attack would allow Candy to still attack while holding wood or something, but that didn't seem to be the case. It just made the move feel more out of place.
To reiterate, besides these issues, I cannot understate just how impressed I am by this game's charm. The way the characters move, the little drawings at the end of the tutorials, and the gamefeel and music are all spectacular. I just felt like these things could be touched up to make it a far smoother experience. I'm rooting this game on! Keep up the good work!
I really like the idea and style of it, but it’s incredibly confusing to remember which range is for what pattern - I think it’d be very useful to color-code the pattern enemies (at least at the beginning?) so that it isn’t just an immediate knowledge check when you get out the door. It might also be neat, as an option, to switch these colors based on the popular controller configs.
Not that it’s necessary it’s just that otherwise taking out enemies feels “wrong”.
It’s also funny because the color pattern almost matches the PlayStation button patterns, Triangle = Green = Vertical, and Cross/X is Blue but instead it does circular patterns rather than the X shape.
I’d also rebind L3 to just dash and R3 to just brake, there’s no need to make it a hold button.
And selecting a level requiring holding Square/X which was strange to me
The game has a lot of fun potential, however. And I enjoyed playing the levels, other than the mantles since you can get hit by enemies during it without any control other than making sure you killed everything beforehand. It felt like getting on those shoulda killed enemies to keep the score time low.
Thank you for playing!
Yes, a lot of people seem to have a hard time wrapping their heards around the swap mappings.
I'm working on an update that offers input rebinding so players can map the characters to their most preferred button.
Right now the mapping is based on their direction. Vertical formation in the Up button, Horizontal in the right and Cross on the left. The Circle formation is gonna be removed and changed for another formation, which is horizontal but in the Z axis (forwards to backwards), and Candy will only attack on the X axis in return. This is because the circle pattern proved to be very situational and people didn't expect that horizontal could go both ways. Mapping Z axis to down will also make more sense I think.
About the dash/brake. You're right, the current mapping is made to test if it'd work on a single joycon, I'll change that.
Hopefully I can drop this update this weekend.
Hi! Just patched the demo with a new version! I think you're going to love the changes
Oh shit I was gonna play a few SAGE games this year but I’ll do it right now :O
Yeah I loved the changes! Initial feedback:
Thank you for letting me change the layout of the team. The only addition I’d request is that on the indicators and for your cursor it still matches the initial layout. The color difference worked wonders, but just having that little bit extra would help I think.
The last level in the demo crashes my game for some reason. Estuaries-4. Is that one unfinished?
I’m also not sure what the stars mean, I’ve only kept to 1 star all this time despite increasing my score.
My only thing now is that the scoring can be a bit punishing since, I think, even shooting an enemy with the wrong person resets it (not kill). This works for the most part until you start overlapping a lot and you have to take extra care of your own positioning that I think you would have to p much memorize for. But it was great fun either way I can just see that being a pain point depending.
I loved the new demo though, it was a lot of fun.