Hey! I’m working on a twinstick shooter inspired by Binding of Isaac, Risk of Rain 2 and Hades.
It’s obviously still early days, but I feel like it’s starting to get to a playable state and would like to share it.
So I would love for anyone to test it and start giving me feedback and suggestions, as such I’ve uploaded it to itch.io.
Hey there @Graylord,
Hope you’re having a grand week so far.
First, congrats on getting to the “playable state” of your game! 
Secondly, as soon as I read “Risk of Rain” I was hooked. ROR is one of my favorite games to lose time in and I’m an absolute loot fiend when it comes to power-ups.
I encourage you to keep sharing the development of your project and letting me obsess over your particle effects and art style.
Sending you lots of support!
ROR is one of my favorite games to lose time in and I’m an absolute loot fiend when it comes to power-ups.
Yeah, me too. 
Currently there’s some flat stat increase pickups like attack speed and movement speed, but I also got some pickups that modify the gameplay a bit, like making your dash knockback enemies, and the enemies taking damage by knocked into a wall.
Added some cables and cableboxes I quite like the look of 
Here’s a quick overview of what it looks like now: Winstick, VLOG 4 - YouTube
Of course, there’s a bunch of enemies in later waves as well that the video doesn’t show. 
Edit: Had an issue where the reticule accidentally targeted the ceiling, I’ve uploaded an updated version now.
Added a overview screen that shows all the upgrades the player has, and gives hints of their functionality when moused over:
I’m currently having a bit of a dilemma with how proceed with an important game decision.
Currently the game only has one room and the player leaves and re-enters indefintely, going into the shop to purchase upgrades between each wave. Just enough to have a fully playable, endless gameplay loop.
But now I’m at the point where I should consider adding the “rest” of the game world, and there’s so many ways to proceed that would fit with the roguelike gameplay that I’m not quite sure what I want to do.
I’m considering 3 types of game world/level systems.
Endless, random rooms.
Let the player choose between a few doors to pick a room type each time the player clears a room, then proceed to the next, etc.
Pros: Endless “exploration” and progress
Cons: Player will probably not feel very connected to the world and the layout
Metroidvania / Zelda dungeon style
Preset world that that the player can explore with secrets, potentially a map etc, where the player then can choose paths to take to desired destinations, like shops, upgrade areas etc.
They still progress difficulty with each room clear, rooms reset on entry, and the player has to consider if they want to check a new area, go back to a previous store to pick up new items etc.
Pros: Can make the world feel realistic, “making sense”, multiple paths to same goal and connected, give the player the ability to plan ahead and real choices.
Cons: Need to develop lots of invidual, unique and sensible rooms causing long development time, need to spend a lot of time making the world interesting and fun to explore in of itself rather than just a platform for the gameplay.
Single area/room?
Focus on 1 main area like the game is now, but instead make that area more interesting. Maybe the player can unlock more areas of the room by gaining access to bridges, breaking down walls, etc over time? Maybe placeables like turrets could play a role? (I haven’t played these much, but I believe something like CoD Zombies?)
Pros: Shorter, more focused development time.
Cons: Might get stale very quickly?
Working on a new enemy, the Imp.
I really like how they’re turning out!
Finally got another update for the game going, and would love some feedback.
I’ve done a lot of work on improving the atmosphere of the game through working on the environment, sound and lighting.
Got a new enemy going.
It’s a bit more gross this time around.
Nightmare fuel. Not “enemy”, that’s a gross nightmare. It’s obviously incredibly impressive and quite a good idea but whew- gave me the creeps. Do you know what you’ll be calling it yet?
The imp enemy is cute though. As cute as a spooky invisible ghost can be. 
Loving all the updates, keep up the amazing work friend. It’s looking super polished and quite charming. Sending you lots of support!
It’s named the “scout”. It’s an early game enemy that shoots a single, small projectile, so that the early game has a bit more variation.
Scout is just cute, i like him.
Haha, thanks. 
Here’s what it currently looks like in action:
I have also been working on having some of my enemies having a chance to show up as armored variants, I spent a bit of time to make it so that the player can knock the armor off:
The plan is to make them move slower have less knockback and behave differently until they lose their armor.
In the case of this particular enemy, I’m thinking of making stop at a certain distance, then do a charge/dash into the player. I’ll probably make them blink to warn the player right before the attack.
Wee! Just uploaded my biggest update yet!
I recently managed to get a hold of an office space with the local highschool, having a seperate place to work on my project has really helped with getting things going and I’ve been super inspired!
Here’s a copy of the changelog:
Another update! So I’ve been working on adding some more stuff that most people take for granted in public games, but still takes some time to get implemented.
I haven’t make videos for literal decades, so it’s pretty rough, but I made something that at least shows the game off a bit in it’s current state, although there are way more items and enemies to find.
Full changelog:
QoL and Settings:
- Non stackable uniques no longer appear in the shop or drop once owned. They will still be recycled on the rare occasion should another drop before the player has picked up the first instance of the item.
- The game is now provided as an installer in addition to a .rar for those that prefer that.
- You can now adjust music and audio effects volume.
- Settings are now saved on changes, this system is also the first step in tracking player progress and unlocks in the future.
- The player can also clear their profile if they wish, currently this only resets settings.
- Main menu volume now matches in-game volume better.
- Main menu ambient now properly loops
- The player can now choose to disable the PSX style model warping in the settings.
Balancing:
- The wedge has been rebalanced to be more useful, it pushes enemies back further and will hit all enemies in the player’s vicinity.
Visuals:
- The armor pickup now has a proper material.
- The vendor has received a visual overhaul and has some new animations.
- The UI now supports indefinite amounts of health and armor, stacking them tighter as the player gains more of them.
Bugfixes:
- An issue where projectile effects sometimes spawns in the wrong place has been fixed.
- The buttons added in the last update didn’t have proper controller support, this has been fixed.
- Fixed an issue causing the player model’s physics to freak out on death.
Version 0.0.4 released!
So the focus on this update has been on player progress and unlocks, the game now has progression and save compatibility for future updates, as well as a bunch of visual overhauls.
Full changelog.
Player progress:
- Player progress in general has been added.
- You can now unlock new loadouts to spice up a new round which changes what you start with and changes the character’s skin.
- SaveGame/Progress should be compatible with game updates, with the exception if some content or progress is significantly changed to where current data no longer makes sense.
Visual updates:
- The player character has been visually overhauled.
- The scopescanner has been visually overhauled.
- Kills have been made more impactful.
- Drops and pickups have been made more of an event
- Invincibility frames after getting hit now has visual feedback.
- The cooldown between dodges now also has visual feedback.
- Movement now has some new visual animations.
- Lots of small tweaks and polish to animations, timings, transitions, etc.
- Pop-in of the keybinds overview in the intro room has been improved.
Other fixes and changes:
- Changing menus will no longer move the mouse if you are not using a controller.
- The flashlight now casts some nice dynamic shadows.
- An issue where the hurt sound wouldn’t play when players were hurt while wearing armor has been fixed.
- An issue where the player could get stuck in the tutorial room has been fixed.
- One of the lamps in the level broke in the last update, and has been fixed.
- The lights no longer fade out before they are off screen.
- The background hum in the level now properly loops.
- Collisions have been tweaked.
- An issue that caused some sounds to cut out has been fixed.
- Fixed an issue where the game didn’t slow down as intended when the player dies, the effect should also be smoother.
- The dodge cooldown has been been moved from the beginning of the dodge to the end of the dodge, so that building a long dodge time does not result in infinite dodging.
- Repairs now drops a lot more often and armor has been made rarer.
- Some loud noises have been rebalanced.
Download at: itch.io
This one took a bit longer, but is also a bigger update, we’ve now moved on to version 0.0.5:
Content:
- The player can now lob grenades that deal damage in an area and knockbacks enemies.
- You start with 3 and can find more during gameplay.
- Holding the right mouse button previews the grenade’s area of effect, and shows how many grenades you currently have
- An item to increase grenade explosion size has been added.
- There’s now a chance for scrap to drop as a pile worth 3 scrap.
- Stuns have been added to the game. You can briefly stun enemies on impact.
- An item to increase the stun duration has been added.
- Stunned enemies will not damage the player.
Visuals:
- Main menu has received a visual overhaul.
- The crosshair is now more visible.
- Some visual flare has been added to certain areas.
- An additional element has been added to the crosshair to show how the dodge cooldown is progressing.
- A temporary guide icon now leads you back to the store after the first wave.
- The keybinds overview in the intro room has been updated.
- Outlines are now more prominent
Shop:
- The shop has been completely redesigned and overhauled to now allow the player to browse and choose an item before purchase.
Balancing and changes:
- The player collision was far too large in the last update, it is now much smaller.
- A retry button has been added to the pause menu.
- The difficulty ramp has been adjusted to better fit the rate at which you gain items.
- Links to bug report and giving feedback has been added.
- The Gyro has been rebalanced, it now equally increases dash duration and decreases dash speed and doesn’t create erratic ratios when combined with multiple dash boosts.
Other:
- Crates and barrels are now breakable.
- The weapon fire SFX has been overhauled to be more impactful.
Fixes:
- Aiming and moving with controller no longer snaps to the center of each axis.
- The default loadout would have the appearance of being locked the very first time the game is started, this has been fixed.
- A bug where you could unpause the game without closing the menus has been fixed.
- An issue where the controller would try to navigate a menu that has not yet been opened in the main menu has been fixed.
- Clicking buttons that opens web links with controller will no longer force your mouse to be centered outside of the game.
- The trail behind bullets did not end properly, this has been fixed.
- Enemies would also gain movement speed if the player used a faster loadout, this has been fixed.
- The visuals for the dodge cooldown would still count down while the game was paused, this has been fixed.
- One of the keybinding overviews were accidentally replaced with the wrong graphic, this has been addressed.
- Some sound effects weren’t affected by the volume sliders, this has been fixed.
Check out the vendor’s new beats:
Working on some new stationary enemies that can spawn in the game.
