The fun is back!

In hindsight the fact that the corruption was full strength even on the first level, with completely un-upgraded characters, was what made it so repellent. The way it's strong only on later levels now works so much better because by then you have characters upgraded that can deal with it.

There's not much to dislike anymore. It's great how the game is shaping up. I did see it mentioned elsewhere that development is winding down and there probably won't be many more updates. I have a few suggestions for things that could hopefully still be improved at some point.

1. If there's only one thing out of these that gets added, please, please do this one. The character selection is frustratingly clunky and slow still on a controller. Having to move left/right and then confirm, to go through each character one by one, is just far too cumbersome. The fact you have to scroll through all the characters again after beating a level if you want to use the same character again is especially frustrating.

Being able to hide locked characters would sort of help, but there's a much better way. Please, put in an extra screen where you see all the character portraits and can just choose from any character on the same screen. After choosing the character there, then you could see the character specific screen where you can upgrade. That would be so much quicker and convenient. Plus, there could maybe even be a random button to choose a random unlocked character to play as.

2. The level selection screen moves backwards. What I mean is, pressing right on the controller moves the level selected to the left, and pressing left moves the level selected to the right. I don't know how that got reversed but it's very confusing and causes me to select the wrong level sometimes.

3. When a relic shows up in a chest, there's no delay at all. If you were tapping a button when you opened a chest with a relic, it gets instantly selected. If you're very used to confirming the chest automatically because usually there's no choice, same thing. I've opened chests and instantly taken a relic without even seeing what it was multiple times. Some kind of delay or extra input (like maybe having to press left/right to select take or leave, instead of having take automatically selected) in the rare case that there's a choice to be made would help.

4. Some kind of indicator to know that you've unlocked all characters in a level would help.

I started from a fresh save so I have four levels unlocked right now. Playing the fourth level for the first time, I saw a red arrow and followed it to a character I then unlocked (fire). A minute or less later another character showed up which I also unlocked (axe). I don't know if one was tied to the other or I just got kind of lucky. But I had been assuming that there was one character to unlock per level (even though I haven't seen any in the second or third levels yet).

Now I have no idea how many characters there are to unlock in each level, or how to tell if you've gotten them all. Even if it's something that has to be unlocked (maybe after beating a level a few times, or with a few characters?) it would really help to have an indicator on the level select screen to let you know if you've gotten all characters in a level.

5. Chests can spawn where you can't get to. My first time in the fourth level I saw not just one, but three chests stuck inside unwalkable squares. They couldn't be reached so they couldn't be opened.

I took screenshots. I could upload them somewhere if you think that would help.

Maybe there could be a check to see if a chest is on a walkable tile when spawned, and if not the chest could slide toward a walkable space until it was completely on a walkable tile.

Btw it's excellent the way chests now remove corruption around them. Exactly what was needed.

Edit:

I was playing the fifth level and was pretty close to the end when there was a "null" error and the game closed.

--------------------------------------

filename: BringItOn

package: com.example.myapp

version: 0.14.15

sess. ID: bio-v0.14.15-65c6e1b4-1113-4e25-8d88-692ee217c073-2024-03-11_08'22'33

started: 2024-03-11 08:22:33

--------------------------------------

crashed: 2024-03-11 16:24:02

duration: 08:01:29

error: Null Object Reference

stack:

substates.ChestOpenSubState.openChest (substates/ChestOpenSubState.hx line 337)

substates.ChestOpenSubState.start (substates/ChestOpenSubState.hx line 101)

flixel.tweens.FlxTween.finish (flixel/tweens/FlxTween.hx line 707)

flixel.tweens.FlxTweenManager.update (flixel/tweens/FlxTween.hx line 1276)

flixel.FlxGame.update (flixel/FlxGame.hx line 747)

flixel.FlxGame.step (flixel/FlxGame.hx line 679)

flixel.FlxGame.onEnterFrame (flixel/FlxGame.hx line 552)

openfl.events.EventDispatcher.__dispatchEvent (openfl/events/EventDispatcher.hx line 402)

openfl.display.DisplayObject.__dispatch (openfl/display/DisplayObject.hx line 1399)

Will there be a way to turn corruption off?

I keep checking back in on this game after some months to see if the "you have to slowly grind from scratch for each character" mechanic has been toned down (it makes the game, which is otherwise fun, get old fast for me. I just don't find starting over from scratch for each character, combined with such a slow grind for each character, fun or engaging.).

This time when I checked on the game I was shocked to find that the fun was gone, and had been almost entirely replaced with frustration.

The corruption mechanic sounds like it could be somewhat interesting on paper. But boy is it not in reality.

Basically, the end result of corruption is that you can't ever go back to where you were before. But that's terribly at odds with how a survivor clone, and even this game itself, works.

A don't like having to say this to someone who's worked so hard on this game, but there are so many things wrong with corruption and I don't understand what value it's supposed to be adding to Bring It On.

Problems:
1. Corruption builds up SO FAST. If you're swarmed or have several enemies next to you, which of course happens often in a game like this, one attack can go from no corruption next to you to a 3x3 block of corruption right next to you, or even larger. And if you were positioned unlucky, you will be half over one of the newly corrupt tiles that instantly appear and immediately take damage with no time to even react. This happens often. It has killed me too, and feels like an absolutely stupid way to die.

Melee plays so badly now because of this mechanic.

2. Corruption never goes away. What's the problem with this? In a game where experience falls on the ground, and has to be collected, I don't really know of any way that's not gonna cause a big problem.

As the round goes on, there's an every growing pile of experience scattered all over that can't be collected because of corruption. I just keeps increasing how much experience you can't collect, through the entire round. That's not fun or interesting. It just feels bad and frustrating. And likely leaves you under leveled.

Ranged suffers from that just as much as melee, especially with how enemies (and the dropped experience) can get knocked backward from the force of the killing blow and land in corruption. 

And then there's chests. Having to stand still a moment to open a chest used to be an interesting mechanic that added some spice without being frustrating or obnoxious. You just had to time it well. Now it's often frustrating and obnoxious. If you couldn't get it open in time, once a chest gets covered in corruption might as well not exist.

Add on top of that--combined with how you can go from no corruption to instantly a several tile wide pool of corruption from one attack--you can have chests get spawned inside a corruption pool that didn't exist a moment ago, literally never having a chance from the moment it was spawned to ever try to open it.

All of this stuff just frustrates and repels. I can't honestly say I find it fun to play the game now. Corruption just gets in the way of the fun every single time.

I'm confused what the point of corruption is supposed to be? If it's to make the player move around, there's already stuff that drops health potions, and stuff like hidden characters. If it's to add excitement or fun, it's very much adding frustration instead and not fun.

Once again, I'm sorry to have to be so blunt about this. I can't think of a better way of saying it. While it might have been an interesting idea for an experiment, I honestly don't see how corruption is anything but an ill-fitting mechanic for this game.

I hadn't played this in a while. I saw it was updated so I decided to check it out again. But hitting Launch in the itch client, the game doesn't launch at all. It tries to pop up a window that closes right away and that's it.

I'm on a Steam Deck so playing itch games through the client is the only reliable way I've found to use itch games. Bring It On was working in the itch client on Steam Deck last time I tried to play it (probably a couple updates ago). I don't know what happened between then and now that's making it not launch through the itch client.

Edit: I tried switching to the previous build (39) and that launches with no problem, but I don't want to be stuck on an old version. Apparently there's something about the latest build specifically that's causing an instacrash. Hope that helps to figure it out.

Last update the game stop responding  always on 10:08

Just stumbled upon a unforeseen circumstance:
Simultaneous dying and gaining a level causes the game to break and loop. Mobs are spawning, the ending message box disappears and the character is gone.
The only way to get back is by ESC > Restart or Exit.

Apart from that I am going for my last 64 EXP in order to unlock the knights special skill :)

The time needed to fully complete a character feels exhaustively long compared to the EXP gained. How do the others feel about it?

I died the first time I played because I had no idea my health was so low. If there could be a health indicator bar right above or below the player that would be very helpful, especially on a Steam Deck where your face is so close to the screen. I also don't see any indicator of when your armor is recharged so I don't have any idea when it would be safe to take a hit or not.

I understand this is early access, but is there really no win condition? I know my way around a Survivor-like so the second time I played I was a lot more cautious about my health early on and prioritized upgrades a lot smarter. I was surprised that it took more than 45 minutes to max all the upgrades. That's really long for a single Survivor-like session. I was even more surprised when the clock got past 59:59 and rolled back down to zero. That's when I realized there was no end. Which was disappointing even if it's in early access.

I know from other Survivor games that if you don't win or die your progress doesn't get saved, so I assumed that's true here too and killed myself. The end game screen said mini-boss and boss were killed, level completed "No". But then looking at the achievements it said level 1 was completed, so I'm confused.

I also didn't get any unlocks that I can see, so what do you have to do to unlock a character? I played over an hour straight in that level and was getting the same wave of enemies endlessly for quite a while. I don't think I even saw another new enemy type after the big red knight died. It's very unexpected that wouldn't unlock anything.

Speaking of that red knight, it looked like he dropped something when he died but I don't know if I picked it up or not. Immediately when he died I got a level up. After I chose what to upgrade, whatever the knight dropped disappeared so I don't know if I got it or not. What was that supposed to be? Oh yeah, what are the maps that drop sometimes supposed to do? That and exactly what Luck does are the two other things that are unclear.

Sorry for asking so many questions. I do understand it's in early access, and I will say it's already more fun than some other Survivor-likes I've played.

You're right about making it your own and expanding on the concepts. I like this more than VS because of the interesting features like ranged enemies and terrain. It was also cool to see at least one boss change behavior based on remaining HP (or time or something). There are a few problems, though:

• Typo: It says "Feather: increases speed by %5" instead of "5%'
• If you keep kiting a horde around a mountain/forest, eventually several enemies get stuck inside it, so the pathfinding could use work. This is especially (too) effective against bosses.
• I thought it's a bit too easy compared to VS in that I never got down to even half health at any time. Perhaps later enemies could deal more damage to make it tenser.
• The bosses didn't actually align perfectly with me horizontally to apply their horizontal attacks, but it looked like they were trying to. Was this intentional? I wonder if giving them diagonal and/or vertical attacks might solve this.

Interesting variation on Vampire Survivors. Looks ok so far, my main issue though is that the game spikes and lags for a while every time I gain a level.