SAGE 2024 - Demo Bun 'N' Gun - '24 Demo

Bun N' Gun is shaping up to be amazing! I really love the game's flow and movement. ^^
Also all of the bats having their own name and description is such a cute touch! Looking forward to the future of this game!

I had a good time! The controls worked well, I like the visuals thus far, the songs are good and very catchy, the level design is nice, I think the boss is pretty good for what it is, the costume feature is a nice touch...

Sure, I'll admit, I did get a bit confused on where to go sometimes, but by the end of it I can safely conclude that's mostly a me problem for not being somebody with a particularly good sense of direction, the game did actually kinda try to clue me in on where it was that I needed to be going well enough I'm pretty sure, I just didn't have the sense of direction needed to always immediately catch onto what direction I needed to be going from there.

The fact that I was able to ultimately find my way around is probably a good sign the level design is doing something right when it comes to navigation because frankly my sense of direction can be terrible sometimes, and given the level isn't the most straightforward layout ever, that's definitely a good accomplishment to pull off in something a bit less linear.

And like... the radar feature thing generally helped me figure out how to fill in the gaps from there when I couldn't figure out where I specifically needed to go as well, I just sometimes needed a bit longer than if I'd just, y'know, used the other clues the game had right there a bit better. Really appreciate that mechanic for telling you what direction to be going and how close you are.

I probably have more thoughts I could get into but I'm a bit sleepy today due to not having slept the best and I'm not sure I can properly put the rest to words for the moment, might update later with better further thoughts if I can remember to but for now this should be good enough anyway, so if I forget to update this or just, can't think of more to say later, eh, probably good enough.

Pros:
+ Designs and graphics are great
+ The gameplay loop is satisfying
+ The descriptions of each bat are charming
+ Swinging is initially hard to grasp but becomes amazing with practice and even better when paired with speed and timing
+ Level design is well thought out

Cons:
- Acceleration is 0-1000 which makes platforming in smaller areas tougher
- Ground control can be unwieldy - at least with WASD. I recommend Mouse camera movement where you can
- The one music track, while good, becomes repetitive after a while especially when there isn't a lot of flair or punch to other SFX like shooting or collecting Bats
- The camera is generally good but I find when right up against walls or rolling down very vertical surfaces it shoots straight up or down which can be disorienting especially in the rolling example

Issues:
- (Known) When trying to enter time attack you might get a visual bug with a long bar across the screen. Quickly pausing and unpausing supposedly removes this
- When trying to change outfits/colours, I hit apply with enter and it double opens the menu again. This can be repeated ad nauseum and you can also get the game to continue playing with the outfit changer still on screen, but it becomes difficult to close the game or keep playing beyond this

In spite of the cons and issues the gameplay is just THAT fun and it's super addicting to just roll around and use the swing to get to areas early or in fun ways - a lot of thought was put into this as secrets are hidden with this aspect in mind, so you're rewarded for your practice. Plus the protag is just really cute :)

With just a bit of a spitshine and refinement this will easily be a 10/10 on all fronts, and I'm still confident to rate it 5/5 here just on the fun factor and potential shown. Keep it up!

Bun n Gun returns!! The controls are better now and we really like how there's new parts of the stages that you can unlock. Really rewards exploration with more exploration hehe

There are some flaws, but overall it's shaping up!

Forgot to leave this rating yesterday. I though the game was fun and engaging.

Absolute gold! The character is fun, the world is vibrant! Found myself hooked to the gameplay for a good 20 minutes, very addictive! Definitely a treat! PLAY THIS GAME!

First things first - I played the SAGE 23 demo and it's not difficult for me to consider this a substantial improvement over what I tried back then, thanks in large part to the improvements in visibility. Making the bats physically increase in size the further away they are is a stroke of genius I don't think I ever would have thought of in your shoes, and it helps a lot too that they don't just run off of cliffs anymore.

Having said that, I still haven't cleared the first level yet because these objectives are a gigantic chore. Emerald Hunting was already controversial even when there were only three shards to a level - I picked up nineteen of these bastards in that one single level and still couldn't see an end in sight. I guess the best way I can think to describe it is that it feels like trying to 100% a level, except that's the primary and only objective? I think the game really needs to step back and pace itself, maybe divide a stage like this into three or four smaller ones so you don't have to play honest to god for over half an hour (maybe even closer to an hour - I'll be honest, I lost count) to make any tangible, savable progress.

EDIT: I've since been informed that the demo effectively ends at around half the bats I actually collected, so, I'm adjusting my score accordingly.

...also am I going crazy or are the X-axis camera controls inverted by default? It controlled a hell of a lot better the moment I swapped the controller binds for them. Weird.