Splendid game, its style reminds me of the small 90s arcade games on the PC, it's so ironically campy that it cycles back to being unironically genuine: adding to how fun it is.
The smoothness of the gameplay, amplified by the consistently creative and speedy level design engages me to a point of addiction, and while I wish to clench my teeth more, I still love the casual P&P nature of it.
Overall, very nice all around, while I'm not familiar with the rest of Strato-freaks, I liked what was on display in this demo.
heyo, long-time super freaks fan here! i've been following the scruffy franchise since back when the name of your youtube channel was just your actual name - in fact, you were actually one of my earliest major inspirations for getting into game design myself. (and now im going to college for it!) i used to obsess over the strato-scruffy devlogs when i was younger, as well as basically any other scruffy content that you had, so seeing the game not only come together and actually release but recieve a more fleshed-out sequel has has made me really happy to see. i gave the demo a shot and its been really enjoyable so far! that being said, there is some feedback i'd like to share and this seemed like a good place to do it.
for one, the relationship between sticky survival mode and the boss feels a bit strange at the moment. currently (and im not sure if this is intentional), if you enter sticky survival before the boss then he leaves when you enter, but if you enter the boss with time remaining then when it runs out he will spawn in there with you. this wouldn't be hard to get rid of, but either way if you're going for a high score it makes the hot clock feel less like a timer and more like a progress bar, since there's no real incentive to do anything other than grind until it hits zero and then either go straight to the boss when sticky spawns, or try to survive him for a bit and then go to the boss. that's not necessarily a bad thing, since its meant to add a sense of risk, but the sudden death thing doesn't make things feel particularly risky either since you've likely already accumulated a lot of hp at that point and its very easy to just leave the second he spawns regardless.
i do have some suggestions for things that could maybe mitigate this. for one, maybe it'd be more interesting if sticky survival had some particular effect on how the boss plays out, like maybe if he activates in or is active by the time you reach the arena, he drops a giant cartoon bomb in the arena or something and then you have a hard limit on how much time you have to beat the boss before the arena explodes and you die. (the instant death thing should probably carry over as well if it doesn't already, i couldn't really tell) also, i wonder if casual and score runs would be made more interesting/tense if the hot clock for shorter levels like the ones in the demo was just significantly shorter.
another random suggestion that i thought of, since you're already taking some inspiration from pizza tower with the concept of sticky survival, i wonder if it'd be interesting if the game had some sort of p-rank equivalent. maybe the requirements could be something like a tight score requirement, maintaining your combo, and running the hot clock down to 0 before you enter the arena (maybe there could also be some way to maintain your combo while you are fighting the boss, like carrying over the spewing yorbs thing from the bosses in ultimate edition 1 or something) this is just a suggestion though, i'm sure the score attack mechanics would make for a fun experience either way.
think that's about it for feedback. sorry in advance if any of this comes off as overly negative or telling you how to make your game, that isn't my intention. it's just that writing feedback isn't something i do super often, and i just didn't really have much to say about the things in the game that i did like since it's just a basic premise that's really well executed.
it's been very nostalgic actually seeing this franchise become "active" again, so thanks again for just being who you are and doing what you do, and for defining such a significant part of my childhood. wish you the best! :D
OMG hey that’s so sweet thanks so much!!! You have no idea how good it felt finally finishing Strato last year. Same with 1 Ultimate, that one at least came together quickly but there’s no greater feeling than finally releasing that first “big” game. That’s really sweet that you’ve been following me all these years, I really owed everyone these games and nothing makes me happier than knowing I was able to pull it off and give you what you wanted. I hope your college life goes well, it’s not easy but it will be worth it!
As far as Strato 2… so funny story, Sticky being able to show up during the boss fight, that’s a bug and I should probably fix that, thanks for finding that! The idea is basically that when he shows up, you get as many points as possible while he hunts you down, and you can either keep that number going higher or go to the boss and kill it. I’m ok with keeping the boss easy enough and without any difficulty alterations since by that point if you have a big score the pressure of losing it right at the end is pretty high. It is an admittedly pretty weird scoring system that I’ll probably need to rebalance a lot. It’s a far weirder designed game than Strato 1 so I definitely think I’ll need all the feedback I can get—I’m usually pretty good about getting all this stuff refined in my head ahead of time but sometimes you can’t avoid overhauling stuff. That’s ok though!
Thanks again for the love (and feedback), I’ll do you proud!
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Splendid game, its style reminds me of the small 90s arcade games on the PC, it's so ironically campy that it cycles back to being unironically genuine: adding to how fun it is.
The smoothness of the gameplay, amplified by the consistently creative and speedy level design engages me to a point of addiction, and while I wish to clench my teeth more, I still love the casual P&P nature of it.
Overall, very nice all around, while I'm not familiar with the rest of Strato-freaks, I liked what was on display in this demo.
heyo, long-time super freaks fan here! i've been following the scruffy franchise since back when the name of your youtube channel was just your actual name - in fact, you were actually one of my earliest major inspirations for getting into game design myself. (and now im going to college for it!) i used to obsess over the strato-scruffy devlogs when i was younger, as well as basically any other scruffy content that you had, so seeing the game not only come together and actually release but recieve a more fleshed-out sequel has has made me really happy to see. i gave the demo a shot and its been really enjoyable so far! that being said, there is some feedback i'd like to share and this seemed like a good place to do it.
for one, the relationship between sticky survival mode and the boss feels a bit strange at the moment. currently (and im not sure if this is intentional), if you enter sticky survival before the boss then he leaves when you enter, but if you enter the boss with time remaining then when it runs out he will spawn in there with you. this wouldn't be hard to get rid of, but either way if you're going for a high score it makes the hot clock feel less like a timer and more like a progress bar, since there's no real incentive to do anything other than grind until it hits zero and then either go straight to the boss when sticky spawns, or try to survive him for a bit and then go to the boss. that's not necessarily a bad thing, since its meant to add a sense of risk, but the sudden death thing doesn't make things feel particularly risky either since you've likely already accumulated a lot of hp at that point and its very easy to just leave the second he spawns regardless.
i do have some suggestions for things that could maybe mitigate this. for one, maybe it'd be more interesting if sticky survival had some particular effect on how the boss plays out, like maybe if he activates in or is active by the time you reach the arena, he drops a giant cartoon bomb in the arena or something and then you have a hard limit on how much time you have to beat the boss before the arena explodes and you die. (the instant death thing should probably carry over as well if it doesn't already, i couldn't really tell) also, i wonder if casual and score runs would be made more interesting/tense if the hot clock for shorter levels like the ones in the demo was just significantly shorter.
another random suggestion that i thought of, since you're already taking some inspiration from pizza tower with the concept of sticky survival, i wonder if it'd be interesting if the game had some sort of p-rank equivalent. maybe the requirements could be something like a tight score requirement, maintaining your combo, and running the hot clock down to 0 before you enter the arena (maybe there could also be some way to maintain your combo while you are fighting the boss, like carrying over the spewing yorbs thing from the bosses in ultimate edition 1 or something) this is just a suggestion though, i'm sure the score attack mechanics would make for a fun experience either way.
think that's about it for feedback. sorry in advance if any of this comes off as overly negative or telling you how to make your game, that isn't my intention. it's just that writing feedback isn't something i do super often, and i just didn't really have much to say about the things in the game that i did like since it's just a basic premise that's really well executed.
it's been very nostalgic actually seeing this franchise become "active" again, so thanks again for just being who you are and doing what you do, and for defining such a significant part of my childhood. wish you the best! :D
OMG hey that’s so sweet thanks so much!!! You have no idea how good it felt finally finishing Strato last year. Same with 1 Ultimate, that one at least came together quickly but there’s no greater feeling than finally releasing that first “big” game. That’s really sweet that you’ve been following me all these years, I really owed everyone these games and nothing makes me happier than knowing I was able to pull it off and give you what you wanted. I hope your college life goes well, it’s not easy but it will be worth it!
As far as Strato 2… so funny story, Sticky being able to show up during the boss fight, that’s a bug and I should probably fix that, thanks for finding that! The idea is basically that when he shows up, you get as many points as possible while he hunts you down, and you can either keep that number going higher or go to the boss and kill it. I’m ok with keeping the boss easy enough and without any difficulty alterations since by that point if you have a big score the pressure of losing it right at the end is pretty high. It is an admittedly pretty weird scoring system that I’ll probably need to rebalance a lot. It’s a far weirder designed game than Strato 1 so I definitely think I’ll need all the feedback I can get—I’m usually pretty good about getting all this stuff refined in my head ahead of time but sometimes you can’t avoid overhauling stuff. That’s ok though!
Thanks again for the love (and feedback), I’ll do you proud!
This game is better than the time I injected funfetti into baked chicken.
And that was a 5/5 too!
bones
bones
This game is so freaking epic
it's so real
STRATO FREAKS MORE LIKE STRATO PEAK
H
he WILL return.
Mayor Cheddar will return in Turbo Leaper Endgame