Playtest: Ink Combat Levels 4, 5, and 6

[russell-cj]

This thread is opened to gather feedback and run playtests for Levels 4, 5, and 6 of Ink Combat.
The goal is to identify bugs, balance issues, visual problems, clarity of mechanics, or any unexpected behavior.

Things to evaluate

• Overall gameplay flow in each level
• Difficulty and mechanic pacing
• Enemy behavior
• Vase functionality and state changes
• Visual and audio feedback
• Possible softlocks or collision issues

Any comments, screenshots, or clips will help refine these levels before full integration.

[manuq]

Hi, I did some testing on the level 5 "fragile vasels" from this pull request: #1671

recording.webm

I find it very nice, it is an interesting tweak to the previous mechanic! By now I became very good at this game, so it was a bit too easy for me. But I suggest that you playtest it with regular or casual players. My strategy was to stay closer to the yellow vassel, wait for the yellow blobs, and collide on purpose with blobs of another color.

The visuals look great, please feel free to take the following suggestions. I think they will be greatly reinforced with sound effects of breaking glass.

I would redraw the vasel to make it really different than the existing one. Just to let the players know that they are in front of a different game mechanic. Otherwise it could be explained with an intro dialogue.

Regarding the overlay progress animation, I find the first crack frame a bit too subtle. I would expect a more noticeable first crack so it is more readable to players. A crack that goes from side to side. Then 2nd and 3rd can be more and more complex (adding more branching).

Regarding the crash "shatter" animation, it is beautiful! it is playing a bit slow (5 FPS). Other frame-by-frame animations in the game are at 10 FPS. I would also make it more quick and explosive, rather than cracking more and finally falling. Moving some of the cracking from the final animation to the overlay progress, would make the progress more evident. Since all this is a bit hard to describe, I did a quick drawing:

[russell-cj]

Hi @manuq !
I’ve already made all the changes and addressed the suggestions you requested for this level (InkCombatRound5).
Regarding the art, I’ll coordinate with Omar to see whether we should work on the design and art improvements you suggested within the same ticket issue #1646 or open a new one.

[manuq]

Here is a video of me losing on purpose to actually show the fragile vasels mechanic:

recording-2.webm