Shotgun Zombie, requesting feedback (top-down survival roguelite)

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Hello, I’ve been working on this project for about two weeks now, turning this into a devlog/feedback thread for those returning. Zombie Shotgun is a top-down shooter focused on destroying massive hordes of zombies with randomized weapons and upgrades. Focused on intense, visually appealing gameplay with the incredible replayability roguelikes have.

Multiplayer has finally been fixed! Should be no further issues with it.

Please read the description of the place for the controls and basic tips, I have not incorperated the message into the title screen itself yet. The game lasts between 15-20 minutes on average and you should face just over a thousand zombies in a successful run.

Here is the project in question: (Shotgun Zombie - Roblox)

Please keep in mind I am mainly looking for feedback on how the core gameplay feels - the map elements were completed very quickly and only serve the purpose of having something other than an empty baseplate.

I plan on keeping enemies relatively simple as to allow for the maximum amount of enemies and bullets to be on screen at once before performance takes a big hit.

I have almost all of the core gameplay elements in place now, and I plan on moving the game from alpha to beta at the end of next week, hopefully getting version 1.0.0 out a month after the beta begins.

Thank you for joining me on my journey! I appreciate any and all feedback :)

ToDo before opening beta:

  • Implement cross-platform to Xbox (twinstick shooter)
  • Improve mobile gameplay
  • Finish most optimizations and gameplay balances based off of community feedback and personal playtesting
  • Finish character customization and a leveling system with unlocks
  • Finish achievement section that unlocks items to get in future playthroughs
  • Create a reliable shop interface for cosmetics
  • Create story mission(s) to get from point A to B whilst completing objectives
  • Add 10+ tier 1 items, 5+ tier 2 items, 5+ consumables, 5 tier 2 weapons, 10+ zombie types, and 3+ bosses
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I’ve sinced fixed the teleportation error. I apologize for the delay.

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i am unable to maneuver around zombies due to being about the same speed

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The game itself is pretty neat, but there is still a huge amount of things to work on. For example, the camera is too close to the player. I can only see as far as the assault rifle points, and thus can’t see incoming zombies and avoid them. Another problem with the camera (in case this is not intentional), it doesn’t look directly down, but at an angle, which is kind of a distraction for me.
And one more thing, the shop is really weird. I can get used to the key-based navigation, but then make it instant, so I don’t have to hold the button for a second to buy something.

A bug I found: The shop ProximityPrompts don’t disappear when the round starts, but you’re still buying something.

Other than these, great job! And I would really like to see and play the full game, but make sure you finish making it before a release

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Thank you for your feedback! I will take that into consideration going forward with balancing.

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I like the game. It feels nice and pretty balanced with little to no boring spots in the round. But there are some things that could be improved. There are some bugs I have seen like getting infinite money, being able to respawn, and being kicked out, but these did not happen often. Also, it can be hard sometimes to get a zombie off you, so probably adding sprinting or an ability of some sort could fix that and make the game more enjoyable. Also also, health doesn’t come back very fast and it feels like you don’t gain your health back. Maybe make it to where your health goes up between each round. But other than that it is a really nice game with a concept I have not seen on Roblox, and if you need help with building or modeling I am willing to do it for free of charge.

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Your feedback is greatly appreciated! I have been having some problems with the coding of the camera, I will move their corrections to the top of the priority list. The zoom feature still works with the camera – you can use the mousewheel to zoom way out. (Personally I play at max zoomout) Your criticism of the shop is valued as well, repeatedly testing the same thing grew me used to it, however now that it’s pointed out I can see the design flaw. I plan on moving the shop entirely over to a GUI, and I will certainly make sure there the only hold button is to open said GUI.

Thank you for the bug report as well! I had thought I had squashed that one, I’ll look into it again immidiately (and fix the other issues with the shop)

Your kind words mean a lot - I do plan on making sure that it’s polished before it ships, and I plan on keeping significant game updates announced using roblox’s built in feed feature until (and after) then.

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Thank you very much! I had noticed you were joining/playing while the teleport feature had a big hole in it, I patched it while we were playing which should prevent future kicks. I’ve recently been made aware of a respawning bug that occured as well - I am patching that along with the shop as we speak. I am not aware of the infinite money bug however, may you elaborate further?

As for the movespeed, I’m debating either making the zombies slower and having the player slow down when they shoot, or keep the speed the same and add a sprint feature where you cannot shoot while sprinting. I will raise the priority on that, thank you!

Currently I have a health pickup spawn on the spawnpoint at the end of every round, however it may be more efficient to have health purchasable from the shop consistantly and have a full heal drop from boss fights. I will keep that in mind going forward.

Thank you for your praise, and I greatly appreciate your offer! I’ll have your name in mind going forward when the core of the project is completed and the mass production of maps and models becomes necessary.

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The glitch occurred when I didn’t spend the money on the first round, then when I finished the first round and spent money my money would not decrease. And no problem! I am looking forward to seeing this game become a full release.

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Completely redid the camera and gameplay system to support sprinting, also squashed the money/shop bugs :wink: just working on backend stuff now for progression between maps/modes and cosmetics then we should be set to open beta!

For anyone just reading, please do not sugarcoat anything. If a part of the gameplay sucks, please say so as I’ve become fairly blind to how the gameplay feels due to the repeated playing. It’s actually slowing development because I’m enjoying playing the game too much lol

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WAY less bugs, I am really liking what you are doing with the game! I like the zoom camera and how smooth it is. But I didn’t know how to do it at first, maybe make it to where you can use the mouse wheel too, but this is my personally preference. Also think medkits should give more health, another personally preference. Also also, there are only 2 bugs that I have seen.

One was when I died it did not show the death screen and my body turned invisible before that happened I was sprinting and my player stopped moving, I don’t think I hit an invisible wall because I was in the middle of the beach next to the blue towel.

The second bug happened when I was fighting the boss and got shot at with low health, when I got shot my game froze. It did not show my death.

Other than that I am really liking the little details that you are adding to the game, keep it up!

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Thank you again for the reports and feedback! I’m in the process of implementing a shop that sells healing and body upgrades at the moment (bonus movespeed, sprintspeed, maxhealth, improved iframes on hit, etc) however I’ve bumped the daily healing up to 2 and made it automatic - the medkit in multiplayer could lead to grief in an uncoordinated team.

Just finished looking through the boss code, turns out there’s a small hole in a while loop that can bypass a wait() - The boss is designed to be (slightly) more or less aggresive based off of how well you’re doing against it - if youre playing solo and get hit by several projectiles in a short interval (even from the same blast) then the crash can occur. It should be fixed now! Also there was a small leak in the lastest weapons update to support mobile usage - occasionally a weapon could cause KB&M users to crash upon dying. Since been fixed as well!

After checking the beach, a trigger for an easter egg I’m working on can mistakenly grab a player instead of an NPC, the trigger has since been removed. However in studio my player stops whenever I hold shift and press a numberkey- this does not happen when playing the game outside of studio. My anticheat could have ran a false positive as well, it has been disabled until I can spend a proper few days on it.

The character invisibility and no game over screen possibly occured if this happened during Dawn - I just noticed that there’s no check in place while finishing a wave to see if all of the players have died. One has since been added, so :crossed_fingers: there should be no more softlocks.

Again, I cannot thank you enough for your feedback. I would not have caught these bugs until much later in development (where they may be harder to fix) without your help.

Cheers!

edit: zoom in/out can be easily bound to mousewheel for KB&M users, I’ll get on that in the morning ASAP! It would make sense to have it be adjustable for the mousewheel and the modular for controller and touchscreen regardless.

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image
I noticed this thing dropping from the boss, imnot sure what is that but overall i enjoyed the game

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• The game gets too dark when the wave starts.
┗ Also the game is too bright at the beginning, you could make the day spectrum smaller.

• Visuals are too bad, to be honest.
┗ From builds, to effect, everything is too amateur and basic. Guis are not clean, and the main interface is not user-friendly. You could hire someone for these or learn by yourself. (I think you’re a coder.)

• The game is not funny because of the map design.
┗ Let’s look at a successful zombie surival game, Project Lazarus. It has connected rooms, so you can escape zombies by using these connections. Also zombies are coming from windows, not from nowhere; and it lead you to the not just killing zombies, also repairing windows. And these two thing lead you to the learning, following, reading and upgrading the map area which makes the game funny.

You might tell “But my game isn’t first person, how could I do that?”, you can make city instead of building, and streets instead of rooms. It could be something like this;
image

The blue X is the city square and spawn, green lines are streets. And the biggest red square is the city board, where have broken doors and zombies get into. Of course it is a really basic design, you can make it more complex.

Also if you want to make layered, you can make higher or lower places. Like, map can have a sewer channels where can be entered from manholes. And these sewers might have their own zombie entrances etc, also special zombie types which just spawns at sewers and get into city from there.

In conclusion, I liked your game but it needs to be improved. Hope too see more visioner project like this!

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Thank you for your feedback! That is a full health item, it is currently in the shape of a mini robloxian however I will be changing it to a " + " icon and make it more intuitive.

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Thank you for your contribution! The lighting will certainly be adjusted.

Of course, all of the assets currently used (including UI) are placeholders for the moment as it takes me a long time to produce quality models and icons so I’m saving that for after the scripting - I will be looking for feedback seperately for those elements once they have been more or less completed (for example all title menu pictures are currently simple screenshots I put together in >5 minutes from studio, full release will be blender gfx) Thank you for reinforcing this!

However more importantly, if the map design and lighting is making the game unplayable then I will certainly scale back the amount of trees in the alpha park and improve the lighting immediately.

The gameplay is supposed to be more akin to a wave-based “Vampire Survivors” or “20 minutes til dawn” with my own spin on the formula rather than another CoD zombies clone - however I will certainly explore the option of making the map another tool the player can use.

Your map suggestion is valued and a good idea! I plan on having at least 5 wave mode maps and 3 story missions before launching beta, however again that will come after I’m completely satisfied with the gameplay and have time to work on making the assets good to look at. In the meantime I will expand the current playtest map for better movement.

Your feedback is very appreciated! Thank you again.

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This game is quite good despite the simple UI/game design. The only problem I have currently is that you can’t reload whilst sprinting, I don’t know if that’s something you can buy in the shop but make it possible through perks or something. Other than that, I like the top-down view and the intensity of rounds in the game, great game.

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Thank you very much! I actually already have that specific upgrade coded - however I can’t decide if it should be an upgrade/unlockable or the default setting. For now I’ll implement it to be added to all guns temporarily to get a gauge on how much that shifts the balance.

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No problem! I suggested few ideas to you, you don’t use them if you wish! It’s not the problem, the problem is low mechanics and simple map design. You can do very different than my suggestions, core point is make the game funny!

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Simplistic design is never a problem if the style of the rogelike will be good enough for the eye, you can look up Final Stand 2 where you dont see good graphics but good style and content innit.

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