-all of the art works together very well, nothing seems out of place or awkward
-was very impressed that your partner could pathfind to come find you, even if it might have been easy to implement with unity
-game works well with PS4 Dualshock although menu browsing does not
-the one door that requires witch to open was great, although it might softlock you if the witch is dead? more character-centric features like that would really help the game shine
the bad:
-closed doors do not block partner pathfinding (looks like maybe the doors do but the support poles don't? )
-enemies can trigger pressure pads which causes annoying cutscene triggers
-dead partner spawns dead in next room, plus there seem to be no healing items or drops which is a bummer
-dead/ dying enemies seem to block fireball attacks, not sure if intentional but it is annoying
-enemies seem to be invincible for a short time after being hit, but it's not too clear visually. would be a lot less frustrating if they had a visual effect to communicate that they can't be damaged during that time, even something simple like shifting their color to red or blue
-using Input Mapper to spoof PS4 Dualshock as XBOX controller causes character to perform multiple actions on single button press - ie pressing X picks up a key and attacks at the same time
the ideaguy:
-mouse support on the menus and in gameplay would be great, but would require new strafing animations for aiming...
-extra button options for attack/swap/etc so that my right hand can do something would be very nice
-rebindable keys would be great
-adding the enemy death particle cloud to enemy spawns might look a lot better than them just appearing out of nowhere. if you do this, maybe having different smoke colors for spawning + dying would be cool
-more enemies, especially ones that require either the knight or witch to kill, would be awesome
-health drops, and/or interacting with dead partner to sacrifice life to respawn them would be very nice
the shill:
-if you want robust support for keyboard and controllers, i've had good experiences with InControl to get PS4/ XBOX controllers playing nice with Windows and Mac (Linux un-tested). I've also heard good things about Rewired but have not used it myself.
-walking into spikes and getting damaged is not intuitive -neither is getting damaged by touching other enemies, while they don't for ramming into you -wizard got stunlocked into death through a cinematic -quit is halfway in the window at 800x600 -didn't figure out I could attack until the mass spawn aread and started spamming keys -the trees look great -aiming is very difficult with the keyboard, not much better with the controller -animations don't feel to smooth -consider fading all UI out when going into cinematic mode -never felt like I needed the characters, more like I was doing a bad MMO excort quest -infinite cinematic loop:
How can walking into spikes and getting damaged not be intuitive? Same for touching enemies (though you're not the first one to complain about this, so I'll probably limit this to specific enemy types)
The 'getting killed during cinematic' thing should be fixed in the latest version, if you have that and it still happens I will need to look into it further.
Yeah I forgot to throughly check the UI on different aspect ratios. I did one quick check early on but forgot to do it once all the UI was in place.
Um the controls are listed on the game's page and on the game's initial dialog? But you have a point, most people don't look at those. I wanted to add button prompts on the HUD but ran out of time.
Thank you!
Agree on aiming not being easy (I need to make turning snappier and more responsive) and the animation being not very good.
That's one thing I will be working on from now on. Making the characters distinct, giving each one strengths, weaknesses and skills that become useful in different situations is one of the main focuses of the game.
Damn, I figured that could happen but I hoped it wouldn't. All that part of code is due to an overhaul so it's okay though.
Thank you very much for the detailed feedback. I hope you enjoyed the demo at least a little bit and I also hope you'll look forward to the next one.
I really like the feel of this game once I figured out the controls. Combat with the witch was little frustrating with the Witch though. Making the aiming mouse driven in someway or maybe have a button where she should has 'plant her feet' so that she can aim more precisely might alleviate that but that might not be the style of gaming you are aiming for. Can't wait to see what's next!
Edit: I see now that the controls were listen on the game page, my mistake!
I like the concept and art of this game. Feels solid, and loved the mario& luigi series it's based off of. kept breaking for me after the the second door opening cut scene so couldn't continue to solve puzzles. Witch also seems to be facing odd directions when I try to aim her fireball.
Really like the art style and loved the music aswell, gave the game a really comfy feeling that reminded me of playing Wind Waker as a kid. Obviously you would have to make the combat a lot more interesting with more actions available and perhaps some kind of default behaviour for the npc when you're not controlling it, right now your partner feels like a deadweight doing nothing. But I understand this is an early build so it's forgivable but I would say that you should focus on that before anything else in the future, because even if it's mainly a puzzle game you spend a lot of time fighting. The puzzle I liked the most was the one that had the other partner trapped behind the door. My first thought was that it was a bug but came a small nice little surprise that this was intentional.
Thanks for playing! I'm glad you like the look and the sound of the game.
Yes the combat is something I worked very little on. I wanted to add more depth to it for the demo but didn't make it in time. Same for the companion character. In the future they will fight on their own, flee from danger, etc. This is another thing I wanted to have in the demo but had to scrap temporarily.
I don't know if I like the Knight being slower than the Witch in terms of movespeed. Could be fine for some puzzles though.
Witch-chan does fire a bit fast for the enemy invincibility frames
Could see this being more fun with more abilities and such. Good foundation.
I uploaded a playthrough if that is useful to you. It's not really a first playthrough since the first recording messed up so I tried again. https://streamable.com/v9ke1 ; Near the end (last screen), I would sometimes be unable to move while getting close to the other character.
Also this next one isn't really a playthrough, I don't really know what happened but I ended up crashing at the end of this. https://streamable.com/5vvtd
The speed different is intentional. The knight should feel heavy, slow and powerful while the witch should be weak but swift. I do agree that right now the knight does feel a bit too slow
Yeah, those are things I need to fix. For some reason both knight and witch can spam their attacks while moving even though I thought I made sure that wasn't possible. And for the enemy i-frames too, first I'd like to actually show that they're invincible making their meshes blink, and second making projectile attacks go through them rather than stopping
Thanks for the videos as well. I think I have an idea of what happened in the first video, as I've run into something similar myself. But I have no idea about the crash in the second video. I can only assume that spamming the magic attack somehow caused it, as I'm not using object pooling yet. Still, it's pretty weird, I'll investigate further.
Sometimes attacking seems to stop the character from moving, and sometimes it doesn't? Same with holding the attack button
Should probably either decrease witch-chan's rate of fire or remove invincibility frames for enemies when they get hit, because you can unload a clip into them and most fireballs just bounce off
My controller worked in-game but not in the menu
I feel like this would need a lot of features to make for interesting puzzle design. At least the polish and core gameplay is there.
Sometimes attacking seems to stop the character from moving, and sometimes it doesn't? Same with holding the attack button
Yeah this is something I don't get either lol, technically attacking should stop you but most of the times it doesn't. Will obviously look into it.
Should probably either decrease witch-chan's rate of fire or remove invincibility frames for enemies when they get hit, because you can unload a clip into them and most fireballs just bounce off
Yep. Together with the first point, I'll go back and fix these.
My controller worked in-game but not in the menu
This is odd because I used the same controls for everything. Will look into it.
Thanks for the feedback, I hope to deliver with the next demo.
Comments
the good:
-very cute
-death sequence for enemies is nice
-all of the art works together very well, nothing seems out of place or awkward
-was very impressed that your partner could pathfind to come find you, even if it might have been easy to implement with unity
-game works well with PS4 Dualshock although menu browsing does not
-the one door that requires witch to open was great, although it might softlock you if the witch is dead? more character-centric features like that would really help the game shine
the bad:
-closed doors do not block partner pathfinding (looks like maybe the doors do but the support poles don't? )
-enemies can trigger pressure pads which causes annoying cutscene triggers
-dead partner spawns dead in next room, plus there seem to be no healing items or drops which is a bummer
-dead/ dying enemies seem to block fireball attacks, not sure if intentional but it is annoying
-enemies seem to be invincible for a short time after being hit, but it's not too clear visually. would be a lot less frustrating if they had a visual effect to communicate that they can't be damaged during that time, even something simple like shifting their color to red or blue
-using Input Mapper to spoof PS4 Dualshock as XBOX controller causes character to perform multiple actions on single button press - ie pressing X picks up a key and attacks at the same time
the ideaguy:
-mouse support on the menus and in gameplay would be great, but would require new strafing animations for aiming...
-extra button options for attack/swap/etc so that my right hand can do something would be very nice
-rebindable keys would be great
-adding the enemy death particle cloud to enemy spawns might look a lot better than them just appearing out of nowhere. if you do this, maybe having different smoke colors for spawning + dying would be cool
-more enemies, especially ones that require either the knight or witch to kill, would be awesome
-health drops, and/or interacting with dead partner to sacrifice life to respawn them would be very nice
the shill:
-if you want robust support for keyboard and controllers, i've had good experiences with InControl to get PS4/ XBOX controllers playing nice with Windows and Mac (Linux un-tested). I've also heard good things about Rewired but have not used it myself.
-walking into spikes and getting damaged is not intuitive
-neither is getting damaged by touching other enemies, while they don't for ramming into you
-wizard got stunlocked into death through a cinematic
-quit is halfway in the window at 800x600
-didn't figure out I could attack until the mass spawn aread and started spamming keys
-the trees look great
-aiming is very difficult with the keyboard, not much better with the controller
-animations don't feel to smooth
-consider fading all UI out when going into cinematic mode
-never felt like I needed the characters, more like I was doing a bad MMO excort quest
-infinite cinematic loop:
Thanks for playing!
Thank you very much for the detailed feedback. I hope you enjoyed the demo at least a little bit and I also hope you'll look forward to the next one.
I really like the feel of this game once I figured out the controls. Combat with the witch was little frustrating with the Witch though. Making the aiming mouse driven in someway or maybe have a button where she should has 'plant her feet' so that she can aim more precisely might alleviate that but that might not be the style of gaming you are aiming for. Can't wait to see what's next!
Edit: I see now that the controls were listen on the game page, my mistake!
Simple yet beautiful game. I see much potential in it!
This demo makes me wanna know more about this game!
Keep it up, Square!
I like the concept and art of this game. Feels solid, and loved the mario& luigi series it's based off of. kept breaking for me after the the second door opening cut scene so couldn't continue to solve puzzles. Witch also seems to be facing odd directions when I try to aim her fireball.
Really like the art style and loved the music aswell, gave the game a really comfy feeling that reminded me of playing Wind Waker as a kid. Obviously you would have to make the combat a lot more interesting with more actions available and perhaps some kind of default behaviour for the npc when you're not controlling it, right now your partner feels like a deadweight doing nothing. But I understand this is an early build so it's forgivable but I would say that you should focus on that before anything else in the future, because even if it's mainly a puzzle game you spend a lot of time fighting. The puzzle I liked the most was the one that had the other partner trapped behind the door. My first thought was that it was a bug but came a small nice little surprise that this was intentional.
Thanks for playing! I'm glad you like the look and the sound of the game.
Yes the combat is something I worked very little on. I wanted to add more depth to it for the demo but didn't make it in time. Same for the companion character. In the future they will fight on their own, flee from danger, etc. This is another thing I wanted to have in the demo but had to scrap temporarily.
Some thoughts:
Could see this being more fun with more abilities and such. Good foundation.
I uploaded a playthrough if that is useful to you. It's not really a first playthrough since the first recording messed up so I tried again. https://streamable.com/v9ke1 ; Near the end (last screen), I would sometimes be unable to move while getting close to the other character.
Also this next one isn't really a playthrough, I don't really know what happened but I ended up crashing at the end of this. https://streamable.com/5vvtd
Hey, thanks for playing!
Thanks for the videos as well. I think I have an idea of what happened in the first video, as I've run into something similar myself. But I have no idea about the crash in the second video. I can only assume that spamming the magic attack somehow caused it, as I'm not using object pooling yet. Still, it's pretty weird, I'll investigate further.
Nice art. Some notes:
I feel like this would need a lot of features to make for interesting puzzle design. At least the polish and core gameplay is there.
Thanks for playing!
Yeah this is something I don't get either lol, technically attacking should stop you but most of the times it doesn't. Will obviously look into it.
Yep. Together with the first point, I'll go back and fix these.
This is odd because I used the same controls for everything. Will look into it.
Thanks for the feedback, I hope to deliver with the next demo.