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A jam submission

Mundo the Apprentice (in development)View game page

Zeldalike with magic you've been waiting for.
Submitted by tlomdev (@tlomdev) — 2 days, 16 hours before the deadline
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Comments

Submitted

It needs a lot of polish but the clear love is there. I was happy to be able to find the first dungeon, even if I never completed it.

Submitted

I played until killing the Mindflayer boss, couldn't find more content after that.

I really love the artstyle, the visual presentation in general. Has a distinct personality.  The spell book+ items and combining them is an elegant way to theme the inventory.

Some of the early bosses didn't move around much, so I could just stand on spot and DPS-race them without thinking about dodging or even understanding what the boss does. You could have some boss invincibility whenever the player lands a hit.

Maybe add a more distinctive effect when you're hitting something and not dealing damage? Took me a while to notice I had to do something else to defeat that turtle enemy. It'll probably be more noticeable when you add the hit SFX, I suppose.

Developer

Thanks for playing!

I'm guessing you played about an hour or so, I'm glad you didn't find any bugs or anything. Mindflayer boss is supposed to be the last one, hope the ghost showed up to tell you demo was over. I will fix the sound effects and music at some point both with hits and other stuff. I'm planning to add a full screen moving attack for the genie boss so you can dodge with the ring. Hope you enjoyed the game.

Submitted(+1)

I made this video for you:

https://mega.nz/file/TF1DGSpZ#PrH6KQV9LUS9i3Aykg4hyAvcpxivscowx93Ow9cEgvk

I hope it's useful.

Developer

Thank you for playing!

I'll fix that issue with getting stuck after portal gate screen in the beginning, and make the hit/blocked hit sounds different.

Submitted

I look forward to seeing changes next DD

Submitted (1 edit)

I was hoping it'd have Gamepad support, but it doesn't. Or if it does, it doesn't work with mine, neither naturally or by emulating XInput.

No Title Music either. Arrowkeys instead of WASD, fine, but unexpected. Highlighting for Start and Exit is delayed and happens on every movement input into that direction, instead of getting lighter the closer I get. Also a bit odd to only control the Hat, instead of the full Character here. A regular button based start-screen might be better.

Tutorial is there. Its not good, with everything frontloaded and Y/Z Keybindings, and I still don't understand why everyone uses YXC / ZXC and Arrowkeys for these kind of Games, instead of WASD and IJKL to emulate Controller sides, but oh well. The Tarot Cards are cute tho.

Shift + Directions feels odd to change Spells/Items. Really odd.

I can open the ESC Menu and have to control the Feather with movement Keys? Ok I guess, since its Mouseless, but why not have me swap between Options then instead of having to place a Cursor over them? Just make it fully Cursorless if you have no Mouse support.

I can circle but not un-circle some of the Things that describe Spells or Items to me, no Idea what that does. Is it an alternate Form of spellcasting that I can't disable now that I've enabled it? Is it just a description? If so why can I enable it at all? Also I can cast spells while in the Menu.

Collisions for your Tables and Stuff seem to start too low, I should be able to walk in front of them more.

Tutorial Area is nice and workable, but could use a bit of a better / more comfy Design. Adorable Owls. And its nice that I get my Flower back if I summon without any Familiars. Don't know whats with the free Acorn and walkthrough-able Pouch at the End tho, ended up wasting the Acorn on it. Should've known that I need that, nice that it respawns.

Dragonboss is fine, Maps are bland. Dying has a really long respawn Animation with the Hat falling all the Way down. And a lot of Sound and Music is missing.

Volcano Dungeon first because I ended up there. Invisible Enemies and no Way to reveal them? Dead, not walking back up there, going to grind for the Jar first.

I love the Interactable Grass and Birds and Stuff, I don't love the sheer amount of Enemies everywhere. The Cat is absolutely adorable. Sadly I had to get rid of it to get a Candle. At least I have a Fish in my Glass again.

If you enter through the Secret Cave after the Candle, the Forest doesn't have the dark Tint applied. Not going into the Forest Dungeon aswell, I'll do the Tent for now.

Your Doorways are only enterable on the lower half. The Bat Room does nothing. And shouldn't the Tent look more like a Tent inside?

Why do I not spawn at the beginning of a Dungeon if I die? But the Dungeon still saves my Progress, even up to the number of Enemies I killed in a Room.

I can not light the Bracers with my Torch? I hope the Moles are at least an Indication for me getting a Boomerang-like in there.

Slimy Stuff for the Witch isn't actually a Slime, Minislime or Slime Projectile, ok.

MiniRug doesn't work on the Water below the Tent. Why? Can't progress anywhere, so Time for another Dungeon. I'll do the Spirit one next, Lava seems like its supposed to be last. Realized I have hundres of Crystals at this Point, guess I'll be casting a lot then. Spells feel underwhelming tho. I don't need the Stun, it doesn'T work on high health Enemies, and low health ones are no Thread, the Zap costs Money which I may still need, see the Jar, the Bomb was only used once so far, and I have no Familiar to summon anyway. Items seem better, the Candle can at least burn down Bushes, altho it only was useful once so far, the Rug only seems to work on Lava, and the Amulet does something I suppose. the Ring is nice if I actually ever where on the Star, I just keep the Jar open all the TIme to check what I can fill into that. So far a Fish. Fish also doesn't work in the SpiritTemple as a Weight. Ok.

Spirit Dungeon is a lot harder. Due to the Fact I loose almost all my Health walking back there, so I have to basically do it with 1 health. Neat, I now have Butter and a Moth Familiar. And a Block too I guess. Again the Items seem more interesting then the Spells. Also a not working FireToken, and no Idea what to do with the Floor Symbol. Guess no Chest and Lifetoken for me. Entering the Crab Area that Leads to the Tent had me take a Damage for no Reason. And if you pick up the Butter with a Fish next to it, you pick up the Fish and the Butter disappears aswell. 

If you activate a Stone Guardian, it stays active if you leave and reenter the Screen after dying. But the inactive one spawns aswell, so you could have endless Stone Guardians active I suppose. Also got Dorothy, but there aren't any Statues, or I don't recall there being any. Into the Lava Dungeon!

Which has that Room with the Invisible Teleporting Enemies, right. Guess I'll spam Bombs or something in the Hopes of finding them. Also I have my Moth now, to help me. Didn't know it damaged Enemies. Nice Lighting in a Jar. 

Lighting Boss's laser doesn't disappear when the Boss dies.

Got a second Soul Crystal for whatever Reason, no Idea where to go next, and a cramp in my Hand thanks to having to stretch over from XC to Z. I'll end it here. 

Needs some Music, less Enemies at once, and more different Uses for the Spells/Items. Also some better Feedback on getting hit/hitting Stuff, and general Soundeffects, and a different ControlScheme. At least minorly, XCZ+Shift is annoying if it isn't in one row, and even if it is, theres still Keys between there, and constantly reaching over with the little Finger to press Shift can get hurtful aswell.

*Edit: I didn't Time it, but you have at least 1-2h of Content already.

Developer
  • I was hoping it'd have Gamepad support, but it doesn't. Or if it does, it doesn't work with mine, neither naturally or by emulating XInput.

Gamepad support exists but not quite working with all the gamepads for some reason, same gamepad works on my windows laptop and doesn't work on my mac. Friends gamepad works and has vibration on explosions and mine doesn't, not sure what the issue exactly is but I want to fix it sometime because playing with analogstick makes the game a lot more fun imo.

  • No Title Music either. Arrowkeys instead of WASD, fine, but unexpected. Highlighting for Start and Exit is delayed and happens on every movement input into that direction, instead of getting lighter the closer I get. Also a bit odd to only control the Hat, instead of the full Character here. A regular button based start-screen might be better.

Start screen is kind of a mess, I want to change it into a more traditional button based screen in the end.

  • Tutorial is there. Its not good, with everything frontloaded and Y/Z Keybindings, and I still don't understand why everyone uses YXC / ZXC and Arrowkeys for these kind of Games, instead of WASD and IJKL to emulate Controller sides, but oh well. The Tarot Cards are cute tho.
  • Shift + Directions feels odd to change Spells/Items. Really odd.

I can make wasd/arrow keys and zxc/jkl with space+directions changing the pages next dd so people play with whichever they're comfortable with.

  • I can open the ESC Menu and have to control the Feather with movement Keys? Ok I guess, since its Mouseless, but why not have me swap between Options then instead of having to place a Cursor over them? Just make it fully Cursorless if you have no Mouse support.

Menu is always evolving and I'm adding stuff as I change how stuff works in the game so it is a bit cumbersome. I'll look into adding mouse support but I wanted players to not take their fingers off from the keyboard and in the end menu will only be used for fast travel and checking item descriptions so I didn't think more precise controls for that was necessary.

  • I can circle but not un-circle some of the Things that describe Spells or Items to me, no Idea what that does. Is it an alternate Form of spellcasting that I can't disable now that I've enabled it? Is it just a description? If so why can I enable it at all? Also I can cast spells while in the Menu.

I changed the casting/attacking thing while in the menu although not uploaded it yet. Circling things isn't going to end up in the final game, it's just for the demo and indicating the items you'll collect from the dungeons, top three for the spell/item combination upgrade and bottom three are passive effects.

  • Collisions for your Tables and Stuff seem to start too low, I should be able to walk in front of them more.

I think it's more of a not very smartly moving problem. MC moves very precise instead of readjusting for minor collusion stuff like in the zelda, idk how to handle that exactly but it does get annoying when  it happens too many times in a row, also why I like playing the game with analog stick since movement feels much better when that happens and you can just glide past it.

  • Tutorial Area is nice and workable, but could use a bit of a better / more comfy Design. Adorable Owls. And its nice that I get my Flower back if I summon without any Familiars. Don't know whats with the free Acorn and walkthrough-able Pouch at the End tho, ended up wasting the Acorn on it. Should've known that I need that, nice that it respawns.

I might change the whole tutorial area, it's born out of necessity for demodays, needed to convey that somehow but originally I had something more elaborate in mind. But it's nice that you like the owls. 

  • Dragonboss is fine, Maps are bland. Dying has a really long respawn Animation with the Hat falling all the Way down. And a lot of Sound and Music is missing.

Dragonboss will have more coulds/mist/wind visuals in the end, also it'll be able to actually hurt but you're the only one so far not complained about flying controls so that gives me some hope. You can press down to fall faster with the hat. And I need to make a proper system for sound and music desperately.

  • Volcano Dungeon first because I ended up there. Invisible Enemies and no Way to reveal them? Dead, not walking back up there, going to grind for the Jar first.

If you activate the sun symbol thing in the menu you can shatter the star spell with ring item and it becomes dust that reveals and stuns enemies for a bit. However the item that you need to pick up for it isn't in the game yet and I think once you die upgrades without items reset and if you haven't upgraded it locks you out from upgrading again, which I need to fix.

  • I love the Interactable Grass and Birds and Stuff, I don't love the sheer amount of Enemies everywhere. The Cat is absolutely adorable. Sadly I had to get rid of it to get a Candle. At least I have a Fish in my Glass again.

I'll make more types of grass and birds/critters/butteflies. Enemy spawn is another thing that needs to get fixed. And glad you liked the cat.

  • If you enter through the Secret Cave after the Candle, the Forest doesn't have the dark Tint applied. Not going into the Forest Dungeon aswell, I'll do the Tent for now.

Do you mean where you find the cat? I'll fix that one as well.

  • Your Doorways are only enterable on the lower half. The Bat Room does nothing. And shouldn't the Tent look more like a Tent inside?
  • Why do I not spawn at the beginning of a Dungeon if I die? But the Dungeon still saves my Progress, even up to the number of Enemies I killed in a Room.

I don't understand what you mean by doorways are only enterable on the lower half. I do need better dungeon designs, I feel like I'm still working on mechanics and I've been kinda delaying it, which again why all dungeons have same tileset, they all will end up having unique tilesets although yellow stone was actually intended for the tent dungeon. And I will change the respawn point next dd.

  • I can not light the Bracers with my Torch? I hope the Moles are at least an Indication for me getting a Boomerang-like in there.

I'm not sure what you mean by bracers. Star spell is the boomerang since it stuns a little bit and kills weak enemies, but it also bounces a lot so it's not exactly the same item.

  • Slimy Stuff for the Witch isn't actually a Slime, Minislime or Slime Projectile, ok.

That's actually a great idea, maybe you could catch a slime projectile with the jar and get the witch out instead of butter, I might make that.

  • MiniRug doesn't work on the Water below the Tent. Why? Can't progress anywhere, so Time for another Dungeon. I'll do the Spirit one next, Lava seems like its supposed to be last. Realized I have hundres of Crystals at this Point, guess I'll be casting a lot then. Spells feel underwhelming tho. I don't need the Stun, it doesn'T work on high health Enemies, and low health ones are no Thread, the Zap costs Money which I may still need, see the Jar, the Bomb was only used once so far, and I have no Familiar to summon anyway. Items seem better, the Candle can at least burn down Bushes, altho it only was useful once so far, the Rug only seems to work on Lava, and the Amulet does something I suppose. the Ring is nice if I actually ever where on the Star, I just keep the Jar open all the TIme to check what I can fill into that. So far a Fish. Fish also doesn't work in the SpiritTemple as a Weight. Ok.

You can reach the potion below the tent with teleportation, combining lighting with jar and reusing jar afterwards sends out a star that teleports you to where it lands. I might change lightning spell to chain lightning and star spell works better for the enemies that you need to hit from behind. And amulet once it's charged on it's own sends out small beams from your weapon to get the range a little bit more, but I will change the effect with each weapon to get it more powerful and covering more ground.

  • Spirit Dungeon is a lot harder. Due to the Fact I loose almost all my Health walking back there, so I have to basically do it with 1 health. Neat, I now have Butter and a Moth Familiar. And a Block too I guess. Again the Items seem more interesting then the Spells. Also a not working FireToken, and no Idea what to do with the Floor Symbol. Guess no Chest and Lifetoken for me. Entering the Crab Area that Leads to the Tent had me take a Damage for no Reason. And if you pick up the Butter with a Fish next to it, you pick up the Fish and the Butter disappears aswell. 

I wasn't sure if fire token should upgrade or if it should be some part of a quest yet, and hopefully butter reappears after you change the rooms.

  • If you activate a Stone Guardian, it stays active if you leave and reenter the Screen after dying. But the inactive one spawns aswell, so you could have endless Stone Guardians active I suppose. Also got Dorothy, but there aren't any Statues, or I don't recall there being any. Into the Lava Dungeon!

Thanks for noticing it,  you could have endless stone guardians actually so I'm going to fix that. Statue is 2 screens above from where the witch teleports you first.

  • Which has that Room with the Invisible Teleporting Enemies, right. Guess I'll spam Bombs or something in the Hopes of finding them. Also I have my Moth now, to help me. Didn't know it damaged Enemies. Nice Lighting in a Jar. 
  • Lighting Boss's laser doesn't disappear when the Boss dies.

I'll fix that lightning as well. I wanted for that boss to have one more attack but didn't know if it'd be hard especially with respawning way outside.

  • Got a second Soul Crystal for whatever Reason, no Idea where to go next, and a cramp in my Hand thanks to having to stretch over from XC to Z. I'll end it here. 

Soul crystals fragments add up to a very round crystal that when I set up I thought with maybe with each crystal it can do something more powerful but haven't used it yet. It's also the triforce of this game basically it'll open the last dungeon.

  • Needs some Music, less Enemies at once, and more different Uses for the Spells/Items. Also some better Feedback on getting hit/hitting Stuff, and general Soundeffects, and a different ControlScheme. At least minorly, XCZ+Shift is annoying if it isn't in one row, and even if it is, theres still Keys between there, and constantly reaching over with the little Finger to press Shift can get hurtful aswell.

I'll add the alternative the keys to wasd/jkl and space instead of shift. Not sure when I'll tackle the music but I know someday I will sit through it. And you're I think the second person mentioning hitting feedback, which I thought was pretty obvious from the slash effect but I'll take another look at it. 

  • *Edit: I didn't Time it, but you have at least 1-2h of Content already.

I know some of that is rewalking to dungeons but hopefully with more secrets and events scattered in the final version I'll have around 4-5 hours of content, Thanks for playing and I hope you enjoyed it!

Hey, finally had a chance to check this out. Here are my thoughts as I played:

  • The idea of having the tutorial be tarot cards is great. 
  • Very good aesthetic so far
  • When I finished the stack or tarot cards it looped. So I tried to get out of it with escape. That brought up a book which was a little confusing. I was pressing random keys until I saw I could move and get out of bed. I think you were going for something a little more interesting with the way the tutorial disappears, but it might be better to go straightforward with it, and make the tarot cards modal. Close them before you start moving around and opening menus.
  • Encouraging the player to bully the broom, and restating the control for it, is great. I need to do more in-game reminders like that.
  • player control and speed feels good. im glad he doesnt move too slow, thats a common problem i see in top down games.
  • cool effect with the flipping pages depending on the direction you shift click. thats fun.
  • dude, there are so many good ideas in this game already. the moving quill in the menu is sweet. 
  • The room asks me to "understand which direction is which spell", but i cant see what the other spells besides star are or do. 
  • oh i see, the next rooms are teaching me. i assumed by "before moving farther", it meant "before leaving this room". Might be better to say "understand how to change spells before moving farther"
  • I think the NPC text that comes up could do with a better font. it feels very operating system, not very "magic fantasy". Something a bit more whimsical would fit better.
  • the story got me a little confused. at the end of the tutorial, there was a room with a bag that i couldnt seem to interact with. i went back down and was back in my living room. When I went outside, a girl was hiding behind a rock talking about a monster, but I didn't see a monster. So I bombed her ass, and she ran away. There were a few empty screens, then a witch sent me to the desert. She said no one was supposed to be guarding the crystal, but I had no idea what she was talking about. Then someone on a broom crashed into me and also said something I didn't know who she was or what she was talking about. I know I sound like a damn Alzheimers patient right now but I was pretty confused. 
  • The staff attack looks good, but its quite unclear when I hit an enemy. I swing, and then even if there is no visual overlap, the enemy disappears a second later. The enemy hitboxes might be a tad too generous, but that's always a tough call. I'd at least put a sort of visual effect that plays instantly when you connect with a monster. Just a puff or something, between your weapon and the monster.
  • please dont force me to watch the hat fall all the way to the ground when i die :D

Good work dude. It has a lot of charm, and is looks to be shaping up well. 

Developer(+1)

Glad you enjoyed it!

  • I think the NPC text that comes up could do with a better font. it feels very operating system, not very "magic fantasy". Something a bit more whimsical would fit better.

I'm not sure if there's font problems but I kinda like how it looks, sort of reminds me of the old crpg fonts which too were bit  a operating system I guess.

  • the story got me a little confused. at the end of the tutorial, there was a room with a bag that i couldnt seem to interact with. i went back down and was back in my living room. When I went outside, a girl was hiding behind a rock talking about a monster, but I didn't see a monster. So I bombed her ass, and she ran away. 

The rock was the monster, it gets on his feet and starts running once you bomb, maybe I could show that better.

  •  There were a few empty screens, then a witch sent me to the desert. She said no one was supposed to be guarding the crystal, but I had no idea what she was talking about. Then someone on a broom crashed into me and also said something I didn't know who she was or what she was talking about. I know I sound like a damn Alzheimers patient right now but I was pretty confused. 

I just checked and the crystal on the portal stone gate thing doesn't show, it was supposed to fly offscreen as you get close and then you see the witch getting it basically, I need to fix that so thanks for bringing it up. And I know right after that the witch crashing you is bit much but I wanted to make sure people see it, I will put her first encounter somewhere further away.

  • The staff attack looks good, but its quite unclear when I hit an enemy. I swing, and then even if there is no visual overlap, the enemy disappears a second later. 

That's actually a new addition, enemies used to poof immediately but now they linger for a tiny bit more to make it more impactful I guess. And I believe every successful staff/sword attack has slash animation and if you're hitting something with a shield there's a diamond kinda indicator. Perhaps I should make a test dummy to teach more about it.

  • please dont force me to watch the hat fall all the way to the ground when i die :D

You can press down and fall faster, but that whole screen might change soon so you won't have to!

Thanks for your feedback, I'll fix the crystal bit next dd if I won't remake whole start of the game.

Played for about an hour, did the two set piece boss fights, did as much as I could in the three dungeons, a decent amount of secrets too.

Visuals: I like the hand drawn aesthetic, stands out among the majority of indie games with pixel art or 3D models. Design for the player, enemies, and NPCs look appealing. The book pause menu looks soulful, though it feels weird to use a cursor for it. Still needs work so the art has a consistent quality. 

Gameplay: Movement is fine enough, just takes a moment to get used to the delay in starting to walk. Personally I would opt for instant moving, but there is some merit for it as a game design decision to discourage standing in place and moving at the last moment. Similar with the stick attack, it takes a bit  to poke with it. The 4 directional magic + item categories are interesting. At first I wasn't too sure about it, but using it as a way to remove the need to go to the pause menu to equip items is nice.  Using resources for spells is fine, but can be annoying if you have to farm for them later. The items themselves were fine, though I'm just a bit disappointed it's basically LoZ items but magical. Main exception being the magical block spawner. Set piece bosses seem fine, but may be annoying if they are difficult given they're different compared to the main gameplay.

Story/Quests: Main story is very bare bones it seems, not very compelling. Of course I imagine it will be more interesting later in development. Quests were fun, like the kitty cat and buttering. Characters seem fine enough, I imagine the green witch will be a semi-companion, given her ability to transport you to save points nd appearing multiple times. 

Dungeons: Felt kinda bad to play honestly. They're quite linear, and multiple times a side path would just have enemies and nothing else. The lack of respawning at the entrance really put a damper on it. Only reason it was tolerable was because the enemies stayed dead on gameover. The mountain dungeon I just couldn't beat the laser and invisible enemy room, probably missing the upgrade for it. Beat forest dungeon easily enough. Got stuck on the tent dungeon, couldn't figure out how to get the key inside the diamond block formation no matter what I tried nothing happened. That or I had a DSP moment.

Overall pretty fun, but it needs work on dungeon design among other things. 

Developer

Thanks for your feedback.

You did a lot actually I'm surprised you missed the key in the first dungeon. You have to push one of the blocks like the cauldron in the beginning tower if you played around with it.

Visuals are sort of final but anything that stands out to me I tend to change. And I plan to add more busywork tiles and get each screen less uniform at some point.

Movement delay is intentional that once you come to a full stop and want to attack behind you or something you don't get in their face. And attack delay goes away once you get the cup item from the tomb. Drop rates aren't final yet but was working ok enough so far, still need to make an adjustment to it but I want to keep it that way instead of magic bar or something. Items and spells are basic but I think they work, also you can combine them which makes it bit more interesting. And set piece bosses will not be hard, they're more of a visual change and to keep players guessing what might happen next.

Story wise I probably do need someone elses help or something both with dialogues and to convey what's going on. But yeah more events will happen later in the game and I want to redo the beginning of it.

I agree dungeons don't have much else than enemies until you get to boss right now, and it desperately needs the spawn point change on death inside dungeon. With the laser room all you need to do is attack around and find the enemies, but there's an item that's not in the game yet(although you can upgrade from menu sun icon thing if you haven't died) where you dash through the star spell and it turns into dust and shows invisible enemies that's around you. Although you didn't get the ring that makes you dash because it was in the hole of that diamond thing in the tent dungeon.

Thanks for playing and I'm glad you had fun!

Submitted (1 edit)

Explored the world, found the naga and dragon fights and reached the slime girl in the tent dungeon.

The hand drawn style reminds me a lot of late 2000 indie games, mainly for the art style and the shading, but also from the story. It is very nice! I like the idea of your little dude having a spell book. I noticed there are more options in the pause menu but couldn't make any of them work, my character was attacking in the background while I was trying to press z and x.

The thing that stuck out the most to me was the controls, that feel sluggish for some situations. The attack has a very noticeable delay before it comes out and stops your character if he was moving. Then you have to wait for the backswing once the action is done to continue. This coupled with the character movement makes you very vulnerable and open to attacks. All the spells have that delay too. The star takes like 2 seconds to start moving, the enemies can get out of the way in that time.

About movement, it feels strange. Lightly tapping a key will make your wizard face a direction and advance one inch or not move at all. Mashing a key will make him tapdance in place without advancing. This feeling becomes very evident when you walk, stop and then want to start walking again. That small pause, I don't like it. While the acceleration to start moving is low, the friction (for stopping movement) is huge and as soon as you stop pressing a key the character loses all movement speed. Also the walking sound starts as soon as you press the key instead of waiting a bit until the character takes his first step.

I spent my first accorn fooling around and once I was outside I had to walk all the way through the tutorial again to get a new one. It would be cool if there is an accord right next to the house, outside. Finding accorns during the rest of the game was difficult too, I wanted to use them in the bushes but didn't had any.

I would like to restart faster after losing, I was never too frustrated or anything but this isn't an easy game so a faster restart would be appreciated.

The amount of enemies and their strength are a bit insane. The ones that have more than one hit point barely get stunned from attacks and the ones with ranged attacks have bullets moving at difficult to react speeds, sometimes locked on the player's position. The room filled with slimes and slimes with swords is not pleasant to go through. The enemy bullets are sometimes hard to see against the floor. I used the lightning attack as much as I could to try and stand a chance in rooms that had a ton of enemies, it was cool that killing two enemies guaranteed a crystal (or maybe that was dumb luck, I dunno).

I liked what was happening in the story and the enemy designs. It was very cute. Like the witch getting stuck in the tree. Also the toad enemies.

The game is very charming and it is nice to see how you have been progressing with it. I hope you will be able to keep working on it!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing the game!

You can upgrade stuff with enter button from the menu but that's only for the demo, in the final game you'll be only able to upgrade it when you get the correct item. I will make the player completely stationary while the menu is open next dd.

Attack delay goes away once you get the upgrade for it. I might end up changing it if I feel there's some other better upgrade instead but that's so far intentional. So does the slow magic, with star you can launch it towards your attack direction in high speed when you attack it with your weapon, lightning ball becomes sort of a mini laser lightning instead of guided projectile(was thinking of arclightning but so far I didn't make that), and bomb kinda slides ahead a little and explodes with the first enemy or wall it touches.

Movement doesn't have any friction. Once you come to a full stop (whether by not moving or attacking/using spell in place) it has a delay that if you want to attack behind you or something you don't move right into the thing you're attacking but only face it. But I'm not sure about the tapdancing in place, might be a bug that I haven't seen. And I need to make a proper system for every sound and music in the game including walking sounds.

Acorns drop from certain kind of enemies only. With each 10th kill that you didn't lose health on you either drop an acorn or fairy, but the whole drop rate isn't adjusted that well so far. I thought randomizing like this would be enough but I should make more drops throughout just from exploration.

You can press down to make the hat fall faster in the start/death screen. That whole screen reasonably confuses some people and I plan to change it, which makes me delay working on it since I'm going to change it anyways. But that start menu and death screen will be different.

You were lucky with the crystal drops though they have the biggest drop chance. Enemy projectiles actually use player's actual collusion mask instead of hitbox mask to make them bit harder. And while testing I probably got used to them so the speeds and everything doesn't bother me that much but I understand it might be a bit too much and slowing earlier enemy projectiles might help.

You can get the witch unstuck. If you go through the tomb dungeon thing in the woods you can burn the bushes for a shortcut to village and there's a lady with cow that you can get the butter from. You can jar the butter and get the witch unstuck that way, afterwards you can call her for fast travel to statues(which there's only one of so far).

I try to keep things secretive in the game instead of telling players you can attack the spells or if you kill the toads this will happen to give them the feeling of discovery. And I try to keep it charming by scattering npcs and tiny events throughout, hope you liked what you seen so far but there's some more content in the works. And thanks for your feedback.

Submitted

gave the game a quick shake, beat the first dungeon and got the sparkly wand projectiles, finished in the lava dungeon dying in the second room with the laser eye in the middle. i enjoyed the game, it's fun, though it can be felt it's a bit rough around the edges and a lot of things have yet to get their polish (no music, scarce sound effects, etc), you probably know a lot of it already.

i think the introduction could be a bit smoother - the game dumps a lot of info on you right at the start, though it does attempt to get the player to really get the idea in the corridor with the owls (which i didn't notice at first - the doors tend to be difficult to spot in the darkness and so close to the border of the screen). maybe it'd be better if the owls did more talking and mentioned the shift+direction combos along the way.

i appreciated the 8-directional attacks.

i think binding both the X spell and the C ability to the same spell page is on a clunky side - found myself failing to dash, because i was just using the thunder ball.

the writing could use some work, i think it doesn't sell the setting. might be an early development thing. tilesets also have some questionable color choices and a quite a bit of repetitive tiling (the intensely blue, if nicely animated, water and zelda reference forest with its brown litter-looking wooden floor being the biggest offenders), though to their credit it's generally easy to tell where collisions lie and the game has a very clean look.

btw seems like F1 toggles debug data.

good work, keep going.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing. I'm not sure how to polish with some stuff since when I add new things polishing seems like it would be better after added content is somewhat finalized, although not always. 

Laser room has two invisible enemies, which can be seen with shattering the star spell around them with dashing through it. Which the item pickup of it isn't in the game yet, but you can activate it from the menu.

At some point I was planning that mc getting his hat after doing the tutorial owl bits or a mini dungeon of sorts, with sort of a minish hat beginning with daylight and fair and whatnot. But it's a lot of work which I need to focus on the overall dungeons and bosses etc. I plan to change the beginning sometime, especially infodump bit. Maybe corridor would be more noticeable if I put the scroll that way, or something eye-catching for now.

I also like the 8 directional attacks, I like the stabbing zelda attack but it's very limited compared to alttp slash so 8 direction is best way to go I think.

Same page spells and items can be combined. I do understand it's not quite like picking an item in zelda and binding it to a key but I think it becomes even faster compared to that once you're used to it and collected all the items. Also combining spells/items won't get confusing that way.

I should probably let someone else who's better with words write the whole thing. I know what the story will be but I realize I'm not good at conveying that so far. 

And I do want tiles to be very readable and sort of looking like the first zelda (if you squint hard and have really bad eyesight) so I'm probably going to keep them very square-ish and color wise uniform, but I will add some more screen weather effects and color transitions that'll kinda break the uniformity a bit. And little more deviations on background or stuff like moss and mushrooms etc would help with overall monotony, but drawing all those take time and not a priority right now but it will change as I add stuff.

Submitted (1 edit)

Gave it a quick try; didn't manage to beat any bosses, but I tried some of the dungeons.

My thoughts:

Very cute menu.

Bit too many prompts all at once to start with the nine tarot cards, especially since you don't start with a weapon or any items

Maybe save most of it for the tutorial, or when you actually get weapons and items?

I also didn't see any way to review it once the game proper got started

Bit distracting that Mundo changes direction when you use the arrow keys in the menu

Owl tutorial is nice and thorough, but the dialogue is a little slow

No sound when picking up hearts?

Nice touch having different sprites for left and right; but you're not getting a lot of use out of it, are you?

Waterfall secret's a little TOO obvious. Cave could use a little secret of its own.

You can't just steal the green witch's broom when she gets stuck?

Got real tired in my finger when spamming the attack button during magic carpet boss 

(nice boss other than that and the lack of sounds btw)

Dragon boss seemed pretty cool, but the controls were sluggish on the broom.

It was a bit easy once I figured out where to hit it.

The "oktorok"s a lot more anatomically correct than I'd expect from the game's style.

The skeletons in the island dungeon seem super hard! I think I had some spawn directly on top of when when I walked in the room.

You should probably remove the player's keys when they die, it's much easier to just run past enemies and hope you can reach your

goal than it is to actually fight them.

Could really use some sound when you pick up healing

Come think of it, most of the time I took damage there was no sound at all.

All the dialogue feels a little wonky to read.

That and the lack of any music was probably the most major issues with the game.

All in all, looks promising.

Developer

Thanks for your feedback!

Very cute menu.

I try to keep it visually coherent but also somewhat cute, it's still not final but I think close to it.

Bit too many prompts all at once to start with the nine tarot cards, especially since you don't start with a weapon or any items

Maybe save most of it for the tutorial, or when you actually get weapons and items?

I also didn't see any way to review it once the game proper got started

I was thinking of possibly collecting the cards and revisiting on the menu for that reason, I think it's bit of an infodump but not the priority at the moment but maybe next dd it will be done.

Bit distracting that Mundo changes direction when you use the arrow keys in the menu

I will fix that next dd.

Owl tutorial is nice and thorough, but the dialogue is a little slow

I thought giving the owls a moment like they're thinking instead of immediate response would be better but yeah they're bit too slow, so going to change that as well.

No sound when picking up hearts?

(nice boss other than that and the lack of sounds btw)

Could really use some sound when you pick up healing

Come think of it, most of the time I took damage there was no sound at all.

That and the lack of any music was probably the most major issues with the game.

Sounds and music is a big lack in the game which is starting to accumulate, for pickups and stuff I have the mechanisms working but not the sounds, for some of the other stuff I don't have sounds, music or an idea how music should behave but hopefully once I put the sound/music volume bar in the menu most of those things will be practically done.

Nice touch having different sprites for left and right; but you're not getting a lot of use out of it, are you?

Idk what much to do with that honestly, I don't want to make it more complicated.

Waterfall secret's a little TOO obvious. Cave could use a little secret of its own.

I actually might put a mini dungeon there but waterfall was a last minute thing right before the dd just in case people has hp issues with the mindflayer boss.

You can't just steal the green witch's broom when she gets stuck?

You need to get butter from the village so she can slide out and then you can call her to carry you to the last statue you activated.

Got real tired in my finger when spamming the attack button during magic carpet boss 

Both the lamia boss and the dragon boss aren't completely done, but I wanted to show it in the dd also you need the rug to move over lava, normally you won't be able to upgrade that menu circle icons from the menu but only with item drops.

Dragon boss seemed pretty cool, but the controls were sluggish on the broom.

That's actually intentional although people think it's not, I think with the wind effect and moving clouds in the background and sound it might make more sense, but then again it might not, but delayed movement is my choice.

It was a bit easy once I figured out where to hit it.

Yeah whole shooter bits might end up being more of a spectacle than a challenge.

The "oktorok"s a lot more anatomically correct than I'd expect from the game's style.

Which oktorok?

The skeletons in the island dungeon seem super hard! I think I had some spawn directly on top of when when I walked in the room.

Dungeon monsters start always spawned before you enter and always in the same spot(unless maybe you died to it and re entered and they stayed near the door maybe) so they don't spawn like the monsters outdoors, either way I need to change the whole spawning monster system at some point including dungeons.

You should probably remove the player's keys when they die, it's much easier to just run past enemies and hope you can reach your goal than it is to actually fight them.

I think I'll make key carrying monsters that you can get the keys after you defeat but not a priority right now.

All the dialogue feels a little wonky to read.

Do you mean the grammar or how it's displayed on screen? If it's how the text displays I'm still not sure if I should put a text box in the bottom or top somewhere or just display it on top of npcs.

Submitted

Which oktorok?

The water lady monster with green hair that spits rocks at you. If you're not supposed to see her nipples under the water, you've got some really unfortunately-placed shadows on the sprite.

Do you mean the grammar or how it's displayed on screen?

Grammar. Mostly little stuff like punctuation and capitalization. The display didn't stand out as a problem (except for the timing of some of it).

Developer (1 edit)

Oh, the zora, while it does look very anatomically correct I don't think there was any nipples, although does seem so. And English isn't my first language so I'm planning to get it checked or even some bits rewritten at some point, still even the display has issues like appearing while transitioning through rooms and some shifting with resolution change from menu which I know the reason of but I feel like I might find a better way to show text so I delay fixing it.

Developer

I checked the sprite again just in case and yeah there aren't any nipples, I think it's combination with the water and transparency.