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Quick and fun game to play as ERB! A lot of the drawbacks of the game have already been laid out by the other jammers so I won't repeat them. The additions of the black & white particles definitely helped with navigation and I could only imagine how earlier playthroughs would have went, especially with the last fight. If development were to continue with this game, I do want to try the mechanic where 'ink could be used?' per level!
You guys did great!
The art in this game is really nice. Great work nailing the atmosphere. I think you accidentally forgot to include shiori's sprite in the boss battle (she appears as a big black square to me), but otherwise it was really amazing. Like someone else said, the collision gets in the way a little but. I found it unclear what walls and ceilings had collision a lot of the time, which would make it so I ended up bonking my head into some ceilings. The black sparkles for floors are a great idea, but I feel like they blend in a bit too much to the dark backgrounds you have. I'd probably change the color to white, red, or blue to match ERB's color scheme, and then for both the platform markers and hidden treasure markers, increase the number of sparkles so they stand out.
The underground stage also has some segments where you can fall into ink, but the camera doesn't show it, and since you end up going down a lot in that stage, I ended up dying a few times because I missed platforms that I couldn't see.
For combat, I think maybe something simple like having enemies flash red or white when they get hit would be huge. Some knockback on the big enemies that take 2 swings would also be nice, but that's not super necessary.
Again, this game was very good and I was really impressed with the level of art you have here and the atmosphere you guys created. Great job!
Thank you for amazing feedback! About Shiori's boss sprite - we don't really know what causes this problem, but it doesn't appear like that every time, only sometimes. We had some problems with her spritesheet during development but in our final rounds of testing everything was fine about her. You are only third person to encounter this issue and I assure you that we're currently looking for a way to resolve that.
In terms of platforming, we already have a solution for the headbumping on platforms issue (in next update you'll be able to pass trough them from below) and we are commited to make game easier to navigate trough. Particles will be replaced with floating ink bubbles of various colorations and platforms will be marked by animated dripping ink to distinguish them from static background sprites.
Undeground stage will undergo some changes too. Your observation about ink pool is correct and we also find it frustrating so we'll find a way to make it more fair. Asides from that we'll also space out pipes better since currently they require difficult jumps or are too close to wall and easy to get stuck between.
Your feedback on combat is spot on and will be completely implemented in future build. Glad you liked the game and I hope you give it a try once we polish it 100%!
I accidentally hit the esc key a few times and finding out that it closes the game and resets all progress.
The art style is nice but the collision gets in the way of the platforming since they are placed too close together, causing ERB to hit her head. It would be great if some of the platforms allow the player to jump through them from below.
We DEFFINITELY want to make platforms pass-trough, but we didn't have time to implement it during the Jam. In future updates ESC will lead to pause menu. Thanks for playing the game and for valuable feedback!
The color and atmosphere were great but it did make it hard to differentiate some of the platforms in the town area. Overall, a very fun and interesting idea.
We'll try to work on visual indicators by making better markings on platforms soon. Thanks for playing!
Great game overall, the visuals and the music fit well together!
I liked the attack pattern of the boss but I wish it had some sort of damage indicator or health bar
I find a weird decision to make the attack input on X and jump on Space but that's not really a big deal.
Nice job to everyone involved!
Great to hear you liked the game! We're working on making bossfight more visually responsive and once options menu gets added you'll be able to change controlls~
The game has a great atmosphere with it's visuals, music and sounds!
I had some issues with the game scaling. It starts in window mode and scale up to the screen size. But the backgrounds kept the prior window size. The options also didn't work. (running on 4k monitor) [Edit: Just read it in the patch notes that you are aware of that :)]
The platforming was fun and I like that the areas are highlighted. The combat needs some feedback, for when you get hit or hit enemies. And a hp bar for the boss would be nice 🙂
Thank you for the feedback! We are going to add more visual clarity to the combat - boss hp bar, damage animation for boss and color flash on boss' model. We'll also rework player model to align with overall theme of the game (as cute as chibi ERB is, we need something more cohesive with the artstyle), and with that add more responsive animations to player character. Thanks for playing and stay tuned for future updates!
Skop of Pyshney Productions