First, I tend to just rush into things, download the game, and launch it, and I did not realize that this required a controller at first. I played through twice while just clicking, which still did things it just always crushed the fruit entirely. I had to go back to the game page to realize that I had to plug in my controller to play.

Also, the UI was a bit broken for me - the timer and score displays that are supposed to be in the lower left are invisible or gone, which also meant when I was clicking and crushing things outright, I had no idea if it was giving me points or not anyways.

The game looks and sounds great, though! The music is very fitting, and the sound effects are so satisfying. I'd love to see a little more juice (no pun intended) in the squeeze animation, though - the hands are quite static during the squeeze, and I think it'd make a big difference if they pushed slowly inwards as the fruit squishes, and maybe if they shook a little with the exertion of squeezing.

The strict display size also bit me in a similar way to some others - it did open in 9x16, but it was also *too tall* and didn't fullscreen with black bars or anything, like I would expect it to. It displayed with a vertical size equal to my display height, but since it also opens windowed, the menu bar thing at the top of the window pushes the whole thing down. Since I can't put that menu bar above the top of my display, it means a menu bar-sized chunk of the game window is always invisible off the bottom of my screen, even after hiding my taskbar! I think this would be fixed by just having it start in fullscreen, though.

Also, I know this is designed for a custom controller (excited to try it that way!). So all of this is about the game as I can play it, since while I know the experience is going to be very different on the intended way to play,  I can't do that quite yet lol. So, on the controller, I had a bit of a struggle with consistency in the controls. From looking at an input viewer on my controller, it looks like the trigger is set to start the squeeze action at 0.5 on the trigger axis, which is super deep when playing on controller, especially when you need to control how hard you're squeezing. Confining the squeeze control to only the 2nd half of the trigger is rough, especially when there's no controller feedback like rumble to help reinforce the muscle memory of where the squeeze happens in the trigger. I frequently found myself trying to squeeze gently but then pulling the trigger like 40% of the way and watching as the fruit just fell past my motionless hands. It would be nice if the initial squeeze action happened waaay less deep into the trigger on a standard controller.

I'm real excited to see this game in person with the custom controller, though. I feel like that will elevate the experience a lot, and I love unusual peripherals and controls like that!

Woah, I’m the one critiquing a game made by David and Mike? (And also Sean! Hi Sean!) Man, how the tables have turned…. 

In all seriousness though, you got a really cool game here. I know you guys have a special controller planned, so take everything I’m about to share with a big ‘ol grain of salt. I played with a dualsense controller instead and it worked pretty well. I’m also assuming you have some sort of special vertical monitor/display, since the game didn’t seem to play well with my monitor, with full screen having the classic Unity 2D blue background and windowed being cut off at the bottom. Not the end of the world, but I figured it was worth mentioning. 

The game itself knocked it of the park in the art and sound departments, with the art being fleshy and gross in the best way possible, and the sound being squishy and also appropriately “gross” to match! 

Obviously part of the fun/difficulty is gonna come from using the special controller, so I can only speak to the experience so much, but what’s here is simple but effective due to the plentiful feedback in terms of sound and visuals. One thing that confused me a little was that it wasn’t immediately obvious that the blue fruit dudes were the one you had to press. In my mind, it makes a little more sense that you’d wanna squeeze to juice the big ones, so I found my wires getting crossed. The spiky fruit was pretty clear to not hit, though. I was also confused whether I wanted to squeeze the batteries or not, because at least when I ran the game I couldn’t see my score/timer at all. The bottom left of the screen was completely blank. I restarted the game a few times to try to get to the bottom of the issue but the score and timer were both missing. Didn’t impact my experience THAT much, but I figured I’d also mention! 

At the end of the day, you have a fun game when it’s being played in optimally, so I can’t wait to see it played properly with the right controller! I really hope this gets into the pop-up arcade so I can pick your brains about the controller, I’m sure you know I’m a big fan of games with alt controls! Great work guys!