i actually first played this one a couple of days ago before the submission deadlines so its mind blowing to see all of the rough edges mended and addressed! the game looks adorable and the concept is pretty neat, i like the music track that plays now and the tutorial is straight to the point and easy to skip this time! i also enjoy how you simplified the toolbox puzzle without compromising the solution, i was playing the first version with my friend and he eventually figured it out after we scratched our heads for a while, but this is much better! i also appreciate how you don't have to select an item anymore before performing an action that requires an item. the post bridge content is pretty neat, i was pleasantly surprised to see a cool little fishing game. maybe have a wolf encourage the player to return to previous area to fish because i thought i only had to catch fish in the pond at first and i was confused as to why he told me to bring him the fish that i already had. i also wish the maze was a little bit larger and more labyrinthian in design, it would make for a neat final challenge. overall i can see a lot of work being put into this game and it was fun seeing it evolve in real time. good job people!
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Super cool! I love the art style and concept. Also it looks like you have a really nicely working underlying system which is really great. A few small suggestions after playing...
- I was confused why the controls didn't work but I needed to press E. My suggestion, make more buttons move along the dialogue including space, enter, and esc. You don't have to put them in the help menu, players will naturally figure this out.
- I think it would make sense if you could use the mouse to move and control. The way this could work real easy is you click on a place in the world and your character just tries to move to that location. If they are blocked the move is just canceled so you don't need to worry about complex navigation. To interact with something you can just press the mouse button.
- Speed up the walk cycle animation a bit, maybe twice as fast. Maybe try adding a bit of arm movement.
- Some interactions should be easier to exit, like interacting with the tool box, pressing E (or any of the other interact buttons) should also exit. it's kind of weird to need to press esc to exit those interactions. if using the mouse probably just clicking away should exit.
- For the inventory system maybe it would make more sense to just have it contextual. So instead of requiring the user to select an item and use it. It is just automatically used if the player has it and it works.
- You could also simplify the inventory so instead or 4 separate pieces of wood it just says Piece of wood x 4 or whatever. This can help with clutter and maybe even switch to an icon for the inventory items.
- I was not able to solve the toolbox puzzle. I noticed there are the same colors on the roof in the top right but not sure how to use this to get the code. the box has 5 slots but there are more roof tiles. I think maybe you could do something to highlight what the combo is. I eventually looked in the code on GitHub and cheated to get past this part, still have no idea why it was the correct combo.
- For the music box, I didn't realize at first the the button on top would play the song until I read the hint. you need to really entice the player to click on this sort of thing. like make it extra sparkly. The ZZFX note function could work really well here to add some sound to the notes on the keyboard.
Tat may seem like a lot but really you have the most important stuff working great. I managed to finish the game after cheating to get past the toolbox. I am looking forward to seeing the final version, keep up the great work!
Thanks for all the tips! Been having a lot of fun working on it! I picked up on a few things you said when I ran through it, like the controls definitely could do with being easier to use and some interfaces don't make it obvious where you need to click. But wanted to get the game up as soon as I felt it was completable for some feedback.
Working on sound as well but haven't implemented yet (like notes for the music box and general background music for the game).
Thanks for the note around the toolbox minigame! The solution to that is that the amount of each colour on the roof represents the order that it should be inputted in, so I might have a look at changing that to make it easier, (like maybe ordering the colours instead of it being random and also maybe add in some dialouge to guide the player a bit more?)
The rest of the tips are helpful as well, like the walk animation cycle, having more controls do the same thing for ease of use and the inventory management. For the movement controls being point and click, I might have a look into that after doing some of the final polishing changes as i'm not sure how much time that would take to add in.
Look forward to posting an updated version before the deadline!
For the toolbox puzzle, I see now that is tricky to get. Sometimes you have to make these things a bit easier at least at first. So what I would recommend is have all the roof tiles be brown except for 5 which are the colors in order you need them to be. Then like later on in the game you could have the more complex version of the same puzzle (the way it currently works) but you will probably need a npc near by to give a hint.
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