Heya, here's my feedback!
Game design feedback:
- I wish the torch instantly snapped to the cursor movement, rather than having that smoothing. It makes the game feel less responsive when I have to wait for the torch to illuminate the path ahead. Furthermore in a time-intensive game, snappiness and repsonsiveness is very important.
- The torch is a little too small range. Many times I cannot see my character and the platform I'm jumping to at the same time. This causes a lot of frustration trying to time jumps and leads to deaths that are less based on skill and more of memorizing the map layout of what's ahead.
- Since this is a game where you die frequently, I wish the character respawned much faster, and the intro cutscene would be skipped after the first time you die in that level.
- The intro cutscene is rather long, but also because of that camera movement in the dark, it's very difficult to orientate yourself, especially since the camera pans a long distance and then to the red wheel, rather than your character. So a lot of precious seconds are lost just trying to wait for the camera to orient on your character before you actually want to move, as if you move beforehand while the cutscene is still playing, you cannot see where your character is heading.
- For me I didn't like the timed challenge on level 3(?). It requires me to memorize the level layout, and combined with the small torch range and tiny platforms, I think it was a little too much for me. I gave it a couple tries but ultimately couldn't pass it. I wish that if you died a few times, the game asks if you want to make it easier, like removing the red spinning gear, so that I can just skip the level and experience the rest of the game without having to struggle. I think as the game creator you are the expert at the level layout, but I think it would be better if it could have an easier difficulty option to also accommodate players less experienced in the genre maybe?
What I loved
- The art was really good and consistent
- I liked how you control a torch and a character - the execution can be better but the idea is nice
- I liked that you discover how to double jump after the first level, I think an idea is to introduce progressive skills or even have upgrades you can choose, like bigger torch range, which I would definitely pick haha.
- Loved the texts at the beginning that show the character dialogs and thoughts, I enjoyed reading them!
- Also loved the voice of the knight when he falls. AHHH!!
Overall good job on the art and atmosphere!