Hi, I had a great time playing your game! Hope my feedback will be useful:
Good points:
- First of all, I quite like the concept of having to manage the way that the different foods interact with each other. It somehow kind of feels like I’m actually cooking and it makes me feel like I’m actually good at it. I found it really enjoyable even if I’m more into fast fps and immersive sims so congrats! Your game is fun!
- I really like the rush that you’re in when the end counter starts playing and I feel like I need to rearrange my entire omelet. Gives me Overcooked vibes.
- The art style is really slick. It looks really polished so I quite like it.
- The music perfectly fits the game and the sound effects are all coherent so good job on the sound part.
- I really like the fact that you can choose different “upgrades” that affect your play style. It adds a lot of depth to the gameplay.
Signs and feedback issues:
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It is really hard to understand what the point of the game is. I had to play at least 8 different times before finally figuring out the concept of “different foods make you win or loose points when they touch each other”. It doesn’t seem to be an easy task but I think you need to rework the tutorial in some way.
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It’s hard to know if I’m actually winning or loosing. The top left corner indicator isn’t really the most readable. You’d be wise to switch it for a progress bar. I usually look at the score (and objective) near the end of the round - because I was too busy trying to make an effective disposition on the omelet. And in these moments it’s kind of a rush. So it would feel more fair if the information was more readable at all times.
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In the first 10-15 rounds, since the game is going quite fast, there’s often not a lot of time to read what each ingredient does when interacting with another one. It’s especially an issue when we’re talking about a new ingredient.
I thought of a solutions for this: it would be to slow the time down when the player has been hovering on an ingredient for about 0.5 seconds without grabbing it. This way, he would have more time to read. But it’s not a serious issue since each playing session is really short. So I don’t think it’s a big deal if you don’t “fix” it.
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It took me about 20 minutes to figure out what the inventory was. If I were you I would turn it into a fridge (or rename it “the pantry” instead of “inventory”) and remove and ingredient from it every time it appears on the conveyor.
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I only saw that there were linked objects after playing for an entire hour. It needs to be more obvious. Make the grey-brown of the buttons lighter when hovered and I guarantee that it will be 10 times easier to understand. (I know that the outline already turns yellow but it’s not visible enough)
UI issues:
- There are a lot of issues with overlapping menus. Your UI would really benefit from a better - more defined - cleaner layout.
- I’d really like to see more animations on the menus.
- The “show omelet” button is a bit clunky. It would probably look better if it was always on the side.
- Personally I didn’t care about half the stats at the end. It’s just too much information. Just show the score, time, and highest score round, and hide the rest of the stats under a “details” button for hardcore players that want to analyse their playthroughs like chess Grandmasters analyse every one of their games.
To summarize, the game is already fun at it’s current state. You did a great job of balancing the different “pantry upgrades” as I like to call them. Though there is still quite a lot of work to do on the UI and the clarity of the game.
Have a great development journey, you’re on the right track!
// oh and I hate to ask for it but could you try out my game? I was really counting on this jam to get some feedback on the difficulty and the intuitiveness of the mechanics and I’m kinda low on reviews. I’d really appreciate it if you found the time - even after the jam, I don’t really care about the scores and ranks of the jam. It’s more about exchanging valuable feedback. Thanks for your time man, have a nice day ;)