I was eager to play this Zelda Oracle style boss rush and it didn’t disappoint! I also enjoyed the Mega Man-style where you choose boss in orders and unlock weapons accordingly, but with a pair of melee/range attacks instead.
I died a few times in Jam mode and many times in Hard mode, forcing me to try observe boss patterns and weapon properties more, trying different boss orders to find the right weapon for the right opponent!
New Game+ last weapon unlock was cool too!
My feedback by category:
Balance issues:
- ice block is cool to destroy red boss’s spear and preventing it from spamming projectiles in second phase! But it doesn’t work on any shinigami’s attack, making blue weapon less worth against the last boss
- green boss feather attack seems to give a huge hitbox to each feather, was hard to dodge. I had to move away farther instead of just staying at 22.5 degrees which would be more efficient for immediate counter-attack
- in some placements, it’s very hard to dodge the Shinigami’s scythe even if you keep moving
- generally speaking, it’s hard to dodge stuff at the last moment, but in a genre where dodge is mainstream feature, going back to the roots with simple top-view controls without dodge is also refreshing and challenging. It forces us to predict attacks more in advance (or use ice block on projectiles)
- green weapon felt weak, probably due to spreading of damage across the many projectiles… Probably well balanced in a full game with minion battles, but in a boss rush with only one target (with the exception of Blue boss spawning minions), it doesn’t cover up the lack of power
Aesthetics issues:
- hub has imperfect BGM loop
- to allow smooth motion, characters move with sub-pixels, but they may also stop on sub-pixels. To avoid fix you may snap characters who stop moving to an integer pixel. But it’s not that terrible in an action game; in fact, Shovel Knight uses continuous motion allowing sub-pixels even on stop position, and I never noticed until I paid attention.
- I thought the ending cinematic was featuring a camel but considering the setting (and reference to Zelda Oracle’s opening cinematic when Link arrives to the temple) it must have been a horse
Player feedack issue:
- if you stand where the boss weapon orb will appear after defeating boss, player character silently picks (no SFX, no FX) it and player may miss the fact they got a new weapon
UI issue:
- cannot press start to go back to main menu and select different difficulty level. I think I selected Jam difficulty by accident when doing a “New Game+” with shinigami weapon unlocked. So I had to close and restart the game, but then I lost my save and shinigami weapon unlock! See “Go further” last suggestion.
Bugs:
- just before entering Shinigami boss, I lost the blue weapon, replaced with normal one, for some reason. Could not repro. Did I hit the blue fire one time too many?
- when defeated by Shinigami at a certain point (probably at the start of skill SFX), the SFX keeps playing in loop in the hub after respawn, until starting boss again and fight actually starts again
- Shinigami may appear quite offset to the right of thrown scythe target position and that may make it appear more than 50% outside screen
Go further:
- probably due to lack of time, the ending cinematic didn’t show whom the MC wanted to resurrect, although it was hinted in previous dialogues
- ability to pick any combination of melee and range (e.g. using range attack on a torch to replace range attack only). BUT it’s probably easier for the brain to remember the same pair every time, so just something that would be cool in New Game+
- show damage and boss HP bar? Not something that was present in 2D Zelda times, but maybe would be good in expert/debug/replay mode to understand DPS and why red weapon look so strong, or if green weapon is worth it… also for you, the dev, to help balancing!
- add a little message at the end of the game (if finished for the first time in that difficulty level) to tell player they unlocked shinigami weapon for that difficulty level, so players don’t just close the game after beating hard mode
- persistent save for finishing game and unlocking shinigami’s weapon (for the same or inferior level of difficulty, I suppose), so I’m not afraid of closing the game (esp. since there is no way to go back to main menu)
I know it’s hard to get back on jam games to update them, so don’t worry about the suggestions, it’s more important to keep this stuff in mind for your next games! … Although I see you tackle a different genre every time!
Eager to try your other games!