Cute dinosaur char
Born to mash click forced to time and aim my attacks
Very fun game and take on theme, with an also enjoyable track
Viewing post in Spiral Counter jam comments
Finally managed to beat it, this first post itself showed my fundamental misunderstanding of your game.
I was never meant to go on the attack, the slime you can fight just by staying still and hitting it when it approaches, the golem is wait and dodge. The wizard I feel is a different game, since it is asking for my multitasking ability of watching for hazards while remembering the colors that flashed a few seconds ago (I don't think this is very fun, to be honest. When there's six of them I felt I was just gambling on a 50/50 rather than properly engaging with the games mechanics. The incoming attack and the portal it came from being purple and the attack being homing really is "you either remember that or you get hit," which is overly favorable to the boss, considering its his only attack. In a way, reminds me of malenia's sword dance)
Other than that, I'd like to ask, the core nature of the game is being passive. Slime and golem alike, you're on the offensive only when they're down (and the golem arguably makes you choose whether to focus on attacking and take a risk on being hit by beyblade head due to a poor timing, or time your attacking with the beyblade to deal a little less damage but taking none too). I think there are few games that make you so passive mechanically, as players mostly want to be active when gaming. Was this dichotomy intentional, you really wanted to make the sit on the passive role since it's a thing you don't do much (teaching patience is a virtuous job), or was it incidental as you designed the core concepts of the game?
It was something I became aware of and leaned into, but it wasn't my intent to make a passive game. I mostly just wanted to come up with a unique and interesting game mechanic, and maybe action games not usually being very passive led me to designing a more passive style of gameplay for better or worse. Some of my inspirations include Skyward Sword and Ocarina of Time, which have some pretty passive fights that require patience and observation, so that was definitely a factor. And while it wasn't as big of an inspiration for this, I'm a big fan of Sekiro, which requires the player to be extremely observant and reactive of the enemies attacks, and often encourages you to wait for the enemy to approach. Idk, maybe I'm just a sucker for more mechanically passive games, and that just happened to bleed into my design philosophy.
Though it was never really my intention for the player to not have to move for so much of the game. The wizard initially didn't have the hazards, and you could beat the entire fight standing still which I found a little underwhelming, so I added the hazards to force the player to think about them and either move around them or try to parry them (though in retrospect I may have overtuned the difficulty of that fight and overestimated a new player's ability to memorize a sequence while avoiding another attack)
Anyways thanks for your feedback, and for returning to beat it. You bring up some really interesting points and got me thinking on the nature of games being more active or passive mechanically.
Ooh, hearing your inspirations a lot of it clicks together. Very interesting to hear all of this, I'm glad I asked.
It is a niche to be explored, and if you like it, it probably is a zone you should venture in your journey. I'll certainly be curious to see how you continue evolving in this philosophy, as it is one difficult to balance, and hard to sell to players used to blowing up 500 things on the screen every second. As opposed to crazy action or stillness, finding what is the balance for a serene action game.