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(4 edits)

My Thoughts :)

Found 21 friends, and my first thoughts are that add a button (perhaps the SHIFT key) to make him sprint instead of him speeding up over time because this gives more control to the player. 

-Consider creating an up and down walking animation as I think it would give more life to the protagonist. 

-Consider setting up a menu screen where you can Play game and Quit the game too (it can be that minimal) + it could set the mood. 

-I liked the introduction with the images but unlike the last few pictures depicting the boss of the Gordon City Bank they're aren't coloured, consider doing so but thats entirely up to you :) you might be going to a black and white theme to reflect a depressive state. (If so then maybe as they get more friends the colours of the town become more vibrant.  OR people who you aren't friends with are colourless but when you become friends they become coloured, just an idea that popped into my head.)

-Also consider adding a town theme song which plays everywhere there isn't a music box (if you want to be thematic you can make it a dummed down version of the music box tune so when you find it, it sounds more invigorating). 

-Whenever I get to the edge of each side of town I run into the wall and are teleported to the middle of the screen. This feels a little jarring so just set up some normal collisions there and consider having something physical in the way so this barrier is more believable in the game world.

-As with all game of a similar style, such as Castle Crashers its hard to perform certain tasks from that perspective. For instance putting in the basketball was quite hard due to the nature of the style of game you've used. So consider thinking of other approaches that rather than show weaknesses of the style embrace their strengths. Every game style has weaknesses and advantages. 

- Finally think of what you could say with this artwork (game), friendship is a pretty important part of all our lives. Does something happen and he has to rely on his friends for help? Do they all disappear the next day and you have to find out what happened and save them? etc.

Apart from all that I think these are the humble begginings of something really cool. I'm glad you've posted your game here because player feedback is arguably the most important aspect of learning how to make your games better. But make sure to get more than just one opinion because unfortuantly some people won't like your finished game, while others will you have to focus on this group. As long as you make it engaging (it doesn't have to be just fun) you'll make the most out of what you've made. 

Stay Determined :)

Just a side note, THANKYOU for making it playable on browser. I think what really stops people from playing demos of games on any website if if they have to download to play anything. So always have a demo online linking people to your full game if you make one :) Good work.

(2 edits)

Thank you for the thorough feedback! Here are my thoughts.

Re: 21 friends. Once you make 21 friends, talking to one of the characters will open up a new scene in the same environment and allow you to make more. We will look into adding an additional hint about this as it is not terribly intuitive at the moment.

Re: Friendship themes, there is a bit of an arc that progresses as you go from scene to scene that kind of touches on what you describe (ie. the reliance on friends). But we have to make sure it's not too hard to reach this and that ties into my comment above.

Re: Black/white transitioning color. There are some additional things we can do with this within the context of the still images (there are more in subsequent scenes). There are also things we can do within the core gameplay as you suggested, but at the moment I am inclined to leave that for a future episode. 

Re: Up/Down animation. Others have made this comment too. I've always thought it wouldn't look natural and therefore haven't had the motivation to try. Maybe I am just being stubborn. I will give it shot.

Re: Player falling off the edge and re-spawning. I agree with this 100%. I think the approach I will try is to put ground/wall outside the view of the camera on either end of the level. This way, the player can leave the screen and then re-emerge without running into an imaginary barrier which I think may also be a bit jarring.

Re: Town theme song. We've gone back/forth on this and for a long period of time there was more constant music. My concern has been that it could be an immediate turn-off for some if they don't like the song. A constant song could also conflict with things that occur in later scenes. We'll give it some thought.

Re: Basketball. This is the first comment we've heard about it being tricky. As a basketball player, I am probably biased, but will likely keep it in unless many report similar to you. I will say that we have had positive feedback about the basketball portion too.  

Re: Shift key to run. Our goal has been make the controls as simple as possible. This ties into supporting mobile and also general accessibility for non-expert gamers. That said, this suggestion has been made before, so we do not want to completely disregard.  We'll give it some thought.

Lastly, I am happy to hear you think releasing on itch was a good choice as we evaluated a bunch of different options and this seemed like the best for what we are trying to accomplish.

Thanks again for the comment. We will stay determined!

Donny