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The flying controls feel the most natural when you use the WASD keys and mouse in conjunction with the Space Bar or Shift (for fast flight). I noticed that when you fly that way, you can even fly up and down without ever having to use the Q and E keys for altitude. So ideally the Q and E keys shouldn't even be necessary.

Something else to think about: Is it really necessary to have 3 flight speeds? I would recommend cutting it down to two. One immediate benefit would be in how it simplifies the control scheme. So maybe have one moderate flight speed for flying around towns and character interactions, and a faster flight speed when you're on the world map.

I never would have guessed that the arrow corresponds to time of day (or why the time of day even matters to begin with).

The N for North on the compass could use more contrast to stand out.

The text crawls by really slow at the very beginning of the game. A skip feature would be nice or some way to speed up the text narrative.

While developing the game, the blue and orange altitude bars may be of use to you, but from a player perspective I don't feel like any of that information is necessary. Most games with flight have an invisible "ceiling" that the player can't fly past and the game usually gently turns the player around back towards earth.

I find the Control guide a little hard to read in the circular style. I would recommend simply listing all of the key mappings with all of the text aligned to the left. Make the most common controls stand out more from the lesser used controls so the player can quickly identify which ones are important.

It's up to you, but maybe consider adding money earned or letters delivered to the main game UI instead of buried in a menu. It will give the player a greater sense of accomplishment if they can see right in front of them what they've done.

The correlation between names and animals isn't very obvious. For example, I met a lizard named Paxtkin (sp?), but nothing in that name really screams "Lizard species" to me, unless I'm to assume that all lizards have short, one-word names. Have you thought about using a visual way of representing letters and who they need to go to?

All of these suggestions I feel would be steps in the right direction . . . but ultimately this game is your creation and only you know exactly what the finished version should play like. I would make one last suggestion though: Get more feedback from players. Here on Itch there's a member named Vlad MGC https://vladyslu.itch.io/

He does Youtube videos of Itch games (even demos and beta versions). Maybe see if he can play your game and give some feedback. I've also found that if you play other people's games here on Itch, they usually reciprocate, and the feedback you get can be most valuable.

That's such good feedback I turned my reply into a devlog.

Two points I didn't address (because they didn't really fit with the theme of the post):

1. I find the vertical ascend/descend controls invaluable around buildings, particularly when negotiating towers. If you can manage without them, I admire your dragon-handling skills.

2. Good point about having some sort of progress measure on screen. I've tried to keep the game view as uncluttered as possible, but I can always make them optional (as I will with the altimeters).

And thank you for the point to Vlad MGC. That'll be something for the next level of release.

You're welcome and I'm glad I can be of help. :) 

I've struggled with a lot of the same things while making my own game. I would understand a certain game mechanic (of course) but then get frustrated when players couldn't figure out what to do. Or I would add features that were ultimately steps in the wrong direction and end up removing them. This video by another developer here on Itch sums it up perfectly.

But I'm confident that if we as indie game devs keep working on our games, we'll eventually reach that moment where it all comes together, when it suddenly becomes the game we've always dreamed of playing.

That video is spot on. The story about the game crashing when a test player tried opening the menu during a cut scene reminded me very strongly of my first testers reporting the controls not working, and it turning out that they'd been dismissing the map while the game was still generating and that catastrophically interrupting the loading sequence.

Glad to hear you liked the video. The guy that made it also plays other people's games occasionally. You can find him here on Itch.