Please use this form if you'd like critique on your game!
Game Title/URL: Sentenced https://bondreal.itch.io/sentenced
Pitch/Information: Just a short tribute to the difficult platformers I grew up with in the 90's. Essentially, you have to escape hell.
I'd like feedback on:
Anything that you see or feel when you are playing it. Just looking for feedback.
Hi bondreal!
Super difficult platformers are uh...not my strong suit, but I hope this feedback is still helpful:
- I like the lighting the game uses :>
- I found that certain hitboxes didn't match up to the sprites. The lava hitbox seemed larger than it should be, and the spikes had hitboxes on the sides as well as the top. I'm not sure if this is an intentional design decision regarding the spikes (as a call-back to old platformers), but to me, touching the side of spikes feels like it shouldn't kill you.
- The music's pretty neat, though I wonder if it might work better if it kept playing after death, rather than always returning to the start.
- It felt a bit awkward to use WASD and E for the controls, specifically for the sprint. I'd recommend putting the sprint on SHIFT instead for that control scheme
- The sprite work is simple but effective. The slimes are quite cute!
- The birds sometimes got stuck inside the ground, usually when they were flying up into it
I didn't end up beating the game, but that might just be on my poor skills. An optional mode with checkpoints would be helpful, but that might go against the design ethos you're trying to imitate, here.
Thank you for the excellent feedback. I primarily intended on a gamepad being used as I am garbage in platformers with a keyboard. The XBox gamepad I used during playtesting allowed me to make it through the level at a much higher percentage. Your point about "E" being bad when using WASD for movement I agree completely with that. "Shift" would have been much better. I will do that from now on. The other points about collisions on the sides of the spikes or colliders that do not match up with sprites are spot on. I went back and looked. You are absolutely correct. The point about it being better if the music was looped and not restarted makes sense too and would help with immersion as well to keep the stress up. Thank you for the compliments about the sprites.. all I can do is simple. lol. I am a software engineer I am not an artist at all. I just started using the 2d light rendering that unity now offers and it really helps/is easy to use. I added the birds really late in the game for added collisions to avoid and I did not see them flying up into the blocks during gameplay. I will fix that.
