This game is a mixed bag for me. I can definitely see ideas in the game that would make for a great game, in my opinion, but a lot of things just seem to fall flat for me. I totally understand that a lot of this could be because you didn’t get the time to fully implement everything you had in mind, and I totally relate to that, but here are my observations…
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I liked the idea of the boat moving through the level, but, the faster the boat moved, the more it effected the player’s jump. At full speed I had a lot of trouble trying to jump to the right and simply jumping strait up pushed me left. I’m not entirely sure if that was part of the challenge, but it felt a lot more like a bug to me.
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“Death” didn’t feel fully realized. I don’t think I ever finished the first level without having lost all of my health bar(?) after which both the player and boat turn green… but that didn’t seem to effect anything. The birds were still attacking, and the level still completed, giving me access to the next level. This lack of consequence carried into other levels as I didn’t have a huge sense of worry as things were happening.
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The bird didn’t seem effected when I hit them… I mean, they did flash red and died, but, the birds were dive bombing me and even though my weapon struck them, they kept moving, unimpeded, through me, causing me to take damage. If the health system had a consequence, then this loss to health would have been very unfair. I think the birds should have either been pushed back upon being struck, or had their ability to do damage disabled while they blinked red (or both).
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I really liked the tutorials being part of the character’s monologues, but, the windows moved around as the player moved. I lost some of the text at one point because I was standing on the platforms of the mast and the dialog went off screen.
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this is a minor gripe, here, but, on the third level, it’s said you can only pick up two planks, however, the icon used for a “plank” looks like four planks! I didn’t notice this at first and thought I had picked up 8 planks and was confused both in thinking I had that many, then finding that I didn’t. It’s really just down to that icon. Ultimately, the system worked, but it’s just confusingly represented in the UI.
Over all, like I said, I liked a lot of the ideas in the game. If they get fleshed out, this could be a very entertaining little adventure! :)