It's getting a lot better! The combat especially is an improvement. There is a nice variety of mini-games. My favorites are the ones where you punch the enemy and dodge anvils. The fist sandwich mini-game is much easier now, I remember that one being difficult in earlier versions. The ball bouncing mini-game with the bird enemy was a little tricky but I eventually beat it (probably helped that I had some extra points towards Max damage). I got as far as the frog crab boss and then ran out of potions and died.
Maybe I didn't notice it before, but I love the moving cloud shadows cast over the ground. Very simple but nice effect. The graphics and animations are very diverse and consistent. I could almost believe this were a long-forgotten SNES title.
Very nice to see a menu system! Simple but it gets the job done!
Overall the game is looking very polished but I do have a few minor suggestions:
- The pixelated text font is admittedly very retro, but also harder to read, especially on full-screen (I was playing on a 32" monitor). Maybe you can find another font that is still playful but more readable at the same time.
- Playing on a keyboard, I find pressing Enter for Interact to be a little awkward. Space bar for rolling is perfectly fine. I would suggest mapping the shooting and interacting to the Z, X, C or V keys on the bottom row. Less distance for the fingers to travel makes for a much more enjoyable rpg experience. A lot of top-down shooters use the above-mentioned key mapping convention.
- I noticed a few spelling errors here and there. If you have a text file of all the narrative/dialogue I can proofread it for you if you'd like.
Very cool to see the progress this game has made in the course of about a year! Very inspiring!