This is a really great game so far, well done! My high score is 2800!
Good things that stood out to me:
Awesome background, reminded me of Game Boy Advanced games, the sprite work is great, the bombs in the later levels really add to the challenge!
Things I didn't understand:
When I first started playing I wondered if the bubbles hurt you. I just avoided them by staying at the bottom of the screen, this also made it easier to catch things.
When the first stage ended, the sound seemed like I was on a heart monitor so I thought I died.
The amount of points starfish give you seems very small, I get more points for just completing a stage, meaning I might as well not collect them!
Things I would suggest changing:
The music feels very off, random high notes and no real volume fades and adjustments, but the overall progression and feeling was good.
Changing backgrounds or a story, a reason to keep playing. Like in Nemo how the scenery keeps changing and they have an end goal in sight, it would be nice to see the background change between levels and some motivation for the player to keep going.
This page, remember to add the controls so people not familiar with GB Studio will know how to play! The title art is also a bit rough and the background image could scroll with the screen if it was the correct size.
Overall the game is great! I got to level 9 and it is definitely more difficult! I can see this being a real physical game in the future, awesome job! Very re-playable!
Viewing post in Finny's Aquatic Frenzy!!! comments
Thanks a lot for your feedback! I'm so glad you got to play my game, your tutorials have been a great help to me in understanding GB Studio!
- The bubbles are just there to add to the atmosphere of being underwater, but maybe I could make it more clear they don't harm you.
- In terms of starfish they do increment the score in the smallest amount, so I do want to add an incentive to collecting them overtime. Hmm there isn't actually a score increase for just completing a stage, but getting the speed powerup does give you 5x the amount to the score when collected
- Making music is probably the hardest part for me lol and I've actually been working on a horror game for quite a while so I feel like I don't know how to make a great cheerful tune, but I'll definitely want to adjust music and sound effects by the end of development!
- I do have ideas for story and more content to work on, those are great ideas tho to implement!
- And yeah I've been wanting to update this page, hopefully I can get around to that and add the controls too. The video where you uploaded on itch was the only way I could figure it all out so thank you for that!
Thanks again for checking it out and I'm glad you enjoyed it! I would love to make a physical release one day!