Hi! I just tried your game. Unfortunately I did not get very far before I hit a point that I could not get passed even after multiple attempts... But based on what I have seen, here is some comments:
- The art of is good. There is a lot of different object and details in the environment. It looks really funny (in a good way!) when the ghost goes hiding in the holes.
- I found one "art bug": sometimes the ghost can hide also while close but not on top of a hole and then it looks like that the ghost is just going trough the ground. You might want to check the collission/trigger areas of the holes so the ghost can only use the ability when on top of a hole.
- There was a lot of funny details in the game world: the ghost can interact with the doors and do weird stuff like switching the lights of a building or cause a beer flood. This game clearly has a comedic side to it and might be something that encourages players to play the game further in order to see what surprises are waiting for them later in the game.
- Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get very long in the game as it quickly became really difficult. I never got passed the two poltergeist patrolling together shortly after the pub. The game mechanic of hiding in the holes to get pass the poltergeist is fun idea but the difficulty was making it difficult to enjoy the game (and impossible to continue). I believe the difficulty comes from two factors:
- 1) the hiding time is quite short and has to be triggered very precisely to avoid enemies seeing you. Having it be longer would help the player. The best case would be that the player could be able to decide within certain limits how long they are hiding.
- 2) The detection system is quite difficult to understand. Looking at the player and the enemies it is not clear whether the enemies can see the player so I had to guess a lot while playing and usually ended up dying when in my opinion I was really far from the poltergeists. I noticed that you had put detection bar on the bottom left corner to help the player with this problem but I'm afraid that it didn't help me a lot as it was super difficult to look both the bar and the player character at the same time. Easy way to make it little better would be to change the location of the bar closer to the player so it is easier to see both in one glance. But I would think that even better method would be to change the game mechanics so that the player will not die when the enemy sees the player but when they catch the player. Trying to not touch the enemies is very natural task to many players because it is something that happens also in other games. You could use the same hiding mechanic (just make sure that the enemies cannot kill the player while hidden) to get past the enemies and the main game play would be similar, just more intuitive and therefore potentially more enjoyable for players. If you like the detection mechanic, you could even include that in this variation too! Maybe if the enemy sees the player they will start chasing the player and the player would have to quickly run away, dodge, or find a place to hide before they are caught. That would be really exciting!
- Game looks like not to work when not in Full Screen. Part of the view is outside of the Camera. You can fix this by changing the settings on the itch.io page: Edit Game -> Embed options. Either make Width and Height settings bigger to fit the entire game or select "Click to launch in fullscreen" to make the game only playable in Fullscreen mode. See the image below:
My favorite part of the game was the weird and surprising secrets. It would have been nice to be able to play further.
If you have time, please consider trying my submission for the jam. It would be cool to hear you opinions of my game: both positive or constructive comments would be very much appreciated!