I loved playing this one. Probably my favorite in the platforming genre.
There were a few minor things that could make this an amazing game.
1. It could benefit from a little more direction. I saw many branching paths but it seemed like a lot of them lead to the same place, but with different rewards. That's fine but it makes navigating it without a map a little difficult.
2. You definitely need to make the enemies drop something. There is no incentive to kill them. I felt like most of the time I was running by them. And when I had to kill them there still wasn't that incentive to get excited about.
3. The game could use some collectibles, minor and major. Minor collectibles would be something like coins, rings, gems, etc. The platforming was lacking that incentive to take the more difficult paths. There was also not a ton of reason for exploration. Minor collectibles and maybe more major collectibles would help that. You have gloves and MP/HP upgrades for major collectibles but it's not obvious what areas they are in, so it still feels like running through a maze. And because of the lack of direction, there was never a reason to take a path that I thought would be backtracking. --Also maybe the characters you talk to could be a form of major collectible. They could give you a lot of minor collectibles or talking to all of them unlocks extra content at the end of the chapter.
These critiques mostly fall under polish so it's understandable. Good job on the game!
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Thanks for your feedback! Ill comment in order:
- The maze-like structure of the game was what we intended to have, but due to time constraints we ended up trying to block off areas that were incomplete. Inherently, it was a completely bad idea in hindsight that we left out a map, so we're at fault. Next time, we'll be sure to add a map to future projects!
- Initially, we planned to have enemies drop currency, healing items, and other things. Due to time constraints, we ended up dropping the shop system we had in mind, and moved healing to appropriate areas instead. Thanks for telling us this, though, since it means we'll focus on incentivizing on defeating enemies in our future projects!
- Like the above statement, a lot of the collectibles/items we planned were eventually dropped due to time. Originally, we planned on having the player collect different pieces of equipment that would be gained through talking with npc's continuously, which is why they have an absurdly large amount of text per npc. Exploration was also originally something we focused on, which is why theres a lot of dead end paths marked with an X in the current build. Due to time, we ended up having to focus entirely on getting the main narrative down instead, since that was our bulk of the 1 hour requirement for the gamejam.
Again, thanks so much for feedback! It helps us know what we can improve on next time!
Originally areas were blocked off, ya. An example of this is the flower glove being used as a large spring, letting you access high-up areas that were previously too high to reach.
As of now, we don't know whether or not we plan to continue this, since it was mostly made just for this jam and to test out the dual-wielding mechanic. Maybe in the future we'll flesh it out more!