Blackheart
by Grimmy Nocturne
Hey there Grimmy, thanks for submitting a project to the 2022 IGMC. I was asked to judge your game in round two of the IGMC 2022 game jam. Here's some feedback about your project.
I like all of the extra options in the options screen. There are many more than the average entry in here so good job with that.
It's interesting that you've ask the player if they wanted to live right at the beginning of the game, I said yes, but now I am left wondering what happens if you say no? Probably Game Over? I'll have to replay it sometime.
Nice music selection.
When Mathias joins the party he teleports to her. You could make a quick and small movement event to make that look better. Same thing for when Sylvena joins.
I prefer to play with a controller and you've bound the dash skill to pressing 1 on the keyboard. It would be a great idea to also tie it to a button on the controller going forward.
The animations on all of the player skills are well picked and customized, but the first enemies you face is missing that extra effort.
You should allow an autosave before the first crusader fight. Not that it's overly challenging, but just in case someone messes up real bad, they won't have to restart the whole thing.
You've done a good job of mapping the town and other maps, but there's too much fog and you can barely see what you're looking at. I would reduce that quite a bit.
Nice little RPG throwback by letting the player smash the pots in the buildings for loot. I also find it interesting that most of the things you interact with get destroyed. It's kind of a subtle thing but good.
I like that you've used classical piano pieces like Moonlight Sonata through-out the game.
I think that you've spoiled something when you revealed the inner thoughts of Lord North. It's kind of clear that when he reveals the main character's inner power that 'something' is up, and I can't help but think that you could of saved that for later in the game.
Good story writing I really enjoyed it.
Why is it that the special tree move that the main character gets is soo strong on Lord North, but so weak on his minion? Regardless, you've done a good job of balancing the fights.
You could further improve the game if you rewarded exploration a bit more, especially with how big you've made most of these maps. You could do this by simply adding more chests and hidden interactable events.
Add name borders to all of the show texts so we can better identify the names of each of the characters.
The story starts really strong and fizzles out slightly through-out the game. I think that you should change the 'I joined to save my brother' motive of the 2nd character because it's too close to the main character's motive and comes off as a lack of creativity in this scene.
The action sequence for 'The End' is pretty tight! I liked that.
The final sequence was good, although I wonder what the other ending would have been. :)
(I chose the 'I refuse' option.)
Overall I think that you've done a great job with presenting a project for the IGMC 2022. I found it to be an enjoyable experience and I look forward to what you work on next.
-Drifty