Disclaimer: I fully understand this is a game jam game not everything can be done but even then I give very "tough" feedback so if you can't handle that kind of "criticism" it's ok just don't read my message.
When pressing and/or holding the jump button it cancels out the press/hold of the arrow keys and so one doesn't end up able to move, I know one can just jump and still move but the hold of the jump button is still common on platformers as said common implementation is to let players do a short or long jump depending on how long the button was pressed, in this game if you hold it you can't move in the slightest, you can move while jumping as long as the button isn't pressed but it just doesn't feel right.
I'd highly advice adding a mild warning for photosensitive epilepsy due to how the "lasers" (or what I assume they are) are presented, either that or tone down their brightness and/or remake them by going from a dark color to a light color slowly (but be careful with the light end not being too bright) as to prevent this.
The controls felt somewhat unresponsive at times, one the movement controls because of hte aforementioned but they are also "cancelled" if pressing the attack button, speaking of the attack the animation is a little slow (a little excessive on the anticipation side ) and could feel semi delayed at times, more on that later. Also sometimes it's also unresponsive because well I press attack but the character doesn't end up attacking at all sometimes. Speaking of after I got the shooting ability I wasn't even able to use it at any time I tried, I'm assuming it required the purple stuff but it isn't really clear if that is indeed the case. And also the C to interact could be changed to the up arrow in my opinion as most interactions if not all used by C are very similar and it's also kind of what players are used to in sidescrollers. The character didn't want to attack in any other direction other than left and right with the arrow keys, I see this is possible with numpad arrow keys but keep in mind not all keyboards will have them and it's more intuitive to just use the arrow keys instead.
Speaking of the purple stuff, the top right UI indicator could recieve more clarity in the sense of atleast a % from 0 to 100 of how full or empty the container is as it would be nice to know how much is required to heal and also to shoot (if this is what's required to shoot).
Back to the character animations, what you want to do in these types of games is avoid as much anticipation as possible to make the actions feels as responsive as possible and both attack and sweeping felt quite slow, especially sweeping so be careful with that.
Speaking of assets, consistency, this time on the light sources, I guess the background and the ground are fine but the enemies and that not so much as for example the main character seems to have this solid color with an outline that makes it look like pillow shading while the enemies have this more "defined" form via shading so be careful with that too.
The audio settings in menu I recommend slide bars instead of the current system or anything, there's tutorials on how to set up proper audio volume as decibels aren't like exactly managed 1 to 1 with % for example, this is a complicated topic I don't really want to touch on so I'll leave it at that.
All in all, very ambitious for a game jam, you got something in, that's already good in itself, the menu is quite impressive althought it would have done just fine with basic audio settings (muting and master, bgm and sfx volume) and basic video settings (fullscreen and resolution options) as the rest aren't really needed or well I didn't seem to see a need or purpose or didn't really understood what they did. I'd say it's still not bad, good job.
Viewing post in BroomStickBot jam comments
Thanks for playing.
Some actions are meant to be slow such as sweeping which was meant to be performed in safe situation.
I don't understand why people say something about not being able to jump and move at the same time cause I can perform that perfectly fine here. Haven't tested it with different OS though.
As for control simplicity, sorry, I won't create ambiguity by using Up for interact and aiming. Direction keys are meant for aiming shots and thrusts. It would be real annoying if you accidentally interact a switch when you only want to shoot upwards. Not to mention, interact animation takes time and you can't shoot while doing that.
Also shooting has delay by design cause it's not a machine gun.
As for action bug, yeah that's true. It's a new system I've developed recently and it has rare jammed bug. Unfortunately, I couldn't find all cause of the bug during jam time limit so I hasn't fix it perfectly.
I didn't mention the shooting having delay but alright.
I see about the sweeping, I kind of figured but still to keep in mind.
About the jump, as I described you can jump and move, the issue is pressing the jump button again or holding it while already jumping, that ends up causing the character to not move at all, causing the jump to feel awkward even if the jump button is released as soon as one actually jumps, the first second/half a second one still is not able to move.
ABout the controls, that is fair, doesn't mean you shouldn't be wary because the actual arrow keys don't really work to aim, character only ends up aiming left and right with those, only the numpad keys actually end up working for aiming which again not all keyboards will have numpad and it's not that intuitive in contrast to just having the actual arrow keys.
Something I forgot to mention is to be careful with AZXC control scheme because of AZERTY and QWERTZ keyboards so I know multiple set control schemes and/or custom keybinds are next to impossible to implement in a game jam but this one is more for a post game jam if you plan on continue investing time on the game.
Thanks for the tips, I never see other keyboard models so I never bother to add different control scheme. I'm going to consider what to do with that but for now hopefully player would read the note in controls.txt I've included with the game.
As for jump issue, thanks for the elaboration. That's what I need to know to understand better of the issue :)
When you mentioned about laser's color, I've checked my sources where I learn about the colors and .... I learned it wrong. The source didn't use saturated color like I did so it was my mistake. I'm going to reduce the saturation in my next projects. Thanks for reminding me about this :D.