Hi! Just played through the demo (assuming it's over when you've collected all the fruit) and I'm absolutely loving the potential here! Here's some notes I jotted down while playing:
Compliments:
- The presentation is absolutely wonderful. The characters, the environments, the animations, and even the GUI are just downright charming. I honestly can't say enough good things about how adorable this game looks!
- Equipping skill cards is intuitive and a good way to keep exploration engaging. The skills themselves are quite fun to mess around with, too, and add some depth to what would otherwise be pretty typical platforming.
Critiques:
- The spin dash is REALLY hard to control. Most of my deaths were because I hit the spin button and hurled myself off the edge of a platform. It became a bit easier when I realized you could jump out of a spin, but I didn't realize that until I figured out you can Inspect the equipment. Having this info pop up when you initially collect the card would save a lot of frustration.
- Depth perception was a big issue for me. More often than not, I found myself missing jumps because I was slightly too far back or forward, with the low angle of the camera making it hard to judge where I needed to be on the depth axis. This is especially problematic when trying to land a jump with the spin dash.
- There seems to be a bit of an issue with misguiding the player. For example, there's a sign near the beginning that says something about turning into an airplane and gliding across, but if you come back later and try that, you just die (unless I missed something). Additionally, I tried for quite a while to get the green fruit on the island using the spin move with that jump pad (since it's located shortly after acquiring that move, and I had figured out that spinning into a jump pad makes you jump higher/further) only to give up after a while and realize later that the jump required an item acquired later. Funny enough, if the sign about turning to an airplane had been there instead, it would have solved both of these issues.
Overall, I'm very impressed with this prototype, and I can't wait to see what's next! It sounds like the way the skill cards factor into battles is going to make for a unique and varied battle system. Keep up the great work!
(Sorry for the long comment, but thank you for taking the time to read this far!)