itch.io

Thanks for playing it!

I try to keep the art consistent, title screen is new, hoping to change it very little when I implement the save/load system with that. And I'm a big fan of naga/skimpy evil witch archetype so I'm glad you liked her design. Weapon always interacts with spells except for the summoning circle until you get a familiar. Having spells unlocked from the start works the best imo since there's still a progress with items and upgrades that make you combine same page items with spells like lightning and jar combines and makes you teleport etc. Also he's still an apprentice so he can be a bit of a rogue even after I scrubbed the sneaking in hat thought.

There are a lot of people on this island.  I know there's the explanation that they were all sent here by the witch, but the first one who says that is off to the top-left...  Fewer NPCs, more dialogue per NPC?

 Story isn't fully set yet and I'm aware that I'm not telling  whatever story I have in mind with clarity. But  some of the npc's are the actual inhabitants of the island, only 4 of the npcs are sent by the witch. There's a town to the west that you can access after you clear the tomb dungeon, although town bit is very barebones right now. 

There's lag between pressing to move and the character actually moving.  I suppose they might be accelerating to full speed?  But with the way it's tuned now, it doesn't feel good- it feels slightly sluggish.  If I quickly tap 'left' in succession, the character doesn't move at all, even though it definitely feel like he should!

The current controls are a bit clunky in general.  WASD/JKL is fine, but selecting spells is a pain.  I imagine you directional spell selection would work well on a gamepad, and that's why you've chosen it, but for keyboard couldn't you add bindings to let me press 1/2/3/4 to pick the spells?

That lag is for player to be able to change directions and attack quickly, otherwise it's more frustrating to walk into enemies jut because you wanted to attack in one direction, but I agree walking around and changing spells feels better with gamepad stick.

The enemies are a bit mechanically samey despite looking different... generally I'd rather fight 1-4 enemies that are actually smart and have different mechanical behaviours/moves rather than a room full of dumb enemies that move and shoot at random.  I feel like there's an opportunity to tie the enemies and environment in with the magic some more, too..  I like the tortoise enemies in principle, but then I'd hit them from the south while they were facing west and feel like I should be hitting underneath their shell.  Not sure how to solve that one.

There are few more enemies and some enemies can follow you around mechanically although I know it's not that easy to tell. With shielding enemies stun from the star spell makes them keep their direction so you can walk around and attack their openings. With tortoise one you avoid the fake eyes so either hit the head or the butt from same direction, also they're weak to magic. With animated armor enemy aligning your hit is easier since they only block from front although they walk faster and more erratic also can follow you around and take less damage from magic. But yeah I'm trying to make them more varied, the one's that are varied so far could be just too slow to notice if you're clearing them up fast enough.

The cliff walls look good when they're only 1 tile high, but for me the 2+ tile high cliff walls looked unnatural due to the seam between them at each 'height-level'.

I had few ideas about tiles and how walls could kinda merge but not working on it since it's not an urgency right now. And I personally don't mind how it looks but I understand exactly what you mean by unnatural looking height and I do want to adjust it some day. But I also do want to keep that weird zelda fake perspective of the walls.

I realize there's a lot of negative in the list, but I do like the game!   I suppose it 'feels' like an actual game more than a lot of the things I've seen this DD, so I'm judging it as if I'd downloaded it off steam, hah.  I really want to see this made as good as it can be, though, so I've tried to give honest feedback.

Title screen and diagonal attacks and possibly few other things you liked in the game are there because people didn't like how the game was before those were in and told me about it, so I think it's really good you don't filter it. Hope you enjoyed the game and thanks for your feedback.