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(1 edit)

I think the base mechanics of your game are strong, you put a lot of work into your combat and it shows. The quality of animation, the way you convey motion in your animations is great. There's definitely depth to the weighty, slow nature of combat, and the abstract presentation of the enemies allows for a lot of possibilities for enemy variety. But the context that combat is surrounded by doesn't work to its advantage.

Levels are very large, and it's very aggravating walking through these massive levels between deaths only to be deleted in one or two hits. Especially in your dungeon where the magma can instantly annihilate the player for slipping off the thin bridges. I personally assumed the magma would be treated the same as the cliffs, and I'd just pop up safe after taking some damage. Was very surprised when my lil guy was fiendishly immolated.

I'm just extrapolating here but I imagine you made the levels so massive to accommodate player's varying movement speeds, they can level up their stats to go faster, and eventually they'll be able to dart around these levels really quickly. I feel like this can only end in one of two ways, either you never get enough move speed for it to feel meaningful, or you eventually become so quick that it enormously affects the balance of your combat. Consistent movement speed in single player action games is fairly standard for this reason, it's very difficult to account for large gaps in move speed, and I can imagine a lot of these enemies being trivialized by some simple strafing eventually. 

That's a pretty fundamental critique, and if you intend for these levels to be large and you care a lot about keeping the movement speed leveling, I can respect judging your game for what it is rather than what I'd like it to be. Here's a simpler observation. Why on earth do I need to sleep in the tent to equip weapons? Finding that sword was very exciting, but the wind was taken out of my sails after 10 minutes of trying to figure out how to equip it, pressing every button on my keyboard before using the tent out of desperation. It doesn't make sense mechanically to not allow me to collect items as I'm traveling, and it certainly makes no sense narratively that the item vanishes from my character's inventory into their base camp. Your game gets a full point better the instant I can equip a weapon on the spot.

The last thing I want to express after all that negativity; I love your setting. "What's the setting for this slow soulsy action RPG? Cyberpunk? Victorian? Medieval?" "No. Modern day Hawaii." Completely left field, but opens the door to SO many exciting ideas. Beaches, volcanoes, hotels, slums, the Dole plantation, ABC stores. The culture clash of the mythology and the tourist reality. BRILLIANT decision. I think you should seriously consider putting a lot of your thought and resources into selling this setting, teaching people about the area, because it's a fantastic premise. You obviously have an eye for the aesthetics with your statues and your kick ass logo.

Keep the brochures I love them. "Go to Hawaii idiot."

(+1)

Hey, thanks for playing. So far only one enemy has been given a look, and in the end they're all going to be proper monsters of some kind.

Yeah, I need to add save points, or warp points in the dungeon for sure. I don't know when that will happen in the future, but it will eventually.

I have a couple of different goals that probably aren't very clear in the game's current form, as I'm working on various other systems instead of making those goals crystal clear. The reason the over world is so large is actually just because I want exploration to be a major focus of the game. The dungeon turned out as large as it did so I could satisfactorily explore several things with the water pipes mechanic. Ideally also, combat will change to reflect faster enemy speeds as the game progresses. Enemies will get faster and more aggressive, and hopefully late game combat will look a bit more like Devil May Cry, or other character action games. Although it's kind of there in the current game, I'm still figuring out ways to include the survival elements I want, but I'm imagining things like requiring certain types of gear for certain climates and making your loadout something to think about for the entirety of your over world traversal. In the final game more dangerous enemies will appear at night as well, adding time pressure to over world travel.

For a while, you could change gear by accessing a chest, and only with this demo did I experiment with sleeping in the tent being where you could change gear, since I thought of it as a sort of daily preparation. For DD 51 it'll be back to accessing a chest to change gear. Unfortunately,  my experiment with putting weapons out in the over world was pretty short sighted, and as you express, it's annoying to find something you can't just equip. I don't know if I'll have a more logical system by DD 51 (such as smithing weapons) but it should at least be less annoying then.

Dang I'm not sure what I'm envisioning for the game will live up to those expectations! Although I enjoy my sort of cheeky "tourist stuck in a troical hell hole" flavor, the game likely won't lean that into modern Hawaiian life. The island itself (although the map is currently just Maui) is a lost Hawaiian island hidden away by magic hundreds of years ago, so you won't see many modern things on it, other than stuff that washes up on shore somehow. The plan is also for the camp sites to be things the player builds themself, even if it's just a quick cut scene when a suitable spot is found. Hopefully you'll like the game anyway.