itch.io

Hi, I found your game through your feedback thread, so I thought I would give some feedback:

Negatives

• I didn't know what to do when I clicked play. Like, not sure what keys to press and what is happening. Am I supposed to just go as high as possible? Took me a while to realize oh, I'm meant to let these massive bricks fall on me (not very obvious imo) ...
  • Idea: a tutorial room where the way you escape is by jumping up into the bottom of a brick, and you see the score incerase and stuff. That way the core mechanic is very obvious, and you dont need to write any dialog/exposition
• Walking into the side or top of the thwomp kills me, and I wish it didn't. Only getting crushed by it when it is falling should kill me (that is what my common sense tells me, and also how the mario games work as well, I think. Or at least the 3d ones work like this. the 2D ones should as well.)
  • A common scenario is where there is a thwomp, but because the player is so slow, it is a pain to move and jump over it to get past it, so I just wait for it to disappear. Something you could try is to just not have anything disappear? Will force me to interact with these things, and may make for more emergent/interesting gameplay that arises through the random way the bricks fall and the structures they make
• There was no feedback for death, I just dissapear which is not very satisfying
• Main menu loop and game-over loop is really jarring, you can tell when it loops. Probably a simple fix in Audacity or something, just need to get that perfect loop timing right
• falling black bullet is impossible to react to, and is a stupid/frustrating way to die. Make them easier to react to somehow (slow them down, or telegraph them somehow, etc). When I have 4 thwomps and octopus chasing me, I can't put all my focus into dodging the bullets.
• The green coin does way too much for how significant it looks (people would say that it is 'too OP'), but it's main problem is that it makes the game not fun for the next 10 or so seconds. Collecting coins is the most boring mechanic in the game. 
• The game needs more platformer elements. Each level feels basically the same. And the purple things are way too hard to run away from, and adding more platforms / things to jump on and move around on will alleviate this problem as well
• I want to restart immediately, not after 10 seconds
  • I didn't realize how much additional content this game had when I started writing this feedback. But it is too frustrating to play all the way through to the end. I was only able to make it to the room with ~5 octopuses. Could you add one of those "Continue" options for the noobs like me? (where you get to start from that level again but with the 3 lives, and your overall score gets halved ? I think the touhou games had something like this. You can continue around 5 times in total I think)
• it is basically game over if the purple octopus get too close. They are way too OP. Make the player faster. I.e the time to reach the peak of the jump and then land again should be halved, and horizontal movement speed should be buffed a little as well

Nitpicks

• yellow pipe that appears at the start shouldn't just disappear. Always avoid making things dissapear, as this is always jarring. Make them slowly move off screen/fade out/tell a funny joke and walk out / leave a puff of smoke / anything else
• jumping is not very satisfying. Like, it feels like I dont have a lot of control. In the mario games for example, the duration you held the space bar is much more closely linked to the height of the jump than in this game (though it looks like you kind of have something like this but not quite). I.e when I lightly tap the spacebar for 0.01 seconds, I should just jump up a tiny bit rather than 3 body heights

Positives

• The subtle downwards 'bounce' when you jump into a brick from the bottom is perfectly executed and feels very satisfying. Need more like this.
  • To lean into this mechanic, add this rule: If a player allows a brick to fall on them, they just get crushed. But only if they jump up into the brick, the brick breaks and they get score.
    • More justification: There are some levels where you can win by just standing there doing nothing. In the grey levels, I was better off standing in one corner doing almost nothing. Adding this rule also fixes this, should engage the player more
• After the first 3 levels, there is some sort of horizontal coin run minigame. These are always cool, more of this please (doesnt have to be the same horizontal run, can be other random stuff you think of)
• Very cool how the enemies interact with each other and the other level elements and not just the player
• The you died screen music sounds like it was inspired by the ambulance sirens, very cool :0