This was a great puzzle experience! I had a great time with your game, and it's definitely the kind of thing I could see playing a lot more of if some things are adjusted. Here is my feedback:
- What did you like more - placing tiles or watching the hero's adventure? The tile placing mechanic was much more interesting than the hero's adventure, because it is the core gameplay mechanic, and there isn't enough of a story element or worldbuilding for me to care about the hero specifically. But I could imagine you adding a story to guide the player through the levels and give some more explanation for why certain goals are necessary.
- What was the most obscure/non-intuitive mechanic? It would definitely have to be the aspect of learning what each tile does. The biggest problem when you start a level is that you don't know which tiles you have, and when new ones are introduced, you have no idea what they will do until you get them in your hand. It would be great if there was a way to see all the tiles in your deck with a counter next to each one, and full descriptions when you click or hover over one.
- Would you play this on Steam? What about the Switch? If a full version of this was developed, I would either play on the Switch or on a Steam deck. It seems like it would be great to play in handheld mode during travel or when resting in bed.
Other feedback:
- I wish I could see the effects of an already placed tile; it would be nice to hover over a placed tile or tile in your hand to see the effects.
- I also wish I could undo my tile placement steps in case I misplaced something.
- I think you should lean more into the puzzle game aspect, and instead of randomizing the order of your tiles, they should probably be in a consistent order (with a visible ordering somewhere), or all accessible from the beginning. As someone else mentioned already it's a bit frustrating that you have no control over that when it's the only random part of the game. It also means you can restart over and over until you get the best starting tiles in your hand. IMO randomness in games with similar tile placement mechanics makes a lot more sense when the goals are more abstract and you aren't playing a linear progression of levels.
- The mouse & keyboard controls were implemented pretty well, but when using the mouse right-click-hold for rotation I wish it wouldn't take me out of the tile placement mode. For these types of games on pc, I do prefer being able to do everything with the mouse if possible.
- I encountered a bug where the music stopped after I restarted the level, and then was gone for the rest of the game.
- There was another bug where some of the glowing enemy eyes couldn't glow at the same time, so it would flicker between them.
- If you turn this into a full game, I would love to see custom modelling and asset work done, and a bit more polish with the animations. The Kenney assets are great, but so many games out there use them to the point where it's very hard to stand out from the others if you use them too, even if your gameplay is great.
Great work so far!