itch.io

Having just played the DEMO_1 version, I enjoyed the game. It is Kirby inspired in terms of visuals and gameplay, but not in a copycat way, but moreso as a foundation for new ideas to take place in. I am a huge Kirby fan, so perhaps I'm a bit biased. I'm looking forward to seeing more in the future, but for now, here are my thoughts on the game so far:

VISUALS:

Characters are very charming, especially Mein himself. Love the ear wiggle details, and the victory pose in particular. Enemies are also given charm too, but the focus is still on Mein. While I have a lot of praise for the characters and their animations, I feel the shading and color palette could use a lot of improvement. I am especially not a fan of the banding present in the vast majority of the sprites. I think banding in general does not look good on modern displays; it muddies the sprite, and makes them look...a bit strange. I feel like a bigger focus on concrete shadow areas from 1 light source could make the sprites look a lot nicer. The colors, especially in the background, I feel could also improve a lot. The shadow colors don't look too interesting to me, and I feel the rest of the game looks a bit too dull, in a way that doesn't quite feel intentionally so. Not too sure about visual direction in terms of the characters and the world, but these more fantastical environments feel like they should have a little more vibrancy present.

MUSIC:

Music was fine. Inoffensive, but nothing memorable yet. Maybe I haven't played it enough to really let it sink in, but I can't really remember anything that was played. Sound effects were cool, the attack swing sfx sounded nice, but some seem to be missing, like a proper hit effect, which is understandable as an early demo.

GAME FEEL:

I played via keyboard, and overall, gameplay feels nice and responsive. There are nice visual effects for most actions, and for the ones that are missing, I assume they will be introduced in future versions. I really like the fact that jumping after running preserves the previous momentum; it just feels right and I will never really know why a good amount of games like this don't have that. But also, moving the other direction mid jump will cancel the run boost, which is fair, and gives run jumping some risk. However, I can't help but feel that it's a bit unfortunate that colliding into walls make you lose your run boost. Also holding both right and left cancels movement, which is fine, but I would prefer a system that allows the most recent move key to overpower the other one, rather than cancelling each other out. But honestly, that is a big nitpick, and isn't even relevant for controller users, but I think it's nice when games with keyboard support do that. I think my biggest issue with the gameplay was the sluggishness of the attacks. Not in terms of animation; the attack animations are very solid. But rather, using the attacks feel a bit more sluggish than I'd like. The grounded attack will keep you in place for a bit, which depending on gameplay direction, isn't inherently bad, but the animation feels a tad too long for an attack that locks you out of movement options mid-animation.
Honestly, that's not too bad; maybe I'm just used to faster paced games, and not every game needs to be fast paced, but what's more egregious to me is the fact that you can only use the air attack once until you land. Not even double jumping will refresh the counter. It feels a bit jank and arbitrary to use because of that. Maybe the attack is too powerful to be used in the air as many times as you want, but I feel like this is not the most optimal method on balancing the attack; it simply feels bad to me because it feels like control was taken from me. Also landing on the ground mid attack will make you unable to use the attack button for a bit, like there's an internal cooldown. I think the main bad part about that is that there's no visual indicator that shows I can't use the attack. The character will do their usual animation, but now I just cant attack until some invisible timer allows me to attack again. It's cool to see Kirby Adventure styled gameplay back, with Mein's attacks feeling like Sword Kirby from that game, but I think it could be handled better.

That being said, I will state once again that maybe I'm a bit too biased and used to faster paced games that have land cancel attacks and stuff like that, and that direction might not be what you want, so take what I said with a big grain of salt.

GAMEPLAY:

The level layout is pretty solid so far! I love the button input images throughout the level; a fantastic way of showing someone the controls without stopping the pace of the game, or flipping through a menu. Level design did a nice job of teaching me the mechanics, and the enemies in the later part of the level do a good job of elevating tension by just a bit to feel like my skills are being tested. The boss fight works really well as a tutorial boss; their pattern is very simple, but still requires players to be engaged to finish the fight, which is surprisingly difficult to balance. It has the right difficulty as part of the first stage, which is awesome.

CONCLUSION:

Great foundation so far, I'm excited to see what new ideas you have in mind. It would be nice if visual direction and game feel were refined a bit more, but so far, so good! I might've had a lot more negative to say for game feel than I expected, but I think they're mostly nitpicks in the grand scheme of things. Keep up the good work, and I'll be back to play updated versions!