Hello Theo! Done dealing with school, played the game, really liked it, wanted to tell you how much, found out you made this in "slightly more" than two weeks and was even more impressed, also should have paid attention to the no save warning but didn't :’ D, and also read all the comments on here since there weren't too many and they were also pretty good reads.
Personally I don't mind the no camera collision, but I do understand why it's better overall to just fix it for future Feydome (I'm no coder so frankly if it works it works but I get if you come across more professional/make Feydome more marketable). I do agree with the faster falling if you're straight up falling from the other comments. And more hair. More hair is always good. Maybe more music, or the option to turn music/sound effects off? (The visuals are eery enough, and the music/sound effects are good! It's just why does the water sound like frogs I'm just already scared enough)
As for the up and down camera advice, a better tracker/binoculars? to see if you've already collected from a bug, I'm...somewhat conflicted. For instance, I didn't want to have to come back or accidentally forget a bug somewhere on the tree/way more challenging flying area, so I would grind a little on the lower areas/explore lower area more fully and collect the orbs before I attempted the tree. This made it so when I did attempt the tree, I felt more rewarded for having planned ahead. I would also stop just close enough and wait to see if the little bit of bug I could see glitched/flapped, and that's not the most convenient way to know if I've collected from that bug, but it made feel...kinda brainy, and I wonder if the commenter that relied on the sound felt that way too. Similar thing with the lack of up or down camera - I guess I bypassed this problem by just moving a little bit farther away/"zooming out", again, feels kinda brainy - but also I feel like the risk associated with taking the leap of faith from eg. a branch on the tree that might not have a branch underneath it close enough to break my fall, made it more satisfying when I still managed to get the bug. Even if I missed, and I did...more than I'm willing to admit, I'd get annoyed but also more vindictive and want that stupid bug on that stupid branch even more. Maybe the real conclusion is that I'm a masochist and a poor gamer but I think it's because overall you got the important things down - the level was small and well laid out, you gave enough orbs at the lower areas that I could get to harder to reach places if I flapped/pressed space bar carefully, allowed gliding down instead of straight falling when you run out of energy, basic left-right cam, so I was still able to get quite far. I think even if you forget a bug somewhere, you'd probably have enough energy/be good enough at the game that you'd get to wherever the bug is quickly. I do think the commenters/advice about including up and down cam/praise and criticism for bug tracker is great, definitely makes a smoother/more marketable game, but if you do implement them, I guess make the space more difficult to navigate eg. you have to fly up and AROUND a tower to reach a target/maybe the target moves away if you don't get there fast enough, so you can still keep some of the planning/thinky/risky aspects.
I won't lie, when I first played the game I got really frustrated with the walking speed (before I figured out how to half fly half walk) and uh, quit, but on the second try I realized if I flew too fast I'd miss the orbs/bugs so maybe you kept walking and flying speed the same? I'm not sure if it would be too jarring/mismatched to walk faster but still fly slowly. Also having a "heavy" fairy does add to making the fairy feel small in its world. Maybe people can choose to increase their walking speed somewhat only by collecting eg. orange orbs? Or if you do add more challenging spaces to fly through, than an increase in general speed would be justified, and eventually the fairy is supposed to feel less heavy/more avian.
But I guess this ultimately depends on your game design vision. If you're aiming to platform, forget what I said and absolutely give more player controls. Nothing worse than an unfair obstacle other than not having enough hair - MORE HAIR - If you're aiming for more exploring (uhh...I think exploring is different from platforming? I'm not confident though), I think limited controls and more creative use of what you do have is...not better than more controls but equal and you should just trust me bro.
Anyways. Thanks for this nice little game, everyone's already talked about the aesthetics so I won't add to the word count but the concept/architecture is awesome, and I hope in the future there's a story, maybe other fairies in the little blue shuttles on the tree to greet or do a "fetch" quest for (some say fetch quests are really annoying? But I think if you have to find that thing it's great for exploring)
Scrnshots (this is the stupid bug on the stupid branch/leaf pom pom)
(This is World’s second best armour - first is none)
