The game was really good. The visuals and everything. The music was really fitting and entertaining. The animations were really nice as well.
The controls are really good and the SFX in the drawing things screen was also really good.
The main sort of trouble I had with this game was that very frequently I would get lost and couldn't complete the objective. I think adding a minimap would be a really good solution to this with the objectives highlighted (for example, the blue keycard at the start could be highlighted with a light in the minimap)
The second thing I had some trouble with was that the objectives while written on the top, there isn't as much info on what to do. I was confused in the second stage as I touched the boxes of goo, they got charged, The objective was to "Destroy" but I could neither do anything with the goo or leave the room.
Maybe a more detailed explanation would help get the player do what they are supposed to do?
Overall, the game is really good, has good visions and great ideas however, there seems to be a lack of guidance to the player. Maybe a tutorial section would really help.
Also, I think I discovered a bug. When casting the ice spell, I am guessing that the game checks that if 3 straight lines are drawn and they intersect at one point in the middle, to cast the ice spell? but drawing a K shape like this also seems to cast the ice spell. (I have also placed the strokes and the order it seems to be working most easily but 1-3-2 also works)
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A tutorial would have 100% improved it, I agree. As a team of programmers, I think we focused too much on making the mechanics cool instead of easy to understand.
I also agree that finding things in the level is very hard and not clear enough, given the time I would have liked to add helper arrows that point to the next objective.
In fact, the "Destroy" objective isn't really an objective, just something you are being told to do! I think that was poorly communicated.
To interact with the goo, you have to cast spells on it by opening the canvas with right click and drawing the spell you want on it. Heating it up makes it spread faster and destroy things, cooling it down makes it slow and makes it more safe. The main idea of the game is to destroy the level until you find the schematics, then to leave the level.
I can't comment too much on the rune drawing mechanics as that was Nijelous who did that, but we wanted to try and make it quite lenient with the shapes since we only have two spells anyway.
Thanks for playing!
Thanks for the kind words! Means a lot to us that you took the time to play.
On the rune drawing point, yeah you got it spot on with what it checks for. I have it checking for 1 vertical line and two diagonal line, then run some logic to see whether the diagonal lines a) are in between the top and bottom of the vertical line at some point and b) cross in two different directions (upwards diagonal and downwards diagonal). It should also check to see if the lines are either side of the vertical, something definitely to check for development moving forwards!