The "feel" of this game is its greatest strength. The sound design and the visuals come together to make a game where it just FEELS good to press buttons. Now, that being said, as a long-time fighting game player, I feel that the mechanics are a little forced. By that I mean the whole swapping mechanic. While I see the concept and can get behind it, I notice that the game is set up in such a way as to force its use. For example, if I dodge an attack and try to counter during the boss' recovery, they just auto-block or auto-dodge based on whatever state they are in, regardless of the fact that they are in an attack animation. This is also true when landing a counterattack during the startup of a boss' attack. Don't get me wrong, I understand that you want the player to use the swap mechanic, but I think that there are more elegant ways to do this. Maybe the boss takes more damage when you use the right move, or they get stunned. (Think about Punch Out, as an example.) As it is now, it feels like it's just random as to whether the game will let me get a hit in, which as a fighting game player, is not very engaging.
That being said, the game looks and sounds great, and it should only take a little tweaking to give the player more agency. I look forward to seeing where you take this project in the future!
Viewing post in Wayside Brawl jam comments
You're right in that I should have added a stun state outside of the stagger state tbh
And yeah, I could definitely have incentivised players to switch between the two fighters a little better outside of the boss auto-blocking after a certain point lol
It's just that was the only thing I could think of at the time to ensure that players don't just spam the kick move
Thank you for playing and for the feedback :)