The art style is what convinced me to try this game out. Your artist(s) clearly had a vision and I think they executed it amazingly well (also love me some PSX-style games, even though all textures in your game have bilinear filtering).
I didn’t really get the story behind the pictograms. Maybe something to do with the tyrant rule of a God-Emperor? But it could be just me being very dumb. I also must have missed the voice acting somehow, so I can’t comment on that (I was looking forward to hearing it, tho!)
Movement was, unfortunately, a bit lacking:
- The character moves too slow
- Jumping slows down the character for some reason, which made it difficult to predict where I would land
- Dashing executes only when releasing the key instead of doing it instantly on press. If for some reason I held Shift down for even a fraction of a second before releasing it, the ability wouldn’t execute at all
- Wall jumping is actually pretty decent, but the character animations made it feel a bit janky. I also would have liked wall jumps to reset dashes, but that’s a minor nitpick
- Often, throwing the boomerang at walls wouldn’t work: the boomerang would either hit nothing, hit a wall near the character instead of the one I was aiming at, or just not get thrown (this last behaviour was very random and it would usually resume working after attacking). This was probably the most interesting ability in the game though, and I really appreciate the way you set up the tutorial!
Combat was very janky: it lacked feedback, dogs attacked almost instantly with no way of predicting or even dodge them, and I found myself skipping some sections entirely. I was guilty of this too with my MVM22 entry, so I totally understand how hard it is to nail combat in such a short amount of time, while also striving to make a good character controller.
I liked the level design. Maybe a bit too punishing at times, like missing a wall jump near the starting area brought me all the way back to the boss arena, but I found it quite enjoyable all around.
I hope I don’t come off as too harsh. I have a tendency to focus on minor gameplay details, so don’t let that long list of issues bother you too much. You had some very good ideas, and with improved platforming this could be a pretty amazing game. I also would love to see more of this art style!