itch.io

I love to see updates to stuff like this! The new level decoration, lives, and the 1-up stages are all absolutely awesome additions. It makes the game feel much more alive.

The Book of Pedro is also very cool! I'd love to see it added to the game from the main menu or something as a sort of bestiary, but that's a wish for another time.

Ultimately Pedro Jam is a very solid arcade fighter! The enemies are unique and interesting and the art is awesome. Stick with it! I'd love to see more of this in the future!

Let me preface this by saying that I recognize this is an arcade platformer for a jam, rather than a full game, so Pedro Jam isn't an example of all of your talents. However, I also believe that for feedback to be good, it needs to review a project as it's own product, and I want to do you the courtesy of giving you my best feedback I can on this.

First off, there are some really good bones in here, at least in my opinion. I really like the retro pixel art, especially some of the backgrounds. I also love the screenshake when Pedro fires his gun, it really gives it a "punchy" feel. I also like some of the enemy designs, such as the general taco grunts and the silhouette dog thing (Chupacabra?). I'm always a fan of themed enemy design, and for the most part the Mexico theme works well here. I would've liked to have seen more Mexican food-themed enemies like the tacos, (maybe some salsa slimes? Burrito bruisers?) but that's just me personally. Overall, this works fine as a sort of platformer PVE arena fighter.

Naturally, there are some things that could have been improved. From a purely gameplay standpoint, there were some hitbox issues with headstomping enemies; If you aren't directly over an enemy when you hit them, it won't register as a stomp, and you die instead. I also had a couple of times when I got instakilled by an enemy spawning directly on me. Some sort of spawning indicator might help remedy this issue.

Additionally, while I like the actual arena fighting, Pedro Jam suffers from a lack of options and replayability incentive. I made it to around enemy 65 or so a few times, but I just didn't feel a reason to go any further than that. Some powerups or lives or something might help to keep the player engaged and coming back for more, but as it stands it leans a little too much into a memory game for my taste. 

Ultimately I enjoyed playing Pedro Jam for my evening, but I feel it needs more mechanics for it to bring me back more than a few times. It certainly has some good elements, and serves perfectly fine as an arcade spinoff minigame of Pedro Land, but as it's own product it also has some room for improvement. A solid 7/10, I would certainly like to see more of it.