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Thanks for the excellent feedback.

Using the spike balls as your own projectiles actually sounds really fun, I'll probably change them to look less spikey and allow the player to also push them as an attack. Objects which damage the player on touch should probably just be floor spikes or something.

You're right that the super charge should probably just have actual damage immunity. Stunning you momentarily once you hit a wall should be enough of a downside if you're locked in moving into a single direction already.

I'm limiting the gameplay to using only one button, so one of the challenges  has been about how the charging should function. Earlier iterations have included pressing the button multiple times quickly in succession, and having the player enter a "brake" state if you press the button again when doing the normal attack, which could then transition into a super charge.

Holding the button is probably what the input will stay as. You're right that there should be immediate feedback when you start holding it, maybe a charge meter or something?

A pause function basically exists, but it's currently only being used by the hit stun effects. I disabled the pause button for now because it otherwise breaks the hit stun and crashes the game. I'll look into implementing player controlled pausing and options before I release another demo.

Point taken about the tiles, I'm not 100% happy with them either. I spent way too much time making the brick walls look better (which is why I will be palette swapping them at least two times in other levels lol) and didn't feel like doing the same with a completely new set of tiles yet.

The sprite scaling bug happens when you take damage at just the right moment while being squeezed by slamming into a wall. I made one earlier attempt at fixing it, but also encountered it right before release. Thanks for reporting it.

Thanks. I'm still figuring out how exactly to handle health. About a week ago the player had 8 hit points (re-presented by hearts) and enemies had a small chance to drop a +1 health item if you were missing any.  Currently enemies always drop those white orbs which either restore health (if you are missing any) or give you additional score if you are full.

I'm still pondering if I should just make the player invincible (like in Wario land 2-3) and have the player drop some score items when they take damage, so actual dying would never be an issue but you'd have to avoid hits to get a higher score. Getting all S ranks will be a requirement to get the game's true ending.

Thanks a lot! The entrances for the levels will eventually function differently, with a pop-up window that shows what you've collected/missing from that level and you have to press the button in front of it to enter. I implemented it here in the dirtiest and fastest way possible by just using a collision event with the player object.

Thanks. I'll try to implement options such as alternate controls for the next demo. One of the core design principles that I'm leaning into is to have unique objects in every level and to tutorialise how they function within the gameplay. I'm personally fed up with text box based explanations and long-winded tutorials.

I thought it would be funny to have a fat Wario expy wearing those leather straps typically worn by muscly and fit men. I came up with the theme while drunk.

Thanks for playing!

The gamefeel is fantastic and the action really gets going once you gain a couple of level ups and better item drops.

There's something a little off about the pixel art style in terms of having different kinds of UI elements (especially text) that have a way different scaling to the actual gameplay. The art style is consistent, so this isn't as distracting after a while.

What I'd focus on before release would be to improve the writing. The steam page's top description should point out more about the gameplay and not be a story explanation (write it more like this: "Archtower is an X genre game where you Y and Z"). The in-game dialogue and quest descriptions had a weird tone (a father calling his dead son a loser out of the blue?). You probably want to get a proofreader to go through the whole script before final release.

I think we'll all agree that the visuals are absolutely fantastic in a schizofrenic way. The gameplay, however, demands an explanation. I know it's like a MOBA, but the player is currently thrown in with barely any clue about what's happening.

Also, my head started to spin after playing. This is probably due to how sensitive the camera is, combined with how zoomed in the game is and the small window size. I got this same feeling when I was adjusting the camera in my own game.

This is very pretty and has huge potential. I would work on streamlining the learning process of how the game works.

The game's current problem is that it gives the player a little too much freedom and expects you to read a large amount of tooltips to understand how to build things and how they actually function. 

The first level starts with the simple instruction of "build a house", but you then have to read the house's tooltip and realise that you first need to build several other things next to it, which also have their own resource and tile requirements before they can be built. Clearing the first level takes too much effort. It's not difficult, but it's tedious and feels like trial and error if you didn't carefully read all of the requirements. The visuals for why something can't be built should be clearer.

The first couple of levels should have 90% of the prep work done for you (and maybe even do some hand-holding). Afterwards, you can slowly complicate things by adding extra steps that you need to consider to get that same result again.

Oh whoops, I didn't even realize there's a double jump. Just replayed it and had a way easier time clearing the last room.

The atmosphere is very comfy, the low poly look is really well done. I think you should focus on tightening the level design and signposting of what to do.  Once I entered the dream the area was just too vast and I had no idea where to go. You might walk on those brick walls or swim somewhere and find nothing of interest for minutes.

Interactable objects should have some kind of faint glow or other indicator that they can be used. I know the game is called dream child, but I still didn't initially realize that I can use the bed to progress into a dream world.

Sorry, but this feels very asset flippy. You just swipe away at different enemies that all act the same (which is running forwards into the player). None of the characters have any weight, attacking enemies does not feel rewarding. The enemies just phase through each other. There's nothing wrong with using assets, but if they are high quality sprites you also need to back them up with great feeling gameplay.

I'm not sure what genre the game wants to be, but I suppose it's like a beat 'em up. This is a genre that lives by how good it feels to attack enemies. You need to create proper feedback for attacks, and different looking enemies need to act differently from each other. The player needs a purpose for using his different moves to deal with different situations.

The visuals are shaping up to be amazing, as is the mechanic of blasting enemies with potions. I think you should add some (place holder) sound effects, the explosions beg to be heard.

Why doesn't the player character jump high enough to reach the platforms? Are they not implemented yet? The movement feels limited if you are bound to just walking on the bottom floor. I don't think there should be a need to press a button to open the door if it's the only way forward, I obviously want to walk through there after clearing the screen.

The attacks of the skeletons were very hard to dodge, as they blended in with the bones of other destroyed skeletons. The bat swooping animation also isn't distinctive enough to dodge it.

What I would work on next would be to get the gamefeel just right. I want to hear earth shattering kabooms as I litter the area with potion bombs and crunchy bone sounds when the skeletons are blasted to bits. The sprite work is amazing, but the visuals need to communicate gameplay more clearly. Enemy attacks should be more telegraphed and easier to identify.

I didn't understand the opening. You are greeted with a strange name enter screen (or something?) that isn't implemented yet, and have to click around randomly to get to the actual game. I think this should have been removed for the demo. This starts an intro sequence that does not really act as a tutorial as you would expect it to. You have to jump into a wall that actually has a door in it that you can't see in any way.

When the game actually started I got immediately frustrated. I get that this is probably the point, as the game is clearly built to be a rage platformer such as getting over it, but I think the difficulty hit too hard too fast. You are immediately tasked with hitting a relatively small button to open a door and I quickly gave up after this section.

The level design should ease you into the bouncing mechanics. The player's turning also needs fine tuning, you should always feel like you are completely in control. Turning a little too hard and face planting on the floor feels bad.

Overall the graphics are fine, but there's some serious mixels and rixels. Zooming into the characters during text boxes looks weird as does zooming out. The player character does not scale or rotate well, I would focus on improving how the player sprite looks when it's manipulated in this way.

Are the controls explained somewhere? I figured out that space jumps and c crouches, but there should be a prompt for these buttons (instead of telling the player that they "can jump here").

I agree with elb that the visuals are shaping up greatly. Movement and mouse sensitivity are too floaty, however. The player character should have more weight when hacking enemies with a melee weapon. Having any kind of place holder sound effects would go a long way for adding better game feel and communicating that something happened (such as when you press or step on buttons).

The combat is shaping up to be really solid. Moving around, aiming and attacking felt very responsive with a gamepad. The pad image in the corner helps with identifying that your input is received, you could probably keep it in some form in the final game (have icons on the buttons for potions etc. as a reminder for what the button does). The inventory/chest screens can be confusing but it's clearly work in progress. The AI is fantastic.

Combat mechanics will need to be communicated clearly, such as how poison or bleeding affects your health. While the controls were quite snappy, it sometimes felt like my shield wasn't coming up when pressing the off hand attack button. There's definitely some instances of getting hit or accidentally doing the dodge jump where it feels like you have to wait for too long before being able to act again. The automatic running feels off, I had to constantly make sure to actually stop running so that I didn't drain my stamina.

How much of the graphics are placeholders? I'd recommend making the grass tiles less noisy. They currently look too distracting, and they are also very close to a hue that hurts my eyes (I have deuteranomaly).

😭

You are standing in the child.

I unfortunately wasn't able to run the game on windows 10. The game window opens and then closes immediately.

I was honestly surprised by how good this game feels to play, which is all thanks to the sound design. Weirdly fitting crunchy rock music plays while your character constantly utters retarded sounds when jumping, falling from a great height or taking damage. Shooting your gun and killing enemies has appropriate feedback, and for some reason you just need to collect every single one of those pizza slices just to hear that crunching sound again.

Where the game feels weak is the level design. It was only by the fourth and final level that everything started to really click. The first level is an annoying keycard hunt, the second a mind boggling pachinko machine and the third just felt like filler.

I understand that level design probably wasn't the point of the demo (and maybe not even the final game given the parody-like nature of the whole thing?), but I'd consider trying to tighten up all of the levels with more condensed sections of platforming, combat and minor puzzles.

Elements like the flamethrowers in the last level should be first showcased in a safer environment, I always got hit by the second one because I hadn't gotten used to how slowly the flames move. The shooting enemies are way too aggressive and difficult to dodge, I had to memorise their positions to avoid taking too many hits.

The texts/voice clips uttered by the enemies are cute and fitting, but you might want to consider changing to a font that matches the pixel size of everything else. Reading the small mixelated text is difficult.