Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! Glad to know that the experience matched our design intentions, you're describing exactly the design considerations we took into account when designing the game. I agree that the boss going offscreen is a problem; the issue is the fact that if the boss stopped or slowed down at the edge of the screen instead, that could catch the player off guard and could cause a somewhat unfair death via contact damage. We're not fully sure what the solution is yet. We're planning on creating more boss battles in the future, so stay tuned for more content!
To be honest in the heat of battle I wasn't really looking at the HUD; I needed to look at the enemies onscreen 90% of the time. The only thing on the HUD I was glancing at was the main icon of which charms I had in each hand and the timers for when each would expire. I didn't have the time to memorize the meaning of each icon and remind myself midbattle which charms had what effects.
To be honest, I think the problem is just the fact that the third charm I acquired, the one with a boot icon on it, had both a main effect AND a special effect when it was thrown that felt too hard to remember. I think if each charm had only a unique main ability and a unique passive effect, as they already do, then that would be enough complexity for the charms. Passive effects aren't a problem for complexity as you don't really need to pay attention to passive effects for them to be useful, so its easy to just not factor them into your strategic thinking and still play pretty optimally.
To be clear, I think having an effect for when you throw charms is a great idea, as it creates interesting decisions for how you best utilize your charms, but I don't see why the effect needs to be different for each charm; that's where it becomes too hard to remember. Maybe you could simply have every charm do the same effect when you throw it. Throwing the boot knocked enemies back a bit, I think if every charm did that it would be a consistent option that would be easy to remember even in the heat of combat. It would still create interesting decisions, because if you have two charms with different effects and need to knock enemies back, you have to choose which charm effect you are willing to throw away and which you want to keep. That's just my idea though, I don't know if that fits your design plan for the game.
Reading over my comment again, I think I came off as a bit harsh lol, I actually thought your game was awesome! The ending was very frustrating and I wrote my comment right after completing it so my tone was a bit off. I forgot to mention some of the other parts of your game that I really loved, like the design of the world. It was cool being able to see different parts of the map before I was able to reach them, and being able to traverse the world with shortcuts after gaining the jump was quite cool. I also really liked how elegantly you were able to exit some puzzle sections after completing them without needing any kind of special hand-crafted shortcut to be created; one of the early challenges with rolling logs made it really easy to get back out because you were moving in the same direction as the logs instead of against them, and also the multilayered hill you had to climb in the second section you could just walk back down easily. I don't know if these conveniences were by design or just happy accidents of the design process but either way I was very impressed by their simplicity.
Rather fun game. Controls were pretty awkward, and felt a little unforgiving sometimes, which led to more frustration than fun for me. The final gauntlet REALLY needed a checkpoint halfway through, having to go from the start again every time I died to one of the very tricky platforming challenges at the very end was tedious, and I came close to quitting right before the end. I still played it all the way through though, so you've created a compelling hook for a game, just one that could use more polish.
Thanks for playing our game!! Just had a try of your game, it was really fun! Love the artwork and the music on the title screen, it was very funny. My highscore was 120, couldn't quite beat your score of 129.
Haha, it's definitely tricky! Getting used to controlling the character takes some time. The controls being quite slippery was an intentional part of the game to make the player character feel more like a clumsy, excitable puppy, but it does create a serious difficulty hurdle for less experienced gamers.
creative game, I really enjoyed it. my high score was 119, after I realised by sacrificing a few incorrect colours I could make the chameleons spawn faster
Wow! Really cool game! Love the main menu artwork, the game is really cool too. Tricky trying to control the charms with multiple fingers at once. Feels like a game with a very high skill ceiling! Some of the charms felt a bit too complicated to understand when their explanations popped up in the heat of battle, and some of them had like 3 different effects at once so it was hard to keep all that in my head, but other than that the game was really cool to play! Definitely took some getting used to but I think this is a really creative and clever use of the theme.
Really clever idea guys! I liked how you had two different types of minigame, though the space invader one was really hard.
my highscore was 30. I think even with perfect play there is only a slight surplus of points after paying for more time, so maybe there could be some sort of incrementing difficulty?
Thanks for the feedback BKLabanos! I have enlarged the text during the dialogue sections, but if it's still hard to read let me know. Do you think that making the levels longer would fix the pacing problem? This is my second published game on itch, so I'm still figuring out how to make the best possible games!
Thanks 012001101. I'm really glad you enjoyed it. If you have any ideas for a sequel to this game I'd love to hear them. I was thinking of doing something very different, as I love experimenting with out there game ideas. Maybe something more pixel arty, with little people that run between the walls! I'm open to ideas. Thanks for playing!
Hi Nick, I had to contact the founder of Openprocessing to get them to fix the issue, but It should now be working perfectly. Let me know if it works, and if you enjoy!
Thanks for all of the feedback Usual Weeb. The cutscenes and art are all thanks to my 2 artist friends, so I'll pass on your compliments. Thanks for your comment on my functions, but be careful not to look to closely at my messy code! It makes me anxious just looking at the pages and pages when I find a bug that makes no sense. I have fixed the walking backwards problem, and I am working on the music system. I have finally added the dialogue and story that was originally intended for the game, so hopefully it will be a more immersive experience now. Thanks so much for playing, and let me know if you have any other comments or ideas!
Hi Nick, thanks so much for letting me know about this issue. I am currently working on fixing the bug. I will let you know as soon as you can play the game.
Hi, thanks for replying to my comment. In response to your questions, I don't remember getting stuck anywhere, although I was very confused as to what the flying eyes did. However, I think that is just an unfortunate side effect of creating such an imaginative game in such a short time, that some aspects may be confusing to some players. I think that your focus on improving the player experience, through titles and other memorable moments, while simplifying or outsourcing all of the underlying framework, like basic movement and map art was a large part of what made the game so loveable. Don't stop putting love and effort into your games! Keep up the great work!
I am in love with this game. The aesthetic is incredible. I love the story behind the scanned backgrounds, and I love how you have recycled and reimagined these old images to create new art. I appreciate the time spent on the title and intro sequence. It captured my imagination and motivated me to discover the secrets of the game for myself, rather than force feeding me information or instructions. The minigames were refreshingly challenging, and the unique and creative challenges created the extra flavour to captivate my curiosity. I really appreciated all of the small details of the map. I got a rush of excitement every time I found myself in a familiar place, and when I discovered the story (or the secret) behind each dead end. This is not the smoothest running game, nor the most polished. It is however, packed with secrets, beauty, history, love, and creativity. And for that reason, I am proudly in love.
thanks for letting me know. I am still working on the dialogue system, so I've disabled it for now . I'm sorry that you missed a lot of the game. Thanks for the feedback anyway
Pixel art was great! The twist at the end was hilarious, and the sound effects were great. It took me a while to realise that things with brown lines around them are interactable, and i wish the wait times were a bit faster. overall great submission!
I loved the music and the parallax in the background. The game was probably a bit too easy, because I never died and ended up closing the game once I got bored. The pig potion was very creative, but I wish it played a more central role in the gameplay than just getting points.
