First time I played, I couldn't figure out how to close the spell book — I realized this time that there's a white arrow on the light yellow page. Maybe putting the spell UI on the bottom of the screen, toolbar style, instead of covering the middle, would make it easier (and juicier) to see what the spell you just chose did.
I didn't play long enough to have valuable opinions on the game loop — except that I felt like I soft-locked myself by buying the Spinner too early and not knowing how to turn it off, so I couldn't do the spell that takes threads anymore (Spinner kept eating my threads.) EDIT: Oh, I see you're planning to change that.
The spirit's animation feels a little mechanical but I do like the leaning and the overshoot!
I like this concept and want to see how you develop it further! Cheers!
Reminds me of Superflight, in a good way! I got my first few deliveries by chance and started liking it before it got hard. I did have trouble seeing what the wind would do to me and agree that something in HUD would be friendlier than the minimap. If you do more with it, maybe smooth out the animations to feel more organic and less video-gamey, and soften the stop when you hit the goal hitbox. If I was marketing this, I'd probably lean into the cozy vibes and lose stuff like "you're too drunk to do your job right." Or lean into that away from the cozy vibes. Anyway, this is one of my favorites in the jam, good work!
The shooting is addictive. The spawning ramped up very fast suddenly for me, way before I got the shield down. Only the text of the buttons is clickable, and the music is only in one ear.
Very cool idea! The platforming is a little hard, I wish there were some affordances around ledges etc. I didn't get far enough to know if there's an extra color but I wonder if combining A and S into one key (making the choice binary) would make it easier. OTOH, maybe I'm just bad. :D
- I agree that the text is a little long to just jump in, but it made me laugh and set the tone, especially one sentence story of "you're a soccer ball that's been kicked around long enough."
- The SFX are very loud — even when I turned them down.
- on level 3, I think, I spawned in moving and hit like 3 players before I even knew where I was.
- I love the slo-mo. I have mixed feelings about the controls. It took me a while to get used to the right-click left-click thing, and I found myself holding down right click long after I should have let it go. (probably meant I wanted to be in slo-mo more of the time, or at least slow down the regular parts of the game.) I wonder if combining the slo-mo and shoot buttons — so press left-click goes to slo-mo, release left-click shoots — would solve that. But it would introduce a tradeoff to slo-mo, which you may or may not want. Maybe cheat the whole game speed slightly slower to compensate for that.
- some kind of reticule, or line hinting what path your shot will take, would be helpful and juicy. Maybe a focal length change when you're in slo-mo.
I have a lot of notes but I think it's a really cool idea, and I had fun playing it!
- Could you point the camera in the right direction and make the pipes appear out of the cloud earlier? First time I played, I had no idea what was happening.
- Feels like there's some kind of multiplication going on with the jump — if you're already moving up, your next few jumps will make you move incredibly fast. Intentional?
- Agree with Pharland and Zackavelli that you need something to tell you the invisible ceiling will kill you.
- Also agree that a score feedback loop would make this more fun.
- since you're in 3D, and since the player probably isn't going to move the camera after they're pointed in the right direction, maybe some subtle up/down movement on the jump/fall would make this juicier.
