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I had fun with it. I made it to the end. Art, music, and overall aesthetic go together well.

I realize in a jam game there isn't always time to polish as much as we want, but a couple things stood out to me as needing improvement:

1. Too many pixel-perfect jumps and leaps-of-faith. One example would be the level where you have to dodge the heart in order to use it as a platform later. I thought this was a clever twist of the rules, but even once I figured it out, executing the route through the level was finnicky. I kept collecting that heart by mistake.

2. The connection between the theme and the gameplay felt a little weak. If you hadn't told me it was about self-acceptance and inclusion, I would've guessed it was a more generic overcoming obstacles, if I had picked up on a psychological interpretation at all. You were onto something with bringing color back into the world--but the idea probably needed to be fleshed out more to make the theme stronger. Was Gris an inspiration?

Thanks for the feedback! Alpha 0.0.3 is pretty old (dating back to September). Since then I've added more levels and updated the animations. There's just so many animations that I end up chipping away at it--revising a few at a time. I ended up studying the sprite work in several DOS games, many of which had half-tile movement increments. That might be where that feeling is coming from. Most of the animations play at 8 or 10 FPS. A few, such as running, play at a faster rate.

Thanks for sharing! Seeing someone play through the first level is super helpful.

Thank you for checking out the in-development version of Rogue of Vallas! The version as of time-of-writing is Alpha 0.0.2. This version consists of the first chapter of the game: 12 levels out of about 48. Your feedback will help steer the development of the remaining levels.

Please leave feedback here or reach me at:

Email: merrak@gmail.com
Discord (Stencyl Community Server): merrak
Reddit: jbartlebee
Twitter: @merrak

I really like the art direction. It's unusual but works very well for this kind of game. It would be fun to have more scenes, and maybe some sound effects and music to go with it. It reminds me a bit of the Orisinal games.