I enjoyed my time with Megaman Tileset Traveller (MTT), but I can’t say it was a perfect experience. The game is buggy, it honestly needed some more time to develop. I can ignore Megaman not feeling like Megaman, but I can’t ignore the lack of indication of getting hurt. In the Rocket Knight level, when I killed the enemies, I didn’t even notice their hitbox was still active until my health was suspiciously low. Any indication of damage would suffice, a simple sound effect would work, but having nothing at all felt weird. There are also just glitches in general, nothing game-breaking, but it was noticeable. Probably the most notable glitch came in the level after the Blaster Master one. The orange demons that spit fire had an interesting bug where their hitbox remained active after they died, meaning you had to take forced contact damage. I was worried that this would make the level impossible, but thankfully it didn’t.
Outside of bugs, I was vastly confused by the difficulty curve in this game. The Shovel Knight level is the 2nd level in the game and was the hardest in my opinion. The level was filled with some fun platforming that I kind of wished was expanded on, but it was also filled with moments where I believe damage could not be avoidable. It was a level that I felt needed more testing, but the confusing thing is that every level after the Shovel Knight one was far easier. I’m unsure if this is intentional, but the Shovel Knight level feels like it should be one of the last levels. The difficulty curve was a high spike at the beginning and then fell right back down, it was confusing.
Critiquing aside, I did have some fun with this game. It had some charm, and it honestly reminded me of an early 2000s flash game. I don’t mean that in a bad way, it’s a style that although it has aged, gives me a lot of nostalgia. I see potential with your games, I really do, but MTT needed more testing. A bit of advice I would give is to have friends test your game out, so that way you can get some feedback about bugs, and other issues before going public. I guarantee you that a lot of the issues I had could’ve been fixed if a tester found them. A simple test can go a long way into improving your games, so look into doing that in the future. Also feel free to update this game, and fix some of the issues I had. I might even be up for playing it again.
Mission: Gem presents an interesting idea where the projectiles are items you must collect and store to score points. It makes the player balance between collecting gems for points and collecting gems for combat. It’s a novel idea, but the execution is a bit mixed. It works, but I feel it can be vastly improved with some touching up. The major thing this game needs is to allow the player to control how many gems they store. If I collect 15 pearls, I don't want to store all 15. Let me choose how many I can store, and how many I keep on me. I know that might remove some of the pace, but I think the benefit of that system outweighs keeping that.
I did have a fun time trying this though, and I would like to see this expanded upon if you do in the future.
It's hard to explain the levels in just words, but it's the one with just one enemy in a tall room that is bordered with red walls. I'd imagine you need to is precisely aim the blade so you can teleport to the enemy, something I didn't want to bother with. Still had a good time though.
I played the entire game, easily perfecting every level while having a good time.
I played it before reading the description, and after reading it, I have more appreciation for Soan’s World.
You took the time to make this for your friend's son. What an amazing kid he sounds like too.
I could talk about the game, but I think that’s not the point here, the point is that you created something for a little one to enjoy, and even had him give a little input on what he wanted.
I have much respect for you for doing this, in a world where it’s filled with negativity, seeing this made me smile.
Replayed it, I wasn't doing anything rn anyways.