Local Malice phase 2 hater here- Humor aside, superb work!
Quite polished for the time given in the Gaming Academy, I really dig that. Clean set pieces, cool music choices, The Kitchen's truly cooking!
I did feel that the first open area was somewhat too open? By the second time I went through the level, I pretty much skipped all the smaller enemies and went to the 'midboss' before the portal. Could have loved an incentive to fight these guys, potentially in the full version- If you all also plan to update it, consider some sword swing effects; I do recall getting hit behind Malice's wider slashes on phase 2, a swing could probably help indicate if the hitbox is active or not, and for extra cool points, too!
An interesting idea for sure! I feel that the game would have been more readable if it had a different camera angle, something slightly higher/top-down-ish so the player could tell when the doctor/enemy is shooting and what is the character's hurtbox/boundaries.
The unlit/shadow-y vibe is quite cool, could use an indicator when the player is damaging an enemy/is being damaged. Either through particles, animation or SFX.
The main mechanic reminded me of something like Pushmo on the 3DS with how the visuals can trick you around. Would love more puzzles at some point later!
The gameplay is simple and gets to the point which is neat! For some reason the enemies stopped spawning for some reason and ended up falling out of bounds onto an edge, so dunno if there's an enemy counter I didn't notice.
Got reminded of the motorbike/bicycle flash game trend back in the day, that was unexpected! The music might be slightly too earwormy with the pitch-bend and the short length, but that was humorous as well!
I dig the gameplay and the level design quite much, would have liked it to be slightly faster for my taste. I would personally go for a keyboard-only/gamepad-compatible layout because the boss made me realize how much shots do I tend to spam around haha. Also please, let me pet the dog!
There's a minor bug that shows up upon death, holding a direction will cause the player to die multiple times instead of properly restarting the level.
The concept is cute but I'm admittedly guilty of tapping everything until it reacted with me with a hint. Also that interactable by the sofa, you're not forgiven! (spoiler alert)
Great work! I realized how awful I am at memory games the hard way. D:
The modes are really enjoyable as well, would have loved to know what they are before starting the level. Super clean art as well, could use more colors/shapes on the bigger levels (7 and 8) since I've felt like some visuals were repeated with a hue shift? That caught me off for a little loop haha.
Neat work! I like the concept and the transition between segments/patterns is really cool!
Usually a shmup would take advantage of a smaller hitbox for the player, especially with such small projectile size, and making them pop would help quite a bit in the detail-heavy background. A bit of an I-frame would be really useful since the explosive projectiles are capable of swarming the player at some points (mainly the last level).
Neat mechanics! For future improvements, consider changing the camera position when restarting, the tug from the start to the checkpoint can be a bit disorienting. Great work!
Cool work! The controls feel nice even if they took me a little bit of getting used to.
I would agree with one of the comments in the game's page, a variety on the shooting and getting hurt sounds could have helped since you shoot quite often, along with a countdown/HUD element to know how many enemies are left to kill. Ended up with 10300 on the last(?) level!
Indeed, that was a design issue w/ the main mechanic that I should have solved! Between having the entire 'if you stand still for too long you'll get angry and die' gimmick and dealing with more traditional platformer boss fights. Will certainly keep an eye out on similar issues in future projects.
