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Pathelan

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A member registered Apr 20, 2020 · View creator page →

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The Art Style in this game was by far the most interesting and most unique aspect of this game. It has good contrast and gives the player a feeling of power with their attacks as the enemies pause and react to your hits.

Despite this, the gameplay loop is very basic and gets repetitive fast. The idea of having 2 different forms to switch between is interesting in concept, but in terms of gameplay it adds very little. The trade off in attack speed for a ranged attack in the small form is often not worth it with the massive hordes of enemies, making the gameplay element relatively useless. I would love to see this idea expanded upon, maybe having ranged attacks deal more damage to counteract the offset of lowered attack speed, or maybe even a more unique twist on the genre.

As the game is right now, it is fun for around a minute before the enemies rapidly out scale the enemy, making it harder in an unengaging way as the player finds themselves getting overwhelmed with no way of fighting back. Some ways I would suggest you could improve this aspect of the game is by potentially giving the player weapons or power-ups (Look at Streets of Rage 4) to give the player a temporary boost to help fight off against the massive hordes.

Another issue I found with the game was a lack of player feedback, especially when giving or receiving hits. This issue has a simple solution, either adding some kind of flash on the player/screen along with a particle effect. This would both help make the game look nicer and give gameplay a much smoother transition to getting hit rather than constantly having to look at the corner of the screen.

Overall, this game was very fun and I hope to see more of it in the future!

How do you plan on developing it further since this jam has finished?

You sent the source code, not a playable build!

I can't play the game!

This game has a fun and engaging gameplay loop, constantly testing the player's skill and reaction time. Because of these skill factors, the game has a very high skill ceiling despite its simplicity with a high score system used to incentivise players to come back to the game.

One area of the game that I do feel is lacking is the graphics, while it is simple and allows the player to focus, it seems almost too simple and rushed. While it's not a necessary improvement to make the game more fun, it will definitely help the game feel more polished and complete, it can also help with player feedback and engagement.

Along with this, I noticed that the game only shows your high score after you have died, I feel like it would be a great addition to have your high score while playing along with it being on the main menu, this way the player will always have a new goal to strive for which may help with player retention.

9/10 - Ashe L

This game has a fun and engaging gameplay loop, constantly testing the player's skill and reaction time. Because of these skill factors, the game has a very high skill ceiling despite its simplicity with a high score system used to incentivise players to come back to the game.

One area of the game that I feel could be improved is more player feedback, this would help give clarity to who has more accuracy. This would be done with something simple, such as a bigger flash or different colours for the different timings the players can get. 

Along with this, I noticed that the game only shows your high score after you have died, I feel like it would be a great addition to have your high score while playing along with it being on the main menu, this way the player will always have a new goal to strive for which may help with player retention.

9/10 - Ashe L

This is a very interesting take on the game jam, focussing more on character development and world building rather than gameplay. Although I have found that this has made the game sacrifice player interaction leading to everything feel pre-determined which in turn makes every choice feel less important.

Apart from that, the story it tells is able to quickly and effectively portray and develop characters, making the viewer able to pick up on things laid down in the dialogue that isn't picked up by the character, creating an interesting dynamic between the viewer and the world. 

While there are no major issues with this game, I was able to spot some spelling mistakes, such as misspelling Amateur as 'ameture' along with a few sentences not flowing properly. Along with this, some of the character's sprites ended up looking quite pixelated and compressed. Despite these issues, the story overall is enjoyable and has some replayability. 

6/10 - Ashe L

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The level design is interesting, although I found myself clipping into the walls at times making me unable to progress. Despite this, the game has a charming and simplistic art style which is relatively easy to read, although I think at times (especially when the depth changes), it would be nice if there was more variety in textures to help with visual clarity.

Everything aside, the only complaint I have is that the camera is quite difficult to control as the mouse moves all over the screen, this also makes hitting the ball more difficult as you have to consider the amount of mouse space you have left on the screen, which creates an unneeded amount of difficulty and ends up being more tedious and seems like an unplanned consequence due to the game design.

Overall the game was very enjoyable if you are able to look past the issues, all of which I believe could've been fixed with a couple more days in development.

7/10 - Ashe L.

I love this game more!