I think it was something fundamental about the game: the movement. It was very slow and it felt like I was navigating a maze. Give it a play and see if you can see what I mean. Have a think about how you could improve movement. I think a large change would do wonders here.
Copied from Google: An overworld or a hub world is, in a broad sense, an area within a video game that interconnects all its levels or locations. They are mostly common in role-playing games, though this does not exclude other video game genres, such as some platformers and strategy games.
For the UI loop, just let me click on a quest and let me do it right away please
I like a lot about this game. The sword designs are awesome and it has a chill vibe. As you work on it, I'd consider making it a bit more structured. I feel like I got too powerful too quickly - an overworld may help with this? Also, I feel the flow of going back to the board, accepting a quest, then having to exit the board to do the quest is cumbersome. Just let me fight!
There's a lot of potential here. I can tell you put a lot of thought and care here. Instead of criticism - I'm going to provide some thoughts I had:
I like the music and the art on the pigs. Music needs more punch to it and cleaner looping would be fab.
The different weapons - great implementation
I didn't feel there were many stakes. I could walk into a crowd of enemies and get them all. I think knockback or stun may make this a less tempting but not unviable if you invest in miasma.
I had some performance issues around level 13. Too many pigs on screen?
I found myself walking in a circle. I wonder if varying the environment could make this les viable.
Again, potential. If you iterated on these ideas, there's something to be developed here. You should feel proud of yourself.
An good first game! I have some comments but it is for sure something to be proud of. The style is lovely and I like the use of colour. You have a lot of foundational stuff down already
Transition between levels - it's a little jumpy at the moment
Fall deaths, have the camera stop and let the player fall past the camera
Fewer Invisible walls! Let me run free!
Look at the parallax layer option for background
I think an enemy stop halt when it kills you
Instead of telling me to jump over a gap, use coins to entice me
It looks like you implemented fast fall and jump buffer but I'm not certain about coyote time?
The vibes are there and there's potential for something really creepy. Music, art, and SFX work in your favour though I thought the scream meant something was wrong?
I'd like to see some thought put in to speed up the game play. Not waiting for the weight to change, scaling the weights to the weight needed to be guessed, etc
I'm sure you've gotten a lot of improvements to make so I'll try and give one bit of advice...
You can adjust the frame rate of the run animation and add some more frames to make it look like the character is running across the floor instead of sliding
Criticisms first: It was a bit jittery on my admittedly old laptop and I found the controls a bit frustrating as I couldn't look/look away when I wanted, it made me go down a couple levels a few times.
That said, wow you set the mood! The shadows, the sunset, the view! Did you base that off of a real view? The music and the cinematics of it were great! I think there is room for more mechanics for a potential full version - maybe when eye line meets, awkwardness goes up but alchemy accelerates for half a second?
Criticisms first: It was a bit jittery on my admittedly old laptop and I found the controls a bit frustrating as I couldn't look/look away when I wanted, it made me go down a couple levels a few times.
That said, wow you set the mood! The shadows, the sunset, the view! Did you base that off of a real view? The music and the cinematics of it were great! I think there is room for more mechanics for a potential full version - maybe when eye line meets, awkwardness goes up but alchemy accelerates for half a second?
Thank you for your glowing review! A lot of people have had similar complaints. While the design choices were intentional, I think re-working the mechanics to address these issues will be a priority for a fuller game
I appreciate the diligence! There are existing bugs in the game so I don't think you imagined it. I'll keep an eye on the comments to see if anyone hits anything similar
System.InvalidOperationException: Could not map Texture2D for reading! Error Code: The GPU will not respond to more commands, most likely because of an invalid command passed by the calling application. (0x887A0006)
at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.FNALoggerEXT.FNA3DLogError(IntPtr msg)
at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.FNA3D.FNA3D_GetTextureData2D(IntPtr device, IntPtr texture, Int32 x, Int32 y, Int32 w, Int32 h, Int32 level, IntPtr data, Int32 dataLength)
System.InvalidOperationException: Could not map Texture2D for reading! Error Code: The GPU will not respond to more commands, most likely because of an invalid command passed by the calling application. (0x887A0006)
at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.FNALoggerEXT.FNA3DLogError(IntPtr msg)
at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.FNA3D.FNA3D_GetTextureData2D(IntPtr device, IntPtr texture, Int32 x, Int32 y, Int32 w, Int32 h, Int32 level, IntPtr data, Int32 dataLength)
Thank you for playing! I've heard a lot recently that the jumps near the beginning are tight (especially in the flowers level). This was something I made easier! I'm glad you got past it regardless.
The blue phosphorus potions emit light and are what make platforms collidable when the light touches them. The black sulphur potions emit shadow and stops light from hitting the platforms - making them passable. I'm not certain what the predictability issue is that you're referring to? It sound's like you assumed that the light forms were collidable when they weren't in light - which is not the case. If light is matter, things in shadow cannot be touched.
Regardless, thank you for your kind feedback. I have ideas for a full game that I may put online in future.
