Hello,
First off, I’d like to say ‘Congratulations, your demo just earned you another KS backer.’ I see a lot of potential here. Overall felt good to play, and I had fun clearing the dungeon. That being said, here’s a list of things that stood out to me while playing, in no particular order:
Lighting: I’m a sucker for more modern ‘dynamic’ lighting in retro/pixel graphic games, and this scratches that itch. Especially look forward to seeing that lighting in the CRT mode. However, in regards to the lighting in dark rooms, it seems odd to me that everything seems to have a pulsating light, with a semi-transparent edge to soften the transition to pure darkness, except for the entrance/exits to dark rooms. The sharp edge of the entrance/exit lighting lighting against the softer edge of the light around the character looks odd. Also, not sure if it’s intentional, but the map is an incredibly powerful thing for navigating dark rooms without using the fire ability to light the way.
Pots: The throw arc on pots feels rather stiff and unnatural, going straight horizontally before quickly arcing down. Also feels odd that pots can’t be broken by sword attacks. Signs I can understand being immortal, don’t want to lose the tutorial text, but pots can still be quickly dispatched by throws, so not a big deal. My real issue with pots is that when a pot is next to a corner in such a way that you can move against the wall into it, you get stuck trying to push it, which slightly broke the flow of movement a couple times. This also seems to apply to other things that trigger the pushing animation like blocks.
Combat: Combat was smooth, and satisfying. Satisfying feeling slashes and death, knockback and maneuvering around enemies, blocking and striking, but it also felt slow and easy. I think my issue there is because of how long enemies are stunned/invulnerable after being hit, while some can be dispatched in one hit, others just feel like they take too long to kill for what they are. As for the difficulty, nothing really seems to do much damage, and health is plentiful, but I’m fairly certain ‘hero mode’, if no other difficulties are planned, will be enough to satiate my itch for challenge from a damage/health perspective. The boss and miniboss, possibly in part due to low damage and general slowness, didn’t feel more challenging than anything else, which was a shame as they were intuitive and fun to fight.
Audio: The music maybe isn’t as legendary as classic Zelda tunes, but it does its job very well. I’ve left the game on in the background as I write this, and through the whole demo and process of writing this feedback, the fire temple theme is yet to get stale to me. Very nice. However, when the knight enemies attacked my shield, I’m pretty sure I heard a quiet sound, yet when the fireballs hit the shield, I can’t make out any sound at all. Not sure if that sound is missing, or if the mixing needs to be adjusted, but in general, felt like shielding enemy attacks should make more satisfying sounds than it currently does.
UI: Not much to say about UI, served its purpose. My only complaints are that when putting in my name at the start, pressing ‘B’ (xbox controller) immediately sent me back when I thought it’d be a shortcut to backspace the typo I’d made in the name. Also, first time I wandered into the inventory screen I accidentally slurped up a potion ‘cause I thought it’d bring up an confirmation option to use, rather than instantly using it with no further confirmation.
Controls: Normally, if standing in front of something, you can attack. If you’re walking into something, whether or not you can attack while holding movement into the object seems to be dependent on whether or not the player is in the ‘pushing’ animation. However, even when stationary, you can’t attack while facing the signs, you can attack while standing stationary to the side or behind the sign, but not from the front, feels odd to not be able to attack in that very specific circumstance, especially when there’s a sign that tells you what button is for sword attacks, and you can’t attack while standing in front of it, where you’d be standing to read it. ALSO, deadzones for controller joysticks probably need to be increased a bit, oftentimes if I let go of the joystick from having pushed it all the way in one direction, it’s bouncing back would cause the character to turn around.
Level Design: Out of everything, I think the level design was my favorite part of the demo. While some rooms felt like they might be larger than necessary, the flow of the dungeon felt VERY reminiscent of my experiences in Gameboy/Gameboy color Zelda titles like links awakening or the oracle games, where I find myself in the moment feeling like I’ve cleverly solved it the puzzles and can’t possibly be held back, and afterwards wondering if I did it exactly as it was intended to be like a puppet on a string. Analogy might be weird, but to summarize, felt authentic to the feeling of classic Zelda dungeons. The only point of confusion for me in the entire dungeon was a room with 2 platforms going around 3 torches in lava you had to light, in the same column of rooms as the boss. I lit the torches, and heard the jingle implying that I’d accomplished something, but tbh, I have no clue what that did. However, while I’m not sure what that did, I’m fairly certain I got everything in the dungeon, as all chests appeared open on the map, and it felt entirely natural exploring and solving it. I think that above all else is what convinced me to back. Look forward to seeing the rest of the game world.