Very cute, love the aesthetic, BUT some things stick out. Some enemies share the same color pallet with the floor, and that makes them less visible (black outline doesn't help). I understand the idea behind black outlines on the columns, but it's a bit jarring how the rest of the column outline is not black.
Character collision box is a bit too big - sometimes I couldn't walk through doors since I got stuck on the door frame and had to reposition myself. Saves are broken. I dig the idea of items and cards, though cards feel a tiny bit underpowered considering you can get straight character upgrades.
Feels a bit buggy and undercooked, but extremely promising. I love your take on a zelda-like, looking forward to more!
Hello! Great game, I'm having a lot of fun playing it. I'll write below what I find as I play:
There are some open doors. At first I thought I coudn't walk through, but then I realized is a probelm with the colisions. If I force myself in a particular way, I have access. So maybe polish this part a little bit?:
There is a small grafical bug with the owl. A line under it? But that seemed to be because I selected ressolution 720p. It was fixed when I changed it back to 1080p :
On the Map, it would be nice to show, a little indicator on rooms, of the existing doors, so that I know where I haven't explored yet:
My magic powers are on the X button (PS4 controller), but my confirm options are also on the X button, when talking to an NPC, or opening a chest, so I always end up mashing, and expending some MP unintentionally. It would be better to Swap, the normal slash atack ( Circle button in the PS4 ) with the special attack ( X button on the PS4 ). That way if someone is mashing X they wont mistakenly use any resource.
I got into a door, but I didn't progressed to the next room. A bug?
PS: It happened again, and i manage to go to the other room by moving me. It was a collision problem as well.
I don't know if this is intended but, I died at the rabbit boss, and restarted. I lost my items, but seems Like I kept the map, and golden compass abilities, plus my gold. Should I have kept those?
I've reached the boss again. But this time, the animation where it bumps into Alice, "spawned" in the wrong position. Afterwards, the game froze. I had to ALT + F4:
Well, I think I'll stop here for now. The game is indeed very fun, and I think I'll play more later. I think if you keep fixing bugs, and giving it some extra tweaks, it will be a great game!
-I managed to gain control of the player while the inventory is open. idk how to reproduce, but it happened in the first room after opening the pause menu while the inventory is viewed, then exiting out of the pause menu.
-Having to choose between 3 rewards when opening a locked chest is just weird. My suspension of disbelief is broken, since the chest doesn't have something special going on to make you choose. They almost look exactly like the silver key containing chests as well.
-Walking collision is not what I expected. My head counts, so I can't walk under a pillar or a doorway because my head it too close, despite my legs saying otherwise. It just feels bad.
-I died to a snail, and then when I pressed continue I was invisible for awhile, and enemies didn't seem to attack me. After traversing a room my character came back.
-I opened a sideways(from the east) silver key door, and when I go through the door the other side still has a locked silver key door. I mean a door behind the door type of thing. Here's the pic.
Feeling about done now. I don't think this is my jam, especially as is. Keep up the devfort though.
The breakable walls' mechanic makes weird/undesired results, also the doors are quite narrow, it's very common to get stuck.
1. At the very beginning of the run.
2. I guess I found the other side of a breakable wall.
3. I got stuck in the middle of the door until I tried a left/right shake.
4. (unrecorded) In a second maze stage I couldn't advance to the next room, and it was the only door available. Very similar to the second case.
Mechanics
This game lacks the feeling of getting better and stronger. If you look at Balatro or Binding of Isaac you keep getting stuff that makes you feel more powerful, and at the same time the difficulty increases. The mechanics that you made with the cards don't give that feeling, and I don't see an increase in difficulty with the enemies either, which they are a little to difficult since the very beginning imo, but once that you get used to their attacks' patterns, you can even avoid them.
Cards
There's no clear need to get most of them, if you get good with the basic attack and how to defeat the different enemies, you just don't need them. Why would I get a finite attack when I already have an infinite kitty?
Enemies (This is more an advice than a flaw)
It's not a good idea to use cute enemies, specially when you have cute designs that are helpful. At first I thought that the seller was a mini boss lol, the same happened with the flower, at first I thought that it was an enemy. Read the 3rd point here:
Cute game. I do like how the game looks. Sounds and music are nice.
Why you lock some rare rooms, but not the others? You can easily just run through sublevels, just dash and evade. You can loot chest if it contains a key, you do not need to clear the room. Some damage feels cheap, you enter a room, enemy was already near the door and hits you. Found out that you can slowly enter a room and just stand in the door frame, not alerting the enemy. Not sure if you are intended to peek like that.
When you dash into the next room you may push yourself back into the previous room for a moment. (Rarely)
Additionally you can even trick the game into not moving camera into the room you entered. (Happened once, I was receiving damage from other room)
Map and compass suppose to work for a level or a sub-level? They are working at all sub-levels.
At sublevel 5 - cutscene breaks with white rabbit character receiving damage from something invisible, after witch he just stands there.
Game plays well. I didn't find any broken items. All of them feel like simple +1/+2 buffs, nothing critical, but I am not sure how differently it will play in the whole run.
Nice Game Boy-esque aesthetic. The rooms could be a bit larger and it feels like a lot of the time you just get spammed with enemies before you actually learn how they work. Other than that it's pretty solid.
i had the same issue on continue where the character seems to exist but is nowhere to be seen. the game is waaay too hard, especially at the beginning. the first rooms should be easier so that players get used to enemy patterns. right now just a few hits from a random bird are enough to kill you also i was absolutely not expecting the butterfly to be an enemy, it looks WAY too peaceful. like there's a disconnect between the style of the enemy and how aggressive they are.
I got mogged, most of my deaths seemed to be from an enemy running into me. It'd be nice if there was more indication of when they were about to attack, especially the snails.
I ran into some weird glitches when restarting after death. The vibes and designs are really cute.
For reference I only used the default palette and played on normal difficulty.
One off notes as I was playing:
- Always thought it was cool how you have classic and modern soundfont options for the music.
- The green projectiles that the bird(?) enemy shoots are hard to see. Things important to the player like projectiles that can hurt them should always have an outline imo. I also think it moves really fucking fast but maybe that's a skill issue.
- It looks like the fountain can only be used once, but if you leave the room and come back its sprite will reset like it's full again.
- After dying, the setting's menu reset the soundfont option to "Modern" even though I had it on classic. The classic music was still playing like normal though.
- The orange flower and butterfly enemy having the same palette tripped me up. When I first encountered the butterfly I ran into it thinking it was some sort of item. I'm still not really sure what the orange flower actually does honestly.
- I don't notice much of a difference in speed from sprinting. From the game's itch page it says I should be moving faster if I hold C after twirling.
- Powercut doesn't seem to be visibly different from the regular attack. Looks like the range is the same as the regular attack so you're better off just spamming the regular attack instead of wasting time charging.
- Continue seems to be bugged. If I try to continue after a death the screen transitions to a new room but the player does not respawn. Pressing buttons will play sounds as if they are there though, as if they are hidden somewhere.
- There really needs to be some sort of hit feedback. Even the NES zelda would at least knock enemies back when you hit them. Right now enemies will always perform their attacks uninterrupted which can make it really hard to attack and then dodge incoming attacks fast enough.
Thoughts on the overall gameplay:
I think the rooms is this game are far too cramped. I'm not sure what sort of resolution you are working with but you might want to consider shrinking the player sprite (or their hurtbox at the very least) among other things so we have more room to play with. Twirling feels unwieldy because it travels you so far with very little control. Since it's suppose to be this game's dodge roll maybe shorten the distance it makes you travel and allow the player to steer it slightly instead of being set on a straight path. The randomly generated props in the rooms are more of annoyance than anything else cause they have collisions and make the rooms feel even smaller.
It felt like I didn't really have to bother with the other weapons or items. As I mentioned before the regular attack already has decent range and you're able to spam it pretty effectively.
Aesthetics are nice but I personally didn't vibe too much with the gameplay. With a few small changes here and there I could see it being a lot more fun though.
Comments
Very cute, love the aesthetic, BUT some things stick out. Some enemies share the same color pallet with the floor, and that makes them less visible (black outline doesn't help). I understand the idea behind black outlines on the columns, but it's a bit jarring how the rest of the column outline is not black.
Character collision box is a bit too big - sometimes I couldn't walk through doors since I got stuck on the door frame and had to reposition myself. Saves are broken. I dig the idea of items and cards, though cards feel a tiny bit underpowered considering you can get straight character upgrades.
Feels a bit buggy and undercooked, but extremely promising. I love your take on a zelda-like, looking forward to more!
I'll be real with you, I love the GBC Zelda games. This game feels really good with a visually pleasing art style. Great work.
Hello! Great game, I'm having a lot of fun playing it. I'll write below what I find as I play:
There are some open doors. At first I thought I coudn't walk through, but then I realized is a probelm with the colisions. If I force myself in a particular way, I have access. So maybe polish this part a little bit?:
There is a small grafical bug with the owl. A line under it? But that seemed to be because I selected ressolution 720p. It was fixed when I changed it back to 1080p :
On the Map, it would be nice to show, a little indicator on rooms, of the existing doors, so that I know where I haven't explored yet:
My magic powers are on the X button (PS4 controller), but my confirm options are also on the X button, when talking to an NPC, or opening a chest, so I always end up mashing, and expending some MP unintentionally. It would be better to Swap, the normal slash atack ( Circle button in the PS4 ) with the special attack ( X button on the PS4 ). That way if someone is mashing X they wont mistakenly use any resource.
I got into a door, but I didn't progressed to the next room. A bug?
PS: It happened again, and i manage to go to the other room by moving me. It was a collision problem as well.
I don't know if this is intended but, I died at the rabbit boss, and restarted. I lost my items, but seems Like I kept the map, and golden compass abilities, plus my gold. Should I have kept those?
I've reached the boss again. But this time, the animation where it bumps into Alice, "spawned" in the wrong position. Afterwards, the game froze. I had to ALT + F4:
Well, I think I'll stop here for now. The game is indeed very fun, and I think I'll play more later. I think if you keep fixing bugs, and giving it some extra tweaks, it will be a great game!
Keep up the good work!
-I managed to gain control of the player while the inventory is open. idk how to reproduce, but it happened in the first room after opening the pause menu while the inventory is viewed, then exiting out of the pause menu.
-Having to choose between 3 rewards when opening a locked chest is just weird. My suspension of disbelief is broken, since the chest doesn't have something special going on to make you choose. They almost look exactly like the silver key containing chests as well.
-Walking collision is not what I expected. My head counts, so I can't walk under a pillar or a doorway because my head it too close, despite my legs saying otherwise. It just feels bad.
-I died to a snail, and then when I pressed continue I was invisible for awhile, and enemies didn't seem to attack me. After traversing a room my character came back.
-I opened a sideways(from the east) silver key door, and when I go through the door the other side still has a locked silver key door. I mean a door behind the door type of thing. Here's the pic.
Feeling about done now. I don't think this is my jam, especially as is. Keep up the devfort though.
Walls and doors
The breakable walls' mechanic makes weird/undesired results, also the doors are quite narrow, it's very common to get stuck.
1. At the very beginning of the run.
2. I guess I found the other side of a breakable wall.
3. I got stuck in the middle of the door until I tried a left/right shake.
4. (unrecorded) In a second maze stage I couldn't advance to the next room, and it was the only door available. Very similar to the second case.
Mechanics
This game lacks the feeling of getting better and stronger. If you look at Balatro or Binding of Isaac you keep getting stuff that makes you feel more powerful, and at the same time the difficulty increases. The mechanics that you made with the cards don't give that feeling, and I don't see an increase in difficulty with the enemies either, which they are a little to difficult since the very beginning imo, but once that you get used to their attacks' patterns, you can even avoid them.
Cards
There's no clear need to get most of them, if you get good with the basic attack and how to defeat the different enemies, you just don't need them. Why would I get a finite attack when I already have an infinite kitty?
Enemies (This is more an advice than a flaw)
It's not a good idea to use cute enemies, specially when you have cute designs that are helpful. At first I thought that the seller was a mini boss lol, the same happened with the flower, at first I thought that it was an enemy. Read the 3rd point here:
https://www.darkpattern.games/pattern/52/aesthetic-manipulations.html
Fullscreen option doens't seem to work.
I think some sprites like certain enemies (Butterfly, bird that shoots projectiles at all directions, the bench) have some thin lines.
I do like the enemy variety.
Cute game.
I do like how the game looks. Sounds and music are nice.
Why you lock some rare rooms, but not the others? You can easily just run through sublevels, just dash and evade.
You can loot chest if it contains a key, you do not need to clear the room.
Some damage feels cheap, you enter a room, enemy was already near the door and hits you.
Found out that you can slowly enter a room and just stand in the door frame, not alerting the enemy. Not sure if you are intended to peek like that.
Game plays well. I didn't find any broken items. All of them feel like simple +1/+2 buffs, nothing critical, but I am not sure how differently it will play in the whole run.
Good luck with your Alice-like.
Nice Game Boy-esque aesthetic. The rooms could be a bit larger and it feels like a lot of the time you just get spammed with enemies before you actually learn how they work. Other than that it's pretty solid.
i had the same issue on continue where the character seems to exist but is nowhere to be seen.
the game is waaay too hard, especially at the beginning. the first rooms should be easier so that players get used to enemy patterns. right now just a few hits from a random bird are enough to kill you
also i was absolutely not expecting the butterfly to be an enemy, it looks WAY too peaceful. like there's a disconnect between the style of the enemy and how aggressive they are.
I got mogged, most of my deaths seemed to be from an enemy running into me. It'd be nice if there was more indication of when they were about to attack, especially the snails.
I ran into some weird glitches when restarting after death.
The vibes and designs are really cute.
For reference I only used the default palette and played on normal difficulty.
One off notes as I was playing:
- Always thought it was cool how you have classic and modern soundfont options for the music.
- The green projectiles that the bird(?) enemy shoots are hard to see. Things important to the player like projectiles that can hurt them should always have an outline imo. I also think it moves really fucking fast but maybe that's a skill issue.
- It looks like the fountain can only be used once, but if you leave the room and come back its sprite will reset like it's full again.
- After dying, the setting's menu reset the soundfont option to "Modern" even though I had it on classic. The classic music was still playing like normal though.
- The orange flower and butterfly enemy having the same palette tripped me up. When I first encountered the butterfly I ran into it thinking it was some sort of item. I'm still not really sure what the orange flower actually does honestly.
- I don't notice much of a difference in speed from sprinting. From the game's itch page it says I should be moving faster if I hold C after twirling.
- Powercut doesn't seem to be visibly different from the regular attack. Looks like the range is the same as the regular attack so you're better off just spamming the regular attack instead of wasting time charging.
- Continue seems to be bugged. If I try to continue after a death the screen transitions to a new room but the player does not respawn. Pressing buttons will play sounds as if they are there though, as if they are hidden somewhere.
- There really needs to be some sort of hit feedback. Even the NES zelda would at least knock enemies back when you hit them. Right now enemies will always perform their attacks uninterrupted which can make it really hard to attack and then dodge incoming attacks fast enough.
Thoughts on the overall gameplay:
I think the rooms is this game are far too cramped. I'm not sure what sort of resolution you are working with but you might want to consider shrinking the player sprite (or their hurtbox at the very least) among other things so we have more room to play with. Twirling feels unwieldy because it travels you so far with very little control. Since it's suppose to be this game's dodge roll maybe shorten the distance it makes you travel and allow the player to steer it slightly instead of being set on a straight path. The randomly generated props in the rooms are more of annoyance than anything else cause they have collisions and make the rooms feel even smaller.
It felt like I didn't really have to bother with the other weapons or items. As I mentioned before the regular attack already has decent range and you're able to spam it pretty effectively.
Aesthetics are nice but I personally didn't vibe too much with the gameplay. With a few small changes here and there I could see it being a lot more fun though.