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Eldwyn's Dungeon Academy's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Recent Work/Making Progress | #1 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Onboarding/Intuitiveness | #2 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Fun | #2 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Overall | #2 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Improvement Summary
This is a big update. We renamed the game, added story, a tutorial dungeon, updated the UI, and made a demo version.
Devlog
https://dragonsisle.itch.io/eldwyns-dungeon-academy/devlog/1647699/050-demo-release
Requested Feedback/Comments for Reviewers
The demo is limited to only 2 out of the initial 4 dungeons, and only 1 per run. For jam reviewers who read this, click on the doors of both windmills to unlock all 4, and the ability to go between them as you would in the full game. This will not grant access to the final 2 part dungeon and full grade.
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Comments
A really cool game. I can only see a few issues:
1. The music keeps resetting whenever you open your inventory, which is really annoying.
2. The cooldown on some weapons is a bit off, and even though it looks like my weapon has reloaded – as shown by the bar next to it – I still can’t use it or it doesn’t respond. This is especially true of wands.
3. In my opinion, the bow is a massive overpowered item, especially against bosses. You just spam it and that’s it… And the enemies – especially those big goblins – are even easier to deal with.
Thanks for playing and the feedback.
I'll take another look at the music. It is a web only issue. I thought I'd fixed it, but apparently not.
We'll double check the timing on the tools. The UI should be synced to tool use.
Yeah, the bow is pretty powerful currently. We plan to go over all of the tools and rebalance them soon.
I was waiting to play this game because it is quite fun.
I will try not to repeat any feedback I have given in previous jams except stuff that bothered me.
Also note that this review will have a lot more nitpicks and negatives than the previous ones, because most of the overview stuff is now already implemented in the game. I know you are looking to potentially steam release so this sort of feedback might help.
The Demo version
My reasoning and suggestions here.
It is ok to lock 2 dungeons but the most fun part of this game is that you can go back, and choose a different dungeon. Having that ability robbed makes the demo feel like it does not communicate one of the best features off the game.
These are just my thoughts and I am sure this was a very deliberate design on our end.
The Full game
I completed every dungeon available in my play through.
My favorite ability is the bow arrow and the boulder ability.
It was fun to fire a warning arrow when I entered a dungeon (because I have just rewatched Odyssey)
I don’t like the sword much.. the reasons are the whirlwind ability seems to have a small hitbox. I am visually on top of an opponent, the sword is touching them but it just does not do damage anyway. It would also be appreciated to have a small iframe for that ability. not anything crazy like the dash, but maybe 0.3s would be appreciated.
The dash works perfectly except that it is attached to F on keyboard. I would love for it to be shift or even space in fact. I am used to mobility abilities being on those.
Sword can also damage through walls. Both enemy and our can do this. I would like for this not to be the case.
The enemy AI pathfinding is not the smoothest as it frequently gets stuck on walls and walks over ravines that kills them instantly, leaving floating items in its wake.
If I hit a knight near an edge with an arrow, he takes knockback and starts behaving weirdly (the sprite stutters and keeps changing directions while in the same spot)
I feel like this can definitely be worked upon.
Bugs
I can walk through walls by going past this door in a specific spot.
The water sprite texture is revealed on certain edges.
Things I loved about the game
I am enjoying the new textures!
The puzzle dungeon was very fun with nice puzzles and the wind mechanic.
I also liked the water reveal mechanic and it is done quite well. It was enjoyable to throw a boulder at them and make them reveal themselves at exactly the right moment.
favorite boss fight was ghost summoner mage who kept calling on to her skeletons. I would just ignore them and put a bunch of bombs near her to one shot her. Although I did have to use healing wand once here.
The giant swordsman fight was also fun where I chose to use the on activate arrows to kill him and used wind to knock him back over and over into them. Quite a fun way to kill a boss.
Overall I love all the effort you’ve put into this patch. Makes the game feel a lot more polished and steam ready!
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Thank you for such great feedback!
I can see the logic in allowing access to both dungeons. We have been discussing how best to do the demo to draw people in, but not give away too much. Since we are letting players have access to both dungeons already, letting them go between them doesn't really have much of a negative, and you are right about it showing something we make a key part of the gameplay. I'll make the change for our next update. Ironically, I had to add extra logic in to be able to limit them to staying in the one they picked when continuing.
I do use the sword, but rarely use the Whirlwind. I can agree that giving it a bit of invulnerability does make sense. I want to revisit it in general, as the Earth Scroll feels like a better version of it. We need to take a look at them and decide how we want each to work and if there is too much overlap. We made a significant change to the weapons in this update, and they still need some refining. The weapons used to be part of the main character sprites. We broke them out to be there own sprites and nodes. The collision shapes are now on the weapon nodes, but they are not as good as they could be. There is something to be said for if you are directly over an enemy you might not be able to hit them with a longer weapon like a sword, so leaving the collision shape on the blade, but not the hilt or over your character can work, but for gameplay we may extend the collisions inward more. Maybe we need to add a dagger for close range. You could fight with sword and dagger... but that probably would not play well with the enemies and dungeon design we have, even if it is a good style for melee.
I can agree that Dash on F is problematic, especially when moving to the right. I don't know why I did not think to swap it to Space... oh, right, we have that as using the primary tool. Instead I added middle-click for it. You can customize the keys in the settings. We'll review the defaults. I'm wanting to leave Shift for a potential run ability, at least for debug mode, but we'll see. Dash is important.
We've discussed the attack through walls and left it for now, but are debating adding logic to remove it. It is not very realistic, but can be convenient.
Enemy logic is on my list to work on. I've done an initial pass on the bosses, but some of the core logic is still a bit flaky.
Those doors have been a real pain, though generally more the logic than sneaking past them. I plan to completely redo them in the near future. We will check the collisions on that one and make sure it is properly blocked off.
I did see the water issue shortly before we uploaded, but we didn't have time to fix it. I think the issue was the effect was designed with the base idle frame, and did not account for the full animation size.
Glad you enjoyed! We really wanted to do more with the puzzle aspects, so it is good to hear they are appreciated.
Earth scroll definitely overshadows whirlwind. And upgrades in a Zelda like are fine. I do have some ideas to make whirlwind better instead of invincibility. It could do:
This could make it more unique than the earth scroll.
The thing is I love to use charge abilities in the game. I feel like I got rewarded for something I prepared for. That is why I kept thinking about why I wasn’t using whirlwind enough.
Well, if you like charge up abilities, one of the things under consideration is adding more of them! Some of the work I did for the jam update was to make the Sword just be another tool, so that we could do more with the others. We are thinking that there may be hidden upgrades, which would allow the upgraded tools to have a charge ability. We haven't fleshed them out yet, and don't want to try to cram too much into a small space and make the rewards feel less rewarding, but we will probably get at least one or two in.
We will keep your suggestions in mind when we review the tools. Thanks!
Really like the update, the tutorial helps the game feel much more polished. I picked the trap dungeon. Took me awhile to figure out the air wand part but that is really clever. Movement and combat are fun, puzzles were clever without being too complex. Really great job, liked it a lot.
Thanks for playing and the feedback.
Glad you liked the puzzles. We really wanted to refine things in this update so the puzzles felt more a part of the dungeons, rather than being too obvious and perhaps feeling like just filler. We have a few more thoughts for additional puzzles to add, mostly in the final dungeon.
Good to hear the movement feels fun. That was one of the things we had an issue with in the previous version, and I myself wasn't happy with. The recent updates felt better to us, but it is always nice when others agree.
Every time I press "E" to open the menu, the music restarts, which gets a bit annoying—I ended up having to go into the settings and turn it off completely.
The combat feels really good, and I liked the detail that your character moves slower while in the arena.
I loved the puzzles using the Air Wand! That part gave me strong Zelda vibes.
I managed to get the boss key, but I couldn't beat him because I went into the fight with only 1 HP lol.
Thanks for playing and the feedback.
It looks like the music restarting may be a web export only issue, as I just tested and only get it there. I'll do some looking to see if I can find what is causing it. We've had music issues on web in the past, so I have an idea of things we can try to adjust. Thanks for letting us know!
We were very much inspired by (S)NES era Zelda games.
Good job getting to the boss. Beating a boss without taking a hit would be tough... Hmm, maybe when we implement difficulty settings we can add a super tough challenge mode where you only get 1 HP... or maybe just an achievement for not taking any damage.