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(2 edits)

I have quite a bit to say about this game. So I'm going to speak about it as encountered each and everything I will talk about.

Edit: I first want to say; I understand this is game jam, and it's not the serious. But I did not get the vibe that this was intended to be rage game, and yet I felt genuine anger and frustration while playing at times. Rage games do not invite criticism of the elements that making them upsetting, because they are done on purpose. The difference between a good rage game and a bad one, is where the blame can be pinned. In a good rage game, the is on the player and their errors. In a bad rage game, the game itself simply feels unfair. Of course, most strike a middle ground between these. Maybe I just suck at this game in particular, but given I've played several other games like it, both the good and the bad, I'm not sure if my skill is the issue, hence why I'm making this post in the first place.

Level 1 - The tutorial level, is, unfortunately, the best level in my opinion, seeing as I only died once, maybe twice, as I was still learning the controls. Everything in this level works as intended, although the tutorial text is a tad small, and could use some mentions on the jumping mechanic, as I'm pretty sure you can go through the entire level without wall jumping once. The only other I can say about this level, extends to the entire game, which is turn that music volume DOWN.

Level 2 - I had high hopes, as the game seemed pretty good off of level one. Took me a minute to figure out I had wall jumps, but any gamer worth their salt could have figured it out just as fine as I had. Let's start with the positives of this level: It introduces the main way in which the puzzles appear in this game, and it's not that bad if you die. Now the negatives: 1. There is red flash whenever you hit a robot, indicating that you're dealing damage, there's no red flash when hitting turrets, so for a good while, I assume they can't be killed, especially since they take MORE hits to kill than the robots. 2. This level has you hit levers through lasers, and introduces this mechanic quite well, save for the fact that you have sit on the last 3 pixels along the edge of the platform where these levers are...and for some reasons there's two of them? 3. The UI for both the projectile ability reload, and your own health, is completely invisible, with the former only being visible when you're not on the ground. Minor issue, but it helps to know how much health I have. 4. This level really makes me wish I had some sort of movement ability like a dash, because ALL of the platforms in this game move at the same speed my grandmother drives, 35mph in 45 mph zone. They don't need to be super fast, but they slow the game down and make dying even more frustrating, but I'll talk more about that during level 3's rant. 5. I appreciate the laser projectors blocking projectiles, I don't appreciate them blocking me, that's the kind of precision platforming this game is not made for.

Turrets - I had to put this here because this applies to both level 2 and level 3. 1. Why do the turrets kill in 2 hits? If I get hit once, I only have to get hit one more time for my ass to get sent back to start. 2. You could use less turrets, or, better yet, make them way easier to kill; 2 hits from the melee should be enough destroy them. 3. Why the fuck do the turrets get homing when you get near them? No, seriously, who thought that was good idea? First you make so they shoot in a straight path, then when you get close enough, they don't? It makes sense for SOME of the turrets to have homing, but why the ones on the walls? It's really fucking annoying to have to deal with an enemy that takes more hits to kill than you do to it, for it having a projectile, and it also homes in on you once you're too close to actually dodge out of the fucking way. It helps that this isn't really true for the moving turrets, but the problem with those turrets, is that you can't actually see far enough up that if you wall jump at the wrong time, you can just eat a projectile to face and have no way around it other than let yourself wall back to the ground.

Level 3 - I will admit, at the time of writing this I didn't finish level 3, because I value my time, and my fingers began to hurt, as they do as I continue to write this. Update: I've beaten level 3 and its fine after you kill the first two turrets inside the third vertical tunnel; as I expected, level 3 is the last level. Honestly, if I could make only one change to this game, it would be to add a checkpoint after each vertical tunnel, or least after the first one. 1. There are WAY TOO MANY turrets in the first platforming section with the TWO moving turrets that shoot straight down, AND ALSO HOME IN ON YOU IF YOU GET TOO CLOSE? (maybe I'm misremembering how they work, but that's just bullshit) 2. Dying has no consequences, I can kill an enemy in a level and it will never respawn. The only downside to dying is that I must return to the beginning of the level and make the trek back to whatever hell I died in. This is bearable in level 2...not in level 3. Please just add some kind of checkpoint system so the player doesn't have to spend half the each life going back to where they died. 3. This level feels like it repeats the same song an dance over and over. For level 2, this was tolerable, because most of the mechanics it has you repeat are being used for the first time, but for level 3, we've already done wall climbs with turrets before...and not only that, but nobody wants to do that for AT LEAST 3 times in the SAME LEVEL. You started the game off showing that box could be moved on to a pressure plate, where's more of that? 4. This is less so a grievance and more just a comment, the music (and maybe the sound in general), completely stopped on this level for some reason, and I don't know why.

I want to end this comment off by saying I DO NOT hate this game. I really like what it's going for and think it has a lot of promise, with just a day or two of good balancing, this could be one of the best games in its jam. However, as it is, I feel like I'm torturing myself. I will try to beat level 3 after I post this and add anything I like or dislike further. 

tldr; Please don't let this comment dissuade you from working harder on this project, I like what've got, and I want to see a more refined version of it. 

I have now played after the developer has updated the game, the main changes were to fixing the UI visibility (which was quite nice) and reducing the damage dealt by the turrets. Overall, I like these changes, but which there was a bit more tuning done. Level 2 is now much more enjoyable, I think most of what I said about can be disregarded. Level 3 is still somewhat painful, and I can't tell if it was easier because I had already done it once before, or because of the balance changes. Still I think these improvements are nice, I appreciate the dev(s)'s ability to take criticism and improve their game with it.