Hey, saw your post on the server. Will definitely get on this. I tagged my colleague specifically as I know he likes games like this. Not that I dont, but I think this is exactly one he would be able to give you some great feedback on.

Hey, very happy to play this. Please feel free to hop in the Discord and post your game. Ive given feedback to about 7 games today, and will be doing more in the coming days. 

Hey, Im very happy to give you some feedback on this. Please consider joining the Discord as its the easiest way to communicate and give/receive feedback. Otherwise Im just jumping between old threads and sites. 

If you have been finding it difficult to find people to playtest your game, then please consider coming to the Discord. We are doing free playtesting (written reports, video feedback with commentary, and live stream playtests with live feedback). Im mainly looking for people that have struggled to get feedback before. 

If you have struggled to get feedback up to now, please consider joining, and we'll get you the most suited form of feedback.

If you are struggling to get someone to give you feedback on your game, then come this way. 

I've been giving this kind of feedback as well as doing live streams of various indie games for people that have been struggling to get feedback elsewhere. So far, the feedback from devs is that it has been incredibly valuable, so if you are struggling to get solid feedback to date, hopefully I can help, so while this is not a post to ask for feedback, it is a post offering feedback.

Hey guys,

I've been in the gamedev industry for over 10 years now. Over the past few months, I've been focusing on providing detailed playtesting feedback to hobbyist and indie developers who are often priced out of good, actionable feedback. I appreciate its subjective, but I think a lot of feedback can be a bit light, and I'm trying to change that. I put in hours of play time, and am as detailed as can be with the feedback. Here's an example of the type of feedback you can expect: https://igb-reports.pages.dev/pulsebreaker/

I'm conscious that this is technically a self-promotion post, so I want to keep the focus on the developers. The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and it's been rewarding seeing how useful this feedback has been to people working on their own games, particularly devs that have struggled to get useful info from playtesters in the past. I've since started Indie Game Booster, a small initiative focused on making useful feedback and other development support more accessible to hobbyists, solo developers and small indie teams.

If you're working on a game and would appreciate some thorough feedback, feel free to get involved. Free playtesting is subject to availability ( so far its always been possible), but I'm always happy to see what people are working on. 

Discord: https://discord.gg/GCqrGwegS

Website: https://www.indiegamebooster.com

Would love to see some of your projects, and am happy to help out wherever possible. I will reply to all messages. 

Hey guys, just following up on this playtest feedback. Ive set up a website which you can see here. I hope you dont mind that I've listed The Wandering Crusader as a playtested game based on the above. Since doing your review, the feedback Ive been giving is considerably more involved (often about 8k words and hours of footage).

I have also set up a Discord server herewhich is centered around playtests primarily. Its very new, but Im hoping to grow it over the coming months, so if youre looking for a place to get playtests, or supportive gamedev community, please do join and encourage people to try your upcoming builds. 

Hey, I didnt get a chance to play this a second time, but I have set up a Discord server that is primarily focused around playtests. Its extremely new but wanted to reach out given I have already played your game and given feedback. Im inviting people whos games I have played, so hopefully you can get more feedback as the server grows. Here is a link to the Discord, and the site if you have any interest in seeing it. Here is my website, I have not listed your game as the feedback I gave you was not up to the quality of the official feedback.

Hopefully you join the Discord and can share your progress and get feedback as it grows. I could see the potential in what you did, it was just really difficult to get through the onboarding at the time about 2.5 months ago because of all the set up, but reading your comments, it seems a lot has changed.

 

Hey, just as a reminder, I gave you the feedback above. I have since started doing quite detailed playtests. I have set up a site which you can see here . I have also set up a very new Discord here that I hope to grow over the coming months, primarily around playtests, if you think it would be of benefit to you. I am also obviously happy to play Axis again whenever you need a further playtest.

Solipsistic is such an awesome game. The guys have done a great job at taking a unique concept and turning it into something playable. There are some incredibly clever fourth wall breaking mechanics here that Ive not seen in any other game (I dont want to say too much as you really have to experience it for yourself).

To top it all off, they make it free. Really enjoyed my time with it. Looking forward to seeing more from them in the future.

I'm glad the feedback is in some way useful. If you push an update to the game, notify me, and I will try out the latest iteration, as its valuable to have a mix of feedback from new players but also players that have seen the previous iteration of the game too. If you address some of the issues outlined, I'm sure it will be dramatically more playable. Let me know when the next significant iteration is available for a playtest, and until then, best of luck with your development, and well done on creating something and sharing it with the world. Its far easier criticize than it is to create.  

I want to reply to a few of your points below.

First off, it can be frustrating to hear feedback that isnt 100% positive. I remember seeing my first negative review on Steam, and being a bit personally hurt by it. This isnt a negative review. This is just some feedback explaining why or why I felt a certain way while playing your game. What scares one person wont scare another, and what makes one person uncomfortable wont make another uncomfortable, so just use the feedback to build a wider understanding of how to get your intended feelings across to the player. Putting the time in to make a game, and sharing it with the world, is something to be proud of, so well done on your achievement. Dont take any negative implications about aspects of the game personally.

I can guarantee you the left click to consume the bars and drinks was not working during my playthrough. It wasnt a case of me not understanding to left click the item in the inventory. I read the controls.  I have a full recording of it not working. You can see me clicking it, and nothing happens. I am trying to left click, click and drag, click and hold etc, so there is a bug where this does not work on every playthrough. This I 100% guarantee you, so please dont put this down to me not understanding to left click the items in the inventory because I have a full recording of me doing just that. Dragging items out of the inventory to drop them was also not working, and this is also in the recording, so there is 100% a bug with this. Its possible this doesnt happen every time you launch the game. 

If you would like to hop on a call on Discord, I am very happy to go through this with you and show you. 

Regarding the fear/unsettling feeling, I understand your point, and perhaps I used the word "fear" too much. Within "fear", I do also mean any form of unsettling feeling, or eerie feeling, but I also didnt get that feeling from my playthrough. I just wanted to clarify that I didnt mean just "fear" in the sense of "Oh my God a terrifying creature".


Anyway, those were just some final thoughts. Best of luck with the continued development of your game.

Hey, I did a playtest and have done a write up. If you have any questions, just let me know. I came across a few small bugs that I mentioned, but most of the write up is giving actionable feedback from my POV as a player. 

As with all play test feedback, it doesnt mean by opinion is correct. This is just my experience with the game as a player, and hopefully you find it useful as an alternate perspective.

Overall

I played BETWEEN PLACES for around 30 minutes or so. During that time I died once, and then re-clipped,  before eventually deciding to quit.

There are elements of the presentation that I like. The overall visual aesthetic is interesting, the chromatic aberration effects are well executed, you did an okay job establishing the setting, and the menu music is fitting, and creates a good sense of mood initially.

My biggest issue is that I experienced essentially no tension, fear, or discomfort during the playthrough. I spent all of my time walking through environments without encountering anything that made me feel threatened and as a result, exploration eventually started to feel empty rather than unsettling.

I also encountered some technical and usability issues, particularly with the inventory, settings, menu presentation and launching the game, which I will outline below.

Overall, well done on making something, but in its current state it feels empty, and tensionless.

First Impressions

The menu gave me a really good first impression. The music was fitting, and the it made it seem like the game was going to present me with a lot of weirdness (which it ultimately never delivered on). While the tone of the menu is good, I think there are some relatively straightforward improvements that could strengthen the first impression.

The glitch effect on the menu text is static. Given the aesthetic you're going for, I think having this subtly animate would make the menu feel considerably more polished.

The menu music is pretty good and fits the atmosphere nicely.

There is a chair (in the top left) being illuminated by a fairly noticeable light, but there isn’t actually a visible source for that light. This stood out to me.

I also didn't initially realise that REALITY meant QUIT. In hindsight I understand the connection, but I don't think it's immediately obvious from a usability perspective. I accidentally quit the game because of this. If you want to keep the current naming, I'd strongly recommend an "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO QUIT?" confirmation afterwards, just in case there are more people like me that didn’t put two and two together.

Menu and UI

I'm personally not a fan of some of the deliberately obscure menu terminology.

Options such as "WHAT'S THAT?" and "SHH" have personality, but I don't think that personality is currently worth the reduction in usability. When I'm navigating a menu, I generally want to immediately understand where each option will take me. You can give menu labels character, but I would try to find a balance where their function is still obvious at a glance.

If you pause the menu during gameplay, you can see some of your menu elements are not aligned correctly. This is relatively minor, and is a quick fix to sort out.

I didn’t change any graphical settings before starting a new game, and once I was in game threre was no way to enable VSYNC.

Technical Issues

The .exe didn't launch on the second attempt I made to open the game after accidentally quitting.

When I eventually got it running again, the audio was extremely quiet. After checking the settings, I found that both audio sliders had somehow been set to zero.

I'd recommend allowing the important display options to be changed from the in game settings menu rather than requiring the player to leave their current session.

Inventory

The inventory didn't appear to function correctly during my playthrough. I collected items, including bars and drinks, but couldn't find a way to actually consume them. This affected my run as I could see my sanity depleting but there was nothing I could do to stop that. I later died with an inventory of about 9 bars, and 8 drinks.

Exploration and Pacing

I have played many Backrooms games, and they just never really create a scary environment. Big empty levels just aren’t tense or fear inducing for me. I would ask yourself what the main emption you’re trying to evoke is. When the whole game feels empty, there is no desire for me to progress, or to explore.  I didn't encounter enough variation, interaction or meaningful threat to make exploration feel purposeful. After around 20 minutes, I reached a particularly long section requiring me to crouch, only to eventually reach a dead end. That was the point where my motivation dropped considerably as I was already just walking through quite an empty level, and now I was going to have to backtrack while crouching through one.

I did continue a little further and eventually reached the ladder area containing two pages. After this, because I couldn't use the items in my inventory, I eventually died and reached the ERROR... 404 screen.

I think the key question I'd ask when reviewing these areas is:

"What is the player experiencing or anticipating while travelling through this space?"

Walking through a long corridor can work in horror, but there needs to be a reason that walking through it creates an emotion. That could be uncertainty, vulnerability, anticipation, environmental storytelling, navigation decisions, audio cues or the possibility of encountering something dangerous. Without those elements, a long corridor risks simply feeling like a long corridor, and that’s how this game felt to me.

Horror and Tension

Across approximately 20 minutes, I would personally rate the fear I experienced as 0/10. Others will find this more appealing Im sure, but I never felt particularly vulnerable and, more importantly, I became increasingly confident that I wasn't going to encounter anything. Once I as a plater develop that confidence, the environments stopped creating tension. In contrast, I am currently playing through Resident Evil 1 on PS1, and that is creating tension constantly. Im constantly hoping to find more bullets. I hardly ever have enough herbs, and every encounter is a risk.

This is worth emphasising because I'm generally very susceptible to horror games. It doesn't take much to make me uncomfortable when I believe something could actually happen. Here, however, I didn't develop that expectation. For horror to work, I don't necessarily think you need to constantly put enemies in front of the player What I think is missing is credible uncertainty. Make me question whether the sound behind me actually means something. Give me a reason to hesitate before entering the next room. Occasionally change something when I return to an area. Establish rules and then subtly violate them. Give me glimpses of something without immediately explaining it. The player doesn't necessarily need to be in danger all the time, but I think they need to believe that they might be.

Audio

There were occasions where I triggered sounds such as knocking and other environmental effects. The idea is good, but the individual effects often felt disconnected from the environment. Some also contain quite a lot of background noise, which gives them the impression of having come from different sources (like FreeSound) rather than belonging to the same soundscape. I'd recommend doing an audio consolidation pass. Even when using free sound libraries, processing the sounds so they share similar EQ, reverb, volume and environmental characteristics can help them feel like they were created specifically for the same game. More importantly, I would connect these sounds more closely to the horror design. A knock becomes much more effective if the player starts wondering what caused it. If environmental sounds repeatedly occur without consequence, I eventually learn that they're harmless background effects. The sounds you trigger at points, are not actually that bad, they just feel very disconnected, and don’t add to the tension.

If you’ve not heard of FMOD or WWISE, I would look at building some tension, rather than just triggering sounds. Use them to build over time, rather than using instant triggers that feel out of place.

Environmental Presentation

The visual aesthetic itself is one of the stronger aspects of the game. I like the overall presentation of the environments, and there are some creative choices here that fit the surreal Backrooms inspired setting. The background hum from the fluorescent lighting works particularly well for establishing the space. It does become somewhat repetitive over longer periods, but as an environmental detail it contributes nicely to the identity of the world. You have put together an interesting environment but I do think you need to build on that.

The chromatic aberration is also pretty well implemented. In particular, the visual effect used when dying and respawning or "reclipping" into the environment works well and feels considerably more polished than some of the surrounding systems. If you asked me to pick out the single best small detail of this game, that is it for me.

I think there's a solid atmospheric foundation here. The bigger challenge is giving the environments enough gameplay and tension to complement that presentation.

Story and Collectable Pages

I found the collectable pages a bit  too long. I made the effort to read the material about Brie and Carly, but I wasn't receiving enough payoff for the amount of information I was being asked to absorb. In a game where the player is primarily exploring, stopping to read long passages of text interrupts the pacing, and becomes more of an inconvenience over time than something positive. I'd consider either reducing the amount of pages, or just shorten some of the text, and if possible, maybe look at communicating more of this information through the environment itself. You could also ask yourself a broader design question:

"If I removed these pages, would the game lose part of its identity?"

Based on what I played, I'm not sure that it currently would (though admittedly I didn’t finish it). Reading about Brie and Carly should ideally change how I interpret something I'm seeing, reveal something I'm looking for, make me concerned about what happened to them, or establish information that later pays off. Otherwise, the pages risk becoming lore that exists alongside the game rather than storytelling that strengthens it.

Player Emotions

At some points I definitely experienced curiosity, such as when I first came across a door, or the area with the blue outline leading through a wall. I was initially intrigued by the visual aesthetic, but these decreased over time as nothing happened.

Fear remained at essentially 0/10 throughout the playthrough. I didn't experience much frustration either. Even when I encountered issues such as the inventory not working, my reaction was more that I was losing motivation to continue than becoming actively frustrated, though I knew it would ultimately lead to me dying.

I think that's an important distinction. Frustration can sometimes mean that the player is invested and wants to overcome something. My bigger concern here is that I wasn't particularly worried about what was going to happen next.

Final Thoughts

BETWEEN PLACES has an interesting visual foundation. I like the overall aesthetic, the environments have some strong atmospheric qualities, the menu is fairly inviting (even if I don’t personally think the game matches that), and effects such as the chromatic aberration during respawning are nicely executed.

For me, the biggest area to focus on is giving that atmosphere something to support. At the moment, there is a lot of walking but very little anticipation attached to that walking. Environmental sounds happen, but I quickly stopped believing they represented a threat. I found pages, but the information didn't meaningfully affect how I understood or interacted with the world. I collected survival items, but couldn't use them.

The result was that I never really felt threatened, which just leads to loss of motivation as a player.

There are definitely some good creative ideas in there. I think the next step is making sure the gameplay, horror design and environmental storytelling give players a reason to care about moving through that world.

Hey,

I have been writing up some quite detailed reports for people both here on Itch and on Reddit. After about 5 minutes, I was quite frustrated at constantly having to re-read everything that had already been presented to me as I dont think the terms were well explained. The description for CONCEDE is far more confusing than it needs to be. The first story, Sharma v NorthStar was honestly just such a dull concept for a case, that I didnt want to spend my time doing it. I have play-tested around 20 games in the past month, and I just could not bring myself to progress with the game after (accidentally) completing this case. I think that should be considered quite strong feedback, and I do mean it to be constructive. I can accept that you may have no budget for art, or that its just not needed at this time, but playing a fully vibe coded courtroom game, discussing contract law, with no sound, and confusing terminology, where it cant be full screened, with text crammed in such a small space that it needs scrollbars, was just something that even with the best will in the world, I could not progress with.  

I selected one of three options (IN DISPUTE, CONDEDE, NOT AN ELEMENT, and I thought this was going to just be some initial decisions to get my bearings, and that I would dig significantly deeper, but then it brought me to make a decision, before I had learned literally anything about the case. The way you are meant to use the right hand column is not clear at all. I used it to look at the definitions of terms. I then selected one of the three answers above, and then clicked "SETTLE THE FRAME". I have no idea what SETTLING THE FRAME should do. I clicked it, and it gave me a breakdown of what I got right, and what I got wrong, which was completely irrelevant as I had not thought I had made any actual decisions, so I left the game frustrated, and quite certain I would not return as a player.

The game needs onboarding, and it needs a case that is more interesting than "Is this person entitled to hours they worked outside a contract period?". I understand law is not what it appears as in courtroom dramas, but this was not fun for me as a player. I would address the readability. I would maybe introduce a short, simple onboarding case where you guide the player through, and I would work on the visual presentation.

The stutter made this unplayable. The horizontal camera stuttering happened in Firefox, Brave, and Chrome.


Beyond the stutter, having an intro that is around 3 minutes long, is unskippable, and plays after you die, is something you should reconsider. Everything you said could be consolidated in about 10 seconds, or with some visual cues in the scenem without any voice over needed. 

Hey, I saw your post about two weeks ago saying you were thinking about reviving this game, and that you were looking for some feedback. Ive just gotten around to a playtest, so here is some feedback. Hopewfully its useful.

The game was fun, so if you want a TLDR, its an overall positive review. I'll always caveat feedback by saying you dont need to take this as gospel, its just one persons opinion. The game is yours, and you choose to do what you like with the feedback, be it taking some of it onboard and actioning it, or ignoring it. Entirely your prerogative. 

If you have any questions, or need anything else, you can message me here, or add me on Discord (same username). If you know anyone else that wants feedback on their game, feel free to send them my way.

One Bullet Biscuit – Playtest Feedback

Overall

I’ll start by saying that I had fun playing this, which isn’t always the case with playtests. The premise is fun, the name is memorable (and very suited), and the core bullet bouncing mechanic is satisfying, and I think there's a really strong foundation here.

The current build does become quite repetitive, but this feels more like a content and balancing issue than a problem with the fundamental concept. If this expanded into different arenas with different layouts, hazards, enemy compositions and environmental mechanics, rather than primarily adding more waves to the same space, I could see it being super fun.

Core Mechanic

The bullet bouncing works really well. The trajectory preview is interesting. I can see why you added it, but I found it mostly irrelevant because I don’t need to see the path the bullet would take if it didn’t hit an enemy, that’s actually mostly irrelevant (unless youre trying to catch it). I rarely ever aimed at a wall to shoot, I aim at the zombies, and once that first collision occurs, the preview is irrelevant as even a micro change in the zombies position and direction changes that path.

After upgrading the number of available bounces, however, there's no indication after firing of how many bounces remain. Because bounce count becomes an important resource, I'd consider adding a small visual indicator that updates as the bullet ricochets.

Using right click as the primary attack also felt unusual. Left click is such an established convention for primary actions that I initially found this slightly unintuitive. Unless right click serves an important design purpose (maybe another shorter range attack on left click), I'd consider swapping it or allowing the controls to be rebound.

Physical UI

Having the UI physically exist within the game world and allowing the bullet to interact with it is brilliant. It's a really nice touch and gives the interface some personality rather than treating it purely as an overlay.

The one complaint I would have about this is that enemies can currently enter the level underneath that bottom left UI. When an enemy spawns beneath the bottom left UI they're obscured during the exact moment when the player needs to identify the threat. Taking damage from an enemy I couldn't reasonably see felt unfair. If a bullet cant pass through it, I don’t think an enemy should be able to pass through it.

I'd keep the physical UI mechanic, because it’s a nice touch, but prevent enemy spawn paths from overlapping those areas.

Enemy Spawning

The gaps in the fences are a really good piece of environmental signposting. Quite early on its clear that these represented enemy entry points without needing an explicit explanation via on screen UI or a tutorial.

The entrances on the top, left and bottom are reasonably clear, but the right side isn't as visually prominent. I'd make all entry points equally readable so the player can quickly build a mental model of where threats can originate. Right now, that right side fence is quite thin.

Combined with preventing enemies from entering beneath UI elements, this would make incoming threats feel much fairer IMO.

Enemies

The small ranged enemies introduced from Level 1 frequently overlap each other, layering up. When several occupy the same position, it becomes difficult to tell how many enemies are actually left (I know you have enemies remaining on the UI but I didn’t find that useful. My focus was solely on the game given its one hit kill).

I'd consider adding some separation or avoidance behaviour so they don't stack perfectly on top of one another. This would improve combat readability without necessarily making the game easier.

Difficulty

The difficulty curve needs some adjustment. The jump from Level 2 to Level 3 is quite extreme, whereas the jump from Level 3 to Level 4 feels considerably smaller and potentially even like a regression in difficulty.

Level 6 then felt close to impossible compared with what came before it. I'd look at the difficulty curve across the entire sequence rather than balancing each wave independently. Ideally each level should introduce a manageable increase in pressure while allowing the player to apply what they learned previously. If you’re currently doing level difficulty by feel, Id suggest doing it via a formula instead.

Lives

The lives system wasn't immediately clear to me. I first took damage around Level 5 or 6 and was surprised to immediately see YOU DIED. I had interpreted the three hearts in the top left as three hit points, rather than three continues. It was only after dying that I understood what they represented. I'd make that distinction clearer visually. If the player is always one hit from death, communicating something like "Continues: 3" may be more intuitive than using hearts, which are strongly associated with health in games.

After losing all lives, the game displayed: "You lost all your liveYou survived until Round6wave1" There are missing spaces and some wording issues here, so this screen needs a small formatting pass.

Biscuits

The biscuit collection across each level currently feels slightly arbitrary. Because the player has unlimited time after completing the encounter, there's no meaningful decision involved in collecting them. You simply walk around until you've picked everything up.

I'd either automatically collect remaining biscuits when the wave ends, or make collecting them part of active gameplay. For example, biscuits could disappear after a short period, creating a risk/reward decision between positioning for combat and collecting currency. The second option would add another layer of strategy and player agency to the combat loop.

It’s a small thing, but biscuits also currently render over enemies. I'd prioritise enemy readability and render enemies above the biscuits.

Pacing

In the first few levels you spend a lot of time simply walking across the arena to retrieve the bullet. The loop occasionally became: shoot, hit enemies, walk for quite a long time, retrieve the bullet, repeat. I think this partly emerged because an effective strategy was to allow enemies to group together and then treat them as a single herd. That made the actual shot satisfying, but retrieving the bullet afterwards became downtime rather than active gameplay.

I'd look at whether later upgrades, level design or retrieval mechanics could reduce that downtime without removing things like positional importance (which in honesty doesn’t feel particularly present anyway in this version). The bullet being physically retrievable is essentially the core mechanic, but the journey to retrieve it needs to be a bit more engaging.

UI

At the end of a round, the distinction between NEXT WAVE and END ROUND confused me. I repeatedly selected NEXT WAVE before eventually realising END ROUND brought me to the shop/upgrades.

I'd rename END ROUND to communicate the destination or outcome more clearly. Something like SHOP, or BUY UPGRADES would make the decision much easier to understand.

After dying, in the browser, you have no cursor and cant actually press PLAY or QUIT.

Upgrades

As mentioned above, I didn’t realize that what I thought was the health bar, was actually lives remaining. So I never saw the incentive for health upgrades. I focused on bullet damage and bounces.

I feel like I needed a weapon, perk, or upgrade to give either temporary invincibility or to destroy all zombies within a short range of me.

Cost of upgrades felt fair based on the number of cookies collected, though I never really felt like any of them seemed particularly good or useful.

Audio

The audio was the weakest part of the experience for me. It became repetitive enough that I eventually muted the game.

Given how satisfying the visual feedback already is, more variation in impact sounds, ricochets, enemy sounds and general ambience could make the gameplay substantially more enjoyable. Pitch and volume variation on repeated sounds could also help without requiring a huge library of additional SFX. So if enemies are getting hit via bounces, so build up in combos and hit sfx would add a lot.

Right now, the audio is quite dulled, and while mellow is probably the wrong word, it’s a lot more chill and relaxed than I think it should be. It feels like this should have a more upbeat tone.

Visuals

I really like the overall art style. The main character animation in particular feels nicely polished and gives the game a lot of personality. The visuals generally complement the gameplay. I love the style, and would play more of a game with this style.

The rectangular barricades within the arena didn't fit the surrounding aesthetic quite as well as I felt the background art, zombies, and player did. They feel more functional and generic compared with the personality present elsewhere. I think a slight touch up on their shape would make them match the broader art direction making it feel collectively more cohesive.

Final Thoughts

There's a lot I like here. The name is great, the art direction has personality, the character animation is polished, the physical UI is clever, and most importantly, bouncing a single bullet around the environment is just straight up fun (I was really hoping I would reach a stage where I had either more bullets or one huge bullet, though I suspect the former conflicts with the name of the game).

My main concern with the current build is repetition. After a few play throughs, and many waves, I felt like I was repeating the same interaction and it was getting a bit stale, particularly when I was unable to progress past a point.

I think different arenas could unlock a huge amount of potential. Different geometry alone would fundamentally change how the player thinks about ricochets. You could then layer in environmental hazards, moving surfaces, portals (for the bullet to go through), in-level power ups, different enemy entry points and other mechanics that alter the optimal trajectory.

I'd also prioritise smoothing out the difficulty curve and removing situations that feel outside the player's control, particularly enemies spawning beneath the UI.

The important takeaway for me is that the core mechanic is fun. I wasn't playing purely to provide feedback, which as I said, is often the case. I enjoyed this, albeit Im not sure if I would play it for hours on end. With more variety, stronger audio and some balancing work, I could see this becoming a really enjoyable game though for sure.

Hey, I play tested your game. I played through both levels, and the Art showcase. All in all, I played for about 15 minutes. It took about 2-3 mins each to complete each actual level, and then in the Art Showcase I revealed the floor (Im assuming there is no “completing” this level). If you have any questions let me know, though I suspect you wont have too many given its generally quite short. 

Playtest Feedback - Axis

Store page

• Its really not clear what youre showing in the capsule image, not is the title of the game really clear at all.

UI

• The Equip text appears noticeably blurry. Improving the text rendering would help with overall UI readability and polish.

Controls

• Mouse sensitivity feels inconsistent between axes. Horizontal movement feels too slow, while vertical movement feels way way too fast, although the vertical movement may simply feel exaggerated in comparison to the sluggish horizontal sensitivity, so I do say that slightly tentatively.
• I'd suggest balancing the X/Y sensitivity and ideally providing a mouse sensitivity option as I would have immediately changed those.

Presentation

• The executable is currently named MY PROJECT, which gives an impression, but as mentioned above, obviously I know this would change.
• VSync appears to be disabled, resulting in noticeable screen tearing which was pretty distracting. I'd suggest enabling it by default or providing a VSync option in the graphics settings even at this stage.
• Visually, the environments are not particularly interested to look at (at this stage) but I don’t think that’s the point of this demo. I would be keen to see what visual style you settle on.

Movement

• The transition between normal traversal and walking on walls is handled quite well. It isn't completely seamless, but the change in player orientation feels surprisingly smooth and the mechanic itself has been implemented nicely. I could be wrong, but it feels like you purposely slow the players movement during transitions. If you do, it does help with the orientation change. I would be curious to know if you plan to add a vignette option to narrow the FOV for those that get more easily distorted.
• The fact that you transition onto walls via the curved ramps is very quickly obvious, and the fact that you fall back to reality when you jump off is also very much immediately obvious so I think those are well implemented.

Path Reveal

• I'm currently unsure about the purpose of the path reveal mechanic. From what I played, it wasn't required or particularly useful for any of the puzzles, so I wasn't sure how it was intended to fit into the core gameplay loop. The mechanic itself appeared to be implemented neatly, but given there was no real purpose to it in any of the levels, its kind of hard to give you any more feedback beyond that. Given the fact you have two levels, and a showcase level, its weird that the path reveal didn’t have a purpose in this demo.

Misc

• The traversal suit is hidden in a corner right at the start of the Explore level. I’m not sure of the reasoning behind that given its equipped in Disorientation. Is there a plan to have sections without the suit? Equipping it almost felt unnecessary, or of why its placed in a corner as opposed to in the players natural path.

Overall

The wall-walking and path-reveal systems both appear technically well implemented, particularly the transition into different traversal orientations. I would be interested to see how those mechanics are incorporated into the actual puzzle design and core gameplay loop. The levels were very short, so they weren’t challenging, but if you introduced a few additional mechanics, like buttons, pressure pads etc, you could definitely have a pretty cool puzzle game here (if that’s what youre going for). 

If you built on this, I could definitely see it turning into something quite fun.

Edit : Screenshot could not attach - I reference a screenshot below. Opposing piece was directly in a corner, and I had it fully surrounded.

Hey, 
I just had a play of the game, so happy to offer some feedback.

The "Copy" button on the "Statistics" page is not copying the statistics.

Please see the attached image below. I was fully expecting the corners to be valid captures so was surprised when they were not.

You can see from the image below that as I was losing, I decided to try and get multiple captures on the outermost rows to ramp back up my score. I was surprised to see that I ended up getting only something like 3 points total from this remaining setup. I kind of wonder if a multiplier should be applied based on free spaces remaining in a capture area as opposed to it only being one point regardless. 

We used to play this game in primary school on lunch break with pen and paper. I would describe the fun I had here as moderate. I enjoyed the challenge but I am not immedaitely wanting to player another round. I will however play a few more games and feed back.

The visual style of making it look like pen and paper is quite nice, and suits the game, given a lot of people would have played this on pen and paper (as mentioned above).

I couldn't full screen the game, which I would have liked. 

Capturing pieces feels slightly underwhelming, but thats easily changeable. I think having a bit more of a "pop" when an opposing piece is surrounded would be a quick and easy way to improve that.

Highlighting the last placement of the other player is a good indicator, so kudos on that. 

I only played on normal difficulty, and thought the AI was just about right but I will feed back on this after more games.

The menu presentation could do with a bit of polish in future versions, particularly the page before starting a game where you set the settings, and also the "Back" button, the way its background appears on hover.

Its a cool game, albeit one Ive certainly played before elsewhere. I enjoyed it, and will play more to give you feedback, but not necessarily because I feel that strong desire to play more at this time. I can see the potential, so lets see if I get hooked later after a few more games. 

Statistics

Matches finished1

Win streak0

Best streak0

Captures (recaptures)24 (0)

Hints used0

Undos used0

Time played10m

Against the AI

By board

Hey, Im happy to play test your game. Ill play it either today or tomorrow and give you feedback then.

Ill put some time in later this weekend and give you some feedback :) For now, take a break, and make sure you drink some water and move from your chair :)

No problem, happy to playtest.

Ill add some further notes here, but they are not extensive. Once you have improved the onboarding Im happy to play again and offer you some more detailed feedback on the actual core of loop of the game.

For now, here is some additional feedback outside the onboarding comments:

- Watching the battles play out is actually quite satisfying. I think youve done a good job on making it feel like a battle is taking place.

- Having an ordered log of attacks would be useful as battles can be a bit chaotic. 

- The placement of your team vs the enemy team on the battle screen is not immediately clear to me. You could separate your 4 from the enemy 4 a little bit more, maybe with a "VS" in between.

On the onboarding, I suggest having a QUICK and ADVANCED option, or at the very least, add pre made selections for the characters, so people can get to the battling in about 90% less clicks. I understand your desire to show off the customization, but having some presets, or the ability to create a pre-set character and then RANDOMIZE the abilities, upgrades etc would be pretty useful. At least that way most of the setup is done for people, and as they play and learn, and fail, they could choose to try again and put more time into the ADVANCED customization. Right now that barrier for entry is too high. 

The onboarding needs significant work. I dont think its enough to accept the sheer volume of reading at the beginning of this game. Clicking through 44 (Yes, 44!) screens is far too much, particularly when there are multiple options to consider, each with their own reading, on each of those screens.

Its not clear at all what you are even doing as a player during that incredibly long setup. There aren't clear headings for "SELECT PARTY MEMBER 2" for example.

After I clicked through and then wanted to FIGHT GHOSTS I had to drag 4 races onto the party, 9 items, 13 upgrades, and 4 relics. 70 clicks, and countless reading before the option to even start is really presented. I was lost as a player forever by then and I suspect many others are the same. I dont think its worth commenting on anything after that point as there is so much friction before even starting, that I think reworking that should be your entire focus. Audio, the fact the game is entirely just a Claude gen, UI clarity, honestly none of it matters until this player onboarding is reworked and made far more pain free, because you will be losing quite a lot of potential players before they ever get to the actual battling.

Best of luck with your game. 

I will. There are some people I know that are interested in this type of game, so Ill send it their way. 

Best of luck with the game, and great job thus far.

Hey, I cant actually download the game as its been marked as suspicious activity. 

Hey, so I played through one full story, and to what I assume is the end of the other. Some thoughts below. Feel free to add me on discord (username is nostalgicbear) if you have any thoughts or want to discuss any of it further. 

I enjoyed a lot of the presentation. The music is charming, the pixel art has a great style, the main menu artwork is beautiful, and the UI icons generally fit the game's aesthetic well. Most of my feedback is centred around clarity, presentation and player communication rather than the core concept, which I think youve presented pretty well.

Narrative

• There is a lot of text with very little visual support (I appreciate this is a beta, but I've given all feedback based on this version, not a future version). I'd recommend looking at RoadWarden as a reference for how reusable background artwork and environmental illustrations can help break up dialogue and improve world building (based on the credits page, youre a small team, so its not realistic for me to suggest you spent months creating bespoke art for every scenario).
• I didn't experience much meaningful branching. Most choices seemed to converge back to the same path after only a few screens. On the store page you mention "meaningful consequences" so I think I was expecting a bit more from this.
• The text presentation itself could be more visually engaging. Even subtle formatting improvements or accompanying artwork would make reading long passages more enjoyable, but again, fully understand its a beta.
• The current day is displayed prominently, but its gameplay relevance wasn't immediately obvious to me.
• The Forest story line has 8 dialogue pages before an action/choice (the option to escape or fight). That feels a bit excessive, and maybe some of the 8 pages of text could be combined to one.

Combat

• The Archer has no attack animations. 
• Battle backgrounds become repetitive, with the same one used regardless of where youre fighting. I have no doubt that adding additional environments is on your roadmap.
• Battle music is excellent and fits the game well. 
• Audio transitions between scenes can be abrupt. Smoother blending (for example using FMOD) would improve the smoothness of transition to be less stark.
• Clicking the chalice immediately consumes it without explaining what it does. Allowing players to inspect consumables before using them would support better decision making.
• It wasn't clear why Attack Cost was 10 during one encounter but not another. The very first encounter in the second story (the forest one), has no cost for attack. If combat rules change, consider surfacing that information more clearly.
• The Energy 120/120 display looks visually inconsistent compared to the rest of the combat UI and could benefit from matching the surrounding art style.
• As an Archer, my Special Ability never became available. If this is intentional for class progression, consider communicating that.
• During combat I could select the blue potion, but nothing happened and no feedback was provided. If an item cannot currently be used, explaining why (for example "Not enough Energy") would improve player feedback.
• Using the red potion caused both consumables to disappear, which was unexpected and not clearly communicated.

Progression & Balance

• Shop pricing felt well balanced. There were items I could afford and others that gave me something to work towards.
• After finishing the forest story first, I entered the dragon encounter on only 4/88 health. Because health carries between stories, I ended up in a situation where I repeatedly died before being able to meaningfully progress. This felt like a soft-lock. Consider providing a recovery mechanic or ensuring players cannot become trapped in an unwinnable state.
• It wasn't clear that health would carry between stories. This should be communicated before the player begins a new storyline.

Rewards

• Loot rewards could be presented with more impact. For example, when I obtained Magical Armour, it was easy to miss within the text. A reward popup showing the item, its stats, and a comparison with the currently equipped item (with an option to equip immediately) would make rewards feel much more satisfying.

UI & UX

• The Inventory icon behaves slightly differently to the other bottom navigation icons when selected. Keeping selection behaviour consistent would improve usability.
• Health feels like a more important persistent resource than currency and would benefit from being visible on the main screen. There appears to be enough room beneath the character portrait for both.
• The equipped item row in the inventory could be communicated more clearly.
• One inventory slot appeared permanently empty. I assume it is reserved for potions, but this isn't explained. I tried clicking and dragging various items without success. A slot label or tooltip would remove this confusion.
• There are four primary navigation tabs given equal prominence. In this build, the Story and Inventory felt like the primary destinations, whereas the Hall of Fame didn't appear important enough to justify equal visual weight, and I never accessed the Shop directly from its dedicated tab. I dont know why Hall of Fame is accessible throughout gameplay.
• The Settings screen has a black underline beneath the "Options" heading that initially looks like another slider, making it slightly confusing.
• The close (X) button on the in-game Settings menu is difficult to notice because it blends into the background. The first time I opened Settings I accidentally selected Back to Menu instead because I didn't immediately see the close button.
• On the title screen Settings menu, the "Settings" heading appears offset rather than centred.
• On the point of selecting a story/quest to do, they feel completely independent due to the lack of an overworld or map or something to ground them in the word. For that reason I was surprised to see health reset between quests. 

Visuals

• The pixel art style is really charming, but all fight scenes appear to reuse the same background. A small library of reusable environments (forest, cave, village, etc.) would greatly improve visual variety while keeping your production costs reasonable.
• The story screen often contains a large amount of unused grey space. Filling this with subtle environmental artwork would improve atmosphere and support the narrative.

Feedback & Player Communication

• After defeating the Juggernaut while also losing my remaining health, I was returned directly to the Story Select screen. Initially I couldn't tell whether I had won or died. A short completion screen or epilogue would provide much stronger narrative closure.
• The dice animation briefly settles on one value before changing to another. I'd either increase the rolling speed so intermediate values can't be read, or hide the value entirely until the final result has been determined.

Resolution

• I would personally have preferred the option to play in a landscape resolution rather than being locked to portrait. Is there a reason you wanted to lock it specifically to portrait?

Store Page

There were a couple of statements on the page that I felt didn't quite align with my experience (albeit I admit Im probably being a bit pedantic with these):

• "Multiple choices with meaningful consequences." During my playthrough, most choices appeared to converge back to the same story after only a few pages, with differences generally limited to small amounts of gold or health.
• "Random events and shop inventories." I didn't encounter any random events. After replaying sections several times due to dying, I consistently encountered the same enemies and story events.

Overall, I can absolutely see the charm in this game. You've shown that the current scope of the visuals can be done to a good standard, and I think the game has a solid foundation with good audio, a nice vibe. Most of my suggestions focus on minor improvements around clarity, player feedback, presentation and reinforcing the impact of player choice. Some small work on these would greatly improve the polish. Again, if you want to discuss anything further, or my points weren't clear, and you need more, just add me on Discord. 

Ill download this and give it a go. Ill drop you feedback in a couple of days. 

Sure, happy to chat.

Just to set expectations, I haven't worked directly with a traditional publisher as a solo indie developer, so I don't want to overstate my experience in that area. That said, I have worked on projects that received platform funding from Oculus (Meta) and Magic Leap. Those relationships involved funding agreements, dedicated contacts on their side, milestone and release deadlines, and platform-specific requirements, so I have some experience with that side of commercial partnerships.

On the indie side, a few years back I also licensed my own VR games to VR arcades and negotiated licensing agreements, and in some cases, exclusive rights. so I've had some experience negotiating commercial rights and exclusivity agreements.

None of hte above is the same as signing with a traditional games publisher, but if that's still useful, I'm more than happy to have a chat and share anything that might help. You can reach out to me on Discord (username nostalgicbear) or I sent you an email a few days ago regarding an out of memory error, so you'll have my email (which should be recognizable based on this username)

Yes, you can add nostalgicbear

Looking forward to trying it out.

Can you post some footage of what you currently have? You mentioned the core loop being done and having a playable prototype, so it would be good to see what this looks like.

This post would benefit from you posting some footage of the character controller as is, or even better, a demo scene where people could control the character to get a better understanding of the movement details that feel that bit off. 

Cool, I am happy to playtest this for you.

Hey,
I just wanted to give some feedback on this post. I checked out your website, and I'm struggling to recall a time I came away from a site so confused. Your ABOUT US section on the ABOUT US page, is quite frankly, bizarre. It gives no info about you as an organization, and instead reads like a fever dream. 

The Games section is as confusing. The existing games, are just text, with auto playing audio audio embedded, all with very weird formatting. The messaging, purpose, and goal of the games is very unclear. To me, they feel like they dont really fit, and I didnt get a clear understanding from your messaging on site, or this post, just why the games exist at all, let alone are something you want to put significant effort in to.

The only universal message I took away from the post and the site is that there is a desire to have a positive impact, but just how these games tie in, and the whole solar energy powering the developers home angle, well, its all just a bit... odd, and disjointed. I dont understand the current implementation of the Dew system, nor do I understand why people would be incentivized to earn point. I dont understand why there is a SHOP tab for things that I cant really understand why people would purchase. I dont understand why on the site you mention hating Google, and not wanting to continue to use BlueSky, while most likely posting from a smart phone. 

I understand the general, broad concept, but its presented in such a confusing, disjointed way. If you want to attract some capable developers to drive your mission forward, I would suggest an overhaul of your messaging, and to consider whether needing a carbon neutral developer is as important as having a capable developer. No hate in any of the above, More power to you on your mission, I just found it very hard to understand. 

Hey, do you have a bit more info on the game? Id be interested in helping out, though dont know if the game is something Id be interested in without some details. 

I absolutely love the visual style you've created here. 

Hey, while I think this is cool, I've read this post and the Github breakdown multiple times, and Im still struggling to really understand it. What do you actually mean by where a game and their novels are written together?

"What excites me the most is the Mirror Book: as the game comes to life, so does its novel. Every scene stores both its playable version and its literary version, tied to the same canon. The engine tells you which one changed and exports the manuscript to both Markdown and DOCX." 

Can you help me understand why this is useful? Can you show what a "literary version" of a scene looks like as Im struggling to understand exactly what this output looks like. 

Sure, "nostalgicbear" on Discord

The art is so nice in the images provided that its hard to image it as part of a XXX game haha.

Ah I have Terrarium is pretty cool. The controls are a bit awkward though. Visually, the game looks really nice, so props to whoever is responsible for the art direction.

Do you have any footage or artwork to show where the game is currently at?