Absolute Cinema

This game is gorgeous. The pixel art and animations are incredible. I especially liked the potion-drinking animation. It was all very professional looking and top-tier.

I do think the controls were a bit tough to get used to and the overall difficulty of the game was pretty high. I definitely struggled in a few spots, but that made me reaching the next checkpoint feel all the better.

For the player character, her movements could have been a bit snappier, both in walking/running and attacking. I also felt the camera could show a bit more of where/what I was going toward, such as spikes at the bottoms of some pits I was wall-sliding down in.

I did like the skill-trees, but I think I ran into a bug where clicking on them wouldn't unlock the skill, but use my points, anyway.

For the menu itself, if you have a dark souls-like, non-pausing inventory screen, I would either make it keyboard controlled OR use the mouse to click through the menus/items, but remap the attack input away from LMB so that you don't take a swing every time you click a button.

Great job, overall, though!

I'll start off with saying this game is very ambitious with skill trees, crafting, and even more souls-like 2d combat. I respect it for everything the team has tried to fit in, its just a tad bit ambitious for a 1 month long jam.

Whilst the core movement and combat feels fluid at first, the animation locks on attacking ends up doing it a disservice. When you have animation locks in combat like this you need to slow enemy windups and down-time enough that the player can actually get an attack in. Now the game does have a parry amongst other skills, only you need to unlock it first.

I will say, with parry unlocked the combat felt more complete and far less punishing and honestly should just be unlocked from the start. Without it, damage is extremely hard to avoid especially from ranged enemies. In addition I came across and pit in which an archer would spam arrows across and was impossible to progress. By the time I'd dashed to the other wall then 'climbed' up, I was already near dead due to stray arrows.

Finally the menu doesn't pause the game or even prevent the game controls so you end up attacking and even walking off pits whilst in it.

But not all is bad. I have to praise the amazing pixel artwork and overall fitting audio work. In addition the core gameplay and combat loop itself is a really solid basis, just needed a little more finetuning to get it feeling really good.

So overall, when considering the length of this jam and the ambitious nature of the project; well done. You now have a solid prototype that could potentially be used as a basis for something good.