itch.io

Oh my goodness, you guys. Feels like a totally new game.

The good:

• I love finding the spring minigame in the wild. i've reached a point where I can beat it about half the time. Two seeds seems like a fair reward, and now that this minigame is more frequent (once a world? at least in the forest), I'm happy with it.
• Love being able to throw away 2 seeds I don't want to pick up a new seed. I will probably never use the poison or cure seeds, since laying a 2-step trap (poison, then kill) seems like too much effort, but maybe that'll change.
• Love the new intro and towns
• Love the new seed videos
• I'm hearing more music in the huts, right? and it's so flippin good.

• 15 seconds is absurdly too short a time for that shooting minigame. I'm lucky if I fire one gun in the first 8 seconds, then I have to wait 1 more second to fire from the same one again. The guns always seem the spawn in the middle of the room, and I'm coming from the bottom left corner, and I don't even feel like I have a chance. Huge huge bummer, but I like the concept. The pistol seed is a huge underrated seed and encouraging people to get comfortable with it is a smart move. If there are other shooting gallery concepts that encourage you to play with seeds, hot damn, that'd be great.
• I still think it's silly to not be able to pick up the next quest after cashing in my last quest. I'm cashing in a quest because I enjoyed doing the quest; asking me to play the game again and potentially not complete my next quest (because I can't pick it up until I play again and die!) is frustrating and unexpected. It encourages me to start and a game and quit just to get back to the village and pick up a new quest.
• The gaps are so much more narrow in the first world, it seems! I consider myself to be pretty competent at driving the ol' Tumbleseed, and I'm occasionally getting gaps that are suuuuuper narrow in the first world. As in, gaps that I have to squeeze through to proceed because there is no other way forward, not just gaps in general. I'll snap a screenshot when I play again
• First and second worlds have so many enemies I feel overwhelmed. Purple homing bugs in the first world are always present and numerous, and those black teeth monsters that rotate and zoom at you seem to be everywhere. With the paths in the first world seeming more narrow than before, sometimes I only have one valid path to go up, and when I'm being chased AND there seem to be more enemies than before, it feels cheap. Occasionally I pull of a set of maneuvers where I feel like a badass, but I mostly feel overwhelmed very early into the game.
• Did the crystal seed animation get longer? This is more an extension of my previous point, but I just had a couple runs in a row where I straight up could not pick up my crystals in time because there was a yellow snake behind me and that little animation before the crystals pop out was so long I had to just run away instead of picking up my dang crystals. And then with the gaps being more narrow than before, there wasn't often a way back down to claim my crystals, because the only path down was full of homing jerks.
• Expected the cup game to mix up the cups in a way where I can pick the right one if I'm sharp (e.g. the minigame in Tapper), not present them in such a way where I have a 1 in 3 chance of winning without any skill involved. I guess this makes sense (you could totally farm hearts this way!), but dang.
• Overall I feel a lot less in control of my own destiny than with previous builds. Between the (I'm assuming!) increase in the amount of enemies and the less open playfield, death seems more the result of being overwhelmed than it does because I made a mistake.

• The second quest (collect a seed from a diamond room) isn't checking off for me when I pick up a seed in a diamond room.
• I rage quit upon dying and the game went back to the title screen, then when I went back into the game, it resumed showing me my death sequence. I'd expect to just go back to the title screen.
• I have absolutely no idea what the ripple rock does. It sent a shockwave throughout the screen but didn't kill enemies or seem to have any noticeable effect. This is after watching the video and using the demo room.

Pardon all my griping! I don't remember dying ever making me so cranky. I may get used to the changes eventually but 5 deaths into it and I generally feel unfairly mobbed and my blood pressure has never been higher while playing. I'll play more tomorrow. Always psyched to see more content.