I played a bit of the GBA demo and got to an “ending” of the NES demo.
I stand by my previous assessment that this is turning out to be awesome. The music, the artwork, the characters. This is already a great game. I loved meeting Tommy, Aníbal, Hedda, Josu, and of course Cronela.
That being said, I have some suggestions:
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The English text needs some proofreading. There are bits of grammar that read like Spanish. The Spanish dialogue, on the other hand, was lots of fun, and I really enjoy your writing style.
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I would suggest renaming some characters for the English version. For example, Josu should be Josh in English. Non-English names are okay, but after the third character having a very Spanish name, I was starting to wonder what part of the US was this game set in.
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I know it’s still early, but I want more dialogue cues for why puzzle solutions are wrong! For example, why couldn’t I read the book when it was on the dresser, and I had to pick it up first? Why couldn’t I pick up a rock but had to push it instead? Why couldn’t I use the crowbar on every door I found, or even to break the padlock that goes into the basement? For most of these things Tommy just gives something like “I can’t use that” or “I can’t open that”, but I would like to hear why he can’t do it.
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As others have said, the control scheme is unusual. A is accept, B is cancel. That is the standard NES choice. With the SNES mouse, it’s fine, though.
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Double-tapping to speed up the pointer with the D-pad was an interesting choice. I kind of liked it over the acceleration that NES Maniac Mansion has. Just make it clearer in the in-game menu that this exists and it’s fine.
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Tommy being a selectable object is interesting. I couldn’t quickly find anything that I could do with Tommy in the demo, but I can see how it can be interesting. A problem, though, is that when I try a solution and it doesn’t work, Tommy stands in front of the object I am trying to select. This was most noticeable in the loose brick escape from the dungeon, as that puzzle actually requires two consecutive actions on the brick.
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Pixel hunting is a design choice that this game seems to embrace. It was fine on my giant-ass Trinitron, but on smaller CRTs remember that some of those pixels might be harder to find. An “assist” mode that flashes hotspots on the screen would be great. I think it can be accomplished on the NES by putting a small sprite on each hotspot. I’ve seen this approach recently on The Campsite, and I think it’s great.
All in all, great game, really delivering so far on impossible promises (who the heck decides to make the same game for 4 different retro consoles and one modern one??), and I am first in line to support the kickstarter when it goes live.