Such a fantastic entry! The music and art are amazing, they really build the atmosphere and I loved how epic the boss fight music was, and the way it all faded to black at the end was suitably dramatic. It really reminded me of Titan Souls, the expectation of the player to work out what they needed to do without being told, the deaths coming quickly and easily, and the fast-paced resets.
The puzzle designs were cool, I got a bit tangled up in the layout of the main level - I went to the right room first but didn't think to check if I could go any further in, as it seemed to all be walls (oops). I then struggled on the left side 'cause it didn't occur to me to use the shadow to phase through and activate the altar after flipping the levers, so I spent quite a few deaths meticulously clearing out the room (which I can only assume in hindsight is not how you expected players to deal with it, because that was hard). Then I went to the final door, got a bit confused it was still shut, and thought I messed something up so went back to the left side and recleared it (mercy on my poor, dumb soul), before twigging that I must have missed something on the right side.
Eventually made it to the boss, which had a super cool sprite and awesome animations. I do agree with the other comments that it felt really challenging, and I quickly came to the conclusion that it was just about waiting them out. With the comparison to Titan Souls in mind, I honestly think the difficult might be fine, as it isn't a long fight, but having something more proactive to do as the player might help with the slight feeling of aimlessness? I'm really excited to see how some tweaks might affect that part in particular, as being able to use your other abilities offensively would have been fun options to have.
Slightly controversially perhaps, based on other comments, but I really liked not having super explicit instructions on how to do things? A lot of the mechanics were tutorialised well through the level design, just sanding off some of the rough edges of the mechanics themselves/including more of the simple parts to give the player the chance to work out what they could do would be great!
Small, miscellaneous thoughts:
I also found that naturally I would hold the directional input after dashing, which would stop the dash after a short distance (just shorter than the first pit aha) which was a bit tricky to coordinate.
I found running out of abilities a bit limiting, unless I missed a way to refresh them in combat (like a certain, late-game someone)? Maybe I was just approaching the game with the wrong mindset, though!
I enjoyed triggering the turrets to fire for both affecting the environment and attacking, although I found the laser hard to hit moving targets with, which led to an awkward stutter-step as I tried to keep enemies nearby to line the shot up again. Also, the enemy lasers being able to hit you through walls felt mean, makes sense for the turrets but the lil' guys.
I'm glad I persevered through the walls I hit, though, it was really fun to explore and all of the central mechanics you laid down were really well thought-out and I can really see how you'd build upon them.
This turned into a really long comment! This is a really good entry, I enjoyed getting to the end of it, and considering it was your team's first entry it is absolutely mind-blowing. Well done to you all!
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Wow, thanks for the detailed comment! Glad you enjoyed the game. As I said in other comments, the game is not polished and finished completely due to the lack of time, so pretty much all critiques are valid. But I'll also comment on some specifics you mentioned:
The left side of the room was indeed supposed to be cleared without the ghost xd. We made the second room hard intentionally because, well, lack of content otherwise lol. That would probably not be the balance in the final version of the game. Also, the ghost just has unintended interactions so you can basically skip 2 rooms with it (which I actually find pretty funny and interesting).
As for the boss, we wanted to make something different. So instead of you killing the boss directly, here the boss has stamina just like the player. And since the boss wants to stop you from progressing further, he uses his skills and thus uses stamina. Now when he expends all of his stamina, he can't do anything to you anymore and thus dies. So the main goal was to basically survive until he is out of stamina. You can however use your abilities still to help you. The explosion can do 2 damage (stamina) to him, and you can use the dash to dodge his attacks (especially in later phases). Of course, this system would be further developed and polished had we had the time to do it.
As for the "zero guidance" approach in the game, since we didn't have time to finish everything, we chose to have the most minimal UI possible. The entire UI is just your stamina bar and boss stamina bar. Ideally, there should be some help telling you how to interact with items when you first encounter interactable items and how to use your abilities when you unlock them. Also for the dash, yes, I should have coded it so that it doesn't interrupt unless you specifically press the opposite direction of the direction you are dashing, that was a mistake on my part but one which would later be easily fixed.
Also for the running out of stamina part, we did plan on having stamina refills throughout the levels as a sort of checkpoint, but since the levels were so small, in the end, we just added a respawn button lol, which sort of fixes this issue.
Once again, thanks for your nice comment, we really appreciate it!
No problemo, it was my pleasure! Absolutely get that, there isn't really time for polish in a jam without sacrificing stuff, so I think it's to be expected with jam games. It didn't affect my enjoyment 'cause I was anticipating some roughness, so the feedback is just in the hope that some of it may be useful for future discussions within the team, even if at the end of it all ya decide to flex ya right as the devs to just say "this guy has no idea what he's talking about" ahaha!
It's nice to hear the plans for expanding on what you've all already built, thank you for sharing; I love hearing about other people's thoughts on designing game mechanics so it was a really interesting read ahaha. It's clear you've got a great vision for what this game would look like without a time limit imposed on dev, that's really cool!