Notes from gameplay:
Itch Page:
- Strong layout and wonderful color scheme + background image
- Smart use of gifs in thumbnails to make the game flashy and exciting, draws in people browsing
- I particularly like the font choice - you capture the vibe of a pixel font, while keeping it easy to read
- Top banner with game name could perhaps benefit from a stronger/darker text outline - the moving background can make the overall text a bit trickier to read. Have you tried a black, white or red border to see how that looks? The 86 is much easier to read than "dualverse"
- Unsure how I feel about the mash of 3 fonts. Something about the word parkour feels off
Main menu:
- Great detail of the background on the loading screen
- Definitely captured the retro vibes!
- Music is nice, reminds me of Kavinsky, in particular Nightcall
- Music volume is very low
- Uhh what's the random flashing red? Not sure how I feel about it. It's way too quick. Something less seizure-y but still dynamic might be windows lighting up in the buildings or stars twinkling in the sky
- Options window feels like it could be punched up in UI
- The sparkles on the Dualverse text look great. Couldn't see those at all on the itch page
- Would be nice for credits text to match the rest of the UI. The calligraphy feels out of place
- Credits music is cute
- Digging the floppy discs to represent different levels
Tutorial:
- Excellent job including a tutorial!
- Screen transition with the slashes is very cool!
- Music volume is louder here - work on normalizing sound all across the game
- Text intro is good. It's well-written, sets up the backstory and isn't overly wordy. Leaves the player with a goal and pumps us up to play
- Top bar UI looks nice. I like the font.
- There seem to be some inconsistencies with sharpness - eg compare the red circle in the top bar compared to the lines comprising the ground the player is running out. The red circle seems blurry compared to those.
- Maybe add a black outline around the countdown numbers, as it's on top of a grey background
- Love the little respawn portal animation, but maybe add some color to make it pop more against the background
- Lots of screen flicker during movement from the lines in the background
- Player sprite is nice, feels Tron-ish. The glow around them is nice. Dunno how I feel about the heavy white outline. Might be a way to combine the glow and the outline into something that feels like it fits better into the game world - as is, it feels like the character and background don't quite match
- Player sprite jump and run poses are great, feel sleek and dynamic
- Commands for actions and buttons to press are great tutorial elements!
- Jump feels fluid
- Run feels nice, except when against a wall - feels like it slows down a lot
- What determines how many times I roll? Feels like sometimes I'm rolling multiple times in a row despite only briefly tapping the button.
- Using roll and stopping in a low area will have me roll in place forever, hehehe
- I feel like I want some more sound effects for when I do stuff, like a boingy/bouncy sound when I jump, maybe a minor animation of dust when I land, some streaks around me when I'm running? The sprite animations look and feel great, but it feels like they are missing a few tiny details to make them truly POP and become really immersive.
- Whoa, this switch thing is pretty cool. I was initially thinking this level felt a bit bland visually, but with this mechanic I understand why you want to keep the palette pretty neutral. Looks VERY cool and is a very interesting mechanic! Will this need an epilepsy warning?
- Hang/grab seems a bit imprecise. I slooooooowly slid down the ledge to the respawn area
- I found a floppy disk!
- Hmm, not sure where I'm supposed to go after the second checkout. I'm trying to jump and switch modes to hang from the vertical red pillar to the left, but I can't seem to get enough air
- Can't seem to get past this part of the tutorial, sorry :(
Beta-City:
- I like the loading image!
- Why is there such a long pause and an extra space after the words "floppy disks" are typed out? Guessing it's missing an icon here?
- Music here is also great
- This background looks a LOT better than the tutorial, no flickering with movement
- Lovely layers and parallax, but should we be seeing the black edge of screen at the left?
- The checkerboard far background feels unfinished, given that's the default tansparent background pattern in photo-editing software
- Respawn portal visually pops a LOT more here against the dark background
- The switch here is very cool, red dimension feels a lot more decayed. The hollowed out buildings on the far left in particular are great, hope I see more of those - maybe consider having one where the switch is first organically needed, as it will visually hammer home the difference between dimensions right away. As-is, I had to backtrack to see the cooler part of this dimension
- Few points where jumping can kinda just hang mid-air against the corner of a ledge
- Argh, I keep mixing up B and spacebar
- Got to the second checkpoint with the up arrow, but unsure where to go next. I think I'm supposed to wall bounce, but can't figure out how to make that work. Every now and then I can get the character to bounce off the wall, but it's inconsistent and he just floats back to the wall I bounced off
- Almost got wall-bouncing to work (it's REALLY HARD, but I'm not great at these games), but now jumping and rolling aren't working at all. Had to switch dimensions to get jumping working again (respawning didn't fix it)
- Finally made it to the 3rd checkpoint. Hahaha I'm really bad at this game
- Some basic jumps seem just a bit too high, like I'm sitting here right below the exclaimation mark sign past the 3rd checkpoint and I just can't do a basic jump up to the next ledge, it's always a bit too short. Momentum helps but it feels like some jumps just fail a tiny bit sometimes. Could also just be me sucking and having to go really slow :P
- Roll doesn't seem to work if I'm against the wall I want to crawl through, need to back up and run at it. Maybe intended
- Made it to 4th checkpoint, down at the bottom, but that was sheerly by luck of falling, didn't realize anything was down here and had run further ahead and was smashing my head against the wall next to the floating drone
- OMG I BEAT THE LEVEL
- 12:38:141 hahaha I'm terrible at this. That time doesn't even feel right, it felt like I spent at least half an hour :P
- Hidden disk found, apparently, but I don't recall picking up anything
- Default choice highlighted is restart, but should probably be main menu (or even a "next level" option)
- Aww seems like I can't play the other levels, they are still showing as locked
Overall, what a cool, clever core mechanic! Even if I'm not good enough at this genre to really appreciate it, I bet there is a subset of gamers who are and would REALLY love it! I recommend finding this audience and leaning on them for playtesting and fine-tune balance.
The overall theming, art, UI, music and story are great at setting us in this wonderful retro world. Things could be tweaked here and there, but it's a really beautiful and thematic core project so far with a lot of polish and cohesion. Awesome work! I can definitely see this going on to being pretty darn popular with the right niche of gamers!