Notes from gameplay:
Main menu:
- Aww, what a cute little fox
- I like the subtle sway to the buttons, it's dynamic yet not too busy
- Nice job including control schema
- Nice work with settings menu. I wonder what speed up does? This part isn't very clear
Playing:
- Top UI bar is laid out well and easy to understand
- Is there something behind the pause button? Looks like there is a circle beneath it
- Lovely pixel art! I think the trophy looks a bit out of place, however, it looks more high-rez than the rest of the art
- Oops keep dropping boxes. I think you're missing just ONE bit of instruction: let the player know they need to click items first
- Game isn't pausing when I go into menu. Somehow I finished level 1 while on the main menu!
- I'd add the controls tab to the pause menu to help remind players how they work
- How did I beat the level before? I'm sitting here unable to figure out how to move the fox to the trophy
- It seems exiting to the main menu is the only way to complete the level?
- Ok spacebar makes the fox walk
- Ahhhh stop walking little fox!
- Adorable little "poof" animation as the fox bounces off the walls to his doom
- Ohhhh ok, I get it. I thought I was supposed to incrementally move boxes as the fox moves, but it's a set it up and let the fox go so I need to place the boxes stragetically
- Good feedback when the fox messes up - nice audio and visual effects to convey his doom!
- Would be nice if I could click the items from the top bar to select them for placement
- It might be helpful to show the player a walkthrough of the fox's movements for the first couple levels before they place stuff, to illustrate things like his bouncy movement and boxes falling apart
- The UI for selecting items for placement definitely could be improved to be easier to use. Why do the choices disappear between placements? Maybe just move items part of the top bar to the bottom and let us click on those to select what to place?
- Hmm, chapter 2-1 - it's unclear what the pink dot does except pause the game? Edit: oh that's exactly what it does, I get it now. That's clever but took a round of messing up to figure out
- I keep forgetting I can rotate items
- Maybe restart the player at the pink dot if they clear the level to there. It's a bit tedious to restart all the way from the beginning to figure out the second half of the puzzle
- Items can be hard to place when they are next to the blade wheels
Overall, I think you have the bones of something very clever and creative. I think this would do especially well on mobile. The core concept is really great and reminds me of The Incredible Machine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Machine) - you've got a tricky puzzler where players need to sit and think about their choices. The art is solid, the audio is great (could use some more music tracks) and the feedback for success/failure/fox movement is all well done and polished.
Where I think you could strengthen this game is:
- Ramp up the difficulty more slowly. Integrate this with a more clear tutorial explaining how everything works and illustrating how to use commands like rotation, placement and removal
- Add an overlay showing how the fox will bounce off of jump platforms. This will make it a LOT easier for players to figure out where to place them
- Have the player restart at the pink dots - treat them as checkpoints. I ended up stopping at chapter 2-3 because it became too tedious to constantly redo everything for the first half of the level
- Improve the UI for placement selection. Right now it's too many button clicks to pull up the items to choose, then choose one, then place it. Streamlining this would make this easier and quicker to play
Really, the biggest issues are tedium in placement/replacement when trying the level again and not being able to predict the fox's movements except through trial and error. Again, I think the core concept is GREAT and this is the seed of something awesome. Definitely following this project to see how it goes. This is EXACTLY the type of puzzle game I would buy for my phone to casually play levels in between other activities (the fact that gameplay is basically at my own pace leans into this well). Keep up the development and I'm excited to see where this goes!