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ecaroh.games308 days ago(+1)


VERY cute, VERY cozy... but I had a few moments where I was asking myself "is this game trolling me"? Because I think the item spawned in such a way that it made me take the LONGEST path possible to collect everything. If you make the wrong guess and start walking to the right (alllllllll the way to the princess statue... which is kind of a red herring because it never did anything) and the item isn't there... you have to walk ALLLLLL the way back to the left side. And unfortunately I made a few wrong guesses, so my player experience had multiple: "i made a bad 50/50 guess and now the game's wasting my time".  Everything about this game's aesthetic and atmosphere was on point tho. Excellent graphics and colors, likeable characters, and cool CRT + weather effects and all that... but the gameplay undermined it a little bit for me.

A few suggestions: Have hints or clues where the items were lost so you get a good starting direction where to search. Even better-- Have breadcrumbs of clues from other characters so you're more engaged with the little world instead of just holding left or right until you spot the item. Have the objectives be a little more within reach instead of on opposite ends of the map too. It's been a while but I think the game Spiritfarer had some fetch quests that could be good design inspiration. And lastly, adding some extra movement mechanics, even just a run ability could solve a lot of my issues too cus at least the traversal would have been quick and a bit more fun to get from point A to point B!

Really nice presentation though and i loved how you described it like "how NES *felt* as a kid"

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PixelPun308 days ago

Thank you for playing, making a video, and your detailed response, really cool! I really appreciate the feedback :)

You're not entirely wrong about the trolling :P Originally, there was a mine entrance where the rocks are, and the pig was going to give you a pickaxe to break in. (I'm actually working on all that stuff now, once the jam ends, I'm going to make the game widescreen and remove the filters.) But currently, the only reason to go to the statue is that one of the items spawns there. There's actually a whole story with the frog and the princess, I just didn’t have time to include it. When I make games, they tend to go off the rails with added stuff and turn into something I never finish :P

As for directions to the items, I thought about this a lot, since I knew some would be hard to find, especially the frog, which could be frustrating. The only reason I didn’t add more clues is because I thought back to the second game I owned on NES Simon’s Quest and how obtuse that game was for me as an 8-year-old. But yeah, it is a bit boring walking from item to item. I think adding some kind of mechanic to make those walks more interesting maybe a non-threatening NPC you can jump on or interact with is something I'm thinking more about :)

Again, thanks for playing and for your response :)

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PixelPun308 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

I watched both videos. I should have made it more apparent, but if you hit the "M" button, it pulls up the letter. It's sort of like a quest helper. It shows you what item you're missing, and you can also read the responses the animals wrote to the princess. I worry now that a lot of people are missing this. I think if I had gotten the controller working properly, using the start button would have been better than the M button.

For an updated version, I’m going to fix that so it alerts the player when the letter has changed, and let them know they can view it by pressing M.


It

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