Congrats on finishing this game! You should absolutely be proud!
Highlights:
- First off, the amount of total content of this game is super impressive! In my notes I just wrote "So impressive??? How do????"
- Beautiful pixel light effects, and they seem to be pixel-perfect too!
- Polish and attention to detail. It's great to see a jam game with such immersive ambience. Lovely UI transitions too. I noticed that little cursor animation when you shoot the blaster!!! What a cool detail! I love stuff like that!
- Cat is so cute
- Delightful illustrations and background art. My favorite is the concept art behind the itch.io Run game button.
Problems I faced:
I apologize if some of this seems harsh, but I feel like it's much more helpful to give my honest thoughts, since that's what I'd want someone to do with my game!
- You need checkpoints on every screen. This is #1 issue. It made the game extremely frustrating to play.
- For a narrative game, nothing kills the vibe faster than having to restart parts you've already aced over and over. For me, it made the game feel like it was overstaying its welcome.
- Game took at least 25-30 minutes to play cause I kept gettin' killed... buuuuut I did stop to take a lot of notes during that time lol
- Control issues
- Jump feels rigid and uncomfortable because your X speed is always at the maximum, just with the sign flipped depending on the direction.
- Dash feels bad and unreliable because it gets stuck on ceilings, and you need to be already jumping in order to use it, which is confusing for my fingers and leads to a lot of frustrating deaths. Dashing to the left in particular feels uncomfortable.
- W key can't jump, which makes the WASD combo uncomfortable. I also felt when using the arrow keys, the dash button (Shift) is not that comfortable to press.
- Gun shoots with way too much cool down (delay between bullets). Let kitty mow down those suckers!
- There are too many buttons and functions to comfortably juggle, if you ask me. Why do we need the stun enemy feature AND the shoot enemy feature? Can't they be merged? Full disclosure: I'm biased towards simple-control games (Super Monkey Ball is my jam).
- Visibility - many platforms lack contrast.
- Did not like boss battle
- Takes too long. Boss spends too much time with shield up.
- My strategy involved camping on the left side of the screen and mashing the gun button. It's easy once you do this but he makes a few cheap shots.
- I'm glad that worked. I was so frustrated by that point, that if the game had asked any more from me, I may have quit, which would be a shame because I wanted to see how the story ended. (I'm a very impatient gamer, lol.)
- Story didn't really land for me (WARNING: MILD SPOILER)
- I feel like I missed something since I was playing cautiously, trying to get through the levels without getting massacred. But the twist left me scratching my head, like..."Oh. That came out of left field." It technically conforms to the theme because there's a twist, but the gameplay isn't a large part of that twist.
Bugs/specific issues:
- If an enemy is very close to you, you can sometimes shoot directly through it, missing it entirely while it murders you :( See level 2 room 2
- Can't read text message in Level 1 room 2. Text box is cut off the corner of the screen
- Steps in Level 1 room 3, room 4. Room 4 also has very frustrating jumps with dangerous ceilings and the collision is unclear
- Robot in Level 1 room 5 moves way too fast. Player isn't sure whether to stun it or shoot it and then dies :(
- When you try to put together the robot puzzle but you haven't completed all the levels yet, it acts like all the wires are put in the wrong position. It would be more satisfying if, with each level you complete, one of the lights turns green.
- Level 3 room 1 has a bump in the road on the right side that made me think going to the right was a dead end.
- Home: Trigger for the "Tools and photos" popup can make it impossible to use the ladder. You try to climb the ladder, but the popup freezes your character. This happened after I completed all levels. I thought I was softlocked until I realized I had to hold E and the up key at the same time to climb while the popup is up.
Anyway, thanks for sharing and working on this game, and reading this Great Wall of Paragraphs lol.
Again, it's a huge accomplishment to get something working of this level of polish and quality in just 10 days! Every jam game has rough edges and despite that, there is so much good here. You clearly understand atmosphere well and have the knowhow to create an polished, immersive environment that FEELS finished despite being a jam game. No default Unity fonts or obviously misaligned pixels here!
Keep up the good work!