My feedback so far. I like the look and feel of this game, I am a big fan of the original Castlevania games, but fell off after the Super Nintendo version.
1. I specifically liked the birds, and felt like I should not be offered the option to remove them.
2. I love the limited color palette.
3. The game really feels like the old Castlevania games, like this could have been Castlevania II in an alternate timeline. Well done!
I have a few concerns.
1. It feels almost too similar to the original right in the beginning.
2. I was maybe expecting something more like Castlevania II (since the name evokes that title) and that has a more perpetual world in which you start off in a town.
3. Game mechanics seem good so far, I did notice that I can move past the first boss without fighting him. The big armored guy... (maybe he's not technically a boss?)
4. I plan to play more, but I am a bit concerned about whether saving the game is even possible? Of all the things about Castlevania, that is the one I do not miss!
Viewing post in The Transylvania Adventure of Simon Quest (Demo) comments
Hello! Thank you for your post~!
To address concerns first:
The build is just a mansion demo- meaning it's just that slice of the experience showcasing only the Mansion portion of the game. The overall experience is an adventure that has you exploring Transylvania- going to towns/areas and finding what you need to enter the mansions. The demo itself only demonstrates a small portion of the whole experience~ Any additional options (dipswitches for birds for example) offered in the demo are just for demonstration purposes. Progressing in the game goes from an exploration adventure where you talk to NPCs and try to figure out what you need to do, and then when you enter a mansion it becomes more of a traditional action game with a lives system- running out of lives simply takes you to the mansion entrance. It's a hybrid of old and new~ The first mansion's design is intentionally familiar; a bit of a nod. By the time you make it to that point in the game proper, the player will have played probably a half hour of content far removed from standard CV. Plenty of checkpoints, places to explore, and things to do~ Structurally I consider the game similar to something like Link's Awakening in terms of how you progress level to level.
Being able to move past the boss is definitely not intended! I'm pretty sure when I added his intro I forgot to implement the boss boundary activation~ I'll have to look into it. Thank you for catching that!
The game has saving in churches, however there's no reason to have saving enabled in the demo since it's just the mansion~
On my Twitter I post regular videos and updates if you'd like to check it out~ Lots of different stuff to see. Here's a link to my sizzler that shows things that aren't in the demo: https://twitter.com/Programancer/status/1254133716315709449
In the end the goal is to have an experience that feels both fresh and familiar! In the end it should feel like a little bit of Castlevania, Shatterhand, Power Blade, and a whole lot of NES tropes.