What I Liked:
- Magical Girl design is super cute, great portrait
- Character animations, especially the dash and ranged attack are satisfying
- Environment art is simple, but really effectively communicates setting and the MC stands out well against it
- Music SLAPS
Notes:
- MC Jump: feels halted, like there's a lot of inertia, making it a little less satisfying jumping forward.
- Enemies do a lot of damage and the MC does not. Feels very difficult to kill even simple enemies so baiting them is faster. There's also very little feedback when hitting an enemy. It takes several (3-5?) strikes to kill the basic phantoms, but I have no idea how much damage I'm actually doing or if I'm able to crit, potentially. It doesn't feel rewarding to do damage. Enemies are also easy to jump over, bait them into pits/walking off edges.
- Regarding MC HP: either adding more health or ways of healing would probably help, specifically just before/during boss fight as there are many ways to lose bits of HP before that fight.
- Regarding MC Attacks: I have really no reason to use the melee attack. If you make the melee attack deal more damage than the ranged attack, it will feel more relevant. Right now it seems to deal very little damage, so it isn't worth the risk of getting hit to do a melee attack. Frankly, if I end up in a situation where I have to rely on melee because the boss were in super close proximity, I'm probably cooked. Additionally, I don't like that the ranged attack makes me inch forward. It feels a little counter-intuitive.
- Regarding Mana Usage: You can fire off about three ranged attacks per second, and regen mana (seemingly) one attack's worth every three seconds. It currently doesn't feel impactful. If you want to make ranged attack feel more strategic, you could try slowing the rate of regen further, increasing the attack rate, or making a long version of the ability that sucks up a bunch of mana at once. If you chose to implement the last one, I would still consider adding either the first or the second, but not both.
- Telegraphing Boss Mechanics: I wish you could have introduced an enemy into the level before the boss that would have telegraphed the attack sooner, because the phantoms swiping at me did not prepare me for the boss. I died very quickly to the boss despite having lost no health prior to that fight.
Overall, I really like how this turned out I think you all did a great job!