This was lovely, and I absolutely can't wait to try the full game! I'm sad I only allotted so much to try this demo, and admittedly don't think I got all that far. As a fan of Metroidvanias, I love this as an entry into the genre.
I did have trouble reading the dialogs. I usually remember to mention my disability on stream, but I forgot during this one. Where it comes into play more here compared to other games is how the font is spaced (the space between letters is similar to the space between words), and especially the text effects. The text effects are really awesome, but if it's not too late in your development, it would be great to have that as a toggle for accessibility reasons.
A few other critiques:
- The game pauses in background, it would be cool (especially as a streamer) to have a setting to have this behavior not happen so that the audio doesn't stop while on a different window.
- The options select
- The Sound Effects slider doesn't have it's own audio feedback. It would be a great quality of life change to have small sound effect play when the slider is released or periodically as the slider is moved.
- The interact prompt is a hard to see. It's very small and still. If it had a pulsing or bobbing effect it would stand out a bit more.
- The map features are pretty good, especially being able to see yourself, your spear, and various pathways. However, there are a couple things left to be desired. Certain pitfalls look like they are traversable by jumping into them, but the player is hurt and reset instead. It would also be really great if there were different kinds of custom map markers the player could place upon the map to remind them of things to come back to when they unlock additional powers / keys. Showing unlocked respawn points on the map would also be very helpful as well.
- The store after a the first boss fight had an interaction icon that didn't respond. I first bought the item then tried to talk to the NPC, and they simply walked away from me instead.
- I ran into a weird glitch that allowed me to expand out of ball form while in a narrow area. I wasn't able to subsequently replicate it, but I thought I'd atleast bring it to your attention:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2562667033?t=0h44m7s - I'm not sure if it's intended, and it's not necessarily a bad thing, but I was able to hit something while changing directions. It would be pretty cool to pull off a melee hit on two different enemies from two different directions doing this.
The VOD is linked below, and will be available for 60 days. If needed for longer, please reach out and a highlight can be made: