Hi there! Been following you on Blue Sky but never got to play till now (or is this the first playtest?). My partner and I gave it a ply. As a gamedev myself, I always find someone’s very first moments trying the game insanely helpful, so we recorded our play through. Overall very cute aesthetic, and fun gameplay. Characters are well styled and are memorable - notes below are just what I, if I in your shoes, would prioritize to improve the experience:
- Fought a little at the start to get it into a larger screen size, maybe don’t “capture” the mouse pointer until you move or click onto the window? And pressing esc should ideally always release the mouse (ie if the menu is up, mouse should be visible, capture again on pressing esc to get back in the game)
- Not a note but positive feedback: Loved the little details like the thought bubbles saying “hmm too small to fit in there” and the different text popups everytime you collect something; also, having a very clear objective was nice, and that it kept reminding you of progress and what remains
- As others have said, I’d add settings to allow for (un)inverting mouse controls, we both nearly stopped playing early on because of this
- More control hints early on, such as for ground pound and punching.
- Also having enemies right where you initially spawn, before you even know the movement controls let alone how to punch, is a little tough, I’d put the lil gophers on the other side of the gate or something
- There are some places where input controls are described, such as with the bird and your scientist sister, but otherwise not described. Signs or even just automatic toast popups when you approach an entity for the first time can be helpful. Also where the inputs were described, it wasn’t giving me the keyboard input messages (and when I switched to controller, I don’t think they matched the buttons on mu controller… I know, a super hard area to solve for). An idea: maybe an in-game action mapping screen? Where it lists the action name, then columns for the keyboard + controller inputs, and even if you can’t change the mappings, you could have it highlight or showcase which ones are being triggered as you press them on the keyboard/controller? That way you test to see how to do each thing easily.
- For the pinball machine, we had quite a tough time - no way to exit, and no clue on what the keyboard controls were. Using the mouse, I could only get the left flipper to work via left click, right click did not seem to affect the right flipper - had to go into he closet to get a controller. Likewise, because the start was zoomed in on the ball, I found myself laughing the ball just so I could have about 1-2s to frantically try a bunch of buttons to see which would get the right flipper to move until the ball inevitably fall through. If you started off the view showing the whole board and left it interactive, I could have probably self discovered the flipper controls. Then only zoom in on the launching once you hold the button down to wind up. Also on a controller, left + right bumper feels more logic than X + A (on my stadia controller anyhow), I had to hold the controller funny to play the pinball game naturally (left thumb over x, right think over a) as I want to be able to flip both flippers at once, but doesn’t work too well when it’s on the same side.
- Very minor nitpick, but was hoping for some acknowledgment or something once we got the last collectable, as I believe we got them all in the end! Even. Temporary “You got’em all!” title overlay that disappeared a moment later would suffice
Overall, really nice work and excited to see where it goes! Also as a sign of success, this inspired us to play Spyro on the gamecube for an hour or so afterwards :)