Heeeey! Glad to see more of this game starting to come out.
I got some feedback and it might be a bit too much but it's free!
1. Game Feel:
- Most game queues and hints feel very shy, the graphic style could definetly go ESPECTACULAR, go all for it. Metroidvanias don't need to be coy with the player.
- One aspect of this is enemy pattern signaling, making obvious decisions here won't hurt the game difficulty, and this ties directly to the animation principles: Anticipation, Action, Reaction. And this three weaved with Exageration.
- This applies, tho condensed in order to feel responsive, to the player actions. Right now Dashes feel like an interrupt while parrying feels like a slow block. This makes the parry action confusing.
- Tieing this last two bullet-points is where I think there is still a search for that sweet spot for player agency at the moment to decide the parry, making sure player can tell between parry-able and unblockable attacks. (Remember most game keep unblockable attacks in few minion enemies to highlight this as a Boss Trait)
- IMPACT! both enemy and player attacks do not feel impactfull enough, there is a ton of feedback lacking, and honestly the dmg bonus from no hit combos is confusing, figured it out while thinking about it after the playthrough (this is another place to go ESPECTACULAR)
- Enviroment queues are also a bit lacking, closer tho, but here is where this game make use of obvious signaling to player, cracks, weak appeareances, not just old looking.
- I like my metroidvania with secret walls, chests laying around like they are right now feel like an afterthought (for a resource I can't even use) and substract from the current demo experience.
- Hide those chests, or put em in a route where you tease the player first to make em explore in the direction they can't penetrate directly.
2. Setting and Storytelling:
- Where am I? Who are this people? Why are they so helpless? Why the boss lays eggs?
- The look is COOL and thank the dev-spirits you are not dealing with banding on your paralax environments, but everything feels disconected, roaming around without really belonging.
- Enemies are mutants? Monsters? There is no clarity if this creatures are coming from the capsules I see laying around or if they are demons like the first boss
The game has excelent bones, I see the vision but I don't get inspired by it, if you guys work more on that I can assure this can be a very succesful metroidvania!