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(4 edits)

I really liked this game! It’s definitely one of my favorites from the jam. (^o^) The secret hunting was a lot of fun, and the moment-to-moment systems all supported that. I did a 100% run and a 0% run right after.

Now that I’ve finally got my hands on it: I’m glad to say that hitting stuff in a fight feels good! d( ´ ▽ ` d ) I was a bit worried by the in-development videos and how Dear Clockmaker’s combat felt. (^^) I didn’t do much of the boss fights though, because I figured out the pacifist trick for them really early. Some more attention on making enemies satisfying to read and maneuver around would start bringing it up to the level of Wind Waker. Also, the screen flash when you get hit really hurts my eyes, please turn that down! That’s my biggest request. X.X

The moment-to-moment movement felt pretty good too. The walk animation is really weird though. The left arm moves forward when the left leg moves forward, instead of a normal person walk where the arm moves opposite to the leg. Didn’t catch that until I was actually walking around in-game. >.< The walljump was pretty nice, the dash felt about right (maybe it fell out of the air too early?), and the ground pound was a lot of fun to use.

There was some weirdness where I could double jump sometimes, without unlocking the doublejump upgrade. I remember it happening when bouncing on mushrooms (without ground pounding them), near the central bell, and a little after beating Seiryu on the 0% run.

Now onto the main focus of the game (and best part): discovering stuff. I won’t go into too much detail (spoilers!), but figuring out all the mechanics and skip-tricks was great. I’d think “oh, would this work?” and then, after a little bit of fiddling, it often would! :O

Spoiler, Best Secret: Figuring out the Sun Concerto was the big highlight for me. There's no direct hints in the game for it (edit: that I found), other than the implication that a song that melts ice should be possible. I had seen pretty much everything else in the game up to this point, and was mid-fight with Genbu. So... I tried a few ways of reversing the song that froze water, and managed to hit the Sun Concerto! :O

It was a really cool moment and a really fun way of finding that song. :D

Nice game! (^o^)/

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p.s. One last suggestion: make the true ending rely on a game-spanning secret. In a secret-hunting game, discovering the secret built up from clues that have been in plain sight (but only given context near the very end) is just the best. ><

Um, if you’ve played Tunic, the true-end puzzle of that is what I mean. The true-end puzzle of Outer Wilds also does it (and its dlc does it again!). (edit: Leap Year might also be a good game to look at)

For this game, maybe it’s some sort of song, with pieces scattered around the world in weird symbols? IDK. It’s a lot of work to pull off, but I think it’s worth trying for. ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ

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Spoilers There is actually a pretty big hint to the sun song, try playing some songs to the frog guy in the center room

:O