This is an interesting game here, but considering it straight up crashed on me at least once already (or at least froze long enough that I somehow clicked a close game button by mistake or something when trying to just confirm if the window was still working, still not sure which), froze a fair number of times while trying to play normally, etc., it’s going to be a bit tricky to rate this one completely fairly. That being said, if my words seem a bit harsh, keep in mind it was tricky for me to actually pin down how I felt in practice, so I likely liked it more than it sounds like I did. It’s hard to explain.
Let me start with what I like:
I think you fit the theme incredibly well, and I do like the song that plays during gameplay a lot, I actually think the game has a pretty interesting vibe going for it.
I like that the combat is very directionally focused as a way to keep its simple mechanics actually interesting without overcomplicating it. I do also like the detail of the corpses sticking around after death and being able to be picked back up, and the idea of having a separate combat mode for when enemies are around is actually pretty interesting.
The sword animation feels very punchy despite being basically just a single frame. That’s really good keyframing right there. And the animation for activating combat mode to begin with is pretty good too. So game feel is good on what is arguably the most important place for it to feel good.
For some more… neutral points:
I don’t care for how the jump feels to use but it gets the job done. The lack of an animation on it to imply that the reason for its low arc is that it’s heavy or something more like that to really make it feel right hurts it a fair bit, but it works, it’s functional.
The animation in the game broadly is fine, I like how the multi-directional walking is handled from that standpoint but less so how the walk cycle itself looks, and as mentioned, the lack of a jump animation isn’t ideal here. The sword swing being an instant snap actually feels pretty good which helps make up for the rest of the animations being somewhat just there, but it doesn’t change that the animations could’ve benefitted from a bit more work all the same.
Unfortunately, there’s a bit of an elephant in the room here… which leads me to my big negative point (I have a few other small gripes but I want to focus on this one):
Dying in a single hit in combat is… harsh. Really harsh. Especially when the respawn times are this long. It makes getting used to the combat, in the context of a game where you can’t even attempt to use attacks outside combat at all, and where you have to manually control the camera at all times, etc., very, very difficult. Likely harder than intended. It’s not made very clear by anything that you have to manually attack upward before you can attack more than twice in other directions, which makes figuring out the combat considerably more difficult than likely intended.
Considering actually being able to progress in the basics of the combat is necessary to make any progress at all, this is kind of a huge problem.
It’s especially odd because this game gives the vibe of one that wants you to figure out everything for yourself, yet the game has an explanation of the combat… that somehow leaves out the part where you can’t attack horizontally or vertically twice in a row regardless of whether it’s the same direction twice in a row, so you for example, can’t attack left after attacking right if you don’t first attack forward, backward, or up in between.
Giving yourself enough spacing to actually reset between attacks sideways is a bit of a pain point in the combat because of the fact that you attack in the same direction you move. It’s possible to get used to, but… with the long respawn times the game has combined with the game freezing for a few seconds while reloading everything after the already long respawn time… it can feel more than a bit tedious.
Especially since one of the very first battles is against three enemies that start about equally far apart from you, meaning you have to immediately learn all of this simultaneously in the span of a fight that tends to last about 5 seconds, win or lose. The respawn time lasts longer than the combat encounter itself.
Due to the depth perception and camera angle, I also sometimes struggled to land sideways attacks, which is a problem when, again, you die in one hit.
This feels like a game that would have benefitted from more playtesting. A lot more playtesting.
…
…I still actually kind of liked what I saw of this one despite everything, but I couldn’t really get very far after nearly an hour of playing, which is a bit of a big problem.
I recommend getting outside playtesters next time! It’s a very, very important part of game development. It’s a shame because I can tell this game is actually quite neat if you can put the time into it to learn how the combat works, but I unfortunately wasn’t really in the right kind of place to where that was going to be able to happen for me today… and, I can’t stress enough… I do still kinda like it despite how rough it actually is to actually try to play. It did actually hold my attention long enough to keep trying for almost an hour despite… not being able to figure out the combat well enough to progress, and not thinking the combat was that well executed.
There’s seriously potential here! Maybe this is one to poke working on further for Super Metroidvania Month…? I think I’d like to see how that goes.
…I’ve admittedly had a bit of a stressful week so my writing was probably a bit all over the place but hopefully I’m getting across what I felt about this and thought about it right.