Incredibly interesting concept, 4 directional perspective mixed with tiled movement, the style is cute and attractive though inconsistent.
While the gameplay is intriguing and seems like it'd be fun for both the level designer and the gameplay, it seems to be underutilized, while the least fun mechanics: Enemies, Interactables, Dashing, are overutilized.
I think the issue is because the game and level designer(s) built up too many mechanics both for each level and for the game's core mechanic, there is little utilization of the rotating player or with the directional perspective, while a lot of emphasis is put on the, often times, frustrating or underthought enemy design.
This is especially apparent with the boss fight, a simply patrolling boss fight mixed with some toggle buttons, that's it.
Overall, the game could definitely be better if it were to take its time with each of its mechanics and use them to its advantage.
Here is a early look at a upcoming Bokube Demo version 15 based on your feedback:
1) " the style is cute and attractive though inconsistent".
Looked for warped textures within the demo levels to try and make it more consistent. In the desert temple demo level where things look scary because of the giant eels I added more statues of cute colorful bunny cubes along walls to lighten the mood.
(Though one thing to note is the game purposely has scary elements its a blend of scary and cute for the stories sake in the full game). *(I can only guess this level is what threw off the consistency for you since you didn't provide feedback for what about the art is bothering you and this is the only level in the demo that has scary element's with the giant eel statues)*
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If these need changes because of color or something let me know if its too busy for you or something I may darken their textures.
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2) "least fun mechanics: Enemies, Interactable, Dashing, are overutilized".
On every level in the demo I removed 2 blue enemies and replaced it with a section that forces you to understand the tile movement more and push green puzzle cubes out of the way as a small puzzle. So each level gets 2 more block pushing mini puzzles now. I think increasing these will make the balance of action and puzzle feel better.
There is only me working on the game so I never know how it feels as a player since I'm too brain-rotted from working on the game alone for so long.
Here are pictures of each of the added segments (Note doing this removed 2 enemy encounters from each level but there are still enemies and traps of course just less of them). Hopefully this will increase the quality of the gameplay genre balancing mix of puzzle and action platforming.
All of these additional 9+ mini block puzzles to the demo levels should force the player to understand the tile system and 3D rotational directional camera more.
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3) "This is especially apparent with the boss fight, a simply patrolling boss fight mixed with some toggle buttons, that's it".
I changed this boss fight to be a sokoban puzzle challenge now where you need to push blocks the correct way to get out of the exit of each arena BUT ALSO hit toggle boxes while avoiding the boss. The bird boss will fly through the arena so you need to figure out how to push the blocks and dodge the attacks along the tile system now instead of just arena's with rings and buttons there is a little bit more complex sokoban box puzzle in each boss arena to deal with/turn your camera with.
Here is 3 photos to show each boss arena as it gets a little more complex each time until you beat all 3 arenas/finish the fight.
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I'm going to playtest this now for 1-2 days and then push out the update on both itch/steam. Thanks for your feedback.
1-The new graphics seem a lot better, though do suffer from business because of the backgrounds.
2-The problem wasn't that the player didn't understand rotation and perspective, it's that they weren't used in the puzzles, and the interactable cubes, like I said, were actually unfun to play with because of unsynergetic they felt with the rest of the gameplay.
The enemies sometimes did, but most times didn't feel like an actual construction to puzzle, times when you would need to maneuver a laser to kill one were enjoyable, but otherwise they acted more as stumbling blocks in the middle of the actual puzzle.
3-Again the takeaway from my points was the opposite, there needs to be less interactables and more utilization of the other mechanics, especially the movement.
You could actually replace the boss with a logic puzzle to figure out the combination to some weapon that damages the boss, or simply be to push some lasers and bombs towards it, but simple bland pushable blocks aren't that fun.
1) Talking about art and graphics without showing or explaining what you mean feels strange. If there is a background that is busy I won't know because you didn't show it or tell me of it. You saw it and just said "Backgrounds are busy" but which ones? Every level? Then the only recourse to fix it is to go into every level and assume the average persons ability to find each background busy when my eyes don't do that I'm bothered by NOTHING hence why I couldn't notice the busyness myself and need feedback on the subject probably making them that busy in the first place.
2) "INTERACBLES" is what you said and I couldn't understand that since I just call them puzzle cubes. Interactable doesn't make sense because there is tons of interactable stuff other than push blocks. The game has that attempt to be a mix of 3D platforming and sokoban but I guess I find sokoban push block puzzles fun and others don't you wouldn't be the first to mention something similar. Despite the genre of the game being a sokoban; I'm gonna try deleting all normal push block puzzles that are only meant to be pushed out of the way then but keep the special ones that have a bomb, laser, or fake boku attached to them then if they are more fun and put one more of those kinds of puzzles then instead on every level that's meant to kill enemies then if that fixes the problem.
3) When you say "more utilization of the other mechanics, especially the movement." that's extremely confusing to me again; there is moving platforms, plenty of ladders, lots of verticality level design of going up, falling down, fall blocks, you name it despite being grid based the levels design do a lot with 3D movement mechanics I'm confused. Dashing over gaps itself is another movement mechanic used a ton on every level for both gap traversal and killing enemies. Complex movement along the tile system happens a lot like with the land mines on 1x1 tiles in the snow cave level.
I think il just have to retool the boss then and make it like a more traditional game boss with a health bar and 5 attacks it can do at random in its arena's along with the patrolling; then you use a special cube to damage it in some form till its dead getting its health bar down and then you save a bunny cube instead of toggle buttons to unlock gates that lead to a giant puzzle cube that kills the boss like before.