I left out some of the conveyance, because I felt the game needed to feel open to experienced players while deterring new players from exploring too far. For instance, were you able to find the first ability pretty easily? After that, your options open up entirely and you can fight the boss at any time. This allows for that fun experience of stumbling upon a hard enemy and running away or putting up a good fight. Even then. Beating him is your only real requirement to finish the game while the more violent abilities are for players who explore and work their way up the food chain. Everything else can be circumvented with some skill. Ta-da! A metroidvania for different skill levels. Also did you notice how the rooms changed a little and enemies got more difficult as you moved around the map eating things? I wanted to create that feeling of being a little lost and having to come back to previous spot just to find that new enemies have emerged from eating the smaller ones. The carnivorous players will have more of a challenge while the players who stick to eating mushrooms like my 7 year old niece wont have to deal with as many baddies. A game for all ages :)
i liked exploring and the open endlessness of it, i guess i just didn't like feeling lost before i started finding things like a boss to go after because it was kinda aimless. but ended up enjoying it anyway. yup, noticed there where more difficult enemies didn't know that what because of what i was eating.
some other thoughts i maybe should have mentioned:
the boss fight felt a bit too long
sometimes the camera didn't keep ahead of me and i didn't see where i was going
really liked the ai for enemies, felt like they where underwater, good job with that
This is some really good feedback, my friend. Thank you so much.!
The boss battle is long unless you use the electric tail. But I've been on the fence about increasing the damage dealt overall and I think you've convinced me, so I'll shorten that boss fight a smidge.
I agree that when I start swimming really fast I can't see any enemies ahead of me. I think I want to fix the camera by zooming it out just a little.
I think conveyance is so important in games and you're right about Big Fish feeling too open near the beginning. I really wanted the player to not feel trapped in a tiny game for the jam. I intend to use an accordion style of progression, keeping things linear near the beginning and end, while slowly opening the game up to the player throughout the middle, but for the jam period, I didn't unfold the areas as well as I could have. For the SuperMVM, however, I plan to have a much, much larger game with more bosses and powers. That will let me build a better flow for the map layout.
Thank you again for your insight! I've been so happy with how great of a community this is and I hope to see you and everyone else again at the SuperMVM!