it's pretty late here and i got to sleep, but i'll def rate yours in the morning, haven't seen a single fps so far in this game jam! here's my game, be brutal please.
Viewing post in Rating and giving constructive criticism
The concept is interesting, the execution is not good...
There is no real tutorial besides the little help paragraph that does not really explain much, I could not beat level 1 for the life of me... the way the house is layed out is just super punishing with only 1 place to hide (closet), there is also no way to know how loud an action is exactly, I still dont really know how to get to the second floor while he is on it, I got it a couple of times but his detection system feels extremely weird and inconsistent. I guess I could beat the level but by going painfully slow, it kind of just becomes a waiting game which is not exactly fun... maybe even when entering a door, the human is on a staircase or hall so it has a small delay between going trough doors, currently the only way of beating the game is to just steal his toilet paper and wait lol, also I had no clue how to put down the weird crafted items, it seemed like a cool mechanic but yet again, nothing is really explained to the player :&
The camera transition between the demon and the human is just way too slow to serve any tactical purpouse, it takes so long that by the time you zoom out, you are left with just a guess and not a good imformation, I guess the "currently doing" thing is the more important mechanic, but then why have the human camera in the first place, a free cam or a minimap would have worked much better.
Altough the gameplay has some issues, especially the detection, I think the bigger problem is the level design, it does not compliment the games mechanics at all, maybe should have made 1 super well made and interesting map instead of 3 smaller maps? Game mechanics might not even be that bad, just not explained at all?
The artstlye is really cool, I dont have many complains on that end, it pairs really well with the super weird and almost trippy audio, I really fw the music and art for the game, it feels quite deranged in a cool way , some of the shadows were quite strange but personally I found them quite charming and adding to the surreal feel of this game, maybe a bit more interactive sound effects to make the game feel a bit more interactive.
The only thing in the art that I do not like is the UI, it feels very off and is not consistent with the rest of the game, mostly cause the pixel sizes are not the same (the pixel filter?) and the UI just feels like its a slapped on jpg on a pixelart.
Overall, cool idea, cool aesthetic, bad readability and consistency
Good job and good luck with your next projects :D
thank you for the detailed review!
i did get quite a few complaints about the gameplay not being explained properly, so i understand your frustration. this game definitely could've gone through a few more rounds of playtesting. the enemy only detects you if you are both in the same room; so if you are in the kitchen, but he is in the living room, he will not see you even if you are on the same floor. this wasn't explained very well, however, so it's definitely something to improve next time.
crafted items can only really be placed in specific places. in the first level's case, it can only be placed on the shelf to the right in the hallway. i really wanted to add more clear visual cues so you'd know where to place it, and also to provide more places to put such these objects in general. sadly, due to time constraints, this was what we ended up with lmao. i think my thought process at the time was that it would make sense to place the book + banana combination somewhere near where the book originally was, but obviously that was not very clear.
i think most of your issues come from these two problems. the fact that some systems were not explained properly led to you not being able to explore the house properly and understand some other mechanics (like more than 1 hiding place, the several different combinations you can make, the routine of the human and how to follow it, etc). also btw, the other levels take place in the same house, just with a different set of routines for the human.
again, thank you alot for your review, i definitely agree with you on the camera being too slow, and the UI being a little out of place. you made a really cool game and i'm glad that on some degree, we were both able to help each other :)