Still at the beginning, but impressive and polished!

Most of all it shows how arcade controls and levels can be made and since you also have the first classic grounded and flying enemies I learn a lot about how we could make it working in our game:

• basic attack is between melee and range, as a good mid-range (and enemies are tall enough to take it). Also grounded melee animation somewhat works even if legs are standing on nothing, since character is moving and legs not detailed we don’t really pay attention to it. Air attack still makes sense with the chain and allows air control during attack. In the final boss in particular it’s very useful to play like Smash, doing air attacks only for full character control… (but the chain? that’s why she looks like a villain. Well it fits the prisoner theme with black & white…)
• grounded enemy is tall, fast enough to be annoying and not stunnable so it’s quite stressful when it approaches, but managing distance well you can kill it with repeated chain attacks. It also has a nice ceiling variant to trap player (we originally designed a separate hedgehog enemy and snail enemy that sticks to ceiling but I never thought about reusing the same sprite to save budget, clever!)
• flying enemy has challenging but logical pattern where it prepares for a bird of prey dive, which makes sense and can be learned. Our game and several others had issues with the “annoying flying enemy that keeps coming at you, not giving a break” (mostly because it’s easier to code), but I see how spending a little more time on enemy movement pattern can make a big difference! However the fact that it flies far below ground level makes it hard to punish it immediately by hitting it back.

Issues encountered:

• some scenes load with noticeable lag (and no fading or anything to hide it)
• Bobby tea / save point still plays attack animation when interacted with
• Some platforms look solid but are not

• Web build: when I came back to game after typing this, screen was black? Maybe just Firefox issue since I also noticed the animated GIF on the left side blinking

I’ll keep playing on Windows build to avoid this issue and finish my rating.

EDIT: It looks like the Windows build is DEBUG though, is it intended to unlock some cheat keys or something? Fortunately it’s Godot so that’s still just 70 MB. I also noticed it didn’t have fullscreen, so I preferred continuing on web where I had my save.

Feedback continued:

• Cutscene: Ebony doesn’t speak at all in the first cutscene, so it’s weird when villain says “3 vs 1”. Ebony and Ivory should probably ping pong some quotes

• Cutscene: Ebony face sprite is hard to see on dark background

• Cutscene: No button/command to skip full cutscene

• Walk: get stuck in low slope

You can also exploit this to trap the Hedgehog and kill it at your pace…

• Jump off one-way platform: great, although it’s easy to guess for veteran players, could be explained how to do it for beginners

• Pearl skill: funny nod to Metroid, I like the “undignified” gag. I also found it very odd when I discovered it in Smash for the first time. “How can she become so compact?!”. Smooth controls (can press down then left/right, or reversely, it chains well, you can even chain with down-jump to jump off one-way platform)

• Projectile skill: clever to bind it to a companion, and to require chain attacks to recover it to force alternating moves during boss and also vs minions. I like how projectiles really stuns the opponent, even a boss, making it much stronger than the usual projectile. (thinking about it, in Shadow Generations projectiles only stun enemies, it’s their role)

• Dash skill: classic, but nice detail touches (purple aura in air, blue on ground)

• Boss 1: nice blue hit and SFX feedback that hitting the cat with chain without projectile defense break is not very effective (I thought at first it would do 0 damage but it does a little - I wonder if I could beat it without Ebony at all, may try it again in speedrun mode, although I want to see if there is a funny dialogue after that)

Bug: waits a lot of time with the charge attack with red indicator toward right. Was very fast for left charge though

A dead spot where I can lock the boss to kill it safely, it won’t attack

… and thanks to that, I could beat the cat without Ebony’s help. OK I got the boots. Time to leave this place now.

Well, I guess the developers didn’t think about this possibility and just counted on the dark wall to stop me after all.

OK, I take it back. Now that’s a nice nod to achievers who try to do things their own way!

(note: the cage respawns after that, but it does nothing anymore when destroyed)

• Last boss: the huge ground kick smoke effect disappears when player character is hurt. Such a big AoE should stay on screen, not disappear like a projectile. Pretty hard to avoid the low frog jump, low enough that you can’t dash below, high enough that you can’t easily jump over it, and she seems to repeat them until she gets you. I think with right timing you can jump-dash over her, but not so easy. As she says: “Is it possible to jump too much?”

Mini-map: I knew I recognized this style somewhere! Metsys, uh? We tried it during the jam but we were already mid-production and using LDtk so we didn’t use it, but it looked interesting. Had to clear the default unknown space texture to avoid having ugly logos everywhere on the mini-map though, and I see you did the same.

And indeed, Metsys has immediate transitions so you can’t hide the loading times, but Godot should be fast anyway, I wonder what takes so much time when you enter the room with the dark wall broken by projectiles. Particles FX loading?

• BGM (area 1): too loud compared to other sounds. No clean loop.

• Level: the first (or second depending on how you progress) top-left bubble tea area with grass clearly shows edge tiles on the left. The tilemap should be extended a bit so it doesn’t show. On the right maybe too, although it connects to another tileset so it’s technically correct that it shows edge I suppose

• No checkpoint before last boss, I had to cross the whole forest again. It also means no healing before boss if you got hurt by some minions on the way, making things harder.

• Speedrun mode: timer appears correctly, but when Speedrun mode is enabled, play, then disabled and retart game, the timer will appear at 00 until you actually start the game when it will disappear.

A very polished game!

Your team really put something special together! Everything from the audio, visual, and programming all felt really solid and refined. I loved the different art styles in the intro cutscene. The 'crayon' style is super cute and fun! And the pixel art portraits are super detailed! The background are also really detailed and pretty with all the decorations!

My only feedback would be to let the player 'jump out' of the peal mode. Right now if I jump while in pearl it just flickers the player's animation and keeps me in pearl. So if I want to jump after being a pearl, I have to time it just right. And maybe put some kind of save station at the start, so it doesn't replay the intro if you die before finding a save station later. Though I love the 'surprise' of the stalls for the save station, so cute!

Love the game and the puzzles! Great work!

So with a controller, the joystick doesn’t let me use the pearl form, the d-pad works, but the joystick just does not activate it, no matter how many times i try.

The first boss had waaaay too much HP, even with the damage upgrade.

The inconsistent pixel art was also kind of put off.

Magical girl Ivy is cool, tho.

Very nice and well-concentrated game!

I love the art style (especially the environment with so many variations), and all storyboard cutscenes were just amazing ¦3

The dialogue near the first bubble tea station implied there could be a trap, giving that PTSD moment without ever implementing the actual trap, which was brilliant!

The only problem I had was with the first boss. It seems to be too tough to deal with, but after a hard fight it decided to infinitely walk into a wall, letting me finish it. But that didn't happen with Ivy, and the last fight felt fairly challenging and interesting.

Thank you for this experience!

Really cool game! i love the pixel art, the cutscene at the start was great!, i like the magical girl design and the gameplay was great!

simple effective metroidvania fun, boss patterns are nice and well paced, abilities briliant. This is a full metroidvania package here. The opening sequence was cute too.

Great job with this entry! I had a lot of fun throughout the playthrough! I seriously hated the birds! They are SO HARD to dodge! The script and dialogue was hilarious! Loved the unlimited dashing! Also found that first pearl form puzzle to be really good design! Wished there was more of that haha. The music was great but I felt that the SFX was loud so I had to lower my volume a bunch. The boss fights were cool, although I had encountered a bug with Mr. Tuskie getting stuck near halfway mark of his health, and he just let me hit him to the end haha. Also I thought his HP was too much but it turns out I was just missing an acquirable upgrade then haha. Thank you again for making this game!

Very fun game and characters, I loved the cutscenes and the design of the main character! The pixel art was also gorgeous for the most part, especially for the player, but the city background in the final area clashed with everything else a bit. 

Using twin snakes to fight is a really cool concept, it reminds me of my favorite character from Star Ocean: The Second Story (Ashton). However, the range on the melee snake is very short, and it was especially a problem on the first boss due to its superior range and high health. It felt like the only solution to the fight was to bait an attack and get a few swings on your own before running away, and sooner or later I'd always end up getting too greedy and taking a hit. Its dash attack also seemed to glitch out if you took the boss offscreen after starting it, and in the end I was able to cheese the boss by getting it stuck in the running animation. On the other hand, Ivy was a really cool boss fight and actually felt a lot easier than the first boss.

Either way, a really cool project, great job to everyone involved!

Really great stuff! I’ve saved it and I’ll definitely be playing more since I didn't get as far as I wanted to. It’s an interesting project. The music needs some refinement, and a volume control option would be nice... also, the track volumes aren't normalized. One song is loud, the next is quiet, etc. I tend to notice these things since I’m primarily a sound designer.

The project is fun, looks great, and really made me want to keep playing. I’m not usually a big fan of long dialogue or narrative arcs, but the 'magical girl' genre kind of calls for it. Congrats!