Was the game fun to play?
It was a solid experience. Watching the battle royale play out was interesting and seeing enemies take each other out was really cool. The training phase was less interesting in my opinion. Dropping weights and clicking the juicer didn't quite live up to the same excitement. I think to make the training more fun, it could lean into the mini game aspect more but that is just my opinion and I’m sure there are lots of ways to increase the fun further in other ways.
Did the game include the core elements from the original?
Of course. Hatching out of the egg looks incredible and I love the build up it creates. I loved the different life stages and the final form where he’s black was a personal favourite. Building up the character’s stats felt core to the experience and the battles, though different, remind me of a Tamagotchi device that actually had a battle game in it.
Was there a clear path of progression?
Yes. It was very clear that you train the rascal and send him to battle so that he has an opportunity to evolve. During the training, it made sense that the dumbbell increased his strength and it was clear to me that you dropped it on him. As a side note, I think it would look really cool if he had arms to catch it. Throwing the rascal to increase health worked but I only knew to do this from reading the description, however, it's not essential for progressing and I see this as a cool extra feature. It’s also clear that the 4 colours in the food dispenser could increase the 4 stats.
How good was the audio and sound FX?
The music in the training area is full of energy and matches the style of the game perfectly. I really like the battle music but it did get a bit buggy the moment the battle was finished, could just be my computer though so no points down on that. Sound effects in the training area were nicely implemented, with things like the weights dropping on his head sounding great and there’s a bouncy sound too when hit. I feel like there could be a few more places for sound effects like opening the treasure chest. Then there’s the battle sounds which were all very solid, I liked the bat sounds and slashes a lot.
How well implemented was the UI?
Clicking to break the egg open is such a great opening both visually and functionally with it determining your starting stats. In the training area, the bottom bar has the stats presented in a nice way with bright friendly colours and a consistent bubbly art style. The icons are easily recognisable for what they do with numbers adjacent to them for health, speed, strength and field of view. I especially like the use of a custom cursor and how it changes to a hand when over the weights and the character, then how it changes to a closed fist once grabbing them looks totally amazing and is definitely a highlight UI feature to me. It also changes to a spanner/crowbar when over the treasure chest but I think a key might look better there and I think the treasure chest could benefit from some colour to match with the rest of the scene. The timer works great and I like that it keeps track of the completion time at the end, mine was 04:53. The hover over effect on the battle arena button looks great. I feel like it would be better if the juice went down inside the juicer and its colour matched what you picked. I would have preferred the juice colours to match the icon colours. So red juice to match the red heart for health, green for speed, white for strength and blue for field of view. There could be some text when you hover over the red juice that says something like +5HP