Very solid game here. The player felt good to control and I thought the presentation was cool. Loved how each biome felt.
I loved the options for combat that the player had. Being able to do range attacks and also parry with your staff felt pretty versatile. I appreciate how snappy the teleport felt as well. The enemies also had a solid variety to them as well. That said, I kinda soft-locked myself in the beginning by killing every enemy, but I didn't get to the top of the first world before that. I restarted the entire game after that so this wasn't an issue.
I'm a little mixed on the "metroidvania " aspect of this game. It felt more like what cave story is in a way ( i.e mostly linear worlds which are inter-connected at specific portals ). The game was still fun to traverse, but it definitely was slightly lacking in that respect. I also thought it was slightly annoying how I kinda had to grind a bit to get the entrance to the last area.
The bossfights were pretty damn good though. I thought the first boss was pretty solid. I kinda wish it had different animations for it's attacks though ( Tbh, this is an issue I had with all of the bosses ). I loved how the second boss really forced me to move around a lot while needing to parry their projectile attacks and dodge their charge attack. Having enemies spawn during the boss was also a cool way to mix up the second phase. I also loved how the final boss sorta forced me to use the teleport and then use the multi-stab attack to get them quickly. I'm not entirely a fan of their second phase though. It didn't feel different enough from the first and just felt like I was doing the same thing twice. Playing tennis with the boss was intense enough that this didn't really bother me that much, but it was definitely somewhat annoying.
All that said, this a pretty fun game overall. Good job on this
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Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! The soft lock is a definite flaw that I should have thought about more thoroughly. The boss attack animations are another flaw I overlooked. The attack animations are only one frame which could have been easily added to.
About the Metroidvania aspect, I think I see what you mean. They are supposed to take place in one big world/map. I actually had planned for that at first (which is why the fist map is so much bigger than the rest) but it got way too tedious without a map editor. I am going to dig into the Tiled documentation so that I can add an actual map editor to my arsenal lol.
Thanks so much for taking the time to play all the way through! I appreciate it so much. You have also given me some super valuable tips that I can use to improve for next time!