First Impressions:
I liked the intro song, I sang along while I pulled up the google doc I keep all my reviews in. I know I’ve played this game before, but the overworld screen seems a bit busy with icons, and had me confused as to what I’m supposed to do, and which icon I was on the map. Paradoxically I wish the map was less bare, more trees and castle and art stuff. I guess I would say hide some of the unlock icons that are tiers ahead to make it less busy. That being said, it’s probably just placeholder WIP stuff anyways. It was not immediately obvious what to click on.
After thoughts:
Blacksmith platformer:
My jump was a little high, I didn't like that I couldn’t go back, but I get that it’s a staple of older games. Camera lag time felt a little too high, like it was noticeably behind me. I then died because I jumped too high into something. I wish I could affect the jump height more in the platformer based on how much I hold the spacebar. Right now it’s either high jump or very high jump. I didn’t need the very high jump and just had to feather it the whole time. Really felt like I was dying to not pressing the jump button soft enough instead of anything else.
Simon Sayeth:
I don’t see the point of this game or what it adds. It’s cute that it builds on an existing pattern and has sfx setup nicely, but Simon says by itself it isn't really fun. Maybe add some kind of gimmick to it?
High or lower:
had the same issue as Simon Says. I am indeed playing high or lower, but I don’t really care that much. It's game of chance, which is kinda boring, would be nice if I could cheat or something. It would also have been nice if a story was tied to these games. In a vacuum I can confirm that they are functional, but not very engaging.
Shoot em up: Much nicer, good music and art, I see the appeal here. Jesus christ is it ever fast though. I’m at 240 FPS, but I can barely keep track. I think I would have preferred it if the level was a bit longer and easier. Right now it feels like I lucked my way through a short sequence. I died in seconds on the second level.
Tower defense:
Nice art and cutscene again. I lost the first time around, and won the second by placing the turrets in the corner as shown. I’m starting to realize that there’s not a lot of room for failure in these games. I beat the second level, I wish I had a bit more time to set stuff down before the goblins show up.
Marksman: I failed the first time. I was expecting the arrows to have travel time and fired some confused shots because I didn’t catch that I was reloading. Maybe grey out the crosshairs? After, I ran out of arrows and just sat there in shame.
Fishing game:
Was I supposed to be able to move the hook in the water once I cast? I could only move it up/down, not left/right. Once I cast it, a single left click raised the hook way higher than I expected, holding down left click was not the way to go. Maybe have shallower water, and zoom it in more so the fish are bigger. There's a game that does this called Normal Fishing. Similar to the platformer, I had to feather the controls here, which isn’t too fun. When I finally got a bite, I spent a long time fighting the fish and the timer ran out. I forgot I could also reel it in at this point, I think that should just be automatic, since holding down left click adds no gameplay, and there’s no reason not to.
JRPG: As opposed to the other games, this one was pretty easy. I think I took no damage. I’m not a JRPG fan and I'm glad it was quick lol. I will say the attacks didn’t look to be coming from the characters, and I was expecting to see the enemy's health bar
What I liked:
SFX and music are very nice, even the overworld sound effect. The intro cutscenes were charming and amusing, as well as adding a nice sense of world building and why I should care.
Something that didn’t work as I expected:
Panning through the map wasn’t as smooth as I liked. Once I clicked, I could only drag once. I would have expected, as long as I’m holding down on the mouse, I can keep panning. I wish the retry options would send me back to the beginning of the mini-game, not the cutscene. Overall the games were tougher than I expected, I think new players might have issues. I think I mentioned this last time, but it would be nice to see plot progression with characters intertwining, but also meta progression too, maybe mix their mini-games together to break some formulas