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anttihaavikko3 years ago(+1)

Seems like a bit too ambitious scoping and didn't quite get to finish and polish enough.


The "main mechanic" wasn't really used at all. And now after reading the description, it's not too metroidvania either... 😅

The art was the best part. Nice looking pixel art with some good animations. There was some weird flickering lines in the middle of the screen at times (sprite tearing maybe). Not really a deal breaker but annoying looking nonetheless. The audio side was quite bland. The sound effects really lacked some punch and the music didn't fit too well either.

The controls weren't too great. Everything was just too clunky. The jumping was super awkward, the initial horizontal momentum was way too much and you didn't have enough control afterwards. So almost like that completely locked jump of NES Castlevanias but without the game designed around that.

Didn't really get the combat before I really had to on the final boss. I got kinda frustrated on that long stretch of enemies because I couldn't really fight an enemy reliably without getting hit. So I just ran past everything. But yeah, obviously I had to learn the combat on the boss and then it did click with me. After beating the boss I did a quick second run killing everything and reached the boss without a single death. 😎

The second swing of the attack was completely pointless. You pretty much always had to dash cancel out of it or you'd get hit. The enemy telegraphs were not enough for my old man reflexes at least. I couldn't really rely on them so I had to just swing, dash cancel past the enemy and repeat until victorious. And the same tactic on the boss too. The boss was also a bit too relentless in my opinion, some downtime on the attacks would make it more organic. And obviously some different attacks would help too but seems like you were struggling with the scope even now.

Happened to me several times that I dash cancelled at a wrong time (I think at least that it is timing related, didn't seem to happen if dashing right after the first swing connected) and was completely locked out of attacking for a huge delay. Like over ten seconds. 😡

Anyways, good job on making something completely playable even though it seems like it's not quite what you were aiming for originally. Scoping correctly is always difficult but gets easier with more experience and knowing what you're capable of. 👍

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dkomnen3 years ago

Thanks for playing the game. I really appreciate the detailed feedback, I feel like people usually avoid being too direct on game jams so sometimes you don't get the critique you need.
I didn't experience the issue you had with jumping. I thought in that way the controls were fine. Not sure how I could fix them in that case either. Maybe reducing the jump impulse(how much force is applied initially), but also reducing the downward gravity acceleration a bit?

For everything else I completely agree with you, most of them were issues I was aware to some degree during the work. I think it boils down to what you said, it was overscoped.  I need more experience working with some core mechanics for these types of games before I could execute it properly in such a time frame.

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anttihaavikko3 years ago(+1)

Yeah, I do like to write brutally honest feedback, the kind I would like to receive myself too. Of course it might make it seem like being overly critiquing since it's more helpful really to point out what could be improved instead of gushing on about what was done well. It's all about improving as a dev in my opinion...

Yeah the jump wasn't a huge issue by any means since there wasn't any precision requiring platforming sections really. It was the most noticeable when trying to jump up those platforms. You pretty much had to go to a standstill right under them and jump up. Even a slight horizontal movement would mean the jump didn't reach high enough.

And fixing it of course is a mixed bag, it all comes down to just fiddling with the numbers until it "feels" right. The most classic platformer jump is the one where you just apply the impulse upwards and let the player still have 100% control of the horizontal movement. And definitely do not decrease the gravity, that would just make the jump feel floaty. The mario formula is almost doubling the gravity after the jump has reached its peak. Sure, it's far from realistic but it's what the gamers have gotten used to. 😅And another thing that would give the player more control is the de facto "hold jump" to jump higher thing for controlling the .

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