When I first heard the concept for this game, I was a bit skeptical. But after playing it for myself, I realize it’s done really well and was a blast to play, even if a bit hard. The first few levels were a bit slow, but once I got into the later ones, running around with all three characters hopping about chaotically but also strategically was soooo fun.
Now since you’re going to work on this game again Yannick, here are a few of my quality of life suggestions:
- Make the rewind after completing a character take the same amount of time no matter how much time you spent in the level (make the rewind move faster if you spent more time). There were a few times where I spent the whole 20 seconds and had to sit through just enough rewind time (yawhhh) to be annoying.
- Even though I love the countdown before you start the level, it’s also just long enough to be annoying. Maybe make it count down in units of time faster than seconds
- Make the sound effect on the timer a little quieter please…
- (Opinion) When you’re on the character select screen, maybe make each character correspond with a number key, so if you press that number key you’ll select that character, making it a bit easier and quicker than using the mouse.
- (Opinion) I don’t really like how the camera hangs back just slightly, but that might just be me.
- Perhaps give the ability to preview the entire room of the level before starting it. I think that this will lead to more strategic gameplay if you’re able to plan out what you want to do instead of having to spend your first few runs just exploring, especially if all of the rooms are going to be as small as they are so far.
- Perhaps (and this is my least favorite suggestion) make it so you’re able to preview your run so far without having to use a character. Similar to the preview room function mentioned above, I think this will lead to more strategic gameplay and planning if you don’t have to try to remember exactly what your last run looked like, since during your last run you were running around trying to do things, not trying to remember.
- Maybe the levels should be a bit bigger and have a bit more room in the future, especially if you’re going to add more characters. I don’t know if you were going for a clautrophobic feel, but I think that a little more room to maneuver and jump over your characters would be quite beneficial.
- Add the white outline to the bottom of the feet of the characters even when they’re standing on the ground. It looks weird that they don’t have it even if it would intersect with the ground a bit. It looks especially weird when they’re standing off a ledge a bit and you can see that the bottoms of their feet aren’t outlined
- Maybe have a light grey outline on every character you’re not playing as, and the white outline on every character you’re not playing as, or pick some other colors. I don’t have trouble telling them apart, but I think that it would be a nice touch, but it’s probably the most unnecessary of my suggestions.
- The dwarf looks like he’s able to fit through one block gaps, but he’s unable to. I think you could either edit his collider to make it just small enough to fit through or make his sprite tall enough to look like he’s unable to fit through.
Both of these next suggestions are based on the NES game Solomon’s Key
- (Opinion) The dwarf should be able to destroy blocks the same way he places them, but if you click and there’s a block where a block would be placed, it would be destroyed.
- (Opinion) The dwarf should be able to place blocks above/below and in front of him by holding up/down (W/S) and clicking, or by clicking on the desired grid space with the mouse.
Even with all this criticism, most of it is just small quality of life things that would make it just that much better. I still loved the experience from start to finish, and I love how there are so many different ways to solve a level, and how you have to think both ahead and behind. I think this game has so much potential, and I’d love to see it grow, get more levels, maybe more characters, and finally be released. I’m very impressed with both of you, BenBonk and Yannick.