If you're testing any feedback is appreciated. Just post your thought here. If you don't want to post anything you can also email me directly via Mike dot Watson at gmail. I really appreciate it! Thanks!
Hello! Grabbed the game an hour ago. Some notes:
Oh wow, this is awesome feedback, thanks! I like that you already managed to get to the end (aside: I am very bad at my own game). The levels not feeling "special" actually came up with someone else and it's something I never thought about. The other tester mentioned that it didn't seem like there was much different between levels besides the colors/etc and that's (mostly) true. I think it was just me making a video game (ice level! water level!) without really thinking about it. There's not really supposed to be a ton of variation between levels but I might try and do something a little more involved. There are small limits on enemy spawning (no exploding enemies in the first two or three levels) but I might go further thanks to these suggestions.
I will have to see if I can figure out what caused that freeze. Not good :(
The biggest takeaway I've gotten is I need to provide more feedback to the player as to what is actually going on in the game. It's super hard for me to evaluate the game in that way, which is why getting fresh eyes on it is amazing. I've already got some ideas and I'll need to make a bunch of (hopefully not huge) changes that will hopefully make it feel better. Thanks a ton for taking the time and playing and writing all this down. I super appreciate it! I'm excited to put some more work into this thing.
Woo! Thanks for playing!
I think the resolution issues are the most pressing thing for me now, since it seems like it's confuse everyone but I've internalized that system so much that I can't see the issue myself. I guess my main question is, since everyone has been playing as Ghost, does the confusion stem from planting bombs while doing his special? His special grants any two actions per turn, so you can move two spaces, plant and move, attack and plant, move and attack etc. In conjunction with bombs that can get a little weird since you can take three steps before it explodes if you plant right after activating it. It might be worth denoting how many actions you can perform or something... in some way.
Also if the confusion just comes from general play regardless of his special ability that's also something I need to address but that seems like more of a fundamental flaw.
When I play through later today, I'll see if I can record what I'm doing and comment on when it feels weird.
I'll see if I can get my kids to play through too, they'll be able to give "first time" comments and an age difference.