Thoughts recorded during my playthrough
+ = I liked it
- = I didn't like it
* = Comment/neutral
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+ Good intro cutscene
+ Cute art
- The movement feels too fast
* Playing with both the keyboard and mouse feels a little awkward for this type of game, but being able to shoot projectiles in the direction of the cursor is a unique touch. (I eventually got semi-used to it after a while)
- The melee attack seems to trigger twice?
- Game music is awfully quiet, even at full volume - if there even is music? I can't tell.
+ This needs to be said separately: Glimmer's portrait is really good!
- I had to take a leap of faith and fell into some spikes. Try to avoid designing levels like that. I did appreciate that there was a bit of dialog to warn me about that, but there was little I could have done to avoid getting damaged anyway without knowing exactly how to avoid it.
+ I like how quick respawning is, and there seem to be fairly generous checkpoints
- There's one point shortly after meeting the first ghost where you have to jump across several small platforms. The movement is so quick and the platforms can be hard to see until you've lit them, so I died a lot in this place.
- Ghost kept moving when a text box was up (I was in the area under the endless flame). It managed to get in a few hits before I was done reading.
+ I like how white torches are neutral, and red torches indicate a hazard.
- Now that I know I can melee the ghosts, there really isn't much challenge to them. I just stand still while they charge at me, I hit them until they disappear, then move on. There are no additional gimmicks added on and no environmental challenges, so that experinece just feels like filler instead of the skill test that I believe was intended.
* Suddenly MUSIC?!
- Throwing a bunch of ghosts at me from the same direction doesn't really challenge me. If they had come at me from different angles and had their own gimmicks, that may have been different.
- The cannon platforms set piece is really obnoxious: More leaps of faith that have me running into cannons that shoot random projectiles, and there are eventually so many of them that it's nearly impossible for me to not get hit!
+ I am really appreciating the hold-right-click light ball technique - I can explore a room for lights if I want, and holding the light ball in front of me can mitigate unexpected hits once in a while.
- Bug in the vertical platforming room: You don't die automatically when you fall into a pit if you fell during your invincibility frames. You have to move after the invincible effect wears off to trigger death.
- Transition to new corruption room is a bit quick. Needs something to smooth it out, like a fade out/in. (More of a nitpick, really)
+ Placing a switch underneath the walkway so I had to use the right-click-follow light ball was cool.
- I got to a room with 4 ghosts. I dispatched them, then started exploring left to see if I had missed something. I did - it triggered the dialog from the now-defeated ghosts!
* I'm not sure why there's a meter for the magic - I always seem to have enough of it, and the light balls are designed such that keeping a right-click-locked ball for long is both nearly impossible and not terribly game-breaking (as far as I can tell). Maybe get rid of it?
+ On that topic, the big, shiny health bar makes sense and isn't in the way.
- Boss has background music, but it stops abruptly - I think the looping is messed up.
- OK, this battle with the clown is really ticking me off. I quit at this point (and I'm sad, because I suspect this is near the end). Here's why:
- Light ball collision detection is inconsistent in the worst of ways: sometimes the arms block shots, sometimes they don't. While I like those times when they don't block, it makes hitting the clown's balls nearly impossible.
- The clown's target areas (it feels weird calling them "balls" 😆) are inconsistent, too. I believe the idea is that you need to light all of the targets up to bring the clown down to earth so you can smack his silly face, then rinse-repeat until he's done. Unfortunately, sometimes the lights are all lit, but the game doesn't register this, so I'm frantically trying to hit targets that may or may not need shooting, hoping to hit that random one that needs to be hit or having the clown fall on his own. Other times, the clown falls before all of the targets have been lit. This issue is compounded by the random hit detection: is the game telling me that I successfully lit the target, or is it being blocked by the clown's body?
- The light balls I cast don't always seem to live long enough to reach their intended target consistently. I'm not sure if it's due to the fussy hit detection or something else, but it added to my annoyance.
- I didn't initially catch that there were more targets above the clown's head; it wasn't clear during the introduction how many targets the clown had. Not the biggest deal, but it's there.
Summary
This is a cute game with some potential, but there are design choices and random glitches that hold it back. During much of my playthrough I was thinking "this game should be subtitled "Leap Of Faith" because there are way too many leaps into the great unknown; I know that you're supposed to light your way with the torches along the path, but it's nearly impossible to get to those torches without making a jump into the darkness. Combine that with the lackluster combat, and the overall experience feels kind of mediocre. Here's what I'd advise: study classic platform games like the Mario series and Mega Man series and try to learn not just *how* their levels are constructed, but *why." What makes them interesting to play? How do they avoid player frustration? And also make note of their missteps, for even these venerated series are not without their errors.
So to summarize my summary, I applaud your entry in this game jam, but I think you can do better. Indie game dev, especially in game jams, is a constant journey of improvement, so I hope you can take this feedback and grow from it!