Hi Alex,
I caught a cold at ECCC and am just getting over it (d'oh). Thanks for the thorough response and your willingness to be open to feedback. (it's an admirable characteristic for a creator to have)
Glad to hear about the upcoming tweaks! It's neat to hear that other people requested the VS mode, since that means your game was interesting enough for people to want to play against each other. ;)
As for the carpet, I think I understand what you were going for - but I think the problem arises when the view is from the top and scaled down - making the pattern look busy. This is not the case if you're actually in the arcade looking at it in scale. I would suggest making the patterns bigger and knock down the saturation/value difference and I think it'll work! ;)
I forgot to make one more suggestion - I think I had a hard time really knowing when I picked up an item and ended up tossing it by mistake a few times. Would you consider adding a new "pick up" / "throw" animation set, much like what's seen in Zelda, Link to the Past? I think that having a motion for the robots to actually pick up items above their heads will improve the feel of the game greatly. ;)
Looking forward to playing the new demo! Hope to see you again at an upcoming con/meetup. ;)
- em
