Thoughts overall:
I loved the atmosphere (music, environment/structure, and story presentation/characters) and felt that the gameplay itself was simple but felt very good/right (E.g., combat, movement, and the puzzle/story engagement). Overall, I would say that the biggest thing I was left wishing for was incentive to play well (or to be pushed to use the healing items). The combat felt fine, but I was rarely left hurting, and when I was it was often just as easy for me to die as it was to use healing items. I also never felt incentivized to use the shield or rolling (except for moving more quickly). Lastly, I liked having significant action sound effects - but without an ability to adjust volume of these effects vs the music, the action sound effects came across as too loud for me. Despite the majority of this paragraph being critical - the first sentence in it is what has stuck with me the most - it just felt "right" as an experience overall and I had a lot of fun with it!
Issues/grammar:
!!!WARNING!!! *****Includes some story stuff****** - Would have loved to cover it, but there is no option to do so here.
- Jail door in starting town remains locked after returning from the boat outside of the snail village and touching the darkness... you can return into the caves and climb back up to the upper jail, but the door remains locked. I was able to get out by using error keys, but otherwise would have been trapped.
- Captain’s diary: Says "We must bring back specimen to study" - seems it should say either - "bring back a specimen to study" or "bring back specimens to study".
- The light house on the marsh is climbable from its left side, but not its right... intentional?
- Broken bridge between swampwich south and north has some weird pathing/collision, making it possible to cross the broken portion but in an odd way... and once crossed you seem to be out of the map, as you are able to walk freely across swamp, bridge, and homes in south swampwich.
- Just after reading the "final entry" in the snailery, you can grapple hook across the gap to the right, but you cannot use it to return back to the platform with the "final entry", I had to use error keys for this.