Hey!
Thanks so much for not only giving the game another go, but taking the time to give me feedback! It's always much appreciated and very helpful. :)
"It's getting a lot better! The combat especially is an improvement. "
Yeah! I thought so as well! I finally have it in a spot where it feels intuitive!
"I got as far as the frog crab boss and then ran out of potions and died. "
Cool, how many cats did you have at that point and how long did it take you to get there?
If you find that particular part too frustrating, you can always skip it! The game isn't completely linear like that.
"Maybe I didn't notice it before, but I love the moving cloud shadows cast over the ground. Very simple but nice effect."
Yes! That's a recent improvement! I'm glad you like it!
" I could almost believe this were a long-forgotten SNES title."
High praise indeed! Thank you so much! :)
"- The pixelated text font is admittedly very retro, but also harder to read, especially on full-screen (I was playing on a 32" monitor). Maybe you can find another font that is still playful but more readable at the same time."
I kinda get what you mean by it being a little hard to read, I had chosen it for ascetics rather than function. After reading this, I tried to experiment with some other fonts, but gamemaker had a hissy-fit about it! So I'm going to leave it for now, but it's on my watch list. I'll have to look into what the problem was in more detail. :(
"- Playing on a keyboard, I find pressing Enter for Interact to be a little awkward. Space bar for rolling is perfectly fine. I would suggest mapping the shooting and interacting to the Z, X, C or V keys on the bottom row. Less distance for the fingers to travel makes for a much more enjoyable rpg experience. A lot of top-down shooters use the above-mentioned key mapping convention."
This seems like a good idea to me. I may leave in the original controls for WASD players, but your ZXC suggestion seems a lot more comfortable for arrow key players.
"- I noticed a few spelling errors here and there. If you have a text file of all the narrative/dialogue I can proofread it for you if you'd like."
Ah yes, the never-ending struggle! I have had a friend go over the spelling and send me a document with numerous mistakes in the past, turns out he didn't get all of them! Unfortunately, I don't have an easily accessible file with all the dialog in it. That is wrapped up in brackets indicating where to drop down a line and add animations to the text. It would be a nightmare to try and decipher and I don't want to put you through that.
"Very cool to see the progress this game has made in the course of about a year! Very inspiring!"
Wow! It's been that long since you played it? xD Time flies!
Thanks for the food for thought friend! :)