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lrdazrl2 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Just tried this game and managed to beat it after a while. Here are some thoughts and comments:

  • Nice platformer! It was fun but controls felt sometimes a bit difficult.
  • Good visuals. They are clear and look nice! Cats and dogs division made it easy to understand who your enemies are already the first time seeing them. Similarly spikes and bouncy balls were super clear about their purpose. The background is very aesthetic. Although, there were also some not so clear graphical elements such as the red dots and the blue rectangles. The rectangles were especially confusing because as far as I know they had the same function than the bouncy balls and I kept wondering why they didn't have the same visual. Additionally, I think some objects (like the dog with magic wand and bouncy balls) behaved differently in different places and it felt weird that they shared visuals but in most cases it wasn't super confusing.
  • The background music was really enjoyable. I liked how it started as a simple fun music / children song but then evolved to more epic adventure music as the game progressed. As a curiosity, the main melody of the soundtrack reminded me a lot about this song. I guess there are melodic similarities in the beginning of the phrases.
  • The upper and lower part of the game are little bit cut off. You could try changing the height value of  itch.io page Viewport dimensions setting. Because of this I didn't notice there was health indicator on the upper left corner and it was very confusing to not know when game over would happen. 
  • The tutorial text were really nice. Like "Let's go cat!" at the start was somehow motivating.
  • The game had appropriate length for a jam game. The levels were interesting but there was a lot of difficulty and length variation between them. For example the first level was really difficult compared to the second level which was (If I remember correctly) a lot shorter than all the other levels. That last level with flying clouds was fun because it changed the gameplay but I think it also was a bit difficult.
  • In my opinion the spawning dog was quite annoying. I suppose it was supposed to be difficult but I felt that there was no real chance to escape from it because they can just spawn in front of you (or in worst case on top of you!) and the player character is not much faster than the enemies so escaping was super difficult. I felt that I always managed to escape only by random chance and not because of my skills.

Overall this was a nice jam platformer. It was fun to try it.

If any of you have a chance to try either of the games I participated creating (DNA & Travelling Neighbors), please consider leaving at least some feedback for it. Positive or constructive are both welcome and greatly appreciated.

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Jinneon2 years ago(+1)

Thanks for writing very detailed review! Health bar is now fully visible after changing viewport settings and full screen button is also easier to see on page. Red dots were placeholder sprites and blue ones were for testing purposes before bouncy balls. They were meant to be replaced, but deveIoping final level and creating browser build took some time before deadline.  

I thought about making second level longer, when developing game. I agree that it could have been longer. I was actually a bit surprised how hard first  level become in it´s final version. I tested a bit today, what is the best way to get past spawning dog. If you first jump towards it before  dog has teleported it teleports below and then you use another jump and land on top of it and walk past of it. I tested that 6 times and so far it has worked every time. It´s a  tricky part for a sure. Another way is trying to retreat, where other dogs are and jump over it, but that doesn´t always work.

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lrdazrl2 years ago (3 edits) (+1)

You're welcome! I tried to mention everything that came to my mind hoping that at least some of the comments could be useful.

Good to know that there is at least some ways to get past the mage dog. I didn't think of either of those solutions.

And for the browser build taking too long... yes for some reason that always goes like that. Even after having done it in multiple jams already there is always something wrong with the first attempts. Now, I usually try to do the build first time on the morning of the submission dead line or even previous evening even if they game is completely unfinished, just to check that it's going to work. Then it's usually easier to do again later with the same settings.

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