(Reposting from my reply on the RPG Maker forums)
What I Liked:
- The presentation. This is a dayum slick game, with killer 8 bit music, and a great Gameboy aesthetic. The title screen art is fantastic, and the boss monster is visually very impressive.
- The world. The Tower of Mu is a really cool concept, with you encountering a bunch of people who have given up on the way. My favourite are the Pig People that tried to climb the tower to revert back to their original forms, but gave up because their "king" decided it was better for them to stay put so he could rule. So keen on that.
- The design. It was obvious that you'd taken a lot of time to figure out how your systems could best interact, and each room presented a different puzzle. And it boggles me still that this was made with RPG Maker. It goes to show that we're not limited to the constraints of our engine.
What I didn't:
- The HP bar. As far as I can see, its only use is to indicate fall damage, which I will get to. The problem is that it's rendered useless by the hazards placed around that game. Now, I see where you're going with this, with your "hardcore" design philosophy, but it means that the player is given a meter for a single system that doesn't carry over to the rest of the game. Traps and hazards, I can understand as one-shot kills. But the monsters around (especially when it comes to the boss) are destructible, and respawn wherever they were killed, thus leading to points when I'm trying to jump up on a platform and suddenly this bird respawns and one-shots me, which seems less "difficult" and more "unfair".
- Fall damage. I have no problem with this as a concept, but at times it felt wildly inconsistent. I could fall into a side hole slightly lower than the one I was meant to, and end up taking fall damage, even though earlier I fell onto a roof slightly off-screen and was fine. Some tweaking, maybe increasing the amount you have to fall to take damage, and this could be a good system, forcing people to stop and think more.
- Sliding. So when you land on a platform, there's always a little bit of "slide". This is became the bane of my existence when it came to the fiddlier platforming sections, as I would land perfectly on the platform, and then slide off. Perhaps making it so you slide after dashing, but not after a regular jump, could mitigate this.
TL;DR:
A great start for a game that uses an engine unconventionally, with an already strong sense of style and world, but definitely needs more refining to make the game difficult without seeming unfair.
Best of luck!
- Catog