Okay, so I played Gelda.
I admit, Hilda have been on my watch/read list for a very long time, and I still haven’t crossed it off. I am absolutely in love with it’s visual style, and Gelda plays into it amazingly. I will play the hell out of it, if it ever becomes a full-length game (assuming everything else is polished).
This visual aesthetic is very consistent thoroughly the whole game, and besides a few clippings/tile gaps it is flawless (for a Jam).
One thing that bugs me about visuals are the branches. They merge with the background and it’s kinda hard to distinguish them while running from a troll. They definitely should be more visually distinctive.
Gameplay. It’s nice, but it suffers sometimes from small bugs and inconsistencies.
As others have said, the death seems too punishing. Delay between death and respawn could have been 2-4 times shorter.
Game features a lot ‘leap of faith’ jumps. You jump blindly and hope the level design catches you. Granted, it does, but considering death delays, it feels very punishing to experiment with blind jumps. And I don’t mean only Mistfox jumps, even the regular in-level jumps often times require lots of faith into level design.
Then, you have these huge leaps with Abi. They seem very inconsistent. I know they are predictable, but because of how big the distance is, they feel ‘leap of faith-y’ as well. Flying through the whole level into the unknown basically.
And to top all that, not all checkpoints are well-placed. Some require a bit of strolling until you reach the troll-sequence (which you’ve died at a few times already).
Conclusion:
Now, I make these downsides seem huge. They are a big deal, but everything good about the game really outshines them. But the experience can’t be whole with these things present, in my opinion.
You see, it seems like I rate this game as a standalone finished product at this point. Which I really shouldn’t. It’s a Jam entry made in a tight time limit. But I can’t help it, cause I really like it))