Just played the demo, superb job. I’m really looking forward to this game. Some thoughts:
- I LOVE the flute mechanic. Tbh I haven’t played many of the games this game is inspired by (though I’ve played a lot of recent metroidvanias), so I don’t know if the flute mechanic has been done before but wow it was really cool. The idea of accruing new songs that have unique abilities over the course of the game is awesome, I’m sure there’s a lot of puzzle potential with the flute as well.
- The map feels good, I know it’s just a demo so there’s not a ton to go off of, but it felt like a good mix of vertical and horizontal.
- The platforming is well done. The character feels responsive, didn’t run into any issues jumping around. My only feedback on the platforming is sometimes I found it tough to differentiate actual platforms from background art (some platforms blended in with the background a bit).
I have a few thoughts on the combat but this is totally subjective. As a fellow dev, I know it’s easy to tunnel-vision on a piece of feedback and try to “address” everything, but my opinion is just mine and it’s likely many others will have opposite or conflicting thoughts.
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It felt a little stiff to not move at all during melee attacks. I think it’s common for melee attacks in other metroidvanias to have a tiny bit of forward momentum. Learning the spacing of my own attacks is definitely rewarding, but it felt a little awkward fighting the boss and feeling like many of my attacks weren’t connecting due to my spacing being just a tiny bit off; might have been helpful to have a small step forward when attacking while holding a direction.
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For the boss fight, it felt like the windows for me to safely attack were a little short. In the end I just traded hits with the boss since the boss’s damage was low enough for that to work. The boss difficulty felt good for an intro boss (was able to win on try #1 but used all 3 heals). Also love the added lighting attack when the boss gets to half HP, I always love a good phase 2 mixup.
All-in-all this game looks great so far. The demo was a blast and I didn’t want it to end.
I’m really excited for this game. I really love what I saw so far and I’ll certainly buy it on release.