This is awesome! I've seen it posted but haven't had a chance to play until now. Very nice. Few thoughts as I play through:
- Get that camera lerping... It's so easy, 5 minutes of work at most, and adds a ton to the "polished" feeling of a game. What I do is, for each x and y, is find the difference between the cameras current position and the desired position (over the player). Then multiply that by the frame delta time, and then multiply by the "lerp force". Higher lerp force gives a tighter camera, experiment to find the right value. As the difference between the camera and target grows, it moves faster, then nicely slows down as it approaches the target.
- Main attack feels fantastic. Nice effects work on it. Kind of surprising it starts so massive, but I like it.
- The mana system, or whatever it is, that depletes as you use your attack is really smart. Dropping to a less powerful version is great, because you avoid that "why isn't my crap working" moment, while also enocuraging smart use of the resource. Well done.
- Secondary attack is really satisfying to pull off against a big group of enemies. The level and enemy design works with it too, allowing you to funnel enemies into a line and blast them. Very satisfying.
- The skeletons dash is a little odd. because of the attack covering, screen angle, etc... they at first seemed to just disappear. Then when I realized they were dashing, I didn't really feel threatened by it.
- Tutorial was really slick. Good.
- Character is funny. I like that you do a lot with only a little writing.
- Wow, combat is really good. I actually found myself using all my abilities, which is pretty rare. In most games without a really well balanced combat abilities, I can just lean on one thing to get through.
- I do think there is a big of a legibility issue though. My main attack is so visually dominant it's hard to keep track of the situation. The dashing enemies make this worse. It's not a huge deal, but more combat readability would be good. The enemies might need their own light as well, if they don't already have one. If they do, maybe increase its potency a little bit.
- Oh sweet, a new character. I really like how she controls similarly enough to the last one where I don't have to learn a whole new setup, but differently enough where it feels novel.
- The dashing enemies feel a lot better here for some reason. I think because with her primary attack, the combat is a lot more readable.
- The knight guy is fun. Again, similar but different enough to be interesting.
- Oh damn, the red knight girl is the most fun one yet. This almost like a SSB character system, with a control template and then a ton of design within that template for each character. Pretty brilliant.
- The crossbow girl is fun af. The roll is a tad janky though, especially with the camera not lerping.
- From the Time Guy Demo I learned a trick which I started using. When you get hit, flash a red border around the screen. It helps a lot with messaging an important piece of information. Might be useful here too.
- I like the character switching system. Found it by accident when I hit tab. Neat.
- With Arcana, it's a bit easy to lose the cursor. Because it's the same color as her attacks
- Feels like it got a lot harder after I went down the elevator. But also I'm not very good haha.
Well, hopefully there was one or two useful things in my ramblings. This is a very fun, polished, and charming project. You have great comedic timing. This was my favorite demo that I've played so far. Great job!