The game atmosphere isn't that bad, but some design mistakes ruin the global experience. I'll point them up for you, hoping you don't do them again in the future :
1. The character can jump way too high. It feels unnatural and make enemies unnecessary to fight. They're just too easy to avoid, this kind of things should be about getting the good timing.
2. The character designs don't stand out enough : You have a white haired & white dressed character in a blizzard, fighting against a white dressed girl throwing white snow balls. It's just hard to follow... Lisibility is essential.
3. The boss mechanics are problematic. The player was never introduced to these kinds of abilities and will likely be cought off guard, it would have worked better if other creatures would throw some snowballs at you as well.
But even if this was the case, it's still too hard.
It's too unpredictible to make up for a strategy and too fast to act on reflexes.
4. Don't make the boss leave the camera field so often. The fact that she can teleport herself without even being touched feels unfair and not fun.
5. Also, put more effort into your sound design; it makes the whole experience unpleasant.
Still, I like your work on textures and colors, so keep going!
Of course, these critics are only here to help.
Hey, thanks for playing and all the constructive feedbacks, I appreciate it, really - it's rare to see someone put this much effort to point out what can be improved from my game.
1. & 3. Yeah... I was actually planning to add another type of enemy, a snowman that can shoot snowballs, but due to time constraint of the game jam I couldn't. The majority of my game jam was spent trying to learn and adapt with this new engine.
And yeeeaaaaah I really should've made the boss easier. Forgot the rule of thumb of game design: if the difficulty feels "just right" for you as the developer, it's probably way too hard.
2. Ah, this. I actually kind of felt the same way when testing, so I made the background a little bit darker. I didn't know how else I could make the character stand out a bit more though... Perhaps I should've darkened the blizzard and the snow blocks a bit darker too and made the background slightly more orange-y pretending this were evening or something - this way the characters and enemies would stand out more.
4. I guess this can be improved by giving a hint whenever she's about to teleport. By the way her new location can actually be deduced by the direction of the blizzard, but I really should've somehow pass this information to the player... Or maybe make the arena smaller?
5. I guess I really did get a lot of complaints about the sound design yeah. The sounds were indeed the last thing I put into the game and were made hastily - some of them were even directly taken from freesound. Honestly, I don't know how to or what tools I can use to make SFX... I also should've made some BGMs but again... time constraint.
Again, thank you very much for the constructive feedbacks. It really helps me.
Taking sounds from Freesounds isn't a problem, but you must learn how to give them a personality.
I personally like to use Reaper, a program that is easy to understand and free. With it you'll be able to mix several sounds to make more complexe ones. When I have to make a sound, I always put at least three different sounds in Reaper, but I can even put twelve for some short effects! Nevertheless I never have any problem to keep track of them, and I'm not even that good with it.
Make yourself a list of sounds you appreciate, musical instruments and other stuff that can be useful like woosh effects.
Avoid sounds that are already heavily edited as they wouldn't be very interesting for you to learn.
And just start toying around with it.
One trick that can help you start is doing the following :
- Double-click on a sound-track on Reape.
- Uncheck Preserve pitch when changing rate
- Push Alt, then stretch the sound
That'll allow you to make easy pitch variations from the same sound.