What did this game do well?
This game is very nice with a very unexpected core mechanic. The idea of it being like a souls game where dodge rolling is key is very fun and challenging. The visuals and sprites look really good. The UI is clear and the hitboxes look like they line up properly with the sprites. Controls are responsive and snappy as well, which is very important for a game like this. It’s very ambitious and as a souls fan I absolutely appreciate the effort. I like that there’s a jump that helps with distancing, no contact damage, the roll isn’t spammable, that there’s support for different playstyles, and that all the enemy movements are pretty well telegraphed. The arena isn’t really crowded either. Completing each wave heals you as well. the art is cool, and the design with survived waves is fun to play. The game is very clean and easy to understand. The movement feels smooth and appropriate for the gameplay. The gameplay stays fresh as enemies positions are different with each wave. Cool graphics and game mechanics The mechanics and animation were well done and the game looks polished. The week’s assignment was to make a game difficult to play. And well this game was difficult to play. It had a UI, good enemy AI, and animations. Overall it is a fun game to play. I like the variety of enemies in waves and the increasing difficulty to survive for longer. The feedback and game feel are ok.
What could this game have done better?
This games variety was standard, I would have liked to see more variety with the boss movement and maybe different enemy types. The game feels way too hard. I couldn’t even get past the first round. It looks like the roll is meant to be used as a reaction to an enemy attack, but I personally felt that the startup animation of an enemy attack was unclear. Your own attack range is also tiny compared to the big round 1 enemies. I actually found the boss a little easy since sometimes his sword flashes red to attack. I think that the action cancel kind of misses out on the deliberacy of the soul-like combat this is trying to emulate. The ideas are there but it needs some polish. You can action cancel with every action except the attack, so it always feels uncertain whether your attack will actually go through or if it will kill your momentum. I recommend sticking to one or the other. Though if you go the souls route, a helpful tip is that souls doesn’t have action cancel but if you hit atk while rolling, your next action will be an atk when the animation is done. It reads your intent even if the rolling isn’t stopped. Enemies have a tendency to turn at the last minute as you dodge through them and the hitboxes are a bit too large (especially with the big giants). The dodge timing is uncertain but I had enough stamina to get through a lot, so that could work with just some tweaking. maybe change the attack ranges for the tall monster, when I attacking the first one the second can always hit me and when I run away i will still get hit I feel games with these characteristics typically have items or consumables to aid the player and make gameplay more interactive. Description on how to play in the beginning would be nice I wish the environment could change or that it was a side scroller. I also wish there was another goal other than fighting the monsters. I don’t gain anything after killing the monsters. The game mechanics could be making the game very difficult to play. There is no room for error, and the crouching mechanic that should ideally enable you to dodge, doesn’t always work. The enemy AI is extremely strong, so it looks like the only way to defeat them is by spamming. However, the game is still really well done. It’s a bit hard to correctly time crouching because you don’t really know when the enemy attacks or their range in the game. I think it would be better to have enemies being slower than the player and have more animations.