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(4 edits) (+1)

This is really impressive overall.

It looks fantastic, sound is nice and the movemet feels great.  The first section through the doors was mostly intuitive, even if I got a little stuck trying to figure out how the jump worked.  But I got really stuck on the second platforming sequence in the open area.

It took me a while to find the main lead.  That's  mostly on me.  I didn't go to the top of the winding ramp and kept getting distracted by other routes I couldn't reach yet.

But after that, I got the Grab power, without really understanding what that was.
When it finally clicked, I had trouble performing it.  If I held Space before I held Shift, it wouldn't register.
I figured that out, but then came a combination of other issues.

Basically, I'm used to Q/E turning and A/D strafing.  This is the first year I've encountered the reverse, and I admit it caused me some trouble.  I've never reflexively gotten used to it.  So I made a bunch of mistakes just walking off edges.

But then the queuing kinda got me too.  Sometimes I just carelessly over-shot.  But when it gets to the point where I'm having to hold down Shift and Space, my brain is reflexively holding buttons, so quite a few times I massed up ledge climbs or walked off edges because I kept holding Up. Could be a skosh sensitive for prescision platforming.

Not to mention Esc being just a press to close the game.  Again, my brain reflexively associates Esc with 'Back', so I think I accidentally closed the game about 3 times.  (If you keep that, a 3 second hold would be safer.)

I had a bit of luck on the last one though.  I had just fallen off the last bit of platforming section before the end, and when I reloaded I was back at the top.  20 seconds away from the ending.

And it's still a great entry despite my troubles!
I'll post my gameplay when it's up.
EDIT: Gizmo's Quest Field Trip Pt1 by Team SunForge

(+1)

Hey! Thank you for the great in-depth review! We're glad you enjoyed your time with it even despite the more unintuitive aspects :)

With the disclaimer that this is an explanation and not an excuse, a lot of the issues you cited come down to cut content we ran out of time before we could implement. For the ledge grab, you can toggle it on/off, and you only need to hold shift when it's toggled off, otherwise t behaves as if shift is always being held automatically.

Esc closing instantly was a holdover from the debugging stage, I will have to add a confirmation window for that definitely.

I planned on being able to toggle between QE strafe and AD strafe but I'll be honest, I just plain forgot I was goin to do that by the time I got to the control schemes. That one is my bad, haha.

The game essentially autosaves your position every minute, which is how the reload works! It's mostly there in case there's a game breaking crash so that players don't have to start over. Glad it was useful :)

Thank you again for the amazing review and the opportunity to watch you play it! It's always a great resource for learning to see others go through your game.