Absolutely stunning entry. The graphics was marvelous, the short concise levels were really neat and that slow slow awfully slow reload speed kept me at the edge of my chair.
Before getting to the critique, let’s preface it with saying this is one of the absolute best games in the jam and quite frankly absurd that it’s this good.
Now, speaking of the reload. While there was camera action when performing it, I did not at all understand the UI nor what it meant. The game was so pedagogical about the [Spacebar] so when I pressed [R] and nothing seemed to happen, just me going into what seemed like a crouch. I got the feeling there was some error in key-bindings. And so I died on my first attempt.
I think there were a couple of problems here. Most important, if there had been a reload sound which would have told me to wait. Second, if there had been some animation on the gun/hand sprite. Or just rotating it a bit or such, it would also helped. I also thought that the three dashes might be my ammo before reload. Another trick could be to not have a linear progress on the filling of the reload bars, but let each segment start filling very fast in the beginning and then slow down as it approaches full. That way I’ll see something happening right away and might also work wonders with sunk cost when stressed and feeling like I’ve invested more in filling up a bar than I had.
Once I read up on the game page and tried again it was easy to understand though!
And the drama of a single enemy in those corridors. That was scary. I think it would have been cool if on a levels in there started to appear enemies that needed two hits. And I think those work best in narrow spaces. (I’ll get to the boss-fight later). There was some occurrences of two enemies at the same time, and while it elevated the stress, I feel they were mostly a bit too easily placed. Now I never died after that first attempt, but seeing as each level seems to have started with full health, I’m guessing that death just restarted current level? If so, there might have been a case for at some point driving up the difficulty a bit more.
However, the level where killing enemies opened up passages behind you, it didn’t feel entirely fair or on par with the other levels in design. Primarily because of lack of feedback. If there had been a clear sound of walls shifting or such. And perhaps increase the sounds from enemies moving so I could have heard the one approaching from behind me. In general if there’s one place the game is weaker than the others, it’s sound. The ones that are there are great, some could be made a bit louder, and there could have been so many more sounds! And eerie music.
Now the boss. I think it was a lost chance to do something cool. Because it was in an open area with cover-pillars. And because the room was regular in shape. It was really easy just running around the periphery. It made it one of the easiest fights, and the most boring.
If the area wasn’t as open so you could loose track of the boss, forget where you should go, those type of things. That would have made it better. But perhaps even better since it was a hive mind. Each time you hit it (or every second), perhaps it should have spawned a regular enemy. That… well that would have been scary and a proper climax to what otherwise was a fantastic game!
Well done! Very well done!
Playthrough: https://youtu.be/n4cPWx14Wrw