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Hi InfamousRabbit,

Just played your demo, I hope you don't mind me providing my feedback - I think feedback is a really important part of the game development process.

Things Done Well:

1. The art style is cute and vivid. It's  hard to work with pixel art at such a high resolution (and v. time consuming!) but I think it has been very well executed.
2. The pacing of the story, provision of new gameplay elements and narrative was largely well done.
3. Humour is used with both the right level of quality and quantity.
4. The control scheme for Keyboard was logical and easy to use.
5. The battle start sequence with the enemies 'rushing you' from off-screen is a great idea that stops the change between exploration and battle being too abrupt or cliche.

Areas for Improvement:

1. Despite the pacing being largely well managed, there was a big dump of mechanics just before you fight the toadstool. It was difficult to therefore work out which to use and what the respective impact was. I'll be honest in that I still don't really understand when to use which ability against a given enemy.
2. I thought the walk speed was a little slow, until I realised there was a run option (holding shift). I'm not sure at which stage this was introduced to the player (If it was, I may have missed it) but I think it is definitely worth reminding the player of this control at the beginning of the black and white chase sequence. 
3. Narratively, I struggled to understand why Slippy follows you around. I know this is useful from a tutorial / meta game perspective but perhaps a clearer in-game motive would be useful?
4. The CRT screen effect is very love-it or hate-it. For me that graphics are not retro enough to warrant the justification. I read in the comments below that you intend to make this optional - I think this is a great idea. Perhaps ask the player outright at the beginning of the game which mode they prefer - rather than assuming a default with menu-digging afterwards to turn it on/off.

The biggest single issue for me was that the game crashed each time I selected restart after failing the black and white chase sequence. This seemed to happen only once I got as far as the water bit. Fails before this point resulted in me starting the room again (a pseudo autosave) but unfortunately this didn't get mapped to the main save file. As such, I was sent all the way back to the last save point on restarting the game. After this happened twice I had to sadly put down the game for good - A shame as I would have liked to have taken it to the end.

I hope the detailed feedback is useful, I am developing my own game so totally hope you take this in the manner it is intended - to help you make the best game possible!

Ben

A pleasure. best of luck!

Hi WhatTheWaffle,

Just played your demo, I hope you don't mind me providing my feedback - I think feedback is a really important part of the game development process.

Things Done Well:

1. The art style is absolutely beautiful, and clearly the standout element of the game for me.
2. This art style is coupled to some equally excellent music which in summation lead to a real sense of depth and immersion with the game's world. In other words the theming is consistent and captivating.
3. The idea of the 'Other Side' is a good one and I enjoyed the moments where this was required. Inspired by the 'Upside Down' in 'Stranger Things' perhaps?

Areas for Improvement:

1. I feel the 'Other Side' element was drastically underused in the first portion of the game I played, and felt largely optional which is a shame - especially as this is literally the first thing you are taught in the game. 
2. My monitor's native resolution is 3840 x 1200. Your game detected this and scaled correctly, though this placed some critical GUI prompts for the on boarding / tutorial process in the very extreme lower corner of the display - which I initially missed. Whilst I appreciate this is a somewhat extreme resolution, when I changed to 1920 x 1080 in the games options it removed the GUI HUD entirely, making progress quite challenging. After some guess work it sorted itself out in the next room and no problems thereafter.
3. The current demo feels quite repetitive (completing the first area and using the portal stone takes you to a very similar looking area with yet more enemies) each level just feels like a massive series of fetch quests. I appreciate however that your roadmap includes more narrative and story driven elements between stages which I think would go a long way to providing a justification for the onward progress beyond just 'grinding.'
4. My gut feel is that the game would play better as a linear RPG without the roguelite elements and procedural generation. I feel the art style, XP system and crafting - if linked to a good story would be more than enough to carry this to success. From a personal perspective a game like this would appeal a lot more to me.

I hope the detailed feedback is useful, I am developing my own game so totally hope you take this in the manner it is intended - to help you make the best game possible!

All the best - Ben.

Hi Meebob,

Just played your demo, I hope you don't mind me providing my feedback - I think feedback is a really important part of the game development process.

Things Done Well:

1. The art style is quite unique and very well executed. I liked this a lot and gives the game an immediate identity of it's own.
2. I think the character creation, dialogue and humour are stand out elements of the game design. You can tell the Undertale inspiration but it's far from a 'copy and paste'. You are clearly talented in this area.
3. The sound design, including music and character speaking audio were also done well.
4. The combat 'fetch' system was novel and genuinely fun.  Again can see the Undertale inspiration here, but this felt legitimately different and not a blatant rip off.

Areas for Improvement:

1. I had some performance issues (noticeable framerate drops) in three of the rooms (the 'second room', the long cave and the big cave). The game ran well elsewhere so unlikely to be my hardware. Could be the ceiling water dripping effect causing the problem? Something to look into.
2. I feel adding PC sprites for moving on the diagonal would aid the visuals. 
3. The  positioning of the PC has to be quite accurate in order to interact with some of the on screen elements. I would consider making the hit box on this a little more generous. Additionally, it might help to make it clearer which on-screen items can be interacted with (unless this is a deliberate game design choice to encourage exploration).

MINOR SPOILERS on this last two for those that haven't played yet...

4. I (rightly or wrongly) expected a 'fetch failed' when hitting something during a fetch sequence and the number of 'lives' to persist over multiple fetches. Nothing necessarily wrong with your implementation but it felt a little easy as a result. That said, it is the first encounter of the game and it is reasonable that they would get more difficult as you create additional levels.

5. On similar lines, I 'solved' the box puzzles by using the dash ability given immediately before said puzzle. I think the game expects me to push the boxes around first based on the dialogue provided. If you have just given me an ability then I am likely to just use this immediately - which I don't think is how you currently expect this to play out.

I hope the detailed feedback is useful, I am developing my own game so totally hope you take this in the manner it is intended - to help you make the best game possible!

All the best - Ben.

Okay mate, let us know when! Had this one on my list for a while after seeing it on Shaun’s livestream a little while back 🙂

Is this game still available to play?