It honestly feels like there's not enough space for anything, on the puzzles that show up, nor on the holding area. On top of the fact that I must be getting the worst luck possible. Constantly starved of the pieces I need, and even when I do get them they just won't fit into place.
The game honestly feels too hard, with not enough time to really do anything.
tl;dr The RNG is frustrating and if each shape was guaranteed to show up once in a sequence of 7 it'd be less frustrating.
Fun little game but too frustrating, especially since the tutorial flat-out lies to you with conflicting information.
"Guests will show up and can order any prey off the menu, but you're not limited to what they want."
"Remember you have to satisfy their order and completely fill their stomach for them to leave."
Tripped me up a few times and led to a loss.
On top of that, having to wait for the specific prey they want is incredibly infuriating, having lost multiple times waiting for the prey they want to finish an order.
If giving them their preference was simply an additional tip that would be great, but as it is now the game is too frustrating for me to want to play it.
A potential solution to my frustration is to use the Tetris bag algorithm that ensures that each piece shows up at least once in each sequence of seven.
It doesn't seem possible to win this game, like at all. You might as well fill a deck with nothing but ace of spades and 2 of hearts. You'll get the same result.
Aces, no matter what suit they are, should be a rescue. Otherwise the game is way too frustrating to deal with.
On top of the fact that a matching number counts as "too damaged" which is kind of dumb.
The game is fun to play, don't get me wrong. In its current state there are frustrating mechanics, but nothing that can't be fixed. In my opinion to fix the issues I've been having:
1. Give the player intangibility after escaping a grapple, not the enemy. This will help prevent re-grab loops, and give the player a window to fix their mistake, especially against tanky enemies, or enemies who attack from odd angles. Oh, and be sure to switch the submit button to a different button than "attack" nothing feels worse than accidentally getting grabbed mid swing, when you're just about to attack again, and accidentally deleting yourself at full health with no checkpoint nearby.
2. To adjust player DPS, make it so that your attacks are a three-swing cycle, rather than an infinite loop of A→B→A→B. I've noticed you have a windup swing to deal double damage after a brief charge. Have that as part of the three-swing cycle. A→B→C! This would also leave the player open briefly, fixing the DPS problem. They can also choose to only swing twice and back off. You can still have the charged up power swing, letting players wind up to use it right away, and have powerups tied to only that type of power swing.
3. HP drops. Make canisters and breakables 100% drop for HP pickups, but have the full heals randomized. If you want to keep the random drops, make it a default that enemies drop HP unreliably.
4. Have a split between minor and major checkpoints. Ones that fully heal you, and another that just saves your progress, and current health without healing. That way you can have those midway through difficult gauntlets. It isn't about the difficulty of dealing with individual enemies, its the iteration time in doing so. Having to fight through a gauntlet after gauntlet just to get back to where you were feelsbadman :(
5. The mage enemies that you include need to have a telegraph of their spell. I know you have the icon of their spell they're casting show up when they cast, but the indicator of their spell is useless if it shows up at the same time their actual spell does. An enemy that causes that much disruption should go Telegraph → Delay → Execute. Plus, to make them less of a problem, have it so only one of those "fields" can be active at a time, but the duration of each field is shorter. This gives a gap for the player to approach, and react to the spells as they come out.
Gameplay critique out of the way, now for suggestions:
I love the fact you include melty digestion in the preferences, it's probably one of my all-time favorite kinks. If there's any way you could draw out the animation of her melting, it'd be even better. Right now it feels a bit too quick. If anything, it should go through multiple stages of the stomach window closing in, then opening up again, her getting progressively more melty, repeat a few times, before dissolving completely. This, of course, is skipped entirely if someone turns off the preference.
The fact save points are basically nonexistent, separated by huge lengths of stage populated by really, really annoying enemies that are more frustrating than fun to fight kills the game for me.
The save points being basically from Africa to New Zealand apart wouldn't be so much of a problem if the breakable items in the game actually dropped healing consistently. For some inexplicable reason, they're randomized.
Plus the player's intangibility being the same length as the enemy, AND there's no indication on a majority of the enemies that they're intangible is also extremely frustrating. I've found myself in constant grab loops over and over because of this, and it's really, really annoying.
Couple that with the fact your attack now locks you in for an annoyingly long time, and also forces you to step forward with each swing, with enemies that are either way too tanky, come at you from odd angles or have absolutely no indication of what their going to do next, and the game just feels like crap to play because you get reset back to Africa when you're two steps from New Zealand because of one of several of the jank things above.
