itch.io

Noticed another one: landing after doing a running jump pushes me backward a bit instead of smoothly continuing forward movement. It happens every time I land, but is more noticeable after longer falls.

Hey, the description for Shattered Team on the character select screen claims that they're immune to instant-death hazards, but when I jumped into a pool of lava, I still exploded. Sure, I respawned on the last platform as a reserve member, but Penguin Cop can do the same thing (if only once). And yes, the dead member slowly regenerated, but by that logic, they'd be "immune" to ALL damage with no need to specify instant-death ones, so I think that line should be reworded for clarity.

EDIT: Oh, and the Soaker Girl/Water Balloon Girl bestiary mix-up might've been on my end, too. EDIT 2: Or maybe it's only mixed up with specific Enemy Promotion settings? I'll have to double-check at some point. 

EDIT 3: Oh, and the unlock description for Holy Cow says she "can trample anything flat with her massive bulk," but again, this isn't special to her because it takes her the same number of bounces to crush enemies as everyone else, and she can't just run into enemies like Sugar, either. I recommend swapping out that phrase for one that mentions her vertical magic lasers or healing ability.

About that problem booting into fullscreen I mentioned before: it was on my end. My mouse has a double-click problem, and sometimes when I'd go to double-click the exe, the second click would register twice for a triple-click, which means File Explorer ended up being the active window when the game booted up. Somehow, that's what causes the game's fullscreen to get misaligned.

Hey, I just noticed that each of the three paintings gives a different amount of points on the mission results screen. Was this intentional? I feel like not all the levels ordered their paintings from easiest to hardest, let alone made the third one four times as hard to obtain.

Then again, I also recognize that this would be tough to undo since 14000 isn't evenly divisible by three, but changing the total points would throw off star balancing, so I'm not asking you to change it; I'm just curious what your intentions were.

Funny, I did notice its similarity to Cave Story's Balrog, but I never expected you to just come out and say it. :P 

Anyway, I stumbled across another mistake just now: if I set Enemy Promotion to "Harder enemies," the Sparky Po will move faster, but if I set it to "Much harder enemies," they go back to being regular speed with no differences, which you might notice is not harder. 

I was a bit rushed with my last two posts, so I neglected to mention that the last part of Mr. 44's entry is rather awkwardly phrased and kinda hard to understand. I think a better way to say it would be "to study the BROX's cognition, such as its combat ability and how it handles human interaction in real-life scenarios." The Oxford comma gets removed since the restructuring means there are only two parts referring to the studying of its cognition rather than three parts referring to the studying of BROX in general. Also, the shorter, less-detailed phrase gets moved up front since it reads easier going into the longer phrase rather than the other way around. Lastly, I rephrased the bit before "human interaction" to avoid using the word "ability" again so soon after its previous use (it's not grammatically wrong; it's just a pet peeve of mine).

Oh, and depending on what BROX is, you might wanna swap out my it/its for he/his. I just made an educated guess that since BROX is something artificial with prototypes, it could become either a male form (like Mr. 44) or a female form (or non-binary, too, I guess), but this is your story, after all. Also, I was convinced that BROX/Mr. 44 was a robot or something, but rereading the description showed me that there's not really much evidence to support that, so I'm not sure which pronouns would be appropriate.

EDIT: Rereading Dan Maku's description, I'd like to correct my previous correction to be "When he's" instead of just "When"

Oh, one more thing: I know this is counterintuitive, and I myself have made this mistake a few times, but it really is spelled "bestiary," not beastiary.

Stumbled across more typos in the bestiary: 

• Zombie's description says "they are brittle and easily falls apart" but since it's plural, it should just be "fall" without the s. 
• Necromata's description says "The only who remain" instead of "The only ones who remain"
• Goblin's description says "A type of imp that live underground and attack in great numbers" but type is singular, so it should be "lives" and "attacks." Also, if goblins have more than one weakness, you might wanna change that word to "weaknesses."
• Tengu's description says "A bird daemon that love pranking" instead of "loves" but if you wanna change it up a bit, you could always make the noun plural and say "Bird daemons that love pranking" instead.
• Giant Pirahna should have a comma between big and carnivorous. Also, I'm not sure "feel" is the right word to describe their blood-detection powers; maybe "sense" or "smell"? Oh, and apparently it's spelled "Piranha" with the h after the n, not before.
• Bomb Girl's description says "the only foolproof way was having human-controlled detonation" which I guess technically works, but again, it would be more natural to say either "having human-controlled detonations" or "having a human-controlled detonation"
• Human Rocket: "The rocket suits allows" should be "suit allows" or "suits allow"
• Fireworks Girl: "fireworks brings" should be bring.
• Sand Queen: it's spelled pharaoh, with an h at the end. Plus, I'm pretty sure it should be "regard for her subjects"
• Dan Maku: I suspect that "While" should be a "When"
• Mr.44: "the BROX cognition" could technically make sense depending on what BROX is, but the stray apostrophe in the current description makes me think you meant to say "the BROX's cognition"

Also, I think the kill count for Soaker Girls and Water Balloon Girls are accidentally swapped. I have a save file where, of those two, I only killed Soaker Girls, but it was Water Balloon Girls who became unlocked in the bestiary while Soaker Girls were nowhere to be seen.

Update on the dialogue font being different sizes sometimes: the cause is changing the "Screen size" setting, which drastically affects the text beyond intended scaling (even/especially if the game is in full-screen):

I am 100% certain. I even tested it with all of the characters, and they all get their jump height reduced by ~18 pixels running vs standing (except Sugar, whose reduction is only 9 pixels). You can try it yourself with the third coin group in the first level; it's easiest to notice as Yal since he ends up being unable to reach the coins at all instead of barely reaching them like the others:

I can record a video, too, if you want, so you can see I'm not releasing the button early.

A similar case to the Balloon Cake: doing a running jump is lower-height than jumping straight up without horizontal movement--and by a full unit, too. I'm guessing this is a side-effect of that same "move the player down when walking" code?

A couple things I forgot to mention before:

- In the vertically-wrapping room near the end of the game, moving into a wall while falling past the wrap-point will kill your vertical momentum as you almost land on the ceiling block. Do you think extending the walls vertically out-of-bounds will result in a smoother fall?

- The change-log says that coins now refill your magic meter a bit, but this is true only for loose coins. Activating coin blocks doesn't change the magic meter at all. Was this intentional? 

More Sound Room typos: 

So, I looked it up, and the correct spelling in English is actually "Minuet," with an i. "Menuet" with another e is the French spelling. Also, Dr. and Reaper should have a space between them just like Mr. and Lloyd should in the intro.

In the Sound Room, you mentioned being concerned about Rocket Rise being monotonous, and during my playthrough, I did start to feel that way about it. What do you think about using The Road Warrior for the cloud-tileset levels instead, leaving Rocket Rise for the skybase-tileset levels? I think it would work nicely for those levels as well as use a previously unused track. At the very least, I think it would fit Very Long Fall in particular. 

EDIT: Speaking of Very Long Fall, there's a hole in the bottom-right wall that's plugged by an invisible wall, but previous levels have taught players that they can jump into those gaps by holding down to duck. This means the fake gap implies a secret area but is actually a cheap hit. Please plug the gap with regular, visible solid tiles instead.

Hey, I just noticed an odd quirk with the Balloon Cake's power: if you're floating and you move forward, you fall a bit faster than if you float down without horizontal movement. What was your reasoning behind this decision? Not saying you should change it; I'm just curious.

Just encountered a glitch where I hikkori-phased into the finish line and my character turned invisible until the game went back to the world map. I tried recreating it a couple times, but was unable to, so it might be one of those frame-perfect glitches where you have to beat the level right when or right before you transform back or something.

Also, I didn't mention this when I first posted about v1.0.8, but every now and then, the game won't boot into fullscreen properly, instead being misaligned down and right. Exiting and reentering fullscreen fixes the bug, so it's not a huge issue, and I also suspect it's on Game Maker's end because this never happened to me while playing v1.0.7.

EDIT: One more glitch: I entered a door right before I got hit by a projectile and died, but then the other room loaded and I was fine. I even had full health again, even though I was just one hit away from death beforehand.

One more thing: the Big Hikkori snakes in the final world seem to have a hitbox issue. Their faces are harmless (even as far down as their mouths), but their tails seem to hurt you before you actually make contact with them. Did the hitbox get misaligned at some point after testing them?

Good to hear. 

By the way, I forgot to mention another grammar mistake I noticed in the ending: Lloyd says "needs of the many is" even though the subject of the sentence is needs (plural), so that "is" should be are.

I hope you're not feeling too down about all the problems I keep posting. As I said before, I think the game is good, and I really like it. I did find a couple more issues, though:

1) If I use the Hikkori Skull's phasing power and redirect my trajectory upward into a ceiling, I'll sometimes get stuck and stop moving until the phasing phase is over.

2) Another very minor graphical issue, but the purple smoke from the Hikkori Skull's phasing power is layered behind doors.

EDIT: Just noticed a typo in the ending: you wrote "rethorical" but the correct spelling is rhetorical.

Oh, and before I forget again: I really wasn't a fan of how the solid-white room near the end of the game had coins in unreachable locations. Even though I had gotten all the notes in that level, I thought maybe there was another key in that world or something that the coins were hinting towards, except no, I ended up falling to my death. Please remove all the coins that are below the platforms in that room, then lower the three coins in the top-right so they can be reached.

Thanks. To clarify, I wasn't asking you to replace them with trivial challenges, but rather simply challenges that the player can see upfront. Like I said before, you have to be very careful when introducing and building upon invisible blocks, to the point where you basically have to design the whole game around them and use them frequently in order for them to be intuitive and fair, especially if you're gonna use them without hints. Not even Lost Levels could pull that off perfectly, so don't feel too down about it. 

One example of a potential replacement could be: for Load-Bearing Grid's first painting, below the bottom jump-through platform in that shaft, add one extra jump-through platform that can only be reached by jumping from the item block. Then, you could add a spike on the left side of the new jump-through block so that a simple running-jump wouldn't be enough, and the player would also have to slow down at the right time to land safely. That should be non-trivial enough for world 3, don't you think?

EDIT: Oh, and just in case this also needs to be specified, the shopkeeper sometimes calls the name of his store something like "Jason's powerups" or "Jason's quality powerups," which would require the p and q to be capitalized (watch your p's and q's! ;P). I guess it could be one of those slogans where the name of the store is just "Jason's" followed by listing one or two things the store sells, but then there'd at least need to be a comma after Jason's.

EDIT 2: Discovered another Hikkori Skull glitch: if you run into a wall while phasing, you can reliably phase again in another direction. I guess you won't fix this one since you said you're okay if something's unfair in the player's favor, so maybe keep this in mind for the sequel since it lets you expand on it by allowing for makeshift wall-jumping.

EDIT 3: Okay, okay, get this: I noticed a couple grammar mistakes while rereading the 1.0.8 launch post. In the first paragraph, you say "flaws that's been" instead of "flaws that've been," and in the second paragraph, you say "these changes trends towards" even though a plural noun (changes) means the verb (trend) should not have the added s at the end. ^__^ EDIT 4: ...and on that same topic, I just noticed that the store's description of the Blood Violet says "enemies that loves" instead of "enemies that love"

Wow, I just barely missed you with my last comment, huh? Anyway, I discovered another glitch: if you speak to an NPC while using the Hikkori Skull's phasing power, you'll still be able to move around and jump while the dialogue box is on screen. Granted, the Hikkori Skull is rare enough that most players probably won't ever encounter this minor bug, but I thought I'd let you know anyway. EDIT: Also, doing the Hikkori Skull glitch while entering a door turns the player invisible until the next room loads (so only a fraction of a second). 

I guess you could always just put this in your "Known Issues" thread if it's too much work to fix for too little gain.

EDIT: Also, is it just me, or is there no tutorial for panning the camera up/down? I only figured that out after I kept running into surprise death-falls in levels like Monument Valley and Massively Makeshift Bridge, but I had just assumed I forgot about that mechanic at the time. However, looking back, I don't think the game ever explicitly mentions its existence, so it'd be nice if you added some text explaining it somewhere in-game.

EDIT 2: You said you didn't change Yal's world 5 convo because you forgot to add it to your list. Did the same thing happen with removing and replacing the invisible blocks in those two levels that still use them, or did you simply disagree with my criticism?

Oh, and one more if you'll hear me out: one of the things the shopkeeper can say is "Jason's discounts is coming to town." This would make sense if "Jason's Discounts" is the name of the store (singular), in which case the d in discounts should be capitalized. However, if it's referring to the general discounts (plural) provided by Jason, "is" should be replaced with are.

...except the phrase is preceded by "When fighting crime has worn you down," which isn't referring to something currently happening right now, but rather to something that will happen in the future. Therefore, it'd be more natural to say that Jason's [D/d]iscounts "will come to town," which also coincidentally avoids the is/are kerfuffle entirely.

Wait, but then why does her description say "range and power" if it was always meant to be just range? Ah, I guess it's moot if you're gonna make it more powerful regardless.

Anyway, I noticed a couple more things and can hopefully get them in before the next update this time:

 - Yal's World 1 convo says "threadmill" (again, no h in treadmill). Also, the word "gym" is a noun, not a verb; it'd be more natural to say "work out" instead. (by the way, it looks like you didn't change "moment of surprise"; may I ask why?)

 - Seems like players can get stuck by Marble Tower's first painting if double-easy blocks are active and they fall from above without a sword or whip item (which is entirely possible if they end up with a fireball/float combo). Maybe save introducing the Balloon Cake until the next power-up block and put a whip or sword in that first one instead?

By the way, I remember you said you had an idea to make a collection/compilation of all current and future Daemon Detective Gaiden games, but I found an archive of the first game from 2014, and most of the levels in it got repurposed for this sequel. The main differences are 1) less HP, and 2) powers are locked to different characters, which is how I discovered that Marble Tower was originally designed so that the (first two) paintings could be collected with either the whip or the cat claw power, which I thought was a neat detail that got lost in the sequel (though besides that and the zoomed out camera, everything else about the sequel is a huge improvement).

What I'm trying to say is: in this hypothetical collection, would you make new levels to replace the near-duplicates, or would you expect players to effectively go through the same levels twice? 

Hey, I'm not sure if you're still working on another small update to address the things I mentioned after v1.08 launched (such as the boomerang sword being weaker than the bomb, even if you're Paige who allegedly has stronger sword strength but still seems to deal the same damage to the final boss as everyone else), but I recently discovered one other small thing that should be tweaked: in Maha's difficulty options, the description for toggling additional platforms doesn't mention that you can add obstacles instead! You'd only know that's an option if you actually cycle through said options. I myself didn't realize that until right now, and the only thing that finally clued me in to its existence was seeing the red spikes in the level editor (I would have never known otherwise; even the "or dial them up" on the store page could just be referring to the stronger enemies toggle).

Also, when I asked for descriptions for the rocket and crystal powers, I meant in their Reinforcements level instead of the shop. I didn't realize the penguins' dialogue in those places was randomized until later, but I still think it would be beneficial to swap out one of the random-dialogue penguins in those two Reinforcements for one that tells you how their respective powers work.

...and speaking of the rocket power, you forgot to fix Sugar's missing shoes in those recolors as well:

P.S. Small typo on the store page: you wrote "an unique" twice instead of "a unique" ("an" is used when the word starts with a vowel sound, whereas unique is pronounced "you-nique" with a y-consonant sound, so you should use the word "a" instead).

Windows

Just saw you published the update already, so I guess I was too late with my last comment. Oh well; thanks for hearing me out and addressing all of the other points I brought up.

Unfortunately, the old save files crash the new build, so I guess I'll wait a bit before double-checking what changed. I was curious how enemies' patterns changed on hard mode anyway, so it's not a huge issue for me personally.

I will say, I only just now realized that all of the characters have slightly different intros when starting a new game, which is a neat detail. However, they do have a typo we both missed: Sugar and Matt say "mr." when the m should be capitalized and a space should go after the period (and maybe also capitalize the b in "boss" since that's the name Sugar gave Lloyd). EDIT: Oh, and in the latest version, the dialogue font size seems to be different depending on who is chosen.

Ah okay, so that means there's no postgame and the "true final boss" theme is unused, then? I was just curious.

Also, if the boomerang sword is supposed to be the strongest, you should look into rebalancing it because it dealt less damage per hit than the bomb. It could maybe have dealt more damage if a single sword-toss could hit the final boss more than once, but that doesn't happen. At best, I was only able to hit the final boss twice-at-once with the boomerang sword if I was suicidally-close enough, with the initial swing counting as a separate hit from the thrown-sword, but no matter how or where I threw it, the sword-projectile itself would never damage the final boss a second time until it returned and I threw another one. At the time, I assumed this was an intentional way to avoid cheesing the fight, and maybe it was, but you should know that it has the side effect of making the bomb the strongest powerup in the game.

And to top it off, the bomb also has a faster rate of attack since you can throw another one right when the previous bomb is done exploding.

Oh, and speaking of the boomerang sword, it'd be nice if pushing the attack button locked in the direction the player is facing until after the sword is thrown. That way, we can push the button and immediately run away from an enemy while still throwing the sword at said enemy.

EDIT: I thought of a way you could make the Teleporer Maze a bit less painful: make the process of teleportation itself faster. Right now, the player just kinda floats there for around half a second before being sent to the OUT machine; I'm sure you could speed that up by 2x or so.

Hey, I think one of us isn't fully understanding the other. I wasn't saying you should design the section to FORCE the player to use ice; I was saying that an obvious series of floating enemies that can't be jumped on would be a better way of subtly conveying your intentions, as opposed to a single enemy that CAN be jumped on and a platform that just barely can't be reached from bouncing on said enemy. In the second chandelier level, the second time the game requires ice for non-Matts without traversal powerups to reach a painting, you use one of those electrified black sphere enemies, and that's a much better clue than the ghost cat since, as I said, they can't be jumped on safely without freezing them, but the platform visibly can't be reached otherwise. All I'm asking is for a similar clue to be implemented in Hellfire Mountain.

Anyway, I've beaten the game and gotten all the keys, and to reiterate: I think the game is good overall; decent graphics, good humor, fun gameplay, solid level design, and the hints for missed keys are also just as helpful as I was hoping they'd be, even if said hints are a bit out of the way. I just have a few final points of feedback:

1) There's no cat claw powerup in Unstable Footing Underside, so the only way to get the key is to bring the power in from elsewhere. Once again, I feel the need to point out that all other worlds' keys can be gotten using the powers within each of their respective levels (and that this would be a non-issue if Inventory items could be used within levels--even if only at checkpoints). Also, I think you should add one more coin to the bottom of that coin trail that leads to the Underside's key.

2) I know now that the long whip was taken by the Rich Reaper, so I'm not sure what a good whip replacement would be for the Snow Queen or Dan Maku. However, I do think some of their patterns could use some clearer tells: when Mr. 44 is about to stomp, have it move upward for a split second, and likewise, right before the Rich Reaper dashes to the other side of the arena, have him move backwards for a split second. Also, instead of the Rich Reaper's melee attack appearing all at once, have each purple arc appear one after the other.

3) When a zombie is coming out of the ground, there should be some indication of this happening on the solid tile the zombie is coming out of, because the zombie itself appears behind the player and can result in a cheap hit in the dark levels.

4) The notes in the final world are well written, but I'd appreciate if they appeared in (or at least quickly moved to) a less-obtrusive part of the screen, such as the top or bottom--or better yet, have them appear as standard text boxes that pause the game until the player pushes a button.

5) You did a great job at introducing the shadow ghosts by having the player fall into that gap and having the shadow ghost float by above right afterward. Unfortunately, the first static level (with the gibberish name) does not do a good job of introducing the shadow hands because the ledge looks safe to fall off...right until you do so and crash face-first into the enemy you didn't see. My recommendation is to have the player fall down a one-tile-wide vertical shaft (so there's no room to move left or right), then have it drop the player into a left/right split path except the shadow claws are right there beside the player.

6) A couple more typos: in the ending, Matt says "a ethereal" instead of an ethereal, and one of Jason's lines mentions "asbesthos" (there's not supposed to be an h in asbestos).

7) Personally, I was disappointed that the keys only unlocked more playable characters instead of postgame levels, but I guess different players value different things.

8) The final boss's large downward laser should have a bit more warning since it covers almost the whole arena. Maybe, instead of just having her float there, have the laser instantly show up but expand slowly for the same amount of time she spends waiting in the game's current build. EDIT: For another clue, you could have the laser's slow expansion rate also slowly speed up.

9) Speaking of the final boss, I found the spinning sword weapon to be rather unreliable at destroying the boss's bullets, and I also found that the bomb weapon made it much more clear when the boss suddenly becomes invulnerable while still pretending to react to damage. Would you consider tweaking the boss's pattern so that the bullet spiral has more frequent but smaller gaps that can be slipped through without destroying any bullets, then swap the given weapon for the bomb and move the spinning sword to the world 6 or 7 boss?

10) Is there an alternate ending? If so, are there any in-game hints on how to get said alternate ending? I already got all the paintings and notes. 

EDIT: Couple more awkward phrases in the bestiary: Court Mage has "they did the correct choice" when the more natural way to phrase that is "they made the correct choice," and Water Balloon Girl has "water balloons is" instead of are. Oh, and Soul of Art says "it once were" instead of either "it once was" or, depending on what you were going for, "they once were."

If you're still reading these, I have a question about the second painting in Hellfire Mountain: it's preceded by a pit and a ghost cat, so I assumed the intention was for the player to bounce off of the ghost cat to reach the platform...except the player doesn't get enough height from bouncing on the ghost cat to reach said platform. I tried both holding the jump button and trying to press+hold it right when I landed on an enemy, but neither increased my bounce height. Plus, there don't seem to be any invisible blocks around, so once again, I felt I had to switch to Matt. It was only right now, as I was typing this message, that I realized your actual intention was for the player to freeze the ghost cat first. Would you be willing to replace the ghost cat and that lone solid tile above it with three flaming skulls? I think that would do a better job of conveying your intentions to the player, especially seeing as this is the first time freezing enemies is required to reach something.

Revisiting the off-screening of objects, it actually can go against the player in certain situations, such as the falling jet platforms in Flying Battery: I had an instance where I clipped off of one of them as well, right at the exact moment when it shifted from shaking to falling, so I thought "I'll just jump right before the transition happens" except that off-screens them entirely, causing me to fall to my death. I guess just increase the killzone to be a couple units past the screen instead of disappearing things immediately after they're not visible.

And speaking of Flying Battery, I wasn't a fan of how the last green switch in External In-flew-ences was placed over a pit, so you have to be to the left of the switch when you hit it in order to land on the platform. In retrospect, I think you intended for the player to see that shaft while going up the previous one, but in that case, you should put them closer together, maybe even only separated by a single-tile-wide column.

EDIT: Oh, and the blue rocket power could also use an explanation for how to use it since, just like the pink rock power, it also works differently from all the other powers and took me a minute of trial and error to figure out.

EDIT 2: It'd be nice if the coin trails in Very Long Fall didn't lead AWAY from the paintings, because that's another level where you can't really backtrack; the most you can do is go back to a checkpoint from the pause menu. I did appreciate how the level design at least lets you see that you missed it before you hit the next checkpoint, though.

EDIT 3: and speaking of Very Long Fall, I'd appreciate if you plugged up the hole in the lower-right. A previous Flying Battery level lets you duck in those thin tunnels from a jump just fine, but for that one, it never worked.

Oh wow, you responded quickly this time!

Anyway, about the teleporter level, I think the easiest band-aid solution would be to dig a hole in the ground before the finish line and put a new IN teleporter in there that leads back to the third painting's room. I went back to check, and all other rooms have their own IN teleporters that (eventually) lead to previous rooms, effectively allowing the backtracking I'm asking for (even if unintentionally sometimes); the only exception is the goal room. If you're feeling generous, you could maybe even add an extra room in the top-right of the level for the teleporter to stop by first before sending the player back to the third painting's room; that way, players who already have the paintings but are curious will get a small bonus instead of just being sent back.

By the way, since the Snow Queen abruptly summons hazard snow around her after she finishes teleporting, I think the teleportation-effect snow should be widened to cover that entire attack area instead of just the spot where the boss is spawning. Maybe you could even have some flashing bomb-snow appear there that's harmless at first but "explodes" when the hazard-snow appears. 

Oh, and maybe have some warning for the boss's stalagmites, too.

Also, I know you said you don't want to overdo it with the stronger powerups, but I gotta admit, I'm a little disappointed that each boss room doesn't give you a different one; the Snow Queen just gives you the same whip as Patient Zero. Like, not even the long whip instead? I don't think you'd have to worry about the long whip reaching past the hazard snow, so it wouldn't make the fight that much easier (it may even mean the stalagmites don't need a warning since you'd be far away enough that the first one or two would be the warning), but oh well. I wouldn't mind if you didn't take this suggestion.

(edit: at least the long whip wouldn't make the fight be nearly as easy as the Reinforcements' flame cannon makes that fight; one charged flame drained basically all of its health in seconds. In fact, I suspect that this world as a whole is easier than the previous two; this might need to be the new world 4 and Caldera Keep moved to world 6. Admittedly though, my main issue with Caldera Keep was the blind jumps that you may or may not fix later, whose absence might put it back down in difficulty.) 

EDIT: I was thinking about the inventory mechanic some more, and I realized: because you can only use an inventory item in the overworld, it's effectively not much different than just going back to a Reinforcement. This suggestion might require too much overhauling for this game, but for the sequel, I recommend letting the player use inventory items within the levels, but counterbalance this by having fewer powerups throughout the game in the first place. That way, there's more of a risk/reward system because if you keep dying on a hard segment within a level, you can try to use one of your now-much-more-limited inventory items to help you out at the cost of maybe not having it later when you might need it more. Plus, it would justify stuff like the original Dismemberment Ward's second painting because it would be rewarding players for keeping the right item in stock rather than punishing players that didn't go in with the right item equipped in the first place. Oh, and it would provide more incentive to buy powerups from the store, something I almost forgot was a thing.

To clarify about the clipping: most of the time, I clipped OFF of the 2x2 blocks, not through them. I'd be about to land, then suddenly my position would jump one or two units to the left and I'd fall off beside the block. It's also not just the sword power because the one time it happened on my replay, I had the fireball power. ...but I guess it's moot if the engine update fixes things on its own.

For the ice power killing frozen enemies on accident, you could do what NES Metroid did and make it weaker than your base powers, so it'd take two hits to kill an enemy that would otherwise instantly die from jumping on it once, three hits to kill an enemy that'd normally take two, etc. You could maybe also make it so that the first shot that freezes the enemy doesn't deal damage itself.

Anyway, I noticed that the second painting in Dismemberment Ward is blocked by a wall of bricks, but the only powerups in that level are the green Mega Buster and an Ice Flower, so nothing that can actually break through a wall of bricks. All of the previous levels DO have the powerups necessary to get their paintings, so again I ask: was this intentional? I had saved and quit right before this level, so I went in without a power and had to back out and replay it after pulling a sword carrot from my inventory.

Also, it'd be nice if the penguin cop let us know that the rock power isn't used by pushing the attack/run button, but instead by pushing down; that took me a minute to figure out.

EDIT: Would be nice if it was easier to figure out which paths lead to the paintings in Teleporter Maze since you can't go back once you enter a teleporter. All the other levels let you backtrack if you realize you missed a painting.

Dang, I was just about to add "or by keeping another weapon in reserve" to my killing-frozen-enemies comment because I JUST beat The Bay's Medbay where I figured that out--and then near the end of that level, I experienced a situation where I had my ice flower in reserve but got hit and lost my equipped sword power, once again leaving me no way to kill frozen enemies in those narrow halls. 

To be clear, the main thing I was trying to get at with my initial comment is that the ice power should have a way to kill enemies on its own, like how Metroid lets you keep shooting a frozen enemy with the ice beam to keep dealing damage. Maybe you could do the same thing with your ice power? EDIT: I know the New Super Mario Bros. games don't let you do this, but what those games DO let you do is grab and throw the frozen enemy to break them against a wall, and since your game doesn't have a grabbing mechanic, I went with the Metroid suggestion instead.

By the way, my issue with the chandelier chains wasn't worry over the possibility of troll chains, but rather that the chains don't stand out too well and that the ones for secret-path chandeliers are placed right beside the chains for the platform you're already on, so you won't really notice them unless (and sometimes even if) you know ahead of time that's what you need to look out for. That's why I thought I had to use the cat claw power at first (because I straight-up didn't see the chains for secret-path chandeliers on my first playthrough) and why I suggested having that level be preceded with another chandelier level where the chains stand out better, because it COULD work as-is if it was properly built up to. ...though I guess you could also just directly make the chains in that level stand out better; that'd probably be easier. What if you recolored them to be bright yellow to match the chains in the level's overworld icon? I think that could work.

Oh, and thanks for responding to me. Not all developers do this.

EDIT: I also had some clipping-off issues with the vertically-moving blocks in Torrential Tower, including one time where I swung the sword while standing on one of the sets of three blocks beside the third painting and ended up falling straight through it. I tried reinstalling the game in case something happened on my end, and while a quick replay didn't reproduce any of the floaties' issues in Water Gun Warzone, I did still clip off a block once during my second Torrential Tower playthrough. EDIT 5: To add a bit more detail, it always seemed to happen when I fell pretty much directly on the left-half or right-half of a 2x2 block (such as the beach balls or vertically moving blocks); it didn't happen if I was closer to the center (or at least it not as often), though the time I fell through the longer floaty, I was in front of what would be its second tile from the left.

EDIT 2: In Brickwork Pipeworks, it's very easy to off-screen the fireball demons' fireballs before they get launched, to the point I did it unintentionally a couple times.

EDIT 4: Umi-Bozu's hands appear in pretty much the exact spot I am when I jump to throw my axes at its face, so I suddenly take damage when there was nothing there before. Maybe you could have his hands come in from the bottom or top of the screen instead of just abruptly materializing? Maybe you could have a harmless black cloud appear and then have the hand scale into the screen from the cloud before becoming harmful?

If you're still checking this thread, I have a couple more things to add:

1) The invisible block placement for Ominous Clock Tower's third painting is marginally better since it's first one is right next to a wall, but I still only found it by chance, so that level also isn't a great way to introduce them even if Caldera Keep was meant to be before Metal Underpass.

2) If you're willing to make more drastic changes, I'd like it to be possible to kill frozen enemies in ways besides jumping at them from below. The first level after Caldera Keep's Reinforcements has lots of narrow halls, so when I tried out my brand new ice power, I ended up having to sit there and wait for the enemies to thaw before I could progress.

EDIT: Also, the Icon of Sin has a similar issue as Patient Zero did: it should have some indication of how far its melee flame attack will go, especially since the boss room gives the player the short-range sword and the Reinforcements give the player the longer-but-still-melee green whip. Since you don't want to do ! zones, maybe you could show its flame being drawn out during its wind-up pose so players can actively see its length increasing and realize how far they'll need to run away to avoid getting hit.

EDIT 2: The collision on the floaties in Water Gun Warzone is spotty. Sometimes I'd land directly on a beach ball and just clip off of it suddenly, and one time, I did a running jump off of the platform by the third painting and fell straight through one of the longer rafts, into the water.

Oof, not a fan of invisible blocks being a requirement. I've hated that ever since Lost Levels 5-1, where for years I assumed the only way past was to take the vine to the World 6 Warp Zone. It wasn't until I stumbled across a YouTube video about a "world 9" that I'd never heard of that required beating the game without using warp zones to access and I was like "wait, how do I get past world 5 without the warp zone?" and looked it up that I discovered the truth, and to be honest, I'm still not over it; no wonder Nintendo of America reskinned Doki Doki Panic instead of localizing that title.

I didn't even know that invisible blocks were in this game until now, so I guess my recommendation would be...don't have them at all? Do something else instead? Maybe in the sequel, you can design the early levels in such a way to guide players into hitting them naturally and safely and/or having obvious clues like holes or markings on background objects to indicate their location, then slowly work your way up to having more subtle clues before finally having end-game level design like what you did here..but right now, as-is? No, you didn't earn that invisible block placement. 

By the way, I realized I misunderstood what you were saying about the boss powerup not overwriting the player's current powerup because I went into the first boss with the float power, which *did* get replaced even though I would have considered that to be a powerup as well (just not one with a weapon). It wasn't until I reached the Metal Underpass boss with the Reinforcement's bomb power and died that I realized it actually gives me the Fireball power instead. In that case, I think it might actually be a better idea to have the boss room powerup overwrite the player's current power anyway so, for example, players don't end up fighting the Sand Queen with melee weapons when the game would have given them the Mega Buster instead (I went in with the cat-claw power but happened to have a Mega Buster in reserve, so I just barely avoided the issue). The thing you brought up about letting players choose their own power still works since their current one would just go into reserve where they can simply bring it right back out.

Also, is it just me, or is the Gaping Abyss a bit of a difficulty spike for world 3 due to the instant death pit? I'm sure the boss could work as-is in a later world, after the difficulty has ramped up to match it...but the easier solution might be to cover the hole with spikes so the player only loses some HP for getting knocked off instead of dying outright.

EDIT: Okay, so apparently Caldera Keep was supposed to be world 3, but I think my point still stands. Also, in Yal's convo for Caldera Keep, he says "moment of surprise" instead of "element of surprise." Was that an attempt at characterization that I didn't get, or did you just forget the expression? Will he be corrected if I pick the right character the same way Sugar quips at Tomato in her Metal Underpass convo?

EDIT 2: Actually, after playing it a bit more, I think Caldera Keep is actually harder than Metal Underpass and they should have their painting requirements swapped to represent this. It feels like this world has more blind jumps/drops than average, where you can't see if there's a hazard or floor below you until you jump down. In particular, Dining Hall of Hell doesn't have certain platforms visible from a safe distance even if you hold down to pan the camera down...unless you bring in the cat claw power from another level and climb down certain walls. Maybe you were trying to indicate them with the chandelier chains, but just like with the invisible blocks, you need to build up to that, for example by having a preceding chandelier level that isn't so dark so the chains can be seen clearly. Still way better than Fun In The Basement, though.

EDIT 3: And while I'm at it, the camera takes too long to pan down after the player starts holding down. It kills the pace, especially with how frequently the player is expected to do it. It should only take around half a second.

Good to hear. By the way, can the first painting in Load-Bearing Grid be gotten by anyone other than Matt? I had assumed you wanted everything to be obtainable by every character, so if that's not the case...maybe you could tweak the mid-world convos to provide hints on who to bring where, so astute players know who to choose going in and aren't forced to go back, switch characters, and replay levels they've already beaten in order to get 100% (and maybe let players switch characters from the overworld's pause menu if it isn't too much trouble).

...and speaking of Matt, I noticed another minor graphical inconsistency: when he has the float power, he mysteriously gains white gloves when crawling that are absent in all his other frames:

EDIT: Wait, if updating breaks stuff, why not just use the older version? The game as-is works fine and plays well, and most--if not all--of my requests would only involve minor tweaks like recoloring sprites.

EDIT 2: Hey, did you mean for the Waste Disposal Plant to play the Nice Day theme? Normally, I would've just written it off as an odd choice, but given the other unintentional little issues, I thought I'd just make sure.

Bit more feedback: the bomb girls in Metal Underpass send out red projectiles on death, but said projectiles get lost in the also-red blood splatter and are often very hard to see. It took me killing several of them before I finally figured out what I was getting hit by, and even then, there were times where I couldn't see their death-shots even though I knew they were there. Please change the color of those projectiles. Also, minor grammar mistake in Paige's convo (also in Metal Underpass): she says sunlight "aren't" instead of sunlight isn't.

By the way, I did eventually figure out that reserve power-ups get sent to the inventory when you get a third, but to reiterate, my issue is that the boss's kneeling will abruptly send it forward into players if they're whipping the boss, giving them no time to react. Even if I had kept the float/sword combo that I went in with, I still would've taken the cheap hit since the sword is also close-range. Maybe you could have the boss kneel in the other direction, away from the player? It'd fix the cheap hit without you needing to draw new sprites or add that "!" zone.

^like that.

In that case, why not swap out the boss room's Whip power-up for a Fireball or Mega Buster power-up so the player will naturally be far enough away to avoid the kneeling when it happens? Seems like that would also be the simpler solution.

EDIT: Oh, and while you're here, do you still plan on making that remake of the first game you mentioned in another thread, or did you decide your time was better spent elsewhere?

I'm a few levels in, and the game itself is pretty good so far. I just wanted to point out that when Sugar has the green Mega Buster power-up, her shoes cease to exist in certain poses.

EDIT: Actually, if I may provide a bit of feedback, the overworld navigation could use a way to speed itself up (it takes some time to get back to the end of the world after saving+quitting), and the world 1 boss's kneeling move should have some kind of tell since the player is expected to fight it with the short-range whip power-up.