itch.io

1) I feel like the cool down made the game more enjoyable.  I  agree with previous comment that it was a little frustrating at first, but after a few rounds I got the hang of it.  It seems better than your previous version where you could just click like a mad man to shoot up the level. Definitely more challenging.

2) I think showing maybe a small mock up of the volcano off to the side with indicators of player and lava position could be a good way to visually show how far away you are from the lava.  A number of total distance climbed would also be nice and also give a good metric to display at the game over screen so players can see how well they did.

3) I think a small scaling down of the grapple hook cooling with lava speed would work but may run into issues if the player can just get really far ahead.  Also I didn't notice any indicator for the cooldown or when the hook was available again, so maybe adding something to visually represent that would be nice.  

1) I feel like the walking speed feels fine but I didn't know how to run so I never got to test that.  If there is a run I don't see a real need for it unless you speed up the bear movements. 

2) I think the map looks good.  There is not too much clutter and I think the vegetation looks good.  I like the model for the bear and logs but was unsure if the logs are supposed to be picked up.  I can only pick up the boxes.  The map seems appropriate based on the speed of movements.  Any larger would definitely require faster movements.

3) The throw trajectory seems a bit off.  I would try to aim directly on the fire but the box seemed to get thrown just a little past where I was aiming.  The aiming mechanism is a little glitchy and seems to jump around rather than track smoothly.

4) I think the HUD definitely needs some sort of health indicators for the bear and character.  I couldn't tell if I was doing damage to the bear when punching or if the bear was doing damage to the character.  I don't think a campfire meter is needed if the actual fire grows and shrinks.  But I  think some sort of indicator for that would be nice.

5) I think the bear needs some sort of attack animation or some visual seen on the character when they are  being attacked by the bear.  Same for the bear, I couldn't tell if I was punching the bear or not since the punch is so much higher than the bear.  It would also be nice to be able to pick up actual logs and that any objects thrown on the fire actually go into the fire rather than fly over it or bounce off of it.  Overall the game looks really good, I think it's just missing some mechanics

   1. How does the dash feel, does the player dash too far, how easy does the it make the gameplay, does the dash give you too many iframes?

The dash feels good and makes sense.  Not too far and helps to speed up movement a little.  The ifames seemed appropriate.

2. How do the enemies feel? Do you think you could handle 3+ enemies at once?

The enemies feel good.  I think that they have the right amount of health and their attacks aren't too devastating.  It is easy to fight just one but I think more enemies would make the game more challenging.  I found it odd that the enemy could jump but not the character.  

3.    What are some other general balancing suggestions you have?

Maybe adding a jump to the character and disabling movement while using parry.  It seems weird to slide around while the character is parrying.  Maybe scale up amount of enemies as well.  I died the first play through but had no problem the second run through. 

1. does the grapple hook have to much force to it? Should it have a cool down on it?

The grapple hook seems intuitive and the force seems right.  Not sure how the player movements work into the grapple hook.  I Started messing with them more and noticed that the jumping seems to stack onto itself.  I found that I could just double/triple jump without using the grapple hook to move up the volcano.  While the grapple hook doesn't seem to cause collision issues, the movement controls seem to cause the player to get stuck on sides of rocks sticking out as well as allowing the player to jump into the wall and get stuck behind the walls of the volcano.  

2. What other forms of obstacles would you like to see as the player attempts to swing out of the volcano?

I think there should be some sort of enemy to fight or avoid.  Maybe adding in falling balls of lava that knock you down further but don't kill you.  Maybe some sort of platform or area that will kill you if touched.  It is fun to just shoot the grapple hook up and move up the volcano but after a bit there's not much more to do.  Speeding up the lava as you progress might help with the urgency as the player progresses.

3. Currently there is only one speed set on the rising milk lava. We plan to later make it increase in velocity as the game continues. Is the velocity that it is at now to slow/fast for the start of the run?

I feel like at the very beginning it seems OK since if you just stand there it will quickly come up and end the game.  Also gives you a little time figure out what's going on.  But as you start to just climb a little, you can tell that the lava is moving too slow, so scaling that speed up the further you go would help.  I think maybe there should be some sort of dialog or info at the start of the game to tell the user how the grapple hook works and maybe delay the start of the lava rising until the hook is first used or maybe a certain spot reached.  If you don't do anything right at the start of the game the lava gets you and the game ends abruptly without ever really seeing the lava.

1. How do you feel about the length of each in-game day? 

I feel like the in-game day length was a bit long after playing it a second time.  I get that it acts as a timer till collision but it didn't seem real intuitive.  Maybe just having a straight countdown without day/night cycles would give a stronger sense of urgency to complete the tasks.  I guess a day/night cycle doesn't make as much sense to me being that you're in space.

2. Is the amount of time you get before your oxygen runs out a good amount? 

Like the day and night cycle, I feel like the oxygen depletion was a little slow.  When I first started it seemed like I was concerned that I would run out of oxygen  but once I got the hang of it, I didn't have any issues running out.  I found it a little difficult to use the O2 refill in the O2 room.  It seemed like I had to be in just the right position to activate the refill.  Maybe increasing the detection range would help with that.

3. How intuitive are the controls and the events? 

The controls seem good.  The one thing I did notice was that in the instructions it says right click shoots but right click didn't do anything for me but left click did shoot.  I think using 'E' to use the fire extinguisher was a little odd but that may just be preference.  I think I would prefer to use the mouse to use the extinguisher. 

As for the events, they seem good as well but I found that the events didn't progress any further once I hit day 5.  I killed all enemies and put out all fires except for one on the top of the map I couldn't get to.  Then the event just stayed on the "interact with controls" event.  I would just keep going in and steering the ship and the days to collision would increase but no other events would come up.  At that point I stopped playing since there wasn't anything else to do.

4. What do you think about the enemies (how they play, their health, the damage they deal)? 

I felt that the enemies were way to easy.  I didn't have any difficulty completely avoiding there attacks and it was easy to just shoot them down quickly.

5. What do you think about the item drop rate from enemies dying? 

I like the item drop from the enemies it fits well.  I think if they are dropping O2 refills than that might lend better to increasing O2 depletion.  

6. What do you think needs to be improved to make the game more intuitive and fun to play? 

Along with some of the things listed above the main thing I think would improve the game would be to difficulty.  It seems easy to avoid enemies and run back and forth to complete the tasks.  Maybe there's some issues with the fire initiation since the first time I played it seemed to spawn and grow quickly.  The second time I played the fire spawned on top of the wall and I couldn't put it out but it never grew either.  Maybe being able to fire the extinguisher could add a better visual element to its use rather than just pressing 'E' when close to the fire.  

7. What would you rate the difficulty of the game as (between 1-10) and why?

I think that I would rate the difficulty at 2 just because the enemies seem way to easy to fight.  This may be just because what happened during my gameplay.  Maybe I ran into something that sparked an error.  Nothing really happened after day 4 or 5 and all I had to do was just keep steering the ship away.  Maybe if I played further along, difficulty scales up but I just didn't get there I guess.