itch.io

I definitely like the idea of needing to execute things well under pressure, in fact I tried the game again after reading most of the tips in the loading screen and paying more attention to the description of the dungeon template. I now managed to get past all the baby step templates pretty easily with plenty of time to spare in most of my runs.

I think a lot of my issues with the game still stand, hell some of the more complicated rooms have some really annoying switch hunting which I absolutely despise, those wall levers really do not stand out at all and I highly recommend you make those way bigger or something else to catch the eye easily. The door tip is also extremely important and I would highly recommend teaching this to players in a better way.

the thing with extra time is, it is only good if you are good at collecting coins and destroying crates.

I think this is a thing that should be clearly communicated to the player, in my first playthrough I was trying to just get collect all the coins as I saw them, instead of spacing them out so I could manage the timer better. I think this is vital information that shouldn't just be told in a loading screen tip, but as a fundamental part of the game that should be explained in the tutorial because the game is clearly balanced around the idea that you have to do this. If the game is based around the timer, and a lot of design decisions are made around that timer, then why does the tutorial not have a timer? Why does it not teach any of the important information the player needs in order to play with the timer?

Some of them are faster, others are less riskier, or they got mana cost differences, or seal interactions and more.

Then I would like to see this properly shown to the player, the tutorial only shows use cases where they are required to use those jumps to proceed, but it does not teach how these maneuvers can be used to go faster in other situations. This creates a disconnect between the tutorial and the actual game because the use cases of the abilities in the actual game is different compared to what the tutorial teached the player to use them for.

Any ideas on how I could make it less complicated?

I still don't really get how the system works either, a lot of the seals seem poorly worded (I had no idea I wasn't able to collect more gold due to the gold cap seals, I thought that the gold cap would mean how much you could possibly obtain per dungeon run) and they are buried under multiple menus. Then there's the way you obtain new seals which just seems weird to me, not to mention the equipping of seals and obtaining of seals are completely different menus just make it confusing in general. But in general I think the game also does a poor job of telling me why I should use this system in the first place.

Overall I think I definitely enjoy the game a ton more now that I understand how you are supposed to actually play it, I still think a lot of the systems I mentioned in my original post still don't really match the game, but I now definitely have a way better grasp of the intended experience and with some tweaks I can definitely see this being a fun game.

I normally love these kinda games but when you add in randomly generated maze like elements with backtracking with a harsh time limit it just falls apart for me, the actual platforming feels great (even if I don't like the mana system) but that doesn't matter when I end up getting lost a ton, and due to the way the time limit works based on collecting gold, getting lost and going through a room again basically just kills the run. I enabled a bunch of extra time seals which barely helps, so my only option would be the unlimited time option which guts income by a ton, but no pressure at all also kind of defeats the point of the game as well since otherwise you are just repeating the same rooms over and over again without anything to make doing them again interesting. A big part of it also seems to be the massive difficulty spike between baby steps+ and baby steps++ which doesn't make for a smooth transition at all. Maybe it can all work better when you ease the player into mastering the rooms so they can go through them super quick, but as the demo currently stands that easing doesn't exist. And even if they do master each room perfectly the player can still get lost in the maze anyway.

Honestly I'm just very confused on what the target audience for this game is supposed to be, it just has a ton of mismatched ideas that don't really work together at all, not just with the supposed lewd management content but just the dungeon gameplay itself has a ton of systems that don't don't make much sense; Why is picking up and throwing boxes a mechanic? Why do I need to stop to manually interact with switches? Why are there three additional jump types to cycle between when it never seems I need any of them? Why is there a random memory game I need to play between getting to the end and getting back to the entrance? None of these things enhance the speedy platforming experience, they heavily clash instead.

Additionally there seems to be a ton of text teaching you about systems or mechanics that barely matter at all, maybe keep that stuff out of the demo until that content is actually in the game, or just simplify them until the systems are in place to make them matter. The seal system is overly complicated when it should be easy to understand and use to help the player make the game difficulty right for them.

That was really neat! I really enjoyed the game, and it also surprised me as I thought this would be a slower paced game instead of such a fast paced platformer. It took me a few minutes to get used to the way the guy moves but you can get through some surprisingly tricky sections quite easily when you get used to the movement speed.

Only real complaints I got is that the combat could still use some work, all the bosses except for the last one where complete pushovers, the first one just died in seconds and the second one I could cheese by just attacking him from underneath the platforms. Sometimes it can also be hard to notice some small enemies like the tiny flying bug at the start of the fire level, but because of the rewind mechanic it's not too big of a deal either when you die to something like that. Additionally the quick step you get when double tapping the movement keys ended up getting me killed quite a few times, so I would suggest adding some way to change the input or have have the input be a bit more strict to avoid accidental usage.

Other than that I was surprised at how short each individual area was with each one only being around 1-3 "screens" worth of platforming, but I suspect that's just for the demo? The map function makes it seem like they are supposed to be bigger areas in the end. Despite that there was still a good climb in difficulty from each area to the next and they all seemed pretty unique too.

Keep it up dude, maybe you'll even figure out a name for the game eventually!

Thanks for the feedback! I already worked on fixing some of those issues like the weapon swapping being buffered and changed the damage upgrade to be only two tiers of actually meaningful change in damage for the next update. I'll also check to see if there's something wrong with the enemy spawns not having their collisions disabled. (though right now standing in the middle when the hole opens damages you, so it might just have been that you would get hit by)

Also the contract doesn't do anything yet so don't worry about not having grinded for it, it's just a placeholder for a planned mechanic.

Can you describe when the bow wasn't shooting? From my testing it should always fire if you release the button after the white flash.

Anyway I made some changes to the big guys and the roll which hopefully makes the game a bit better.

I like the look of the game, and the ideas are cool but the movement and camera can use some smoothing out (especially during level 6 the camera would just freak out). The wall jumping feels a bit unresponsive

Also I noticed some common bugs like the GO screen not appearing at the start of the level or I would get softlocked at the finish as pressing jump wouldn't finish the level.

I love difficult platformers but I'm not a big fan of this one, I simply don't enjoy the controls and focus on linear platforming around slippery surfaces. The art, animations and style is fantastic though.

I also don't see the reason why hard mode exists, after running out the time the first time I just beat the game on easy instead, after which I went through hard mode thinking there be some difference but there is nothing different at all except for the timer. Other than that I think the timed mechanics not resetting when you die is kinda annoying too.

I also noticed that you posted before about levels and block types that aren't part of the demo (like the last gif on the game page), did you cut those intentionally from the demo or what?

Just updated the demo to improve on some of the issues people posted about, thanks everyone for the great feedback!

The bow works by holding down the firing button for a second and then releasing it to fire (with a stronger shot after 2 seconds).
Right now there's basically no feedback to indicate that however so I'll work on making an animation for it showing when it's ready to fire.

My bad, this bug should be fixed now.

Whoops, looks like there was some bug that didn't show itself up in the editor but only when exported as a release build due to some small programming error. The issue should be fixed now and you can actually throw the spear (and take damage too!)

Nice work on that animation btw!