Hey, this asset pack really clicked for me, so I took it and ran with it.
All for that for creating a funny little western game without guns. :D
Check it out, and let me know what you think: https://kosinaz.itch.io/dad-or-alive
Review
---MY REVIEW---
1. MAIN MENU
1.1. Arrow Glitch on Reload
Right away, in the main menu, adding the arrow mechanics is a very cool idea. However, the arrow itself glitches before every reload.
Basically starting at the default position for a single frame, then repositioning to the position of the bow. Not a big deal, but it's easy to fix, and getting rid of it makes the game look more professional.
1.2. Settings Button Logic
The Settings button works as a toggle, but it's only one way. If there won't be more settings, there is no real need to have them hidden behind this button. In general, if there are only a few settings, it’s better to scatter a few related buttons around the edges of the screen. See the Craftpix GUI asset mockups like the Jungle, the Wooden, the Fantasy, or the Space Shooter.
1.3. Button Feedback and Visual State
Overall, if the button's response is tied to the arrow reaching its target, then it would feel more responsive if the button used an in-between state while that happens, instead of acting like a usual button.
Adding a little red target point until the arrow arrives would communicate to the player to anticipate something unusual, then when the arrow hits, that is the time when the button should animate into the pressed state to match it with the exact moment when the user action is resulting in the expected event.
1.4. Missing Main Menu Audio
The lack of sound effects and music in the main menu felt odd when I finally started the game and the music burst at me.
Sound volume settings directly in the game would be a nice addition in the final game.
2. INGAME UI
2.1 Overwhelming UI at Game Start
Once the game starts, the player is immediately overwhelmed by a huge number of unusable UI elements.
It's good practice to only start showing parts of those when they actually become useful or are used at all in the game.
Later on, I realized that this is basically just a stat block and an inventory combined together. This is definitely not the best way to do it.
2.2. Inventory
The inventory should go at the bottom, either in the middle or to the right. That is the usual place where players look for something like this. And it should only show the items the player already has. Showing empty icons is just wasting space.
Money should go here.
2.3. Damage and HP
Showing the damage is useless. There are no weapons or other ways in the game to change it, and the health of the enemy is not displayed as a number either. So even if the player knows this number, there’s no way to figure out how many hits each enemy will need. And knowing that would be pointless anyway, because there are no health-related tactics in the game — you need to kill everyone, no matter how much damage you do or how much health the enemy has.
The same applies to displaying the player's health as a number, when you already have a health bar over the character. There is no need for it.
If you really want to display all these numbers, they should be at least toggleable, and hidden by default. Or displayed only via tooltip. The player definitely won’t need to see them all the time. Some games even hide the health bar if it’s full, just to make sure the player never has to look at anything that won’t serve as useful information at any given time.
2.4. Level and XP
These are fine here. But to make the experience of leveling up more engaging, little XP numbers flying out of enemies when they die would be a nice improvement.
2.5. Unnecessary Signpost Explanations
The three signposts explaining the basic controls — which is common knowledge for every player who reaches the point to actually start the game — is waaay too much text.
Even those who know right from the beginning how to control the game have to spend some time to scan through these with the assumption that there might be some unusual controls in this game worth explaining in detail.
But since there aren't, this is just noise, which once again impacts the overall experience of the game.
2.6. On-Screen Icon Prompts as a Better Approach
Adding an always-visible overlay of icons that suggest what the player needs to do is a lot better approach.
Especially if you don't frontload the players with the jumping and attacking controls, but show them on screen only when they first need it.
3. STORYTELLING
3.1. Action Platformers Should Show, Not Tell
In general, players don't like to read unless it's the very point of what they expect from the game.
An action platformer is not that genre.
Even the intro dialogue from the elder could be made more impactful as a slideshow or a flashback of demons actually crawling out of the well rather than just writing it down.
3.2. Unhelpful or Redundant Elements
The hell signpost is completely useless — once again, just noise.
If the goal here is to make the player visit the magician, all 8 points of interest up until reaching the magician are practically make no sense, especially the arrow that points to the only direction that the player already followed through the whole game.
Adding extra props to the background is a good idea, but not without meaning and purpose. The story is that the demons crawled out of the well, but the environment sure doesn’t look like it. Once again, show, don’t tell. Add broken fences, burning ruins, anything that shows that something indeed happened here, instead of just filling the whole area with boring signposts.
3.3. Broken Parallax Effect
The parallax background is moving incorrectly.
The middle layer should move in the same direction as the front and with half the speed.
3.4. Streamlining the Intro Sequence
The main takeaway of the intro sequence is that it has to be as short as possible.
You should only keep those parts that are crucial to understand what the player needs to do in the game, because players have a very short attention span and can't wait to start to play instead of just warming up.
4. EARLY GAME FLOW
4.1. Premature Shop Interaction
Asking the players to visit the shop with just enough money to buy the first item when they don't even know what to anticipate yet is an unfair move.
Half a minute in the game already and the first meaningful decision is to buy an extra potion or not while we have no idea how often we'll need to use it.
Skip the shop for now. Only send the players there when they already faced the challenges that can be overcome via these items.
4.2. A Better Starting Point
Instead, I would suggest starting the game in medias res — a few extra slides on the intro slideshow, and then jump into the well, directly.
A little animation of the player falling from the top, landing, then the movement keys showing up on screen, without the enemy even in sight at first.
Then the first enemy, waiting patiently to get attacked, with the attack keys displayed under him — this is the ideal user-friendly flow: non-intrusive, minimalistic, to the point.
5. COMBAT
5.1. Combat Collision Issues and Lack of Impact
Not colliding with the enemy is frustrating.
Trying to hit him while overlapping, flailing aimlessly is painful, and an underwhelming battle mechanic.
Enemies should not only collide, but also be knocked back.
Hits should have a higher cooldown, but way bigger damage to make it more satisfying even on the first level.
If the first battle the player experiences is not fun enough, they will never reach the later stages of the game.
5.2. Weak Combat Animations
Attacking while moving only shows the standing attack animation, which simply doesn't look good enough.
The legs of the character should be animated separately from the upper body.
That way, the player can start or stop moving mid-attack and it will still look fluent enough.
5.3. Directional Control
If mouse is meant to be supported, maybe it would be a good idea to add mouse look.
Relying on just attacking towards the movement direction once again can be frustrating.
Preventing the player to do the simplest tactics properly, like backing away from an attack, then hitting the attacker.
Obviously this won't really work with just keyboard controls, but even in that case, if the attack key is held down, then maybe the player shouldn't change direction.
6. PLATFORMING
6.1. Lack of Jumping Animation and Features
Similarly, there is no jump animation.
The player either stands or walks in the air, which is once again a bummer.
The most successful platformers have a lot of industry-standard mechanics around jumping.
Jump height controlled by how long you press a button, and coyote time are just the two most important ones of those.
6.2. Harsh First Jump
Asking the player to make his first jump over a deathtrap is a bit harsh.
Even the classics weren't so mean.
It's nice to allow the player to experiment with less risky jumps first.
7. ENEMIES
7.1. Enemies Are Too Dumb
It's way too easy to just run past the enemies.
They either need more damage, or some other ways of blocking the player.
Otherwise, they are just pushovers.
Forcing me to kill them even though half of them don't even follow me, just so I can free the villager, doesn't make a lot of sense.
7.2. Flawed XP System
Getting XP for landing hits instead of kills feels odd.
Leveling up before even killing the very first enemy is not just confusing and unsatisfying, but undermines the whole value of a leveling system.
Keeping all XP, items and money after death is just a broken, exploitable system. Without punishment, without slowing down player progress, players will not care at all. And I don’t think you want that.
7.3. Boring Combat Loop
The battle in general is just boring.
Spamming attack until the enemy dies.
Not even moving around, because that would slow down the process.
The fact that the player is forced to die and then come back to farm XP multiple times, and there is no optimal way of playing other than just dying and farming and dying until you are tough enough to win, is just a huge disappointment.
8. SECOND LEVEL
8.1. Hits and Misses
On the second level, the addition of new gameplay elements like the tree and the traps are nice. If you want to be extra friendly, you could teach the controls using them in the village. Just a barricade to break through to reach the village, and a pile of rocks to show how to jump. But it has to be implemented carefully, otherwise the player will crave for the actual action and will be annoyed by the dumbed down tutorial.
The underground area bleeding into the screen was surprising. At first I thought it's a glitch. And since in the end the player teleports anyway and there is only a single vertical movement in the whole game, once again, it’s an issue that could have been easily avoided with more thoughtful map design.
8.2. Unforgiving Traps and Slippery Movement
The fact that the traps insta-kill you, but the player movement is kinda floaty — like sliding on ice in the depth of hell — is not a good point either.
Especially because they kill you if you touch them from the side, which is not even intuitive. Even on level 18, with a 1000 health, when I almost one-hit-kill every enemy, I get insta killed by these nasty traps. That’s just bad design.
8.3. Frustration with Repetition
Checkpoints would be nice too. Especially before the fireball trap. I spent a good 45 minutes always dying at this point, then trying to slide and jump through the first part of the map all over again.
There is a reason why saving or at least checkpoints became common in games like these.
Players easily abandon the game if they need to repeat the same things over and over, especially if they weren't really having fun anyway.
8.4. Misleading Progression and Forced Grinding
Finally, looking at the other comments was the key for me to finally finish the game.
Facing the fact that the only surefire way to beat the so-called platforming part of the game is to buy an invulnerability potion from the infinite amount of money you can grind through repeated dying, then skip through the part like it isn't there, is just a huge misleading design.
If the game is meant to be a platformer, then it should be beatable via actual platforming, instead of just mindless grinding.
9. SUMMARY
Overall, the game has potential. I see what it is meant to be.
The first thing coming to my mind was that it's a side-scroller version of Diablo with platformer elements.
Which is a nice idea, but needs way more refinement.
Diablo is played on a 2D top-down plane, which gives room to a lot of tactical elements even in close combat.
Your game at this point is basically 1D. There is very little utilization of the height.
Dare to use the space! Make it an essential part of the gameplay — this is what will make it interesting.
Look at, for example, Shovel Knight or Rogue Legacy.
Find out what is the main concept of your game, the key element, then build the whole game around it. If you chose it to be a side scroller because that is the right perspective to achieve your goals then be a sidescroller, use the space, figure out unique movement or combat patterns.
Don’t end up being one dimensional.
Unless you really want to. But in that case, accept that this is not a platformer game, and really focus on how to make sideways movement exciting.
And most importantly, don’t give up. You might have failed to nail the things I listed on the first try, but that’s exactly what will help you learn and improve upon in the future.
Good luck! And try to have fun in the meantime! You are making a game after all! ;)
