It takes a while to get to the good part of the game, that is, the dungeon. At the time I got there, it was already 5 minutes.
I'd prefer more parkour and less shooting very basic enemies that are there just to pad the level.
Maybe making it more like Neon White, where enemies are more like obstacles than actual enemies, would make the game flow much smoother
Better avoid using copywrighted characters.
Ignoring the issues regarding copywright, using a bunch of characters from different games, each one with different movement styles, mechanics and physics is not a good idea. because you don't have a central mechanic from which you can build your games' moveset.
For example, both Mario and The Knight can jump but the knight can jump AND dash so why would I ever want to use Mario?
Aproaching the game in this Frankstein fashion creates this kind of redundancy where things don't fit perfectly or repeat themselves.
A better aproach in my opinion would be having a set of charcters that can each do ONE thing. One character can jump, another character can grapple hook, another can shoot, another can dash. and then you build the level design on top of these mechanics that complement themselves.
It's not a perfect solution, but I believe it's better than to have a bunch of copywrighted character each one do one level that all feel very disconected from each other.
Also, there were some problems on the level design, with the foreground being difficult to distinguish from the background, weird collisions and some very unfair jumps.
Powering up feels like powering down
The window for the movement oportunity in any piece other than the pawn is just too short for me to be able to hit it with any precision. Therefore making the "power up" feel like a power down as now I'm more unable to move than before due to how precise the comand must be
Either make the time that each square is selectable longer or make the window to hit your desired square more forgiving
For example, if the game sees that I'm going to fall because of a 0,1 second difference in my input, it forgives that and puts me on the last valid square.
Also, the game would really benefit from a song to keep you in rythm like crypt of the necrodancer. If each piece had a prticular rythm that fitted the song, it would be much easier for the player to play correctly.
The game seems very inspired by Enter the Gungeon and Binding of Isaac. The concept is nice but the gameplay itself has some issues.
The shooting doesn't feel very good. The main weapon reminds me of Gungeon's fish gun. A big part of what makes that gun feel good is the "oomph" of the gun animation and the sound effect. That, combined with the projectile speed and the damage sound is what makes the gun feel good, so I think the gunplay would be greatly improved with some animation and sound design.
Animations for the enemies taking damage would also improve the feel of the game.
There is a bug where I can make grandma invincible by just keeping space hold down at everytime.
I only discovered that I could switch guns at the end of my playthrough. Maybe explain that in the beginning or have somewhere where the player can pickup a new gun and is taught how to change them.
The character movement is very slow.
When the player dies, they want to get to where they were as quicly as possible, but the character just feels slugish and heavy when the player is rushing to get to where they were.
I'd suggest to either make the animation much quickier or make the characte skip to the next spot in the grid automatically when the player presses the move button quickly, like in Tomb Raider Go. In that game, Lara snaps to her next position when the player presses the movement buttons in quick succesion.
Also, I didn't manage to go further than level 3. It can be me being dumb to puzzle games but it just seemed very hard to go through the spikes when the charater is so slow.
Game looks very good but:
Movement is great on controller and bad on keybord and mouse (specially wall jumping)
Aiming is great on mouse but bad on controller (too unprecise)
Right now the optimal way to play the game is to have one hand in a mouse and the othe on a controller.
If your are giving the players the option to use an alternative input method, they should feel good enough using it so that they don't even think about using another one
Very cute stardew valley-esque artstyle and the gameplay loop is satisfying.
My grudge is the energy system. I feel very limited to explore the map as the energy runs out too fast right now. Maybe making itdecrease more slowly or to have items that make it go up again could solve it.
I'd also tweek the calderon's UI to make it clearer to the player what they are doing.
I didn't really get the point of the game. There is no explanation, no introduction, nothing.
Moving felt very wierd and the character very heavy.
There is no fall damage animaton or indication so, at the begining, I thought I could just drop from anywhere and have nothing happen to me.
Level design felt very messy and cluncky to traverse
I assume the objective is to get to the bottom of the cave but what are you suposed to do when you get there? This game would benefit from a tutorial.
The game is very charming and cute but I just couldn't figure the puzzle with the button and the dog snacks on toasters???
There are these invisible walls out of pickes in the room that I assume are temporary but just made mevery confused. It took me a fair while to figure out I had to liquify to go under the desk and after that I still didn't know what I was supposed to do. How can I make Spike eat the dog snack?
Probably better to avoid copywrighted music
Right now the game is a bit confusing.
Like, how do I change the music? Is it automatic?
How are new people converted to a particular color? Is it random, dependant on the music or proximity?
What is the use of every class that is not pink/rock? If you have lots of pinks you can win very easily, while this is not true for the other colors. I don't even know what Techno and EDM do.
Too zoomed in. Please zoom the camera out a bit
In a game where the whole point seems to survive by killing minions, penalyzing the player for shooting is not a good idea. I get that this was probably what the original concept was but in practice this just makes the game very unfun to play as I have to constantly watch my health while I do the only real thing that there is to do in this game: shooting.
If the waepons were overpowered, in a way they would one-shot most enemies, then I could see the health mechanic as a necessary balance, but right now the weapons are very weak and you need like 10 shots to kill the most basic minion so, it just feels that the game is punishing me for playing it.
Also, why make the weapons shoot with different mouse buttons? Dual-wielding guns should feel like an awsome power up but I feel powered down as I now have to worry about two guns taking my health away and not even making that much more damage than just one gun.
Very fun party like game. My main problem during the game was that there was difficulty understanding the controls and what you have to do before the game starts. You could take a page out of Mario Party's book and have a tutorial session of the mini game where no points are being acounted just for the players to understand what they have to do and, after that, go for the real mini-game
NPC is by far one of the best prototypes I've played. The writing is really cheeky and well-humored and that makes the main character very likable. However...
At some point during the 12 minute mark of my playthrough I was just tired of reding so much text. I'm the type of player that doesn't skip any dialogue because I think it's cool to see what the characters have to say... but this is a 2d puzzle/platformer game. There is no need for so much dialogue, or at least not so much dialogue in the start of the game.
If the protagonist's banter with her incompetent bosses was spread out through more levels, it would be much more bearable I feel.
I spent so much time reading dialogue that I couldn't even get to level 3 without spending 17 minutes in the recording so maybe reducing dialogue (or spreading it through more levels) and giving more focus on the puzzle gameplay would be better to make the game's gameplay x story ratio a little more balanced
Also I noticed some sprites were scaled up a bit weirdly, making them seem low res. The main character looks very crisp but the slimes and rocks look low res for example.
Other than these issues, the game itself is very fun and you can see a lot of effort you guys put into it. Well done!
I didn't really understand how to actually play the game. At first I thought I had to serve the clients, then It seemed I had to decorate the restaurant, then it became a weird tower defence where you cannot see what is taking damage from the enemies and neither your "towers" (traps). I took a lot of damage but still didn't die.
The game says that decorations become traps during the day but, during daytime, the traps I placed disappeared and enemies just went directly to the front desk to damage an invisible screaming guy.
Suffice to say I think the game is confusing right now and would bennefit from some tutorial or initial guiding level.
The game is very fun, one of the best prototypes by far.
The bat swinging mechaninc is very similar to Enter the Gungeon's "Casey" weapon and I think, if tweeked a bit, it can feel as good as that if not better. 2 things that concerned me while playing: controllers and repetiton.
For the controllers: the mouse and keyboard work well enough but on gampad, I can only control the character's movement. It would be awsome to heve the rest of the movement adapted to controller because I believe that would fell more confortable
For the repetition: If you only have one weapon and 4 different types of enemies, the game can get stale. Maybe adding more stages or enemies could make the game engaging for more time. Honestly, the bat is so satisfying, I only need an excuse to keep using it to hit new goons.
The sprites look very nice but the boat mechanics are still a bit unsatisfying. The tides make your boat too slow and you have to go to the other side of the map to get tides that go in the direction you want to go. But, when you get there, the tides have already changed and your boat becomes slow again
The dice mechanic is not very satisfiying. If the intent is to do a more interesting Pokemon game, it just comes accross as making the randomized nature of Pokemon Battles more time consuming and annoying. If the dices combination is fundamental to the gameplay, maybe making it into somewaht of a cardgame where the dices represent the actual attacks, not the status of the attacks wouls be more interesting. Right now, other the amount of times we can roll the dices, we as players don't have much agency on the battle at all so the game becomes boring fast.
