Heya, I just finished playtesting Zentera up to the third level (the final level was blocked off by an invisible barrier, so I assumed that that one hasn't been finished yet/scrapped). I like the mechanics of having to drag the boxes around to progress and finding ways to unlock the switches in the levels (level 2 in particular is my favorite because it's a mix of pretty much all the mechanics).
I do think it's important to note that I played this game with mouse and keyboard instead rather than a controller because I don't have one of those at home. This did cause some initial struggles with figuring out the controls for PC because the displayed controls at the bottom are the ones for controllers only. After figuring out what the controls were I started playing the first level, which was a great introduction to both the box pushing and lever mechanics. The box was a little bit janky to move initially, but I understand that they have to move 1 full square space at a time. The second level was a little bit harder and took me a couple tries, but was also interesting and fun to figure out.
In the third level I did find a couple issues. In this level you have to cleverly move the boxes around to open all the gates, and you can only use 3 of them, otherwise the tower will be too low for your character to walk on top of it at the end. It was the hardest one to figure out, but it was still fun. However, I did manage to find a bug in this level, making it so i didn't have to interact with the mechanic at all: If you walk very closely around the barriers, you will be able to just walk around them due to upwards momentum from the stairs and skip the entire puzzle. This was the only bug I managed to find in all 3 levels, and I did go back to this level to properly figure out the intentional puzzle.
My feedback/potentially fun ideas for the game:
- It could be fun to add some kind of background music to the game to improve on the atmosphere, as well as add some more sound effects in general. Maybe when the gecko shoots out his tongue it could make a noise, a walking loop for movement and maybe a falling noise followed up by a landing noise for when he drops down from a platform.
- I heavily recommend adding some kind of controls for PC somewhere on screen so people are able to figure out how to play the game immediately.
- Find some way to patch out potential sequence breaking bugs/skips in the game. It's a shame if people can just walk through the levels without interacting with the mechanics that make them interesting.
Overall this game was an enjoyable experience, and I hope the feedback is able to further improve on that.