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Gotcha -- that's about what I was thinking! Thanks for the reply!! :D

This may be a silly question, but has anyone ever tried this with six players (three couples)? I only ask because that is the number of people in my D&D group, and I could totally see us having a blast with this.

Viability: I am not quite sure where the ending of the game is supposed to be; like Josie mentioned, the white rectangles make it so you cannot progress beyond a certain point. If that is the end of the game, then the game is playable from beginning to end; if not, then I am curious to see what is beyond it.

Presentation: The controls make sense, but it would be nice to have some indication of what/where the goal is, whether it is killing enemies for points or reaching the end of a path. Speaking of killing enemies, I notice there are moments where the enemies will move above or below the player, which makes the fact that the player can only shoot left and right kind of inconvenient. I do know from experience that it can be difficult to get the player to shoot up and down, so I totally get why it is the way it is now.

Theme: The sci-fi/space theme is very clear, and I am a big fan of the design of the monsters. They kind of remind me of enemies from the Corruption area of Terraria, which I love! I am curious to see art added to the elements that do not have any yet; I want to know what the yellow triangles in particular are supposed to be. The sound design is great -- I love that you have music and sound effects already, and very fitting ones at that! My one nitpick would be to maybe turn the volume of the shooter down slightly, simply because it is a decently loud high-pitched noise, but that could just be a me thing.

Engagement: I can definitely see how things are coming together, and the game is engaging so far, but I think adding a clearer goal will go a long way toward making the game more engaging for the player.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the player's HP only shows up in the first room, not any others after that.

Viability: The game is playable and I was able to reach the end! I did run into an error message while going through one of the shortcuts (I'm assuming that is the error you mentioned in the description!) and I included a screenshot in case that is helpful. For me the buttons on the death screen did not work, but all the other elements were fully functional. Something I noticed is that whenever you enter a room, you spawn at the same entrance regardless of where you came from, which can be confusing.

Presentation: The rules and goal are clear; move through the maze, avoid the bats, and look for the shortcuts. The movement is a bit floaty, slow, and awkward, though I feel that may be a quirk of Playground more than anything else. I would recommend tweaking the RigidBody and Move component settings to see if that makes movement less floaty (something I need to do for the game I'm working on too!) I also might see if the bats could be made to move a bit faster to make them more of a threat to the player.

Theme: You all nailed this! The pixel art is super cute, and the color palette fits the vibe of the game well. I like the design of the bats a lot, they clearly read as enemies to avoid. The game feels cozy and autumnal, I like the mood of it a lot.

Engagement: The only critique I have engagment-wise is that more responsive movement might make the game physically feel better to play. Looking for hidden paths in the corn is a really fun variation of a maze game, and I was engaged with that mechanic in particular.

Viability - things are working well! The game started where it was meant to, so no worries there! It would be awesome if the game could be made to work in browser, but I can get how that would be tough to make work.

Presentation - super clean. The only thing I'd change is the color of the date/time, as they blend into the background as they are.

Theme - clear, looking really good. Definitely feels like Discord or something of the like, it works really well.

Engagement - I was engaged! I'm interested to see where the game goes!

Viability: Playable all the way, story makes sense, very good! One question I have is whether the HP is supposed to continue going down during every passage between when it starts going down and when it is stable. I only see it during the first one, but putting it into every one would raise the stakes if you're interested in doing that.

Presentation: There is a bit of an issue with text going off the edge of the screen. It only cuts off a letter or two at a time, so it's not game-breaking, but adjusting something to fix it would be very nice. Proofreading for typos / grammatical errors and such would be good too.

Theme: The theme is absolutely 100% on point, and the artwork looks awesome and fits perfectly. The story is great, the references are funny and well incorporated, and the ending works really well.

Engagement: I was engaged from the get-go. You nailed this!

Viability - looking good so far! I like the animal characters a lot, and I appreciate the inclusion of chapters. I think making it so you can get back to the raccoon with the branch without having to go through the text of meeting the raccoon again would be great if that works.

Presentation - There's an issue with the way the text is laid out where it continues off the side of the screen – I think using percents for the size of the game should solve that, but take that with a huge grain of salt, I'm new to this lol. I'd also recommend changing the color of links that have already been visited since they start to blend into the background as they are. Also, a couple error messages about your else statements popped up while I was playtesting, so make sure to check those out.

Theme - I really like the colors and the font you chose, and the storyline is clear.

Engagement - I was totally engaged! Like I mentioned before, I like the characters. I'm really interested to see where the story goes!

Viability: Seems really good so far! Only one of the images, the first one, was loading for me unfortunately.

Presentation: For the most part, things are looking good! The game isn't centered on the screen when you run it in full screen, so adjusting that may be helpful. Also, when restarting the game, the links you've already clicked are very purple, so changing that to match would look nice.

Theme: Absolutely working great so far! The only thing I may recommend is changing the fonts for stuff like the newspaper.

Engagement: I was absolutely engaged! I am excited to see where the game goes from here.

Viability - doing well so far! One major thing I noticed is that once the game starts over it doesn't reset the affection variable, so you are automatically best friends with the griffin as soon as you start to interact with it.

Presentation: I would recommend proofreading for spelling/grammatical errors, but other than that things are solid! I also think you should potentially change the color of links that have already been visited.

Theme - I like the colors, feels like the sky, which fits well. Styling the affection variable somehow would look really nice.

Engagement - I was engaged! Could easily be longer/have more to do; maybe different levels of friendship with the griffin as affection goes up before best friend?

Hey all, this is Emma!