I've played this game for a while now after discovering it at Creosphere with my secret spies on the run, cool concept, kinda like how it turns out but I think it can use some improvements.
Things I like:
- That classic farm music you made
- Interesting gameplay, easy controls
- Vegetable noises are on point, very cool
Things I don't really like, and a few suggestions:
- Gameplay is kind of... rigged. Getting the golden carrot won't guarantee you to always get 3 stars, but if you don't get the golden carrot you will almost never get any stars (hence the unlucky results after the round I guess). At least, with how fast the person can run and how randomized the rate of the vegetables spawn and their speed, I don't think you can get all the vegetables before they disappear. Not sure if you can call this a bug or this is a tweakable variable but this game really forces you to be mindful of what you should aim on a certain situation. That alone isn't a bad thing I guess, but I feel like the player has a very limited chance to capture most of them and I don't really like the way you need a golden carrot to secure the win for three stars. And you don't get to see when the vegetables will be able to escape. Player abilities could be a nice touch (maybe like a dash ability you can activate every x seconds), or I don't know. It's just, it's kind of luck based, and I personally don't really like that.
- Score required to gain stars (after every round over, or in-game text). This is fairly minor, but I personally would like to see the minimum points needed for every star. I end up figuring out how many points you need to get three stars on a certain level, but it would give a better first impression if you atleast added the points
- You don't really know when the vegetables are able to escape. In this game your chances of getting them is outspeeding them (mainly through diagonal movements) or pinning them onto a fence. This however also comes with a risk of them easily escape once a certain time has passed for them to be able to escape. I might be asking too much, but adding a sort of timer on every vegetable to let you know how long you can chase that vegetable before they can escape. When the timer runs out, the timer disappears and the vegetable escapes just like the normal behaviour. If you can implement that, I think that's a nice touch but that could just be me, you can honestly somewhat predict when they're gonna disappear but I feel like it could be a nice addition for a timer.
- The lack of pausing in-game and a restart level button every game over. If you can add those, that'll be a nice touch.
Some personal gripes I have with this game, but not really necessary for you to fix and it won't really affect my rating:
- The ability to remap controls. I'm not using the QWERTY layout, and the WASD location on this particular layout is WARS instead. It really throwed me off, but this is fixable with AutoHotKey if control remapping is too complicated to implement. Besides, arrow keys worked just fine.
Overall, solid 3/5. Could use some improvements which I heard you are trying to do, which I look forward. Pretty fun gameplay, but the luck based factor wasn't my favorite, unless if that gameplay design is meant to be that way, then I can't complain. Few basic stuff can be improved, but other than that it's a pretty good game. I don't know how long you have been working on this game, so sorry if I'm probably being a bit harsh and nitpicky on my review, considering this is a submission for a jam, after all.
Oh and, I'm probably not going to submit this comment (or rating, though I'm not sure about that one) on the flair fair jam, since I don't really have the time to try out the other games, so I might create an unfair advantage with that in mind. I apologize if you dislike me for that reason, but I'll just hope for the best for you on this jam (if I end up not voting). Good luck Tyrant!
