itch.io

-Controls are fine enough(would somewhat prefer spacebar to jump), and the prompts for interactables is good.

-Death into respawn took forever, I hope that's only for the first death.

-Got confused after getting the weapon, feels very gamey(in a not so good way) to make me attack a switch through a ceiling to open the way.

-Nope the long death animation is every time, lame. You get hurt very easily at that, so it's a massive waste of time. At least you keep equipment and switch state after dying.

-Getting contact damage from enemies is lame, you're already risking getting shot/stabbed at point blank. At the very least limit it to when they jump on you.

-I fall down the fall trap and die, le epic troll.

-I use the rolly polly to hit the enemies, and they try to kill it, fun interaction.

-I jump over the fall trap and proceed to get the only good weapon, the bow.

-I then mopped the floor with the enemy and reach the end.

So I only died like 4 times, but it was painful because of the animation length. The combat felt too easy to get pummeled, directly proportional to your equipment. So bare hands > stick >>> bow, from hardest to easiest. And that is mainly due to the contact damage, though in part it could be my playstyle lends me to being closer than I should.

Decent game besides the difficulty, keep up the good work.

Will consider removing [thought bubbles] if I can’t make it less obtrusive.

Some thoughts I had were to move it to the bottom of the screen, so it only covers the outer wall, or to make it semi or fully transparent when you start moving.

That [don't walk off edge while on ice] was put in as a bit of a safety. Probably not needed though if it’s unintuitive

Taking into consideration the lack of an undo, I can see why it's there. If you do add it though, then I think being able to throw yourself off is good for the consistency(or at least it makes more sense to me).

---

Thanks for the hints, I decided to give it another go. Though I couldn't make it back to the monkey room, the stone triangle room seemed to reset in a way so that all paths lead to death. And, the books also reset.

The hard ice puzzle was cool after the block was put into place. I was only solving half the issue before.  Difficulty wise, I suppose this is a later area, but in most cases I think it's better to put more challenging puzzles off the main path to get a collectible(book) or some such. But the game seems to be built around an exploratory linearity, you have to do all branches. So idk, maybe that's just how this game is, where the challenge is more of a focus (some gameplay wise but more so with story right now). All that said, with an undo I think it will help make things more reasonable in any case.

Luckily the last few levels didn't need the other branch done, so I was able to do them and finish the game. Fun puzzles, though on the last one the bridge tile seemed pointless as I solved without using. I then re opened my save to try once more at the monkey level and found out that the stone block blocking the way was gone, and went through the door. Bad idea, now I'm softlocked for good since I'm in the bottom left of the puzzle and it can't be solved from here! Too bad for John.

I forgot to screenshot it, but I think my end game stats was 87%, spent the most time in the Bat Country.

-Canceling an Act/Attack also cancels the movement you made. In some cases that could be useful, but is overreaching by default. What I'd expect is just going back to the previous menu state.

-When making the fore wall invisible inside a building, like the smithy, denoting the shape of the doorway is nice so you don't walk into the wall like a dummy.

-I meet the bugs.

-I wish I could cancel out of the first layer of menus in combat so I can instead pan the camera to see the battle. I got into a fight while in a tunnel and I can't see any of the enemies.

-Blocking input while menu slide animations play is annoying. I want to be able to 'buffer' the inputs for the menuing or be able to press cancel and it immediately start reversing.

-I died to the big bug because I forgot about HP potions. Oddly enough,  on respawn I was able to waltz in and take the sword without triggering the encounter. Oh looking at it again all the spiders respawned, at first I thought most of them were dead bodies.

-I can't seem to exit the tunnels, since the ladder takes me to the main menu.

New stuff is fun, combat is still a little lack luster though. Keep up the good work.

-There is the hardware mouse on top of the software mouse for some reason, maybe it's just me.

-Holy chromatic aberration batman. It looks hideous. [later] I can't seem to see it in this extreme again, maybe it has to be specific angles or it was bugging out.

-Wish I could shift to quickly pan. Also, the rotating with middle click is way too sensitive, I do a full rotation after < 10% horz screen travel.

-Building is half baked. You can place beds though wall blueprints and when a construction fails it removes the blueprint.

-I placed a cooking table but they're using it on the opposite side of where the workplace indicator states.

-Wish I could toggle play/pause with spacebar.

-I played for awhile and this happened at some point. The guy in bed is unconscious, the other is trying to hunt a cow but is stuck. An alpaca later slept in the other bed and he switched to kicking the unconscious person in the head repeatedly through the head board. I fixed it by clicking on the wifi/waypoint action. I also fixed the unconsciousness by doing that.

-Being in a desert and all my food and beds being taken by the animals(and building being annoying), I am relinquishing my village.

That's about it I guess. Keep up the good work.

Played previously, so I'm skipping to the new stuff.

-UI goes offscreen on 16:10 monitor.

-New tutorial starts off with like 4 tanks firing at you immediately, so before getting my bearings I already lost a squad and my B-26... oops. Maybe I miss remember, but I don't think the other tutorials start hot like that.

-Squad movement seems to get stuck more often than I'd think around tight turns(using mouse path shaping). Maybe a by-product of using similar pathing to the tanks. 

-Now only the main tank and a squad of soldiers, luckily that one tank is busted powerful... I eventually finish the mission.

-I don't like how squads lose their outline when in a building. Just makes it more annoying to click on them.

-Clicking on a portrait or icons of a unit in the garage screen doesn't toggle inspecting said unit, which is mildly annoying. Also, not automatically selecting Modules or Crew on unit inspection is weird, it just seems like a no brainer(and maybe you could have it open to Crew if you click on the portrait then, idk).

-Minor point, but the reference to war crimes in the Mahiri description seems odd given the setting, it seems like there's so such thing in the current conflict. 

-Playing mission 4, I told my tank to release a squad and they got squashed on sawn by their own take... I don't really get it. It did a shimmy so I guess there wasn't enough room and ran them over?

-Slightly disappointed with mission 4. I thought it would be a last stand then run, but after the initial wave I had to slowly look around the map to find the stragglers. Though it didn't help I lost all my infantry. Anyways, due to that it ruined the theme of the mission and made it feel like every other one.

That's it I guess. Keep up the good work.

-Text bubble on restart is a bit annoying since it pulls my attention away from the puzzle with filler phrases. 

-Minecarts feel intuitive.

-Monkeys are alright, but they feel quite static, since they act like a wall all the time it's just a matter of moving around the slide maze to reach them with the head. After the two monkey head area I back track and go down the other path to do more minecarts.

-I can't walk left to kill myself after the bait minecart, feels like a bug? Though, I guess it's like how you don't walk off the edge unless you slide into it... still.

-Lack of undo is getting annoying. Unless there's a really good reason, it just feels like a waste of life to make me redo everything for one mistake in input.

-At book select, at least in windowed mode, pressing up/down to scroll the selection can make the cursor invisible.

-The 1/2 in the corners of the book feel kind of pointless, since it never seems to be longer than two pages? Also, these notes are so short that numbering them make them seem even shorter. And the numbers are a little too close for comfort with the actual text(spaced like it's the next line of text). So for all those reasons, to me at least it makes sense to remove them.

-I reach a gold block junction, so I guess I need to go back to the monkeys and finish them.

-If you look at a pit after sliding in from the right, there will be an erroneous prompt to put down the head, still there from first sliding in. Also get a prompt to put the head down if you fall down a pit that has a walkable tile directly in front of where you character would be looking if he wasn't falling. Also the prompt sticks around after a level restart.

-I can see the top of the save icon in the bottom right at all times... I hope that's unintentional because it's ugly once you notice. [later] Oh suddenly the entire icon is in view at all times, either it got glitched or previous was the glitch. [later again] OK it seems like if you spam room transitions it confuses the animation and it gets higher or something. It's now 3/4 up my screen... Actually it's more like a rounding bug, it seems to go higher even if I let the animation play in full before doing another room transition.

-Turtle powers. Not much of note, though the left/right sprites are shorter, so it's only like 1/4 of a tile tall when placed down. Not a deal breaker, but making it larger so it's easier to spot for an unobservant player could be nice.

-Ice blocks being unpushable on ice feels odd. Would help sell it if you did an animation where he runs in place, to show it's too slippery to get traction or whatever.

-I get stumped on the 1 ice block 5 icicles room.

-I backtrack and do the stone triangle path, get stuck on the monkey and minecart area. Can't figure how to get the monkey head without consuming the needed bridges.

Well that's enough for now. I remember enjoying the previous demo, this was good too. Having no controller support is ridiculous though.

Fun little romp, well mostly. The controls felt a little rough(too many actions on one hand) and I didn't see a point to using the slide move, especially since you can't use it while pressing forward for a speed boost. Also, it was a bit hard to tell but it seems like there was more input lag than what I'd expect from a game like this. Maybe it's true to its inspiration, though I wouldn't know.

I can't believe how much this game is.

>I'm curious what you are referring to when you say "before switching between the two."

Very silly way to say that it would swap between super choppy and smooth every half second or so. To explain, I was using controller, and it happened the entire time I was playing. I played the game again, and the issue isn't there. I tried to recreate it by doing stuff with the window or mashing the controls, but nada. Sorry to say, but it seems like a freak Unity bug or somehow a windows bug(but I don't think my controller had any other issues that day).

Hope that didn't send you down a rabbit hole.

-Having such a small dot to click is annoying, make it bigger or at least make the hitbox larger.

-The combat feels boring with only one unit. Also, it seems like there's no healing between combat(no item drop at least) so it feels even less fair to only have one unit. [later] it seems like it was a fluke? other times it seems like I'm healed between battles, I guess it's from the regen stat? I'm not sure when it triggers though.

-Got a shop finally, nice. Oh, but I can't equip or use items mid battle... LAME!

-Found summoner, doesn't seem to do anything(rip healing items).

-I wish there was a wait option, annoying to do a small move then wait for the slide to end.

-Allowing going back to previous tiles is nice. I buy the rest of the items from the shop.

-Oh so focus is moves per turn, wish I was able to equip my hat before that first encounter after buying it. But, this now makes it even worse when you want to wait for the enemy to come to you.

-Bouncing in this game feels off, I expect it to bounce at right angles to allow corner shots and stuff(sometimes it's fine), but it seems like most of the momentum goes into sliding across the wall instead of bouncing off it. I think it's more noticeable when the angle is shallower.

-Got to boss fight and did the stuff, I got a critical for 63 damage which would one shot the boss... seems like iffy balancing there. At this point I got the hat, shorts, and the more powerful sword.

-Player dot can be hidden behind environment decorations.

-At this point the game now feels trivial, so I aim for the bosses then wrap it up.

Game is alright I guess, I think the main downer was how long the turns felt, and how dumb the enemy AI can be.

Keep up the good work.

I did beat the last level, and at that point I finally figured out it was a rotation going on. Just forgot to mention it, I was getting a little tired. I'll describe that my finishing touch for getting each piece together(on last level) was by putting a tile close to the 'target' area and then using an ouroboros(wrap around with an L shape, then eat and go in circles) on the object to rotate it in a 4 square. Thought that may be interesting to you, if you assumed people would play a certain way.

I was doubtful about how much the player would get from the mechanics and the puzzles since I'm just putting them there

Felt fairly straight forward for the most part. I took it as a challenge, like those Rule Discovery puzzle games you may know about. Though, right now it's quite simple so there was less to chew on. I really like that genre, but if you want to lay out the rules so more people won't bounce off I can see that too.

Won't comment on most of the obviously bad things.

-Most menus are broken in 16:10 (main menu, item selection). 

-Not much to it, but the parry feels satisfying to do, as well as leaping to finish the enemy off. Though, it's strange how you only finish off an enemy if they died from a parry. I guess cause it's like a teleport.

-I notice that moving the mouse outside the screen causes the camera to move out a lot more than expected, it looks like it just keeps going with no distance limit to the character(can move so the level and player is entirely off screen).

-Parry timing could be tighter, it's very easy to just spam RMB to do it. 

-I'm able to keep playing despite being dead, funny.

-Playing again, it seems like my HUD disappeared? Maybe from alt tabing or from clicking on the broswer while the game is open? The mouse isn't locked to the game. Also, I can walk through the doors on the top of the stage into the void while the encounter is ongoing, while the HUD is gone. The open doors block in earlier levels it looks like? idk it's odd

Fun for where it's at, keep up the good work.

Not much to say, but compared to last time the game is waaaay more fun. I think half of it is just having a golf ball dotted line trajectory. Keep up the good work.

Playing on controller.

-Where's her flashlight coming from? Personally I would do a chest/shoulder mounted light over a flashlight.

-New hologram visuals of the pet are cool, makes it feel more cohesive this way.

-Camera is oddly choppy. It's frustrating, you hold one direction on the stick and it randomly starts moving or stays still for a moment before switching between the two.

-Oh the demo's already over. I was hoping the enemies would actually pose a threat this time.

I think the new direction is good, being up close makes it easier to bond with the tomagachi. Keep it up.

I launch bunny game. She stares at me, and the games stops responding. Send help?

Is what I would say, but after like 30+ seconds this happens to the screen? It looks like the game is super low resolution (my cursor is the moving white dot on its lonesome).

Launching again and it just werks.

-Room with blue enemies went haywire, they were vibrating so fast they were between two spots at once, and bouncing all over.

-So I'm just playing around, game seems better for the most part. But the mouse feels not as good. Maybe I just forgot how much input lag there was with this software mouse. The new outlines on enemies is a bit much, but it does help with tracking them. It also seems like you added more enemies in these early levels.

-Seems like you pick up ammo from floor guns now, nice.

-Use of hazards in the sewer + fire traps level is fun, though due to moving so fast, just tapping the keys gives little control(usualy stepping more than I want), I moreso aim for the walls so touching it will align myself to the tiles.

-New minecart guys are a fun idea, and also thematic since it relates to the rails of the subway. Maybe I just got lucky, but I found them to not be very hard to beat.

-Lobbed missiles have an inconsistent land radius. Due to sorting or whatever, parts of or the entire circle disappear, mainly when the center lands inside of geometry. Then you're surprised by a big boom you didn't expect.

-I don't feel like fighting the train boss, since it's the most challenging area I went through.

That's it I guess, keep up the good work.

Played in sandbox, just to be safe.

-First level is funny, since you expect being able to eat the dots, I ate the same dot a couple times before realizing  nothing was happening. 2nd level then cements the goal, to put things together.

-I like being able to change the snake head direction, acts like an undo if you eat something. And, it allows you to do the actions faster.

-Not a big fan of the portal opening the instant the last tile is in place, since your snake butt is still in front of it. Wait till after the snake move away from the piece to solve the level, I think.

-Rotating bone is a fine puzzle idea, but it feels kind of cheap since there's no reason for it to do that, and we already did a bone puzzle with no such rotation. At the end of this puzzle, I think I failed to realize the actual gimmick, where it's being mirrored depending on the snake head direction maybe? Because I had a config where both bones were snapped side down while next to eachother, then did a snake head reversal twice then it was the right shape and ended the level.

-So we get an expansion on the skull level too. idk, the new gimmick makes the level longer, but not more interesting.  But overall, I'm not entirely sure that's the direction to take the puzzles. I'm sure you have plenty of ideas though, if you expand on this.

Cool game.

-Art is nice, though I swear there was a game on the DS with almost the same thing going on. For the character linework I mean.

-The Details portrait of the Rogue is a duplicate of the Cleric. Also, if you select Equipment, when you press cancel it will send you to the Details instead of where'd you expect. Also also, when you press cancel on the party screen, it sends you to the main menu instead of Party/Start screen.

-I'm not a big fan of the Darkest Dungeon combat, but it seems like you have the basics down pat. Though with missing sfx and lack of punchy visuals, it does fall flat right now during combat.

-I beat the first battle and went to level up, but I notice that my knight is Level 3? Shouldn't he only be at level 2? Seems like a bug, or else he gets a bonus first level.

-I keep seeing DR, what is that? Dodge rate?

-I lose my Cleric on the first turn of the 2nd fight, with 2 high rolls from the enemy. I also misunderstood, since my Knight healed from the level up, I assumed it was a heal after every fight, and I glazed over the other party member HP values. My Cleric was probably low.

-Luckily Clerics are nerds, so we slay the Manticore, with the 3 other members living to tell the tale.

-I level the knight again, and it jumped from 3 to 5. So most definitely something silly there.

Guess that's it. Cool looking game, keep up the good work.

-With 16:10 screen, ui of main menu trails offscreen. Moving to 16:9 now.

-Load out UI is quite snazzy. But I have no clue what I'm doing, and continue to the tutorial.

-Tab to continue text isn't bad per se, but it will make people who want to alt-tab(or shift-tab for steam overlay) quite upset probably.

-I don't like how I need glasses every time I change the zoom level. And, texture details like the road lines flicker when panning from a distance for some reason.

-Order move lines feel intuitive, and I like how I can either extend or branch off from any point of it. I haven't played them, but reminds me of doorkickers.

-It's odd how you get a stat summary when hovering over your tanks, but not when you hover over the squad list on the left. Instead, you have to click them.

-Tutorial 2, I find it slightly silly that it starts by telling me I can edit the path. Seems kind of late for that, when movement was introduced last mission. Could tack it onto the end of the initial explanation. Though continuing on I see why, you talk more about waypoints in general, fair enough.

-Got to mission with 4 tanks. More going on here, and it felt like there was a little more nuance on how to approach it. Though, I feel like the minimal intel makes it more like a guessing game of where enemies will be and where they're facing.

-The mission for destroying the base feels like a step up in difficulty, have to restart a few times. When using the quick move option, I note that it tends to 'change formation' which is annoying. Causes them to run into eachother when changing lanes.

-Decide to do some upgrades, it looks like I have infinite parts? So I just upgrade the engines and armor since there seems to be no downsides nor cost.

-Did the last mission and got the whole crew out. Compared to the previous mission, it was kind of a walk in the park, though perhaps beginner's luck. I do wish the non commander led tanks had some sort of mook portrait, so you feel more bad if they die. As is, those tanks feel like pawns, gameplay nonwithstanding.

-I didn't seem to have bad performance, but idk what the FPS is, probably locked 60? I have a mid end card, 1660 Super. Main bad thing was the stutters. It happened sometimes when a new tutorial prompt showed up, or when a bunch of tanks were firing at once, maybe more.

-Controls should be fine on paper, but I found that I kept accidentally doing group moves by mistake, since I was wanting to cancel a force look, and didn't realize I had more units selected. idk, maybe you could use another key to separate the look and group move command? Like middle click.

Quite fun already, keep it up.

-Enemy pathfinding size seems a bit big, he should have been able to close the distance and attack but he was bumping to the enemy above me and couldn't get closer. See screenshot.

-I feel like the enemy turns take a little too long to play out. Slightly boring waiting for them.

-Oh the game is already over. I restarted and looked a little bit, talked with the wayward soul and mr legs. Guess that's it.

-I decided to fight once more, and when I attack the left enemy from behind on the first turn, he's now stuck in an infinite walk(waited 2+ minutes) and his turn won't end! Very bad bug, at least add a timeout for the AI.

Well not much to it now, but the framework seems fine. Keep up the good work.

Played in Emu, Later.

-It's been awhile since I played a GB RPG, but the UI feels lacking. I guess mainly the map, combat and rest screens are better. Well, I do wish that the skill names would be listed rather than 1 2 3, but it is what it is.

-Pressing (nintendo) B while on the attack-skills-run-etc selection will cause it to move the box down then back up but won't actually do anything. Just seems unintentional.

-You can get an enemy encounter when you step onto a special event or floor exit, which feels weird. ie walk onto an 'adventurer' and do a fight, then immediately get the option to greet him.

-Using half tile movement for the map was a good idea, makes the small area feel bigger, even if at first I thought it felt too slow.

-Floor 8 now, the enemies are getting stronger, but it seems like the Strength I get from the camps is basically a stat boost, so we are too. So far, the mage Ai is quite OP, since his spells one shot most enemies, cost only 2 mp, and he has lots of it.

-Don't really understand what the icons in the top right of the map. Battle also has some icon in the top right, I guess denoting whose turn it is, but that seems extraneous when you already have your character name displayed.

-When a party member is attacked and they aren't active, you can't see what their new HP is.

-Well Ai died because I got bored and accidentally made him attack instead of cast a spell, oops. Level 10 now with no rest in site and no healing items, I didn't respect that it would be this long of a stretch between rest points. Also nearly out of stamina.

-I try to last, but with random enemies getting to attack first, I get whittled down on F11 next to the exit. Adam dies by casting parry for the first time, then learning it doesn't work how I think(100% block + some damage to enemy), so he just dies.

Well I'm done playing now. It was alright I guess, gameplay felt a little bland until sudden difficulty.

> I feel bad that you didn't have a good time

I may have come off wrong, it's fine for where it's at, and I had fun with that mindset of playing an early game. But yes, there's plenty of things that could be done to make it better. Good luck with it!

Playing on controller.

-Why is the stick not also assigned to the directionals? Cmon man.

-Lockon button name kind of insinuates it's only for locking on, so I was expecting the choice of focus attack or wide attack while doing so. But, it just seems to be an alt firing mode and nothing else (locking on is purely aesthetic).

-Going through a couple stages, it feels basic but has some promise. I like the concept of a bunch of smaller levels strung together

-Beating the area boss felt really unsatisfying, where's the boatload of score and pickups from the corpse? I know you don't have the latter yet, but ya get it. Speaking of, score feels underwhelming to collect, mainly the sound effect's fault.

-Visual Bug: If you pause while dying, the game will keep going for a bit to respawn the player before freezing again. But enemy bullets and stuff is still visible until you unpause. Just thought it looked weird.

-Gameplay Bug: I respawned, then before an enemy even showed up I was killed by bullets that came off screen. Must be bullets from before the respawn.

-It seems like enemies after a certain point won't shoot anymore? It would be nice if that was made obvious somehow, like they start short circuiting or change color.

-If you pause the game, then click with the mouse, it will remove focus from the pause menu buttons(can't refocus). Luckily, you can press pause to make it close the menu.

-Beat game, it's a nice start. Hopefully there are more things gameplay wise, like pickups and a UI, next time.

Keep up the good work.

-I find it odd that my guy got up on his own, maybe I'm just too used to other games, they tend to make you press a button or wiggle the stick when you're collapsed in an event.

-Initial tutorial prompt is too much, hard to retain all of this at once before you even play. [later] I realize after the fact I (probably) could have noodled the controls at that point, but I assumed it was forcing me to talk with her first.

-Case in point, I forgot about the dodge immediately after the tutorial until mid way through the lizard fight.

-Surprised nothing happened when walking into the monster mouth, I assume he's the guy we're serving?

-Beat lizard guy, he felt fair for the most part but the dig attack suddenly getting an AOE range boost felt not well communicated, and arbitrary. The prompt for the navigator said to drag but I'm click n dragging the dots and it does nothing? I click the glowing dot to continue to the blacksmith.

-I wish it was communicated that the boss restart was a timed ability that leaves you open, I assumed it was a debug hotkey so I didn't have to beat the lizard over and over (boring). Depending on how long these boss rush segments are, maybe a life system / checkpoint would be better than per boss resets, so it feels less bad to die outright.

-As for the blacksmith fight, it's OK so far, but I feel the attacks are less obvious than the lizard. The fact that one attack does a screen wide cross shaped floor attack kept throwing me for a loop due to how understated it is.

-Gameplay in general is alright, decent fun but it feels very repetitive since I just do q q q, then q e when I want the power slash. Since the weaves aren't combinatoric, adding a third one might be fine? Since you don't have items that feels like the direction you would go as a player, unless you can switch out your weave selection with a button, like equip sets. Also, random critical procs in a boss rush seems kind of antithetical to the genre, unless you plan on adding classes where it's all about that, like an Assassin?

-Opening the skill menu, I now see that the slash weave actually give a big stat boost, not obvious at all. Should be an icon around the character or the healthbar. Ohhh, it's denoted by those pips by the top left I think. Not intuitive, looks too much like the special gauge it's next too (one of them is the same color).

-Having obstacles in the blacksmith fight is slightly aggravating, but I assume it's like that on purpose.

-Bug: he did the donut attack by jumping into the  right side wall corner, but the visual wasn't there then suddenly it flashed. Bit weird.

-So I tried like 8+ times but eventually real died twice to the blacksmith, I give up.

Not sure where this is going, keep up the good work.

Thanks for the feedback! Much appreciated.

One of the customers was staring at a vase in a case with an exclamation mark over their head for a long time. Couldn't seem to interact with them

You should be able to interact with the customers to 'open' the case and give the item so they can head to the counter. There isn't a highlight yet though, so either you were missing them or you were also in range of the counter itself and it took priority.

When I pressed the button to adjust camera zoom I didn't realize there would be a second option afterwards

Yeah, will add a proper icon and visualization so it's obvious what each mode is doing.

 I wish I had more inventory slots!

I was thinking about increasing the inventory as an upgrade path, but I think I may ditch it and instead let you access the Storage whenever you interact with a display. Maybe I can have a sense of it, where if the shop is open you need to still lug stuff around(to restock items when more customers show up, and later you can have hired hands do it too).

 It all feels very polished. Just keep working at it and you'll have something great on your hands.

Thanks for the words, it's encouraging. We'll keep putting in the effort to make the best game we can.

Thanks for the feedback! Hopefully guns, haggling tuning, and more will be there next time.

-Shadow pop in in the forest intro is appalling. It's 2 feet in front of me. And personally, I would prefer if it was consistent and used the tile based movement instead of a bespoke first person. But it's fine I guess.

-You're probably aware, but the button prompts clash with the entire visual style of your game.

-Texture LOD is too aggressive. If you take a step forward after starting the first level, the bricks of the pit's wall ahead of you will all pop in. And if you undo a bunch or reset the level, all the textures need to be restreamed in or whatever in front of your eyes. Game doesn't seem that intensive, couldn't you add an option to always load the best LOD or some such?

-New chain/blocks are fun. And I haven't said it yet but the polish is great. Lots of care put into this.

-The level Hold feels like filler. Why is it interesting to have a gate get in the way of a block? All it does is add the step of shooting the eye keeping it closed. Subjectively, first level I didn't care for at all.

-Angle is the first level where I get stumped for a bit. Really fun puzzle for how simple it is. Also, behind the gate that has the block for completing that level, there is a hole in the corner edge that shows out of bounds geometry.

-Would be nice if restarting the level a bunch in a row, didn't each have its own undo. Much like how you don't include an undo for each time you bump into an antiwalk tile. Though speaking of, for some reason there isn't undo for bumping into the red no-walk-around-corners repeatedly in levels, but in the hub each one has its own undo.

-Not bad per se, but the outline shader draws in front of the red no-walk-around-corners vfx. When an object is behind it like the edge of a block or a gate beyond it, the outline sticks out and makes the effect less nice to my eyes. And as a bonus, there is clipping/flickering here when it occurs on top of  a one way door.

-I notice that when reclaiming the arrow, the wall version of it will stick around for a second after it already rematerialized in the bow. Not sure if intended.

-Got stumped on Push, Release, and the hub puzzles. Normally I would move on to the next area, but since I can't I went to sleep. Next day, I finished Push and Release quite quickly, funny how easy they seem now.

-I couldn't figure how to get the 3rd block free for the locked thing, so instead I went for the new levels. Took awhile but I got there. Extraction wasn't that hard to figure out, but Slice is very opaque. I can't envision a way to get through the pit and walk to the exit. So I take a break and sleep again.

-Slice is actually really easy, but I don't like it. I was strung along by the level name and the fact there's a button plus slice mechanism. Basically, I went down a rabbithole of trying to use that mechanism somehow(but it seems like it isn't possible to ride the blocks without dying), instead of just doing what I show below. Though, there's a good chance this is an unintended solution.

-The extra levels for doing the hub puzzle don't seem to have a perma path unlock after getting to them. That isn't great, makes it annoying if you want to revisit them later, or you beat one and want to go elsewhere but are pressured to stay so you don't have to do the hub puzzle again. Though the puzzle isn't that hard once you know, this expands to all future hub puzzles and may be more of a problem if they get more lengthy or hard to remember. But for the average player going once through, the system is probably fine as is.

-Spent more time trying to get all 3 blocks to the switches. But, I'll give up for now and maybe return later. I feel less motivated now that the levels are 100% on the save screen.

So overall, I had a great time!  'Beat' it in ~2-3 hours, 6 to eventually wrap up what I was stuck on while listening to other things. Already feels like a near finished game, content notwithstanding. Puzzle design is fairly good. Could be improved upon, but I wonder how much of that lacking feeling is just from playing the starter puzzles. Later puzzles tending to be better.

Good luck with the continued development.

-Having to press a button to proceed dialogue is exhausting. And I can't press ENTER to proceed either. And in general, text options would be nice like instant text / display speed.

-Soveration isn't a word, and unlike the other made up words, using it in place of a nation's title(Republic, Union, State, etc) is plain weird. Or at least the word sounds like that, and not part of a made up name. At any rate, that in particular bothered me for some reason, though I assume it's some soviet-adjacent thing(but in that case just use the words that mean that?).

-Why is the speed up from running so minimal? I almost thought it wasn't doing anything. At that speed, may as well make it the default and remove running entirely. Though I think the headbobbing makes it seem less useful, because counting the seconds to cross a distance it seems to be ~1.5x faster, but visually the speed doesn't look much different.

-Having to re-present evidence to ask all the questions it spawns is silly.

-The shadow/focus that appears when selecting evidence from the Pieces screen is wrong when in 16:10 fullscreen.

-Not having Shelly walk down to the front gate after talking with her is jarringly inconsistent(just said she would join you), since you have David walk to and fro.

-Not sure if it's intentional, every time I open the pause menu it tells me that the game saves in the bottom right.

-The darkening effect when you choose what evidence to present to people doesn't reach to the vertical edges in 16:10.

-Earfold being the only indicator of more pages on the Pieces page is a bit too minimal I think. Missed it for awhile.

-I got the 'end' of being told the demo was over, but it seems like there is so much I didn't get done, I can't believe that was the end of the available gameplay(only two solutions after all that busywork of walking around and questioning?).

-Hiding the vial in the car trunk is kind of annoying, I was about to give up before checking the cars. Not even a hint from the dialogue, mentioning the ARC is in the car would clue the player in to check the car out, at least. Though, it seems like the vial can only pickup some leaves(I think it was from someone using an escape route), and nothing else. But that seems like a dead end, since the dog thinks nothing of it.

-I am stuck, only with the first two questions of Detail of the Incident answered correctly. This pales against last time, where I was able to 100% the garbage yard demo. I must be missing something obvious, because I'm not getting traction and I'm not having fun. After a couple hours I give up.

I like the new visualizations of what may have happened with some evidence(ghost guys). Writing seems a bit better than last time. Overall, it was decent fun but getting stuck made the already slow movement and iffy conversation UI really aggravating. Good luck with the continued development.

Haven't played in a while, I see a lot has changed.

-Enter tutorial, seems longer but more comprehensive. New ninja moves for going through windows and etc is fun. I assume you know that the item highlight shader is completely broken when rotating the camera? Also, the control cheat sheet, for controller at least, is on the small side.

-Did item section. Found that holding DPAD plus RSTICK to select from your held items is unwieldy. Still better than when there was no UI, and you had to eyeball a highlight on the hip items or whatever. Catching projectiles is fun, though I couldn't seem to do it after seeing him throw the star, only when I spam the button before he does it. I then beat the fight section and start the game proper.

-I have to say that there are so many controls that it feels overwhelming. It takes time to remember what strokes do what I want, which isn't great in an action game. Will get better in time though.

-Seems like picking up bodies if they're under a roof will fail sometimes? I hold Y and it cancels part way through the start of the animation. I know it works, because I killed a guy and was able to pick up his body earlier. This bug is noticeable on the closest enemy of the camp on the porch, as well as the ladies and other enemies in the building near the street facing exit.

-Pots are so big, I was disappointed that I couldn't hide inside of them.

-If you're carrying a body and walk off any ledge, like the short one from the porch to the ground, you will noticeably speed up your walking for the duration of the air time. This also occurs for other slow movement like crouching.

-Doesn't seem like the lamp affects stealth at all, even if you're inside the funny tall grass inches from a guy. Could be balanced so that you can drop lamps that act as distractions?

-Killed the first target. I then went into the forest down the other side of the river(after crossing the archer bridge), curious if I could go to a new area. Instead it ended the game and I have to restart. BOGUS! Should have said "Abandon Mission?" as I was leaving, otherwise I wouldn't have done it. Seething a bit as I just finished decimating the first house.

-Going through again it was more violent, but it seems like the enemies are blind and the choking after grab is an easy way to kill even if they are attacking you head on.

-Things go well and I kill spa man easily. Seems like I'm getting used to the game more. Also seem to have the controls ready in my mind now.

-Woops I died partway to guy 3, and I can't choose another character. This is the same problem as accidentally ending the mission early, I thought I could keep going to the map with the other assassins if I die. Having them follow to the mission by default seems better.

Don't really feel like playing more. Game seems solid, besides where it's broken. Keep up the good work.

Note: When I say fullscreen, I mean borderless fullscreen.

-For some reason this happened to the master audio slider? I was in windowed mode([later] also in fullscreen) when it happened, I was using mouse. It also seems to be clickable from the other menus, like Graphics, which shoot it up to 100% or whatever.

-Logbook text(the 'I's) seems to break for no reason when scrolling through???

-Backing out of the subsections of the Logbook, it doesn't remember my place, and instead puts me at the top of the log book. I assume this is a bug, since the Status menu remembers where you were last when exiting Logbook, Weapons, etc. And maybe it's just due to my color blindness, but the selection color difference here doesn't stand out at all. I kind of have to squint to make sure my selection is right. The Status screen is fine since it has a bar on the right that acts as a cursor.

-Actually getting to the gameplay, it looks fantastic. Just like last time, but I recently got a high hz monitor, so it looks even better all smooth like.

-If you move the mouse then go back to controller, it will make the crosshair visible while not aiming, causing it to flick across the screen until you use the right stick. This is minor, but it's more annoying here since I'm alt tabbing to write as I go.

-Realized I can't use DPAD if I wanted to, for player movement. Just a bit odd, a lot of modern Metroidvainias allow that by default. My brother for instance prefers DPAD movement in these games.

-Got Dash Thruster. It seems like the text is broken for it. And since I have all these problems let me say what I have: 1080p, win10.

-And while I'm at it, this is the text under the Map Screen. I honestly can't tell if it's broken up on purpose or another visual bug.

-Directly after opening the map screen, the room name and coordinates will usually overlap. Once you move the cursor though, it's fine.

-I decide to restart the game, despite that annoying long intro. But all the text bugs I posted are still there. I go to the menu to try out the audio slider, and I realize that the directions for the sliders are backwards!!! On controller that is, holding the button then tilting right will move it left, and vice versa. Also the audio slider bug mentioned near the beginning doesn't happen with controller, but it does once I try to use the mouse. It also broke the Menu Volume slider, and it's just like the first visual I showed you, but now it's below the also broken master slider by the height between them initially.

-Gameplay is good so far, I quite like the ability to shoot while grabbing a ledge.

-After you release aiming with LTrigger, it will show the mouse without decorations.

-I got the kickslide bracers. It seems like when the menu is opened after getting these equipment items, it will default to Keyboard prompts in the description. It also happened when I got the dash upgrade, but I thought that perhaps I used my mouse and didn't notice. Also, the lettering, just like Dash Thruster, is all messed up. Lastly, its box was rainbow for first time seeing it. Which is neat, but it didn't seem to have a change in outline when focused, which made me think it was borked somehow.

-In this room at least, if I stand around here, I can 'throw' the weapon but instead it gets stuck in the wall.

-Also, the UI of this weapon(ammo and box outline ) will show up on top of the pause menus, ie Map, Status, etc.

-Lack of contact damage sfx is annoying when fighting the flying grapes swarm enemy thing. Keep losing HP because I don't notice one swarmling next to me. Though seeing the entry for the Bloat Fly, I only now realize that I can just walk past them.

-I got the shockgun. And now I see why you didn't bind the DPAD to movement. Perhaps pop up the weapon switch HUD even with only one weapon, so the player knows it has a purpose sooner?

-Got the wings. Menu text kerning changes now on different button focus I guess? Also, unlike the other equipment, it seems like the wings displayed the controller prompt instead of keyboard on first collection.

-Beat final boss. Got everything, but only 91% equipment. The fight is OK, but after the first death I realized it was that one boss from Super Metroid, so having a free safe spot in the corners made it easier. I also started using my grenades, and that helped in beating it 2nd try.

Overall, game is fairly fun. Enemies are a bit of a pushover, including the mini bosses. But, that's difficult to tune for this sort of game. Hope the UI feedback is helpful and not some weird one off thing for me. Otherwise, I felt like I had very little to comment on. Anyways, game's cool. Looking forward to future versions of it.

Anything in particular you noticed?

If I remember right, the feeding sounds, opening the can, pulling it out, and placing the yums, sounded a bit harsh on the ears in particular.

-Text caret blinking but not having focus on the name prompt is bad, miscommunicates to the player.

-Audio is too loud by default. Like 2-3x louder than everything else on my PC.

-Going through tutorial. But I'm stuck? It says to buy elixirs from the shop, but I see no items in my list.

-I restarted the game but I see now. I thought the WEAPON, ARMOR, ACC, were related to the two icons below them, because my eyes were glazing over the icons themselves. I went to the Acc section and all is well. I may be dumb, but you could avoid that confusion by using colors or tab style UI so it's obvious all the icons are grouped with that specific section.

-Double click to remove item from hero inventory is slightly annoying, since click is how you equip/dequip. So you have to be careful, if you want to do that back to back. Why not use Rclick to move items instead?

-Having heroes exist on both sides of the 'inventory' for the embark menu is weird, inconsistent with the rest of the menus. At least, have an outline or some other indicator in the home box that says that hero is currently on the embark side too.

-I try to click on this node, and it just fails and moves the camera for no reason? Other nodes seem fine. [later] I beat the enemy on the right of this node, and I still can't walk there from that position.

-It would be nice if I could use keyboard, or hold some mouse button to allow panning the map camera, instead of moving my mouse to the edges of the screen.

-Battle mode. Clicking to drag the characters will fail if it's near their feet. Highlighted attacked enemies on selecting unit is neat, but I feel like it'd be better by showing all player/enemy targets simultaneously with line connections so you don't need to click around. Though, if you only have access to ~3 units it's less useful.

-If you click and hold a unit, then move you mouse off the grid and release(unit stops moving), then the next time you click it will teleport the unit last held.

-I finished the quest. I only used the elixir on my swordman twice. But, all my unit's elixirs are set to 1. Seems like a bug that decrements all those items simultaneously.

-With the inventory items being so few, I wish I could view all weapons simultaneously, and likewise for the other categories Armor and Acc.

-Unlocked research, why are there two Rings I listed?

Think I'm done now. Rough, but I see where you're going. Cool stuff, keep up the good work.

-Having to press on the dialogue is a little odd, most VN let you advance by clicking anywhere besides a button. It also means you have a high likelihood of the mouse covering up the text, unless you put it in the corner. Which effectively means you have to click in the bottom right all the time. Also, I can't use ENTER to proceed the dialogue.

-Going through the game, straight forward but it's what I expected. Art is nice for what it is, audio sfx  could be improved. Music is fine. I like how Beau can put his paws on the dialogue box, seems apt for this kind of game.

-The dialogue "Look down boss" has '<null>' for the character tag.

-Did both endings. It's decent fun, but I don't have much else to say.

Keep up the good work.

we need something that shows you cant pick something up when both inventory slots are full

Not sure how best to handle inventory. Might just ditch the idea of local inventory and put everything into Storage, and Storage is always accessible. For the shop at least.

there's a book clipping the scales... what was your artist thinking?

Don't worry, I noticed it but left it there(it's part of the shop scene) since it kind of looked like it was propped underneath to make it level like a table leg, which I thought was funny.

along the wall, and objects clip into it (also maybe it would look better if items like the teddies "look at" the right side, even if I've made the furniture face the wall unknowingly)

I don't think the clipping into the wall decoration is that bad. But, probably shouldn't happen. Item facing direction is fine to let the player choose I think. For example, if you put the long table by the window, you may want the teddies to face outside, or you may instead want them to face inwards, so you can get a better look yourself. But, the rotation of items will later be closeable by the player, not static.

just about managed to get to $300 by the end, $200 seemed pretty easy if you remember to charge double+ for high demand stuff

This is kind of challenging, because like you I can get $300 fairly easily by planning ahead and squeezing for profit, but it seems like novice players really have a hard time doing that. I think they underestimate the need to understand the systems, or rather I'm not communicating that well. This was also the case with Recettear, most people who bounce off don't understand how to effectively play. Short of spelling it out to the player with a tutorial or tips, it will be a hard sell. Because, the alternative is making the game way too easy for players who know what they're doing, while fair for novice players. I suppose that's why Recettear lets you keep your money after failing a debt and resetting, so novice players can keep up with the pace but suffer having to go through the days again.

do we eventually offer a "no thanks" option?

Yeah that seems about right. Though it's a little funny how you can do it by just offering insane prices right now. Not worth the time spent though.

I think we should have a small time delay between dirt spots spawning and giving the customer the "disgusted" mood - the shop would be pristine, a customer would spawn tracks just before I start the trade and they'd be immediately disgusted without giving me a chance to even see the dirt (I think that's what happened anyway)

Nice, that's the impression I wanted more or less. But I didn't add customers getting disgusted from dirt yet, so it's all in your head right now. Later it will be like you want, where after a point they will become disgusted with the dirt.

Ohhh that's what you meant by clipping. I thought it was the same height. Oops.

Thanks for the video! This type of feedback is very useful.

New patch released.

-Fixed bug I accidentally introduced last minute.

-Customer haggling is more than 2x faster.

What do you mean no continues? You mean like to continue from the phase you died? But I still plan to make the first difficulty easier and somehow keep it interesting with patterns.

Yeah I meant continue where you died after your last life, but lose all your score or whatever. To me at least, being able to fumble through a bullet hell before later mastering(to my ability), is way more enjoyable than being stumped and redoing a stage a bunch. To be fair, right now the stages are really easy before the boss, so it's just a time loss of < minute.

Thank you! Good luck with your game too!

Thanks mate, glad to know some of my commentary was useful.

Cool, sounds like you got a good idea of what progress to make. Here's a couple clarifications and thoughts on things you said:

Hard to read interactables has been a common complaint, I'll eventually try to do something about it, perhaps play with color coding more, I've been using a limited 64 colors palette

Maybe use a toggleable outline shader for all interactables?  Or some other finder thing. Though that may look messy given the pixel art. Guess that's a bit of a bandaid fix. 

I'm aware there is an ammo balancing issue

You probably wrote this as you read, but to be clear, this statement of low ammo was spurred by the confusion of the ammo display. After I figured it out, it seemed fine. Though, I did use the pistol for most of the way to Rumia.

I didn't really want the teleporters to be jarringly fast, you could say the animation is for "flavor" rather than any other gameplay reasons, enemies are supposed to come out of the teleporters when alarms sound and the animation will be helpful in being able to react as they come

I think the animation is fine, it's just a little long when you want to quickly go between rooms. Or, one time I accidentally got sucked into the walking-towards-telepad animation when walking near. As for enemies, you can just have the walk-to animation be for them in all instances. And, the player only for cinematic parts like the start and end of the level. But, it isn't that bad as is. I just have a certain taste for minimizing cutscenes(no control) in gameplay.

I've been noticing the dullness myself lately even while playtesting, I have things in mind to spice it up like enemies spawning out of screen as reinforcements, more traps, puzzles, etc. In the roguelite mode I noticed it gets more interesting when there are more than two enemies shooting at you, going through a map definitely shouldn't feel like an empty walk through a park.

Some other ideas could be, locking the room behind you until you kill all the enemies; so you don't take pot shots from the hallway, or enemies that spot you will notify other enemies in their own line of sight. Though, idk how hard that would be when you have the alarm system. But I don't think I ever saw an enemy cause it, only cameras.

You fell victim to me not properly pointing out that the fridges could be used to set checkpoints, that's another thing I plan to improve in the future.

I did find that out, and I was a bit surprised. So that wasn't the problem, I died once to Rumia, I think once more in the 2nd half, then a 3rd when walking into that acid. idk if me having to restart the level at that point was intended.

Also I don't think you found any secrets, perhaps I hid them way too well, I'm thinking I should have the AI companion at least try to point out the first one for free in order to train the player to look for them.

I did find a duct behind a crate near the (first?)blue keycard locked area. I went back there after getting the key, and it had some goodies and a shotgun I think, but its spread was so big that I opted not to use it.

Also a bug I forgot to mention. I got to the yellow keycard area, and I tried to open the door without the key several times. Later I returned with the key, but surprisingly the door was already opened. Did it remember me trying to open earlier, and auto open after collecting the key? Kind of odd.

Thank you for all the feedback! It helping me refining my ideas a lot!

Glad it's of use.

-Amount of dialogue, continuing into the tutorial feels a bit much. I know you're trying to show off the characters, but being constantly interrupted while you're trying to learn the basics for an action game is annoying.

-The first enemy in the tutorial, its sprite faces right. It feels wrong when it started shooting me without turning(I wanted to sneek on it). Maybe make it more symmetrical, or some such.

-Character art seems a bit dark? Compared to the game at least it doesn't fit as well in the colorful landscape.

-Jumping from the tutorial end to the real game instantly was a bit jarring. Since it was stated the tutorial was a simulation, and you go into a telepad just to end up on a real telepad right after. I mean, for the moments you control Cirno before the conversation pops up and tells you it's the real deal.

-Being unable to force reload my gun, combined with no way to see the base gun ammo is annoying. It may incentivize the player to shoot until they reload before entering an encounter. Also, I notice that it won't reload after the last shot, instead I have to press shoot to make it reload an empty mag. Which seems pointless.

-Gun(and other) SFX could be better. I don't see why you can't base most of it off of sounds from touhou. 

-Environment is very saturated, and kind of blends with the important objects too much. ie I missed a camera because it didn't stick out(or that's my cope), or how interactables like the pipe valve wheel is only reasonable because it shows a giant crosshair around it when you approach.

-Having to press 'i' to pick a gun from inventory, and only having like 10 shots with it makes me never want to use them. Make the ammo a lot more, or go for a 'pistol' + 'temp gun' setup where you can easily swap them. Also idk how to de equip a gun.

-Got a shotgun, and this weapon now has a ammo indicator, is the icicle gun just missing it? I have a lot of ammo, so I guess it isn't a problem now. [later] Oh I see now. The reason I was confused is that when you spawn, you have the Icicle Gun. But, it doesn't show the ammo for it. It's only when you equip it from the menu that the ammo indicator shows up, so I thought it wasn't the default pistol.

-Teleport animation feels a little long, considering it's suppose to be instantaneous. I don't think you need to do the cutscene walking to them, unless it's for a story thing.

-You can walk into the top side of obstacles, so Cirno's feet go a couple pixels past their edge. This is good for game feel, but half the things in the game get the sprite ordering wrong, so her feet show up on top of the sprite, instead of behind it.

-Game is fairly dull, but the sudden Touhou match with Rumia was a fun twist on it.

-I walked into some acid and now I must restart the level. Well, guess I'll stop here.

The idea of the game is fun, but the execution so far is lacking gameplay and polish wise. Dialogue is decent fun, but I do think there was too much to start with. Maybe section off some of the tutorial dialogue behind optional events, where the player presses a button to get help if they're stuck on a section of it. Or, do a thing where you allow players to do things while the dialogue talks at you. idk

Keep up the good work.

-Walked a couple steps then the tamagachi popped up, I can't seem to exit the screen after feeding. Guess it's time to check the controls.

-Did some walking, big thing I suppose is an enemy. I walk away since it doesn't look like my shots are doing anything. I feed my pet in the arcade, but then the monster is hitting me and I can't see anything because it obscures the entire camera. I then die or something but I don't see.

-I don't find much in the arcade, then try to go up this ramp/cave in next to it. I fall down and can't get out. I fumble around and see some new area(where I'm not visible), before it starts glitching out and showing me previous rooms. Guess that's it.

Not much to the game right now, and I don't think I appreciate it as much since I never got into tamagachi. But, I see the appeal of linking that with your ammo and health in this alien setting.