I love the deliberate level progression. Excellent work on it. But the controls are very unresponsive. I really dislike there being momentum attached to the camera movement as I was fighting the controls more than the levels themselves which can be quite frustrating. But good work. The simple visuals and the song work well together as well. Very clean.
Love the concept and the design of the character. Hella metal-boxing vibes. I'm digging it.
So as far as gameplay is concerned It could definitely use some work. The power system feels really taxing when you are trying to recover or play conservatively. Turtling felt really bad as even if the guy wasnt hitting me I'm not regening as max speed when holding guard, which I kind of always wanted to since they just kind of jab you most of the time and letting them jab you or trading jabs just makes you lose hp too fast. I just felt like I was trying to regen my stamina most of the time rather than fighting and I never could get . I'd almost say you might want to scrap it altogether as it just kind of punishes the player more than encourage strategic play.
I also felt like the game could use some animation canceling especially when I would want to dodge after leaving guard or jabbing. There should not be recovery on leaving guarding just straight up imo. The recovery time on the animations feels really long; however, the recovery on smash attacks is too short. As I felt like if I dodged a smash I'm only really rewarded with dodging it and I feel like I should be able to get a free hit in as well.
A percentage hp recovery between rounds would be nice as well.
This game would work better with a few more buttons so I personally feel like you should keep working on the game! A cool idea would be if there were high attacks that you could duck and a cross counter bonus damage system if you hit them while dodging to reward skillful play.
I like the little riff, it added to the grungy feel of the world.
I'd encourage you to explore similar released games such as Punch-out! or brawlers to get a better understanding of improving the game feel as this has great potential with such solid visual assets.
So TL;DR
Player Character needs a buff and the enemies a bit of a nerf. Great visuals (tbh might be the best for the jam that I have seen so far) and concept. Looking forward to updates if they come!
Cheers!
I love the concept of this game. Its hits a lot of genres niches that I enjoy mostly fighting games and rhythm. I also love manually casting spells as a game mechanic always so hell yeah with that.
It took me around 10-ish tries to beat it. The spell combination that gave me the win was frost bolt and annihilation. With the freeze ray as something that helped a lot in the later levels if I needed to hit more than 1 enemy in the row.
I'm guessing that the reasoning for this was because that moving lanes is a huge turn investment. And with how quickly you get swarmed in the later levels, you need perfect execution of the spells and minimum movement. Correcting mis-inputs is counter intuitive as you have to press a button between the beat in order to reset the input buffer.
My best recommendation for this game from a design standpoint would be to implement a combo system similar to Legend of Legaia, Where inputs that have overlapping commands at the ends can be combo'd together. This would make moving and mis-inputs way less punishing to the player AND It would make the flow of the game a lot better and increase the skill ceiling.
An example of this would be the input R0 > R0 > R2 > B0. This would move the player down and then let them finish the frost bolt command without having to input a third R0. Another example would be lighting bolt into fireball with the input being R3 > R0 > B0 > B3.
Outside of that, There could be better visual feedback for what button I am pressing. Sometimes I got my button inputs fumbled while holding and lose a lot of turns due to not realizing the mistake. I tended to look at the hold number mostly and I think if the number was colored coordinated with the button it would make the clarity a lot better. A more asset heavy answer would be moving the buttons from the left top of the timeline to the middle where the beat marker is to put within the direct vision of the player.
I think also if the beats would on the quarter note instead of the half note the game would feel a lot smoother personally.
The game needed more sound feedback for a few things like activating a spell or getting hit. It would definitely add a lot to the experience.
Also it took me a while to realize the adventurer guys absorbed a whole attack. I think maybe removing the shield from the sprite after its invul is gone would definitely help send that message across to the player.
But yeah this game is sick as hell. Looking forward to updates if you ever do! Awesome idea.
Cheers!
