A game with a lot of potential, great art, decent sfx, and an interesting concept, deserving of a high rating, but here is some critique:
Readability
- The game doesn't explain how to play it. As others have pointed out, your first goal is to protect the "jukebox", but this isn't explained anywhere. A typical way to solve this is to give the jukebox a health bar, so it can tank multiple hits, and immediately explaining to the player that they have to protect it (especially once they see it taking damage).
- The starting area is confusing. The cat ramen shop makes you think you can buy or at least interact with it, but this is just a waste of precious time.
- The starting area also becomes trivial after a few upgrades. You shouldn't have to replay the tutorial every time you die when you've already completed it. There is some merit to making the levels randomly generated for a game like this for a similar reason, although fixed levels are understandable too, especially for a game jam.
- The abilities of the enemies aren't explained. Do they attack me? How much health do they have?
- It's easy to walk past jukeboxes later on, as they are hidden in the shadows. I didn't even know there were multiple jukeboxes until 10+ runs in.
- The starting tutorial provides buttons to switch weapons, but it isn't explained which weapons you actually have.
Readability was the biggest problem for me. The first couple of minutes were very frustrating, which is the last thing you want from a game.
Even just a description of how to play on the itch.io page would help. (Tip: in any game jam, abuse the itch.io description!).
Pacing
The game shouldn't start as soon as you spawn, and ideally there should also be downtime between stages (This is assuming the main gameplay is the combat and not the movement, as I think it should be). The jukebox at the start was interesting. You could limit the health drain to only activate when a jukebox is playing. Maybe it powers your weapons as well, making you defenseless outside of them. Or you could make the jukebox areas larger and larger and gradually introduce parkour challenges, or add more points to defend, to increase the challenge and force more movement. Or maybe you can activate your weapons/health drain/parkour abilities manually, so you have to be strategic about when and where to activate it. There's lots of potential here. But putting constant pressure on the player gets exhausting after a while.
Core Gameplay
Although the core gameplay has a lot of potential, there are several issues:
- Combat: The combat is pretty one dimensional, I've only seen two enemies, and they seem to behave about the same. Additionally, since the core gameplay seems to involve around the combat so much, attacking shouldn't come down to button-mashing. Either holding the fire button should auto-attack, or the enemies should be redesigned so that you actually have to think and pay attention. Spamming attacks is fun for a while, but gets tiring quick.
- Level design: Some enemies are spaced too close together. It's actually just a waste of time to fight them. Killing one or two will already fully heal you, so there is no need to fight the rest. An overheal system or another small reward for killing enemies besides healing (coins or something) would help with this.
- Progression: The upgrade system doesn't feel like it accounts for progress. Whether I die at the second fight with 0 enemies killed or at the fourth after killing 100+, it feels like I get the same amount of points. Since it takes several minutes to get back to stage 4, I feel like that should get more than one upgrade point. The current progression actually encourages a grindy play style that intentionally dies early, to farm more upgrade points.
- Movement: For a game that is all about saving time and moving quickly, the movement is pretty bad. You get stuck on walls and enemies all the time. Adding parkour challenges with such a system is not a great idea.
Bugs
- Death pit that doesn't kill you, and no way to respawn, so you have to wait out the timer.
- Art glitches/missing art. Got me confused several times. Some areas seem accessible, when they are not.
- No animations. Honestly, this one is just a nit-pick, although it does tie into readability slightly.
Compliments
Finally, some compliments:
- Healing from killing enemies is a great idea. The main "damage" is from the constant timer ticking, which should probably change as I mentioned above, but making enemies the only way to gain health is a nice way to force players to engage with the combat system. This pressure made seeking out combat feel enjoyable, even though the combat system is actually super simple.
- The art and gameplay fit very well together. I am already interested in this world even though it's ultimately still very basic.
- The upgrade system is a nice way to get you to keep playing. "Maybe now I can defeat the enemies I lost to".
All in all, an interesting and creative idea that fits the theme nicely and is very impressive for a 4 day game jam and a (presumably) two-person team, although it still feels more like a prototype/tech demo than a game. It's the type of game I want to see more of, but not (yet) the type of game I want to keep playing over and over again.