First I'll address the art style overall the watercolor style of art being displayed contrasting the more traditional digital art style of the characters work really well. The animations of the main character worked really well from the walk cycle, the jumping, and idle animation works really well.
Next I wanna talk about the gameplay on its own. As collective the first few scenes work well to introduce the player to the world and the movement. The only issue I had with the beginning was the lack of explanation for opening what I would consider the inventory of the player. The text boxes were simple but work well for the artistic style of the game.
Upon traversing the world further I grew confused with the level of verticality of the world. At one point it seemed to go up forever in these environment of white boxes, but then I reached a jump that seemed nearly impossible as I neared what I can only assume is the apex of the world. I attempted the jump several times and continually hit my head before falling all the way back down. It eventually began to irritate me and I moved back down to the forest area to travel further to the right. I eventually reached some difficult tree branch jumps, but unlike the previous example was able to clear it after a few attempts. I eventually reach what I thought was the end of the forest being blocked by a white wall. I then traversed upwards after backtracking slightly and eventually ended up in the "Ice" biome. This is where things got frustrating. The black blocks having never been used instantly knocked me down before resetting me back to my last jump and taking away a heart from my health.
This area had lots of leaps of faith where I was completely unsure if the jump of the character would clear the black boxes often resulting in deaths or multiple lost hearts. Having adjusted to the controls and jump height of the character I was confused on the constant failures. The other issue is with the save points for this section. If I died I had to then attempt the same difficult jumps from before. Followed by risking death against those black boxes again to reach a new area. Not to mention the more tight layout of the ice biome created a cramped atmosphere, in addition to the fact that my jump was being interrupted by the platforms resulting in lost momentum and often a loss of heart to the black boxes.
Last Notes:
- I had a bug where the red eyed raven enemy would completely disappear from view as well as its projectiles which resulted in a loss of several hearts with my inability to see it at all.
Overall the art style and gameplay bones are there and I think with more time this game could really be an addictive romp through a world of creatures and satyrs. The movement is satisfying and the gameplay is easy to adjust to even without a tutorial, the controls being so minimal helped me adjust quickly.
The art style really really works well. I really love the extra polish that goes into the effects and environment like the parallax background.
However, the gameplay is confusing (as expected of a metroidvania), but a little frustratingly so. I don't really have a clear indication of what's up, what's down, when I can jump higher, and if I am making progress. There's a segment with several branches I just can't get across and I don't know if that's because I suck at jumping or I'm missing something?
Also, some of the gates between rooms are a little obscure -- like a brown block that looks like a lot of other environment pieces. It might be best to use something consistent like a black gradient shadow to indicate to the player how to go forward?
The controls also were weird. X or click to slash? Y to force field? I don't have that many fingers. I hooked up a gamepad controller and I couldn't move at all.
Anyways, I feel like this has a lot of potential with a little bit of UX testing.
Thank you for the feedback! We're very happy with the art style and environmental effects; Anna's done an amazing job. :)
We definitely will be tweaking the levels to make things a little more intuitive with regard to "where to go next." A mini-map feature is also in the plans to ease in-level navigation.
When it comes to room transitions specifically, we have some more finished rooms earlier on in the game that utilize a bounded camera system, which does not show the brown blocks and such, but rather shows a dark gradient to indicate how to go forward. We intend to bring this to all of our rooms, along with further polish to those rooms and more consistent environmental transitions between rooms.
Controls are also something we definitely want to work on. Things like Y for force field and X/click to slash kind of work as in-development solutions, but we definitely plan on tuning our UX (and perhaps allowing control rebinding) in the future. Also, thanks for the note about the gamepad controller; I thought controller support was already implemented, but we will definitely be looking into that.
Thank you for your feedback, we really appreciate it! I definitely agree that a lot of things need to be conveyed more clearly and controls should be reworked. I definitely need to add a map as well as upwards and downwards slashing animations. There are a lot of things we'll be adding in the future that I hope will address these issues.
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First I'll address the art style overall the watercolor style of art being displayed contrasting the more traditional digital art style of the characters work really well. The animations of the main character worked really well from the walk cycle, the jumping, and idle animation works really well.
Next I wanna talk about the gameplay on its own. As collective the first few scenes work well to introduce the player to the world and the movement. The only issue I had with the beginning was the lack of explanation for opening what I would consider the inventory of the player. The text boxes were simple but work well for the artistic style of the game.
Upon traversing the world further I grew confused with the level of verticality of the world. At one point it seemed to go up forever in these environment of white boxes, but then I reached a jump that seemed nearly impossible as I neared what I can only assume is the apex of the world. I attempted the jump several times and continually hit my head before falling all the way back down. It eventually began to irritate me and I moved back down to the forest area to travel further to the right. I eventually reached some difficult tree branch jumps, but unlike the previous example was able to clear it after a few attempts. I eventually reach what I thought was the end of the forest being blocked by a white wall. I then traversed upwards after backtracking slightly and eventually ended up in the "Ice" biome. This is where things got frustrating. The black blocks having never been used instantly knocked me down before resetting me back to my last jump and taking away a heart from my health.
This area had lots of leaps of faith where I was completely unsure if the jump of the character would clear the black boxes often resulting in deaths or multiple lost hearts. Having adjusted to the controls and jump height of the character I was confused on the constant failures. The other issue is with the save points for this section. If I died I had to then attempt the same difficult jumps from before. Followed by risking death against those black boxes again to reach a new area. Not to mention the more tight layout of the ice biome created a cramped atmosphere, in addition to the fact that my jump was being interrupted by the platforms resulting in lost momentum and often a loss of heart to the black boxes.
Last Notes:
- I had a bug where the red eyed raven enemy would completely disappear from view as well as its projectiles which resulted in a loss of several hearts with my inability to see it at all.
Overall the art style and gameplay bones are there and I think with more time this game could really be an addictive romp through a world of creatures and satyrs. The movement is satisfying and the gameplay is easy to adjust to even without a tutorial, the controls being so minimal helped me adjust quickly.
The art style really really works well. I really love the extra polish that goes into the effects and environment like the parallax background.
However, the gameplay is confusing (as expected of a metroidvania), but a little frustratingly so. I don't really have a clear indication of what's up, what's down, when I can jump higher, and if I am making progress. There's a segment with several branches I just can't get across and I don't know if that's because I suck at jumping or I'm missing something?
Also, some of the gates between rooms are a little obscure -- like a brown block that looks like a lot of other environment pieces. It might be best to use something consistent like a black gradient shadow to indicate to the player how to go forward?
The controls also were weird. X or click to slash? Y to force field? I don't have that many fingers. I hooked up a gamepad controller and I couldn't move at all.
Anyways, I feel like this has a lot of potential with a little bit of UX testing.
Thank you for the feedback! We're very happy with the art style and environmental effects; Anna's done an amazing job. :)
We definitely will be tweaking the levels to make things a little more intuitive with regard to "where to go next." A mini-map feature is also in the plans to ease in-level navigation.
When it comes to room transitions specifically, we have some more finished rooms earlier on in the game that utilize a bounded camera system, which does not show the brown blocks and such, but rather shows a dark gradient to indicate how to go forward. We intend to bring this to all of our rooms, along with further polish to those rooms and more consistent environmental transitions between rooms.
Controls are also something we definitely want to work on. Things like Y for force field and X/click to slash kind of work as in-development solutions, but we definitely plan on tuning our UX (and perhaps allowing control rebinding) in the future. Also, thanks for the note about the gamepad controller; I thought controller support was already implemented, but we will definitely be looking into that.
Thanks for playing!
Thank you for your feedback, we really appreciate it! I definitely agree that a lot of things need to be conveyed more clearly and controls should be reworked. I definitely need to add a map as well as upwards and downwards slashing animations. There are a lot of things we'll be adding in the future that I hope will address these issues.