The platformer game design is excellent, controls are satisfying, and the end game is a giant skill check in way you're forced to learn with minimal frustration. It feels finished. Plus the WebGL version worked like a charm!
Biggest issue was that my left hand was cramping by the end.
the game's design and level design are great! i love the final levels and the practice it took to play through them. some generalized feedback:
haptic feedback for checkpoints would be great, visual and audio cues mostly
hurtbox of the player is too wide
hitbox of the spikes bleeds out through solid wall (which i can see why the edge spikes got taken out in many cases)
the game is very left hand reliant, not sure if there's work to add player customizable keybinds (shouldn't be difficult in Unity)
when cannonballs collide with the wall and do a puff smoke animation, player can still die from a lingering hitbox from the cannonball
wall slide jumps are not as intuitive, either tell the player to mash jump key or hold either slide direction as alternating left and right and trying to time jumps has strict timing (maybe sticking before sliding for a little longer can help the player timing without intruding on your level design)
on all moving platform screens where player dies from spike obstacles, delay moving the camera back for a second to see death animation, and perhaps move camera less fast to prevent motion sickness
in metroidvania styles the game time pauses as the camera slowly pans to the next room, this is to prevent motion sickness in case a player spams left/right or height changes when changing rooms. this is mostly evident early on when there are alternating wood platforms to jump through, it makes it easy for a player to miss a jump and get spammed by camera movements changing from both rooms within a half second
not sure if you're implementing any sort of UI e.g. audio controls, pause menu, and all that but tutorial controls and keybinds can go there
yellow buttons have no visual cue that they've been pressed, perhaps just removing the red bit can help with that (e.g. in one room players have mentioned they feel like repressing it can retoggle the walls rather than just waiting for it or dying to reset it)
some pathfinding hints can help at certain states of the game (e.g. abilities acquired?) as most of my friends and I got stuck and had to reexplore the entire map a couple times
cannon and cannonball color contrast compared to the background is not distinct enough, could use a white outline of sorts which requires little to no picture editing experience
i absolutely loved the level design and how we kept going back to the starting area with newer abilities and explored areas we couldn't reach before, that gave me a huge sense of satisfaction and closure
the boss levels including the mario wonder style rising spikes gave me shellshock but were very satisfying to play through, I can tell you've spent a long time fine tuning the obstacle distances and timings for these levels
also thought it was funny but a friend and i both read S - CROUCH as SCRUNCH somehow
Thank you for this extensive review! I will definitely take your advice regarding the camera movement. In my mind I wanted really quick cuts to different rooms, but I see now how that might be disorientating. Also you are definitely right about the player hitbox being too big. It's frustrating to think you've almost made a jump, and then just not quite make it, even though it looks like you should have. I used a box collider for the player, but I should probably change it to a capsule collider and make the collider size slightly within the bounds of the player sprite.
+1 to the capsule, and thanks for hearing out the feedback! Hope the camera adjustments aren't too taxing to adjust. Looking forward to see what direction you take that, as there's many different ways to go about solutioning for it (pun intended)
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Awesome game!
The platformer game design is excellent, controls are satisfying, and the end game is a giant skill check in way you're forced to learn with minimal frustration. It feels finished. Plus the WebGL version worked like a charm!
Biggest issue was that my left hand was cramping by the end.
Thanks for the review! I def should have added alternate controls to decrease left hand reliance lol
the game's design and level design are great! i love the final levels and the practice it took to play through them.
some generalized feedback:
haptic feedback for checkpoints would be great, visual and audio cues mostly
hurtbox of the player is too wide
hitbox of the spikes bleeds out through solid wall (which i can see why the edge spikes got taken out in many cases)
the game is very left hand reliant, not sure if there's work to add player customizable keybinds (shouldn't be difficult in Unity)
when cannonballs collide with the wall and do a puff smoke animation, player can still die from a lingering hitbox from the cannonball
wall slide jumps are not as intuitive, either tell the player to mash jump key or hold either slide direction as alternating left and right and trying to time jumps has strict timing (maybe sticking before sliding for a little longer can help the player timing without intruding on your level design)
on all moving platform screens where player dies from spike obstacles, delay moving the camera back for a second to see death animation, and perhaps move camera less fast to prevent motion sickness
in metroidvania styles the game time pauses as the camera slowly pans to the next room, this is to prevent motion sickness in case a player spams left/right or height changes when changing rooms. this is mostly evident early on when there are alternating wood platforms to jump through, it makes it easy for a player to miss a jump and get spammed by camera movements changing from both rooms within a half second
not sure if you're implementing any sort of UI e.g. audio controls, pause menu, and all that but tutorial controls and keybinds can go there
yellow buttons have no visual cue that they've been pressed, perhaps just removing the red bit can help with that (e.g. in one room players have mentioned they feel like repressing it can retoggle the walls rather than just waiting for it or dying to reset it)
some pathfinding hints can help at certain states of the game (e.g. abilities acquired?) as most of my friends and I got stuck and had to reexplore the entire map a couple times
cannon and cannonball color contrast compared to the background is not distinct enough, could use a white outline of sorts which requires little to no picture editing experience
i absolutely loved the level design and how we kept going back to the starting area with newer abilities and explored areas we couldn't reach before, that gave me a huge sense of satisfaction and closure
the boss levels including the mario wonder style rising spikes gave me shellshock but were very satisfying to play through, I can tell you've spent a long time fine tuning the obstacle distances and timings for these levels
also thought it was funny but a friend and i both read S - CROUCH as SCRUNCH somehow
Thank you for this extensive review! I will definitely take your advice regarding the camera movement. In my mind I wanted really quick cuts to different rooms, but I see now how that might be disorientating. Also you are definitely right about the player hitbox being too big. It's frustrating to think you've almost made a jump, and then just not quite make it, even though it looks like you should have. I used a box collider for the player, but I should probably change it to a capsule collider and make the collider size slightly within the bounds of the player sprite.
+1 to the capsule, and thanks for hearing out the feedback! Hope the camera adjustments aren't too taxing to adjust. Looking forward to see what direction you take that, as there's many different ways to go about solutioning for it (pun intended)