Whoa, this is so polished and clever! Curious if there were any particular inspirations for the mechanics, because I feel like I haven’t quite played anything like it and I’d love to learn more.
Super super cool and addictive regardless :]
Bulby’s animations are so cute, I love them all so much haha
The game itself is really cool! I wish I was better at platforming, because I unfortunately got stuck for a while at that section with the alternating pillars with spikes at the top (literally the exact spot in the last screenshot lol) - I’m taking a break and I’ll see if I can beat it later :P
Glad I could help to some extent haha - the game is definitely playable and fun as is, and as for the difficultly, I might just be bad at it! I tend to favor slower paced games haha, and even I felt like the difficulty here was still pretty reasonable.
I'll try to keep following this, cause it seems really cool and I'd love to see where you take it from here! It definitely sounds like you have cool plans ahead. Happy developing! :]
I went ahead and gave this a go after seeing it on the forum! I have played the ranger games if that means anything. I played it on a laptop mostly on chill "difficul-tea" (love that lol) up to level 25. After that, level 26 caused a black screen and I assumed I finished it. Here's my very long thoughts as someone who's much more of a gamer than a dev - sorry for the wall of text!
Things I Liked:
Felt really polished! I liked the art/sound, and the visual aesthetic and humor was fun from the get go. A lot of the mechanics felt intuitive to me (circling to remove hazards etc.). The introduction of new enemies felt like a fun pull to keep me playing, and the customization is a nice touch. The difficulty on chill was perfect for me - normal felt a bit too intense to steadily make progress, so I appreciate the options. On chill, I feel like I usually had to give each level 1-3 tries.
Criticisms:
Excluding the black screen on level 26 I assumed meant that were no levels left, the only bugs I think I encountered was that the main menu started saying "You passed with 6.08 seconds left" at one point and never changed, and then the game froze when my laptop fell asleep (probably just my old laptop being slow lol).
Playing with a laptop can be kinda clumsy, and this game feels like it might be more fun on a mobile touch screen.
Enemies going offscreen was a problem for me. Ghost enemies sometimes teleported offscreen, and the button enemies charge offscreen. I'd prefer if they all just bounced off the edges like the knights so I didn't have to wait for them to come back onscreen to play.
This is pretty subjective, but the gameplay loop gets a little repetitive for me personally. Seeing new enemies every so often is fun, but I would love to feel like I'm working towards something. Maybe something along the lines of unlocking more customization options as I get through more levels?
Finally (and I feel least confident about this point), I don't think you ever specify in the game that if an enemy runs into your thread, it will break the thread and the circles won't count. You specify this in the controls on this page, and I kinda knew this from playing ranger already. But maybe someone who didn't play ranger and didn't read the stuff above might get confused? The only indicator that something negative happens is the wincing face (the expanding circle animation I feel is kinda ambiguous). If someone doesn't know what to look for in the beginning, they might not get why their circles aren't doing anything. Sound effects for the thread might help this to some extent (ex. a snapping sound effect for when the thread breaks).
Overall impression was good, though! It feels really cozy and minimal, and I quite enjoyed playing it! I'd love to see it when it's finished :]
this is amaaaazing! i wasn't really expecting a lot, and this is absolutely fantastic. read the whole thing and am definitely going to be returning to read it more as i keep learning - literally cannot thank you enough
congrats again on this project from its state machine cows to wrangling the bridges! it feels great, and i wish you the best of luck on future projects - i'll keep an eye out!