Ouch, that music was waaay too loud! (Also, I didn't think anything would make me like heavy metal, especially mixing it with chiptunes - turns out I was right!) But seriously, if the music drowns out the sound of Juni's footsteps, you need to turn it down. Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) is a great, free, easy-to-use program for modifying music.
Some of the puzzles and challenges in there were pretty cool; I enjoyed the first moment I fell down towards a black spiker and I had just enough time to dodge it. However, there were a few things not so good. Want to suggest a few things:
- I try never to put a save point anywhere dangerous, especially as immediately dangerous as some of your screens - such as the screen with two purple spiders right next to the save point. I think I'd have been happier if I'd not used that save point at all! Nothing compounds the misery of messing up a difficult obstacle at its final stage so much as dying the split second you reload, five times over.
- Screens like your second screenshot and the screen immediately after it combine randomly attacking enemies with split-second timed action, which doesn't work. When an enemy is attacking randomly a player should have time to judge their moment; by forcing the player to leap without looking first, it becomes a situation of the player dies or doesn't - no amount of skill will save you. Find predictable enemies for your split-decision screens and use randomly attacking enemies where the player has time to sit and wait for the right moment.
- While it was excusable for following a theme here, on the whole I recommend using the really nasty enemies like the grey wall-climbing shooter sparingly over all your levels as a whole. They are fun to dodge as they're so aggressive, but if there are too many they can just become irritating. It's awesome to dodge one perfectly and drop into the next screen, but disheartening to find two more when you get there!
- I know you gave lots of warning but it still would have been very frustrating if I'd gotten to the end without getting the key, and found myself stuck, unable to complete the game. I'd strongly recommend never putting the player in a situation where they can't win the game and can't go back to correct the situation. It can totally ruin the fun for the player. Playing a game should be a fun experience, winning a game should give the player a sensation of triumph. Snatching that victory away at the last moment is a really nice way of kicking the player in the teeth.
- Try to give your players time to think before pitting them against... anything. On the whole, nothing much of interest should ever happen at the borders of the screens. Give players time to notice when they're about to run off of the edge of a platform into a pit of death, time to notice a save point before they run by it, time to pick a landing from a difficult jump before they fall past, time to dodge an enemy before it kills them.
- Everything mentioned above is stuff I only learned by getting it horribly wrong first.
I think you were fair with save points, apart from the kill-you-straight-away one. The challenges were mostly not too vicious and you did construct some clever challenges in places. The level looked cool, too. So well done. But I did have to resort to using KS+'s map feature to muddle through level 5.
I ate an orange right before playing this!
I find them very interesting and I'll also use them for my big project "Looking for Flynnas".
Unfortunately at the moment I'm busy and I can not make changes quickly. But it's wasn't a metaphysical orange !
Thank you !
Kira
StraightFlame,
The level 5 is too hard, for a "joke" level, i'll change it. But the idea was: there is two ways to be not poetic at all: first aggressive and hard (level 1,2,3,4,6). Second: too sugary, too cute/kawaii (level 5). It was a kind of joke. And i think finally level 5 is much more unbearable that the others