BulletMagnet wrote:
- I'll always have a soft spot for that weirdly endearing, slightly disturbing art style of yours. The one nitpick I have here is that the animation quality comes off as a bit uneven; using more limited frames doesn't necessarily look objectively "worse" here, but certain elements (the clams in particular) strike me as noticeably stiffer-looking than critters with more variety to their movements (mind you, not that there's a heckuva lot you can make a clam do). In terms of sound, I'd personally like to see the goofy cartoon sound effects given even more prominence - go full Crash Bandicoot!
Glad you enjoy the art!
For the detail on the clams... they actually show up in 3 "incarnations". One is the world-map, one is when you talk to them close up (before a level starts), and the final one is when they show up and spit the pearl.
Did any one in those particular stand out as needing more work or did they all 3 seem stilted?
Thanks for explaining.
BulletMagnet wrote:- I like having little hidden bonuses to search out on the overworld (never did figure out how to make those darts do anything useful, though); out of curiosity, is it possible to "grind" earlier areas for additional "stocked" powerups, or is there a limited overall number of them to obtain? I'd also dig having additional story/humor tidbits, or even a hidden level or two, hidden for thorough explorers to find instead of just the items. Speaking of items, I didn't see an explanation anywhere of what each did, did I overlook it?
1. The overworlds in the main game have lots of little puzzles and things to sort out.
Something not in the demo, but I may add to the demo is NPCs! There's at least 4 NPCs in each main overworld (20 overworlds total, 5 unique settings) so there's plenty of silly things going on there.
2. You can't grind items. It plays like Super Mario Bros Wii. Basically if you get all the items in an area, and then use them up, you can talk to a creature (think Toad from Mario) and he resets the items eventually. Also, there's a cap on each powerup type. Those powerups are one-time-use. So use them on a level you're having trouble with. The powerups aren't explained... I thought people would get their uses through actually using them. And often they are inside an action-level already. Maybe I'll put it on the powerup menu.
The disguises of course, are permanent powerups and all unique.
BulletMagnet wrote:- The game plays well on my third-party 360 controller, though sometimes I found it just a bit difficult to precisely tell if a ball would be affected by my suction, or if I was facing a ball directly enough to gobble it; it's nothing major, but perhaps a handful of visual options, like making a ball change color when being sucked, would be handy at least for getting familiar with the mechanics. Maybe making barfies flash a little before reverting to yummies would be good too.
Hmmm... I'm a little confused exactly about what was causing trouble here. I know it's a pain, but would you happen to be able to record a video and talk over it, and sort of .. show me gameplay-while-talking exactly what is the problem? That is, if you can do some video, and show the part like "ah, there! That feels like I should have gotten it" or something like that.. if I could see it all together, I may be able to understand what's up.
BulletMagnet wrote:- Speaking of options, would the "particle effect" and "barf amount" settings be better-suited for the "video" submenu instead of "gameplay?" That's where I tend to look for stuff relating to performance (mind you, the things ran fine on my non-gaming laptop, so it'll probably be good on most machines)...also, is it my imagination, or was the default game speed set to "1.1"? I also didn't see an option to turn controller rumble off, adding that would be appreciated.
Yes, it runs at 110% speed. It just feels better! But people can change it. I don't want to reset it for fear of messing a lot more stuff up.
Yeah, good idea on the barf-particle menu thing.
Weird.. we had a controller rumble option! And now it's missing... <goes to check why>
Thanks for finding that.
BulletMagnet wrote:- After finding the fake lips it took me awhile to figure out that I could scroll farther up the disguise list to the default glasses and "turn off" disguise effects, so perhaps listing the first costume you find right next to the glasses might make that clearer. I might also suggest highlighting the "zoom" function a bit earlier, it might have prevented a couple of annoying hits in the "dudes with drills" level in particular. It also took me a bit to grasp that except in levels that limit how many hits you can take you really can't "die", and can even use hazards to finish faster; you might consider rephrasing the tutorial language there.
Good points.. I will look into them.
BulletMagnet wrote:- When replaying a sub-level to improve one's time, after finishing it the only options are "retry" and "next", with no way to return to the stage menu if you only want to play one particular area.
Back button on finish screen... in the current demo there is now a "Done" button after you are replaying levels, once you've gotten the pearl. That was in a recent demo update.
BulletMagnet wrote:On a minor note, I think the name/title of each level should be displayed as you select it, and not just after completing it, it's too easy to overlook those as it is.
I'm confused, where should the names be displayed? You'll have to explain. As it stands, once you've beaten a clam, then try him again, he'll pop up a list of level names.
BulletMagnet wrote:- One possible bug on the dual-wielding beer stein boss; once he threw the stein, but it stopped (not at a tap, just kind of against a wall) and wouldn't return to him, so I had to restart the level. Only happened once, so not sure what might have triggered it.
About how long did the beer stein "stay stuck" against the wall? 1 second? 5 seconds? Longer?
Thanks.
BulletMagnet wrote:
- What a better world we'd live in if every game had a "don't suck" button.
Ha!
Thanks a lot of the detailed playthrough.
I appreciate it!
