I played a few runs, and the game is surprisingly fun and tense. My thoughts so far:

Spawn points should be a adjusted. On my first run I spawned in the line of sight of a green enemy... you can probably guess how that turned out.

The engine could use some optimization. Admittedly I am playing on a toaster, but the game is nearly unplayable due to low framerate.

I'd also suggest making the color scheme more consistent. I know the graphics are placeholders, but it was confusing determining whether something was an enemy or item. Also, I expected blue enemies to be slowed by the permanent light fixtures, since they are the same color as the flashlight.

As for progression, I think you could accomplish this by making more enemies and hazards, and introduce them gradually throughout the game. Maybe use different combinations of enemies and traps to make more distinct levels?

I haven't had a chance to try 2 player yet, but here are my initial thoughts:

The game looks and sounds fantastic. The music and sound effects are very fitting, and I think the whole shadow puppet aesthetic is beautiful.

The problem I have with it so far is that the combat lacks variety, and the controls feel unresponsive (with both keyboard and gamepad). The way the weapon moves matches the way I would expect a shadow puppet to move, but it feels impossible to pull off interesting moves, so most rounds just boil down to sticking your weapon out in front of you or flailing wildly. As it stands, it basically plays like a slower, less precise version of Nidhogg.

Aside from that, more character variety would be nice. I feel like throwing projectiles and deflecting them with melee weapons could be a fun mechanic in this engine, but I'm not really sure if that's the kind of game you're going for.

Personally I find the wall jumping places in level 1-3 too hard. Then again i rarely play platform games. The sword throwing and knockback are cool though.

It's entirely possible that I'm too used to the game to identify the problem, but I'm not really sure why the wall jumps are giving some people trouble. Could you elaborate on which part you found too difficult?

Long list of nitpicks incoming!

-The game's graphics are set to the lowest quality by default, which makes everything look awful. The game looks and runs nicely on the highest quality settings, so I'm not sure if there's even a point to including graphics options in the launcher.

-The visual assets and animations are really good overall, but the shading is inconsistent. For example, the character is lit from the right when they are facing down or left, but from the left when they are facing up or right.

-The character really should be able to move diagonally, unless you have a good reason to exclude this.

-It doesn't seem intuitive that the item you get, which appears to be a flying bug, can't fly over gaps.

-In terms of combat, the player's attack feels too small, too slow and too weak. I think the combat in Link to the Past is a good point of reference in this regard.

I hope this doesn't come off as overly critical, because I really like the game so far!

I have a problem with wall-jumping here. Took me around 5 minutes to get through the first parallel wall. Maybe while a character climbing a wall, makes it moves downward with a constant speed (does not affect by gravity) so a player will have more time to do next jump. Do some research in  games that have wall-jump mechanics like Super Meat Boy or Megaman would help .

Thanks for the feedback, in hindsight it seems silly that I didn't include this to begin with.

I'd say the controls and physics are solid. The recoil effect is fun, I like the speed. I kinda wanted to be able to instantly turn around in the air with a single tap (but still keep the momentum). That way you could jump forward, turn with a tap and recoil launch your way further forward. That's a design choice though. I also think you should make the sword hit enemies on it's way back.

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll definitely be tweaking the jumping mechanics to accommodate what you described.

The ability to hit enemies with the sword as it returns was omitted mainly because this would be easily exploitable in the game's current state, as the returning sword does not collide with walls. I will probably change this if I can figure out how to make the sword path around obstacles.

First of all, let me say that I am REALLY impressed with how this came looks! The color scheme is nearly flawless (not a fan of the green and red squares), and the minimalist environments are really pretty. There are, however, a few key flaws.

The character's animation is very stiff. I'm not much of an animator myself, but I imagine it would help to have the whole body move when walking rather than just the limbs.

I would also suggest giving the player more control over their jump height. This is a pretty standard feature in platformers nowadays, so it tends to feel jarring when a game doesn't let you tap the jump button for a shorter jump.

Finally, the lack of sound effects really detracts from the feel of the game. Even some very basic audio feedbback would be better than nothing.

Good concept, but in practice I found that the "time bubble" did not interact with the environment intuitively. Why is the character's vertical movement frozen while they can still move left and right? Why do gears still hurt you when they aren't spinning? In terms of gameplay these things are not a huge problem, but they seem to be slightly disconnected from the theme of freezing time.

In addition, the quotes at the beginning of each level came off as very generic, and by the end I didn't really feel compelled to know more. "Philosophical indie platformer" is a surprisingly crowded genre.

On a more positive note, the visuals and color scheme are really nice and clear, and I think there is the potential for some really creative puzzles with the time stopping mechanic!

A game in which you throw a Big Sword at all kinds of things! Currently this includes:

-Walls
-Robots
-Slightly bigger robots
-Poorly calibrated hitboxes

Itch.io link: https://shigatosis.itch.io/bigsword

This is a little project I threw together over the course of a few weeks to practice using Game Maker. I would love to get some feedback pertaining to the controls and platforming physics, as well as the overall presentation. The main idea was to make the titular Sword feel very heavy, to the point where the player can use the recoil from throwing it to launch themselves higher (real world physics be damned!). Assets are mainly placeholders, but I would appreciate some critique here as well.

Hi everybody!

I'm a computer science major looking to get in to game design. I've been making games in my free time recently, so I look forward to posting some of my work here for feedback!

I grew up playing Nintendo games like Ocarina of Time and Star Fox, but as of late I've mainly been playing PC games. Dark Souls, Nuclear Throne and Half Life are among my biggest inspirations, but I try my best to play a little bit of everything.

I also like analyzing and testing games in development, so I'll probably be spending a lot of time in the playtesting forums!

First of all, the concept as a whole seems really unique, so kudos for that! I have to admit, though, managing four characters at once was extremely hectic for me; at the current speed of gameplay, I would feel more comfortable with two or three characters, at least in the beginning. The combat is also a bit too simple at them moment, as it seems like it's just a matter of ganging up on one enemy and stringing together the highest combos you can afford.

Also, the URL you provided leads to a 404 with a link that redirects to http://abyssal-arts.itch.io/. Might want to see if you can fix that, and make the URL a hyperlink while you're at it. Best of luck!

Just wanted to say that this game is cool as hell, keep up the good work!

Those banana-headed fellows look amazing. Do you guys plan on releasing a playable demo at some point?

From the first couple of levels that I played, the game is pretty fun overall! That being said, I do have a few minor complaints:

• The buzz saws you have to fly through in the first level was a huge difficulty spike for me.
• Some text (notably the level selection screen and the dialogue with Toad) is cut off by the edge of the screen or other objects. Might have something to do with the resolution at which I was running the game?
• I feel like the gun would benefit from a firing animation, such as a muzzle flash, small amount of recoil, etc.
• The little thingies (atoms?) that you pick up disappear very quickly

Looking forward to seeing how this game progresses over time!

This actually seems very promising, but the lack of sound effects and music REALLY killed it for me. I guarantee you this game would be twice as fun to play if you included even the most basic auditory feedback. If you weren't already aware, http://www.bfxr.net/ is a very easy-to-use website for video game sound effects. Hope this helps!

I'm really impressed with how creative some of these levels are, especially given how simple the concept is! I actually enjoyed how levels alternated between tricky and easy; the easy, fun levels felt like a good reward for figuring out some of the tougher puzzles. My only real complaint is the repetitive music.

After playing it for a few minutes, here are a couple of criticisms off the top of my head:

• Sometimes the letters are cut off by the top or bottom of the screen, making it impossible to know which key to press
• White letters on a grey background are somewhat hard to read. Maybe consider a different color scheme?
• Some sounds and visual effects would be nice (such as letters "popping" or exploding when the right key is hit)

That first point is pretty game-breaking, so I'd recommend you take care of it ASAP! Other than that the game seems to work perfectly fine.

Woah, the game looks incredible! I'm really digging the soundtrack, too. Congrats on the release!