Bizzare Song Sugar Morning @BitAssembly

So a quick review of all the stuff in the game and how I feel about it



1) Platforming

Right now the platforming feels surprisingly tight for a project like this. I really like the general responsiveness of the controls and I also really like the whole climbing and hanging mechanic. It's really nice to just be able to walk at one unit tall blocks to get over them as opposed to being forced to jump over them like a lot of games like this would have you do, and it opens up a lot of options like small "wall jump" sections and stuff like that.



What I think this game could do with quite badly though is a variable height for the jump based on the length of the input being held down. That would help add an extra feeling of control to the player that would make the game more satisfying, while also making the challenge more consistent and allowing you to add more depth to the platforming as a result. Another feature that you should probably consider is a duck mechanic, since people are going to want to feel for something like that anyway it would be nice to have if only to use it to climb down onto the side of ledges and drop down from them as opposed to not having any sort of downward interactivity anyway.



Besides that maybe consider air strafing controls? I don't know if that's something that you don't want to preserve the challenge of the game, but they would feel really nice. Doesn't seem super necessary tough in the current state of the game. Though I would stress that if you ever want the player to be moving down in a level instead of up that it would be almost necessary to add them just because reasons that I won't get into unless you want my pleb opinion.



2) Health

Health system seems fine, maybe try to make the damage enemies deal a bit more regular and make the health bar a bit more discrete to help people have a better idea of what exactly instances of damage are doing. The only other thing that I would point out specifically is that maybe you should have some damage buffering/immunity frames for reasons I'll mention later



3) Enemies

Gonna go over these one by one

A) Wandering/Hanging Slimes

Super cool, I love the concept, the look and the implementation for the most part. The only specific thing I would say is that I don't think they should be able to hit you when you're hanging from a ledge and they're just pathing back and forth along the ledge mindlessly, it would open up more timing options for the player and thus give you more options for depth as a developer



B) Tentacle Mares

Honestly these are awful, I would rework them completely if you intend to use them seriously. As it is they are just not interesting or fun to interact with. The only consistent way to avoid damage from them is to jump over them and ignore them entirely, which isn't even an option in one instance. The second to last tentacle mare in this level is just a pure garbage fire of game design. She attacks so fast and knocks you back so hard that you can't really kill her easily without taking significant amounts of damage. Her attacks are fast enough and her hitboxes are large enough where you can't just move past her consistently because of the knockback, and you can't avoid her. So really your only option is to either try to brute force kill her before she kills you, which I found frankly impossible, or just try to jump into her and run past her and _hope_that she doesn't hit you in a way that stuns you into multiple constitutive attacks that knock you back in front of her and force you to try again. It felt like a health/time tax and it took a non insignificant amount of time to even get to her int he first place after the checkpoint.



I would recommend slowing down their attack rate and speed and making their actual hitbox for damaging you with their standard attack significantly smaller, at which point I would recommend giving them a secondary attack that fires off only when you're on top of them after a delay to force you to move again when you're on top of them. This would allow the player to bait out ranged attack, move in to take a swipe or two directly, then move back and repeat the process. Also, I think these might be BETTER as wandering mobs exclusivity because it would make it EASIER for players to get past them with timing while also making the player feel more rewarded for playing around a dangerous threat intelligently, instead of just forcing them to fight into or run through an enemy that feels completely random.



C) Little Bird/Bat/Maggot Things

These seemed fine, maybe sometimes on hard mode they would spawn a bit too quickly in succession and maybe sometimes just in general it feels a bit frustrating when they have certain up-down patterns that randomly fuck you up with almost no recourse. Introducing some of the platforming mechanics that I mentioned above would make them perfectly A-OK though.



D) Boss

I actually liked the boss. The only issue I had is that sometime it seemed a bit hard to play the actual character around it properly. I liked everything about the boss except a couple points of combat that I'll get into.



4) Combat/Striking

Your ability to do damage seems underwhelming, which I assume is intentional and as such I'm super fine with it. That said, I feel like the animations/lock in's on a couple of the strikes are a bit too long, specifically on the roundhouse kick/sweeping buck thing. Literally just shorten that by a couple of frames and combat will feel so much smoother. You don't even have to make the actual animation shorter/quicker if you don't want, just let people cancel it with a jump slightly sooner.



Frankly it also took me way too long to figure out that you could even hit/block. I played all the way up to the boss without seeing that you could hit, and I only saw that you could block after reading the comments through here, which was only after I completed the boss on both easy and hard really wish I knew I could dab on enemies as Filly-Anon sooner tbh . I did do some double checking and I will say that my criticism of the Tentacle Mares, especially of the second to last one, is the same. They're just not fun. In any case, maybe do some super basic idiot proofing for a future product, just put some instructions and have some simple requirements that people use all the game mechanics before they move onto places where they should be using them in the game. Something like Cuphead's tutorial, which even a child could figure out and beat without much effort, would be nice here and I don't think many people would mind it.



5) General polish

The game LOOKS great and I really like most of it. Health bar could use some design work on it to make it look nicer and be a bit more intuitive. Besides that I'll say that the current "You Died" screen lingers for far too long and is a bit frustrating that you can't skip at all. The taking damage sound could be slightly quieter too, though it's a very minor issue.



I look forward to seeing if this game ever gets some story, dialogue, or even music to it. It will do a lot to elevate the experience and it will make the game a lot more fun. Though small steps, right?



Overall amazing for a demo. I enjoyed it except for one really annoying part that I already mentioned and I look forward to seeing this project go forward.



10/10, might play through again