Multiple problems
1) Controls arent as responsive as they need to be in a game like this 2)when people give criticism its a good idea to FOLLOW it and not respond saying they are wrong... 3) Controls need to be used as long as you hold the button not you tap it and it stays for limited time Have a nice day
Fatal flaws
I enjoyed the game, but I'm giving you a zero because it's the only way to lower your score and make a point about the mechanics. You should know by now that not making checkpoints or a level select option is tantamount to grief code. It turns campaign mode into survival mode and time-wasting games into marathon games.
It's annoying when someone calls it a "reflex game" and nerfs the importance of the player's actual reflexes. I kind of liked the challenge of ambiguous visual cues, but "gimped" is an understatement of the necessity to play this game with audio. Not only is it annoying to rely on audio cues, but it's griefing when you make those audio cues ambiguous, too. Was that a rider or a hoplite or a farmer who just screamed "die!"? Was that two or three sets of arrows being shot at me?
Aside from that, game mechanics weren't conducive to speedrunning. I can't think of how many times sprinting ended up killing me because the character was moving too fast for the animation to get back up from ducking under a branch didn't complete in time to recognize a new input command. Along the same lines, the game was (by default) needlessly one-handed when it might have been better to map some things separately. Up is the opposite of down, but block is not the opposite of sprint.
tl;dr: Why the hell isn't there a level select? Give control and pacing back to the player. Find new voice acting.
i hate hard
ARRG, FUCK THIS GAME!
Sorry about that. You deserve better than no stars, but I don't even care right now, the frustration I've built up needs to be vented.
A hard game demands the player to cope with a lot of gameplay elements in a short amount of time, but when that rider that chases you gets thrown and you've got to use your boost, it becomes damn near impossible.
I played the level where you get chased by a horsemen for FIVE HOURS straight and could not get through it. The best I did was throw off two riders, but that only happened three times out of the hundreds of times I tried that level. Most of the time I wouldn't even throw the first rider off before dying.
Hard is good, but UNFAIR is rage inducing. It's a rare occasion when you get into the zone and you're playing near perfectly, but then suddenly, the game's random obstacle generator throws a volley of arrows at you, which you block, only to run face first into a tree branch while in the middle of your shield lowering animation, even though you're mashing the duck button. That's just absolute bullshit. It's a scenario where your failure is guaranteed through no fault of your own. The parameters need to be tweaked so that that scenario doesn't happen.
That or the recovery animations need to be interruptible or shortened, because at that high of a speed, the controls feel much too unresponsive and slow.
When you're not in the zone, the issue of time becomes the game's biggest weakness. At the high speeds of the boost, the camera should zoom out to let you see further ahead. Or the window width needs to be increased to give you more time to react. Or the obstacles need to stand out much more from the background, since their colors and art style makes them blend right in, introducing hesitation in the player's decision making, since he needs to spend time decoding what the heck it is he's looking at, especially with the tree branches and rocks and the other obstacles with no audio cues.
Which brings me to the audio cues: they're terrible. The game is practically impossible without them, but they're needlessly overcomplicated. All the enemies sound identical, especially the horseman that charges at you and the farmer, those two sound pretty much the same, which is quite unfortunate since you can't respond to them in the same way. Either give each unit a distinctive voice that the player can immediately make out, or give each unit one line that they say, so that the player can distinguish them that way. You might complain that the game will be too repetitive, but trust me, by the 300th playthrough, the 2 extra lines you coded for each enemy don't make a bit of difference.
Zero? ZERO?!! right...you don't deserve that I read your opinion.