Enjoyable, but 1 problem...
Overall I liked it quite a bit, but I had one serious annoyance; on the fifth level, after almost completely beating it--I had broken the runestone and all--I accidentally jumped into the lava pit, not realizing my character was stupid enough to actually jump... And that reset the whole level! At least just set me back to the last pillar =/
That you don't lose your savegame is a recent addition. In the original version (1.0) you would have had to replay from the beginning. That got me a lot of (well deserved) hate! ;)
Nice atmosphere
I thought this was a fairly well made submission. I think you managed to create a very good, eerie, dark, mysterious atmosphere in this game. The music you choose helped to establish that, but the best thing was the lighting in my opinion. I really liked the dynamics shadows and the role light played in advancing through the game.
I do wish the character would move a little bit faster through the dungeons though, because you had to do a lot of backtracking and finding your way through mazes. That can become a pain in the ass if your character moves so slow. I understand you want to slow down the gameplay, but a bit more speed would be nice nonetheless.
Furthermore I agree that it was difficult to steer the butterflies in the right direction, but once you figure out what to do it works alright. I thought the butterflies were an interesting puzzle element.
Overall 8 out of 10, 4 out of 5. I think you have managed to implement your ideas into this game pretty well. There's still some room for improvement, but all in all I think this was well made.
~Auz
Nice one
Yeah, I have to admit, the butterflies can be annoying, but other then that a very nice little game.
Reminds me of some old Amiga games, great atmosphere (thanks to the well-placed sound!), the light effects are simply good like the entire graphic and the gameplay is smooth and (almost) no fighting is needed to create a fetching adventure - good work!
I like, but...
I dig the atmosphere of this game. The art, the music, the dynamic shadows (nice touch) are all pretty solid. The one exception is the butterfly AI. Too loosely designed, It seems that the only challenge of this game is dealing with the finicky butterflies. That gets old real quick.
I think with better level design, you could use the current AI, but it just seems to be a juggling act at this point. It feels like this is just a beta test of sorts for an even bigger project, in which case I say push it to limits, and surprise yourself.
Maybe I'm just a lazy American, but your game, at it's current state, lacks mass appeal. Hope this was constructive.
No worries. It's been constructive. And I appreciate it!
I didn't think much about the mass appeal when I made the game. I thought about how to create a certain atmosphere. And I wanted to challenge certain conventioins in games. (Like player death.)
The butterfly AI is not broken. The one thing you need to know when dealing with butterflys is that when left alone they return to their home-spot. Considering this makes all puzzles pretty easy. Trying to chase them to where you want them won't work on purpose. :)
Very interesting game
This game is challenging. It's the classic dungeon crawl but with fancy shadowing. The result is very impressive.
One thing I didn't like is that blind zones are black just like shadows, and it looks weird to have bright objects (butterflies, green crystals, mushrooms...) "obscured" by a shadow (actually a blind zone). Takes a while to get used to it.
It's hard to get butterflies to cooperate; sometimes you must hide and ambush them in their way home so they go sideways. The walkthrough can be helpful.
Now let's see if there's a way to get rid of the golems other than run...
The blind zones do one important thing: They allow you to only see things that your character is able to see. It's like a top down ego-perspective. I realize that introducing both line-of-sight and realtime lighting&shadows in a "retro" topdown game can confuse players. It's been mainly a technical challenge to me and I liked how it turned out.