I enjoyed it. I liked the music. It was short and sweet. If you checked everything, you got quite a bit of backstory in there. There was a bunch of self-referential humor at the start, but it wasn't too cheesy. There were good animations, very cute. Liked the ending too.
That's about what I have.
I am glad you had a good time! :D
Man i got some really positive vibes from this game! I can definitely see that a lot of love was put into this, and i totally admire it! Great job man! Also lots of references plus i believe some inspiration was drawn from Pokemon? Great stuff keep up the good work!
Pokemon certainly did influence early development on the visuals of the game, but the main gaming inspiration was actually a small indie game called "Wither". :)
!cool game!
Thanks!
I have to say I did like the game but there are things that I would like you to review:
First, Why did you decide to bring animation to the game? It is definitely an interesting idea but while lovely the cutscenes don't bring much to the story.
Second, there aren't many things to do. This may not be a problem: some of my favourite games are extremely simple but you will have to work on other things and if I were you, I would work on the dialogues and comments. Everything the player knows in this game go through dialogue, so make them more humorous / intriguing.
Some other things:
- I guess you are working on the laggy stages.
- Make the dialogue of the hatchet only appear once.
- Nice sound effects but the music is sometimes dissonant with the game (too calmed sometimes?).
- The music is great but sometimes it doesn't fit well with the rest of the game.
- The character is maybe sometimes too expressive. Its cartoonish stryle creates a dissonance between the eerie atmosphere of the stages and the main character.
Well to summarize it up, you need to work on the harmony of the game, and I would say that the origin of the "dissonance" I am talking about is the main plot of the game. You have good raw material, spend some time planing how to play with the elements and I am sure you can bring us a really good game.
Cheers!
Thanks for all of the feedback, I am glad you managed to have a good time despite your issues with the game. I will be sure to implement these things into my next project. ^^
My thoughts:
the animation is very fluid and has good bounce to it, but not a great deal actually happens.
the narrative is nearly nonexistent, at least that i've seen, considering I only got the bad end. which brings me to my next few points.
The gameplay is /terrible/. Truly, truly awful. reading things doesn't give you any further information, it's pretty much a straight shot for the first part of the game, and the second part of the game is a collect a thon. Yume Nikki is quite possibly the only gamemaker game i've ever seen that did collecting the things in a fun and interesting way, and that was only because of the unique soundtrack, gorgeous landscape, and bizarre inhabitants, which transitions to my next point:
The overworld is /hideous/. I'm not an artist, so I can't really describe why, but the color palate and design just dragged on and on and on.
The soundtrack is /passable/. It isn't amazing, but it isn't awful. It's very simplistic, so I can't really get engaged with it, and it actually began to grate towards the end.
The game is also extremely laggy, which is horrid, and takes forever to transition from screen to screen. Given that this is a gamemaker game, that's pretty much inexcusable.
I did notice that you gave Lemon unique lines for every examine, which was nice, but the lines themselves weren't particularly notable. Just because it's a kid saying the lines, doesn't mean you have to write it like a kid's saying them. More advanced humor is fine, given that this isn't really a serious game.
A final complaint: every single time you cut something down with the hatchet, and every single time you pick up a piece of metal, your character says the same. freaking. lines. THAT is why I could not complete the good ending.
tl;dr, your game needed more in depth gameplay and storyline, more sprites in the overworld, and fixing whatever the heck could make an RPG maker game lag. The animation is really the only saving grace, but lacks the storytelling potential and good character design that would it would take to make this truly good. Currently, it's sitting at mediocre, but I am a very picky person.
I am sorry that you didn't find the game to be an enjoyable experience. I have taken note of all your critiques and will try to integrate these into whatever game I make next. :)