just, no

I'm annoyed I went to write hours worth of describing how I felt with the game and give ideas just to mid-way go on to look at some other reviews of this and lose what I had written. Anyway I'll go back to the trouble to review this game, and try to make my points quicker this time.

So... I'll just say it straight, this game isn't very good. I spent hours and hours wasting time trying to beat this stinky game. I got close at one point, but in the end, this game isn't worth the amount of time and effort I have been putting in just to get something out of it. You can't really learn new ways to overcome the challenge, it's the same tedious obstacle of you trying to avoid all the hordes of fire aimed at you. But it is kind of fun, and I like the aspect of it but it is lacking so many basic mechanics that would just make it work properly. The graphics and design are good, the design of the sprites are all really good, not bad at all, you don't need to worry about that. But if you hopefully are to update this game or make a Dragon's Tower 2 then there are a list of things you definitely need to make note of.

So I guess i'll just list everything off in order; easier for me.

Complaints first,

1. The Hit-boxes are completely OUT OF PROPORTION.
How this game defines what hits you and what doesn't is nonsense.
If the character touches the very end of the sprite that will take a hit. It is way too easy to just get caught up in the hazards' hit-boxes and lose instantly. This is one of the most important cons about the game, or that the fact is the hazards are too big and/or that the amount of them on-screen is too big and there are too much of them.

2. There needs to an array of wider platforms more often especially near the Dragon where you have to jump on those tiny platforms as a way to get up. It could and should be a lot more comfortable. You CANNOT fight that dragon on those tiny little steps, you just can't avoid all those massive repeated fireballs that are always aimed at you and also rebound on walls -ON THESE TINY PLATFORMS, Please, make more space for platforms to move around on.

Now I've got some ideas on how I think you can make this game much much better, so i'll just go ahead and list them off from here.

There needs to be a wider variety of abilities, maybe potions or something that could destroy fireballs or maybe that you could hold onto to heal yourself? Or more weapons that you could unlock/buy? I think you should definitely have the ability to fire diagonally upwards left and right; I get the point of not being able to fire straight forward to have a bit more strategy involved, but the character the player has to play as doesn't have an option to do any other abilities and is not helpful. He can only just jump and shoot upwards.
Also a campaign, there should be more levels and more stuff to do. And what if you could acquire allies? to help you take down the enemies, maybe slowly but more effective. And you could upgrade the ally's abilities. Like if you could have a set of abilities in the corner of the screen that you could activate at anytime but at a cost of waiting to use them again, or something. Like a wizard that boosts you with a lot more health but only for a period of time, and could also send out fireballs but to help the player, maybe they're coloured blue or yellow or something. And I think the character should jump a bit higher and move a bit faster too.
A good game has good mechanics. But just fix the game for the most part, than give the game more/better mechanics, I suggest.

All in all I do think this game is worth improving on.
And I actually like the look of the character; I think people were saying it doesn't look that good, but I think the design's really good. I like how he just casually wears jean shorts over his armour.

I'll start with the main problems I encountered playing:

1) Sound got very aggravating. When the majority of what you hear are jumping grunts and the throw sound effect, it takes a toll on you. What may counteract this redundancy in sound is maybe a light soundtrack playing in the background. Also, possible change the sound effects when you vanquish a skeleton or a fireball to distinguish the two.

2) The overall game mechanic is fine but very flawed. I do like the challenge of climbing the castle and avoiding/killing enemies along the way but the challenge does not feel like ingenious gameplay but this felt challenging due to flawed programming. The knight has a huge hit-box while the enemies feel like they have a very small hit-box. This isn't a bad thing, though, what is bad is that the Knight's large hit-box is also coupled with taking damage with no small period of invulnerability following the hit. 3 hits can come and go in a blink of an eye without this mechanic and that's just not fair. However, an invulnerable period isn't completely necessary, maybe if you just give him a much larger health bar, or maybe involve both. Regardless, something needs to change because, at this moment, the challenge doesn't feel punishing because I wasn't careful enough but punishing because I was foolish enough to even want to play.

3) Jumping. It isn't bad. It's even quite passable and maybe if other aspects were changed in this game it would be even fine as is. However, it's missing something. What do the programmers call it? The Coyote Jump? Where you have that very small grace period as you are walking off the edge to jump on thin air. That is missing. If I am even a smidgen off that edge, that Knight is dead weight.

All of these flaws are bringing down an otherwise really fun game. The art style has that nice retro aesthetic and I really love this tower-climbing invaders-type style. To sort of curve the spears when I move and throw and also consider where the enemy is going to be and not where they are great and fun aspects. I hope you do tinker with this title with a sequel or an updated version or something! Until then, despite my major gripes, I do enjoy playing this as a little time waster. Good game!

This game is so difficult, but I didn't want to give in easily. And because of that, I played the game for half and hour straight so that I could beat it. I think that this game could go places if you added some variety to it. I liked this game a lot. Keep up the good work!

Mmkay... I'm guessing this is your first game, based on look, feel and other reviews saying so. Let's get into this.

Aesthetics:
I think the knight looks a bit funky, personally, but otherwise I think you got the pixel look pretty down. I like it a lot.

Can't critique sound cause I'm playing with it muted.

Gameplay:

Just right off the bat, for the love of /god/ WHY do you not have invincibility frames after you are hit? Especially when you have such a large amount of projectiles coming down.

The control scheme is simple, spears shooting up makes sense, couple times where I wish it'd shoot straight, but yeah. Simple, easy to control and feels silky smooth.

Are the fireballs RNG? Cause I feel like it is, occasionally fireballs don't hit me until the cows come home, and other times their heat seeking missiles. This again, is a problem with no invincibilty frames after you are hit. It makes it feel like a roll of the dice if you beat the dragon at the end.

Overall? Not bad, certainly helluva lot better than my first game I showed publicly (Which is not on my profile anymore.) I'd keep it going man, You can make some good stuff with more practice.