Only bad
Reviews for "The Fading Light"
This game was fine. It had a simple concept, and executed it well enough. Let's talk about it.
This game had good presentation. That much is undeniable. The art style was farily distinct, made enemies fairly easy to see, though I wish the basic enemies were brighter, and looked fairly good.
The UI is pretty good too. I like how your health bar changes with your weapon and everything looked really clean and easy to see at a moment's glance. Music is pretty good too, and suits the atmosphere of the game well. If there's anything I would complain about in the presentation department, it would be that sound effects felt cheap and off to me. I can't explain how or why, so it probably isn't very helpful, but I know there's something off about them.
Things get weirder once we get to gameplay. Originally I was extremely put off by the way you aimed by moving, but it's grown on me. While aiming with mouse is much more snappy, this game forces you to think about positioning much more. Firstly, to aim at enemies, you must face them, and your staff turns slowly, making you have to walk towards them. This makes you have to put some distance between the enemies before turning around to aim at them, and makes it so being against a wall puts you at a large disadvantage. It was something I learned to pay attention to, which is why I'm sad that the walls and distance to enemies are the only things that make you consider your positioning. Something that would make this system shine much more brightly is if you put enviornmental obstacles. Rocks or trees or something like that that would get in your way. Maybe holes in the ground that dealt damage to you. Walls that allowed only projectiles through. Stuff like that would make your positioning a constant factor if frequent enough, and you would have to consider your distance from them always. I also wish the enemy variety was greater. Though there are a few enemies. Most of them run towards you and damage you. Some have bigger hitboxes, and some die when touching you, but other than the mushroom that shoots purple pellets at you, they're very similar and mostly uninteresting. Try new ones to make the player have to move in different ways. Maybe one that shot a huge slow projectile that would stay on the map for a long time. Maybe one that spawned other smaller ones. I don't know. They would be great at exploiting how movement and shootiing work against each other in this game. Also, the fact that your torch runs out of light is barely an issue as it runs out so slow. I recommend making it run out faster but placing more pickups and making them replenish less so it's more of a concern.
Also I wish I could select menu options using my mouse. The option never hurts.
Well that's all of the criticisms that come to mind. Hopefully this was at least somewhat helpful.
med999 responds:
Your feedback is very understandable and helpful.
That'll help me a lot to improve my games.
Thank you.
Nice game, this does remind me of a game i used to watch but i can't remember the name of it.
Still, a very nice game, keep it up!
Awesome-looking game! I'm glad to have been able to play this, this is a straight-forward, but nevertheless stunning game!
The gameplay concept is very simple and was a little bit irritating to me, since my aim of fire always faced the direction that I was going towards, so it ended up in me having to always distance myself from the enemies and come back, which I at first didn't like, but then I got used to it and realized that it really adds some uniqueness to the game and requires you to think a little bit ahead on how you're going to move and when.
I also really like the different powers you have, they all have cool-looking glows and I like how they each have unique abilities! I liked the freeze, it felt satisfying shooting the enemies with that and it made it easier on me when they were moving in slow-mo.
Overall, really nice demo to your game! I've seen many games with a reminiscent style to this one (dark environment, cute, little main character, colorful lights) but this felt like a really special experience! ;^)
Only putting the arrow keys and wasd on the ground to begin with kind of confused me. It was only when checking the ‘How to play’ anyway that I realised you could shoot/change weapons.
The view is a little close, with moving up and down more fraught than left or right, and playing it until you die has little longevity. Most games like this add upgrades and the like to fix it and make death less pointless and boring. The aiming is also off: locking to the 8 points around you is fine for a tile based game, but leave you unable to properly aim here, which is odd since its mouse aiming anyway.
Points for a nice art style though.
med999 responds:
Hey, thank you for your feedback.
I made this game for a school project and then I uploaded it here so anyone can try it, that's why it's missing some features. but I'll use your feedback to improve my future games.