I'm iffy on the charging mechanic. There's already enough interesting things between the bosses themselves, deciding which way to move, correctly timing your clicks, and all that, that I don't think charging is really necessary or fits in with the rest of the game. It's pretty frustrating when King Midas randomly decides to use the burrowing hands attack right before I launchm or when I fail to grab the cubes so we just stand there awkwardly for two seconds because he decided to be polite and let me charge this time. Of course I might just be salty that I couldn't beat King Midas. Might I suggest that he move a bit towards the center before doing the barrier.
Reviews for "MAGE-KESHIFT"
Wow, it could be my bias as a boss fight lover talking, but I found this to be surprisingly very promising and cool!
It's certainly rough around the edges and unfinished, but the bosses showed a lot of effort put into their unique attack patterns and suitable telegraph animations for them, and the general gameplay of catching the bosses attacks and throwing them right back into their face was very satisfying, especially when combined with the charging mechanic and the risk/reward it brings! In a way, the general gameplay reminds me of something like Titan Souls, but with combat more akin to some sort of weird fusion of Kirby and Sekiro, what with the general way you parry/suck&blow attacks from the boss.
While I did have a good time with this, it definitely was pretty confusing to start out with and there were a lot of weird quibbles that got in the way:
*I spent way too long trying to just smack the enemies with the orb before realizing we were supposed to throw objects at them and the orb was just a tool for that, haha! Maybe the starter room could teach this concept a bit more: I know it subtly tries to by making you throw the key at the door, but maybe it could be a bit more clear.
*Input registration was very unforgiving and a bit annoying. For example, if after an attack, but before you've recovered, you hold down the attack key, it will not start charging when you finish recovering: instead it requires that you wait until you've recovered and then press and hold the attack button anew.
*Collision detection was very odd: there would be times I would charge up and throw an object, but because my back is to the wall and the object was technically behind the wall, it would rebound off the wall and go out-of-bounds. Plenty of other strange bounces as well, and sometimes the feedback from a throw would be difficult to see as they'd just go way too fast to even be seen.
*Found it odd that you can't pick up objects if you walk over to them while already charging: it will only pick them up if you start charging while already next to them at the start. I understand it might be intentional as, in the context of intercepting fireballs thrown at you, it would be too easy if you didn't have to time your button press to nullify them parry-style, but in the context of a rock just being on the ground that you want to pick up, I think it would make sense to be able to scoop it up in such a way.
Definitely found this to be quite the promising prototype that I'd like to see more from!
FishDev responds:
Thank you for the feedback!! I plan on getting back to working on this again once I'm done with another game. Also, thank you so much for the compliments on the boss designs!! I put a lot of work into that, I was pretty inspired by Wizard of Legend. I definitely need to do some balancing though, as I've gotten a lot of complaints about the difficulty haha
- Yup, an actual bonafide tutorial is planned. This was made in just a month for a game jam so I wanted to spend more time on the actual game itself.
- I'm sorry but I'm not sure what you mean by this. Is there any way you could elaborate?
- Lol yeah I've seriously gotta make those walls one-way or something
- I try communicating that by having the range circle flash at the start, that doesn't continue as you charge, but I could use a more noticeable method, the flash is def pretty subtle.
genuinely love this, its simple but absolutely charming to me, def gonna play this here and there when I have time to kill
What ?! That's it ? I'm sad its over already. Game is too good and I Hope this becomes a legit game in the future with cool upgrades.
FishDev responds:
It's planned! But at the moment I'm working on a different game.
I have a skill issue, fantastic game though.