Legend of the 4 Orbs

First of all, I love the pixel art for this game, especially for the Golem in the left room.

I enjoy the puzzle elements for each fight, needing to utilize different tools in each fight. Very reminiscent of top down Zelda games.

I was confused at first about the magnetic gauntlet, but I ended up figuring it out by trial and error. Though, notably sometimes the gauntlet wouldn't work. I assume you had to face the Golem's front where the shield wasn't up.

I think what would improve the game is some good sound effects, especially when damaging an enemy.

@SnowFox, thank you for the feedback!

The magnetic gauntlet needs some more explanation or some way to be more intuitive. I wound up walking right up to that boss and waving my sword at him, and the gauntlet at him, and it wasn't until then I figured out that the gauntlet did anything.

Speaking of which, you can walk right up to that boss and if you are close enough you, all of his attacks miss. I did this by walking up in front of his arm (which it would be expected that boss attacks would miss), then turning to attack the center (which did nothing, neither magnetic nor sword), and then moving in to the center.

Some polish would go a long way, at the very least, fix the "game title goes here". Cleaning up the GUI buttons and making it clearer would also help.

Also, you support arrow keys, but not WASD. Are you not using Unity's Input.GetAxis() for this? How do you support both controller and keyboard without it?

This is very nice but I would love to see this in what would be the rest of the game!

@laaph,

Thank you for the feedback. I am actually using Godot, not unity. The input system is actually functionally better. Your not the first person who requested WASD (which anyone with an AZERTY keyboard complains about). I should be able to move the non-movement keys elsewhere on the keyboard and add WASD as alternates for arrow keys.

The magnetic gaunlet should be somewhat more clear when you get to the boss in that, it is a zelda like thing, were you get the key item for the dungeon, use it to solve some puzzles, then fight the boss.

The rest of the game should be done by Dec 31st as I set a goal of at most 100h or end of the year to be done with the game.

"Game title goes here" has actually been fixed in the project, but I have made changes that make it hard to build a 'boss only' build (the build setting only overrides the over world, so you would get what ever progress I have on the dungeons also).

After my first session, so far I've gathered the yellow orb and entered the green dungeon.

The very first seconds playing the game gave me a wrong impression, as the first thing I've done was fall off the boat, respawning and then not being able to disembark because I didn't have the blue orb or something :,-D Turns out it's totally not representative of the game quality, as it turned out to be pretty fun.

Starting with the nitpicks I had while playing:

• I wish there was a little cooldown before taking damage again, in certain scenarios I could take 3 pts of damage in a split second.
• There's quite a lot of filler screens. having some is alright (if only to give us some enemies to farm health when needed!) but sometimes it felt like a lot of walking through similar places. This could be explained by the game being unfinished though.
• That guy is hungry for charger meat! Can't you just tell me the story again without more meat? :D (this one is not serious it made me smile tbh)

Some positive things now:

• I like the different enemies, there's a good variety and they all have their own behavior which we learn quite fast
• The puzzles are simple but still satisfying to figure out. Some pointers would be useful in the final game to make it fool-proof with things like how to equip/use the gauntlet, but I managed to figure things out without too much trouble.
• The combat is quite satisfying, with a generous hitbox for the sword and 8 directions to attack.
• Thanks for the save system

So, the only boss I've met is the yellow one, and honestly I've got nothing to complain about it. It was quite interesting to learn his patterns and figure out how to beat. I still have a couple suggestions though:

1. You could use SFX / VFX to help show that attacking him straight with a sword is not effective (I tried at first to attack him where there's no shield, it took me a few attempts before deciding it did not seem to harm him). Same thing with a successful attack, the "hit" sprite was reasonably readable, but some SFX and particles to reinforce it could help.
2. The white squares to represent health are not very intuitive. Even for the player it wasn't until I got attacked by a monster that I understood they weren't inventory slots. For the boss, I thought the white rectangles were part of the environment until I realized a couple of them had disappeared. You could try for instance introducing a thin, dark bar that slides into the screen, then getting filled with red rectangles one by one or something. It would make it clearer that we just met a boss and it has 3 health points.

All in all just little details, overall this is a nice little adventure, great work so far!

@Wan,

Thanks for all the feedback, it is really helpful for this game dev journey. Looking forward to that day were I can sit down and make a full game that is worth putting up for sale.

falling in the water right off the boat.

If I had more time, I would likely make the water 'solid' except when using an ability that you might not have yet. My problem there had to do with that being a very fiddly bit of code (basically having 3 states - solid, sink, no effect, instead of 2, sink/no effect). I do think it could possibly be a good bit of polish there… or just make it so around the boat/pier said behavior exists. But if you finish the game, why it works the way it is will make more sense. Given that this moment of the game is 'first impressions', I think it could definately use some improvements.. as like you said, it gives a bad first impression.

I wish there was a little cooldown before taking damage again, in certain scenarios I could take 3 pts of damage in a split second.

This one has been the most consitent feedback and definately something I will be taking to heart for any future games (given when you commented, it sounds like you got the final build - at least the final planned build). There is .25 seconds of knockback and that is also the invunrability window, unfortunately, there are times were that doesn't knock you free from the enemy's pathing (mostly the chargers). With how I did up the statemachine, I don't have a clean way of separating the invunerability window from the knockback. (at least not without making damage clips/boosts possible). Definately something that I need to do better next time. (or even this time if I had plans on putting a lot more into this game)

There's quite a lot of filler screens. having some is alright (if only to give us some enemies to farm health when needed!) but sometimes it felt like a lot of walking through similar places. This could be explained by the game being unfinished though.

yup, I orriginally wanted to add stuff to find on the overworld, but given the gameplay/etc, I didn't have anything useful that I could put out there without messing up boss combat balance. there are 47 overworld screens, 19 of them have something to interact with and a few making up a multi screen maze. So about 40% of the screens have something to do on them. Do you have a suggestion for how dense 'something to do' should be?

yellow boss comments

Yes, by far this was the hardest boss to come up with good feedback on what was working not working. if it was 3D, it would have been much easier… I could have just made it clear that the head was the only vunerable bit… you can't reach it unless it falls down and that metal bit on the front that can be pulled could be more clear also then.

That is some really good feedback on the boss health bar, thanks… I will definately take that one for my 'things to remember' note book.

So about 40% of the screens have something to do on them. Do you have a suggestion for how dense 'something to do' should be?

Technically you could go up to 100% and it would give your game an interesting "no filler vibe": the player would just go through lots of screens with places they can't enter/understand yet, accumulating hints for later.

I would not totally advise it either because technically "something to do" can also mean just "discover some lore", "let the player practice something", "have a good landmark for orientation", "give easy mobs to farm health before a boss" etc. and not necessarily just a quest or puzzle.

On the overworld, your 60% of screens "without something to do" still let the player learn how the different enemies work, practice fighting with them and eventually use them to recover health. I'd say that around the spawn zone in particular it's interesting to have some, but overall you can maybe remove a good dozen of filler screens without losing too much?

(PS. I quite enjoy thinking about this kind of game/level design stuff ^^)