General thoughts on demo

[alixelora]

Just got done playing the demo! First of, love the art! It's very pretty and unique, super charming. And the music is so good, too.

Generally really enjoyed my time with the demo, it was pretty fun. I didn't experience any glitches as far as I could tell. I had one crash but I think that was my computer being weird, not the game.

Now for the gameplay thoughts & nitpicks lol, and I'll preface this by saying that I played with a controller.

So, personally, I thought that for a gameplay that is inspired by Celeste, I found myself a little frustrated with the movement sometimes; Mae feels a little too slidy if that makes sense? It's not quite as snappy as I would have liked it to be for a game that requires precise platforming. I would sometimes accidentally walk into vines, and sure that sort of stuff happened to me in Celeste too but in that game it always felt like mistakes were entirely my fault. Here, sometimes, it felt like it was the game's fault.

Now of course, maybe I just suck haha, but this leads into my next nitpick; the momentum when exiting out of the tether doesn't always feel good. In particular, when you are trying to tether onto the floor but you're just above it you get the usual momentum and it causes you to slide onto the floor and, more often than not, go straight into vines or the void. It felt to me like the game would benefit from only giving you momentum out of the tether if you're in the air; as in, as soon as you touch the ground, Mae stops completely. Maybe that'd be awful, I don't know haha, that is something to try out, but at the very least I know that this was especially frustrating on moving and/or small platforms where I wanted to tether onto them but kept sliding off.

Another thing is how Mae falls down when tethering, I felt like it should give you a second or two before she starts falling because first it would reward the player for being quick when moving the spirit to their desired location, and second it would be like a little grace period for close calls like when you try to tether right above vines for example (which happened more than I'd like to admit, and sometimes felt a little frustrating).

On a completely unrelated note, I do love how the town looks, but sometimes it was a little tough to tell what I could and could not stand on. Not sure how you would get around that and ultimately it is not a big deal but yeah.

And the last thing I wanted to talk about was the room with a secret flower behind vines, not too far from the end of the chapter. It's a room where first you pass by one of those respawn stones and you find yourself with nothing but a chasm and vines on your right and so you have to wall jump up between two walls to progress, but if you tether past the vines instead you can get into the secret room. Well it's not really about the secret room but I was convinced I had to go in there to even progress because I tried tethering up to wall jump between the two walls before but the vines go so high up that I kept wall jumping onto them at first for some reason. And then later I tried again and made it work but I do think that visually speaking the vines go just a little too high and make it look as if you're almost wall jumping onto them. It definitely confused me and made me look for an alternative way to progress for a bit.

But that's about it for the gameplay nitpicks lol, overall I still had fun, for me it all comes down to making things a little snappier and I think you all have something very special on your hands!!

I hope my feedback proves useful and thank you so much for gracing us with this demo :D

[Old Skull98]

I had the exact same problem with the town and sliding off platforms, I thought I was just bad

[birkovbokriv]

I agree with both of you. I've really enjoyed the demo, the art, the music, animations, but the character slide too much, so you fall of corners more often than expected.

Also the control when you are tethering, at least form me, is too quick so I usually move the character to a position further away than intended and when I've try to correct I've already died falling in the vines.

Maybe I'm too bad but for me would be easier if the positioning of the character was a bit slower, or if the character stops in the air half a second before starting to fall when you are tethering.

The platforming on the city was a bit odd form me at the beginning because you were never sure if you can stand or not in a platform. I've like the render of the buildings but sometimes it makes difficult distinguish what is background from where you can stand.

Overall a great demo.

[SeVs ★]

[O.]

Thank you all so much for talking about this! Seriously, we're glad to be learning of this now before launch. You're not alone in feeling the character is slippery. Adjustments to come...