Constructive criticism.

[Coronis]

So I wound up sending this game in for a refund after just under two hours right after beating the second boss. I feel that it might be worth informing the developers why I did in hopes they might be able to take it into consideration when making further games.

First, things I liked:
Soundtrack was amazing. One of the best chiptune albums I've heard in recent memory, up with PPPPPP and Shovel Knight's OST

The pixel art is really pretty and fits the game well.

Controls are nice and responsive, which is extremely important for a platformer/metroidvania

Now issues I've had:
The game world seemed rather lifeless. Any NPCs I found there were had no character and only served to inform you of mechanics or where to go next. Contrast with Shovel Knight's village, which had NPCs with their own little quirks or things to do, even if they only had one line. It didn't feel like there was a world so much as a place to enact gameplay.

For the gameplay, the difficulty was a bit too much on the steep side. Zoe only having three hearts with save points spaced as far apart as they were was rather aggrevating, as I'd wind up failing just a couple screens before the next save point, which was extremely frusterating. This could potentially be alleviated by boosting the amount of hearts dropped by enemies.

The boss fights did not seem well designed. The first one (The spider fight) was ok, but rather dull with how repetative the movements you made were, and killing him didn't feel like much of accomplishment. The second though, felt extremely cheap as there didn't seem to be nearly enough time to make a bubble and jump over him with how slow Zoe normally moves. With him moving so much faster than my character, I found the only way to beat him was to wait until he moved to the center of the room and then rapidly mash the attack button and hope he died before I did.

I hope you keep trying to make games, as I feel like you put a lot of effort into this, but as it is it just wasn't fun for me with the aformentioned issues.

[76561198308578187]

Thank you for taking your time to write to us and thank you for giving the game a chance. I hope that your feedback helps bring more life in future games that we work on.

[wyrdwad]

I suspect this just wasn't the game for you, as I didn't have any of the issues you did. Specifically:

- I didn't feel like the NPCs were especially lifeless, on account of the fact that there are very few NPCs to begin with, which I think is appropriate for this game. It's meant to have a lonely Metroidvania kind of feel, and the absence of other people adds to that quite significantly.

- I actually feel like the game was quite generous with save-points, and having three life hearts was fairly generous as well (especially with enemies dropping life hearts on occasion, save-points healing you back up to full, and the ability to scoop up well water for an additional 3 life hearts later in the game).

- I found all but the fourth boss to be quite easy... although I did struggle a bit with the third boss, but that's only because I sequence-broke the CRAP out of this game, and fought the third boss before I'd even obtained the bubble spell at all, using trick jumps with green blocks to climb to the top of the Void Tower. As such, I was lacking in blue crystals, so I had to rely on pattern memorization and a lot of trial and error to beat the boss -- but found myself able to do so after only 5 or so tries, which isn't bad for this kind of game.

Basically, I feel like if Elden Pixels took your advice to heart, the game would either be too easy or... not really what it is that I feel makes it special. Which isn't to say your feedback is wrong or bad, of course -- I just don't think this game was meant for you. Maybe you went into it expecting one thing and got another, I dunno, but I feel the end product I just 100%ed today was virtually a 10/10 experience. I would change nothing, as I feel like changing any aspect of this game could only be to its detriment.

[Elden Pixels]

Hello. Thanks for your feedback. As the designer of Alwa's Awakening I wanted to just comment on a few things.

Thanks for the comments about the music. The full soundtrack is available on YouTube and coming to Spotify, Bandcamp and on a NES cartridge later this spring.

Regarding save rooms they're about 7-10 rooms a part (varies a little though). In earlier versions we tried 3-4 but that was way too easy and more than 12 was way too challenging. What we saw when people played the game was that they learned how to get through each room without getting hit and that was something we wanted. I mean, in most NES games dying and losing your lives would permanently end the game or respawn you at the beginning. Spawning the player in a checkpoint just a few rooms back was something we thought was fair and most deaths would only results in a few minutes of time loss. Each room in the game can be completed without getting hit, it's just a matter of learning the pattern.

As wyrdwad mentioned above you can very early find a flask that gives you 6 HP instead of three which decreases the difficulty substantially. We never really intended the game to have any health drops, originally the hearts was intended as Red Orbs which was meant to work as currency. We realized though there was nothing really to buy so quite late in the process we changed them to hearts. When we beta tested the game with a lot of different testers most of them seemed to think the game was too easy. But now when the game is out a lot of people say it's really hard. :) I think it's pretty fair.

When it comes to NPC:s we were mainly inspired by Zelda 1 and 2 and a typical tip in Zelda would be something like "FIND MAGIC IN A CAVE IN MORUGE SWAMP." or "Digdogger hates certain kind of sounds". Really, really cryptic messages that would have any kid talking about it on the schoolyard the next day. That was the kind of tone we went for.

I think Steam refunds are great. If this game wasn't for you it's awesome you can get your money back. Thanks for your feedback!

Cheers!

// Mikael, designer of Alwa's Awakening