The Elementalist

brunozisman 2021-10-05 04:54

A very fun game to play! I liked a lot the art style, music and the idea in general, also the way that is not always a good idea to use your spells in what's in front of you xD. I think it would be good to let the player jump while going to a wall, since sometimes there's these enemies chasing you and making that adorable sound and still manage to scare me hahaha. Also, the idle animation while running made me feel like i was going backwards/not moving as fast as usual. In general it was amazing and i loved to play it!

spex130 2021-10-07 04:22

This is not a bad little game! Competent and well put together. I liked it!

matthieu-riboulot 2021-10-07 15:34

Fun game but some questionnable choice on the inputs. You should have put the fire/ice magic on the same button and put it also on the right mouse button. Jump collisions are also very rigid. But there was some very nice idea on the LD.

forik 2021-10-09 13:19

Love mechanics with phisics. Good job!

robbzenone 2021-10-09 13:23

I liked the game very much :D played till end. Found a bug.. you can die after you completed the level and the respawn dialog is over the next level dialog. Very nice idea

david-price 2021-10-09 17:55

Enjoyed play :) I died quite a few times, I think I need to brush up on my platforming skills :) Good introduction to the different elements and how to use them. Jumping next to walls was a bit difficult worked well when not touching them. Nice level design and flow, a good play :)

hadik 2021-10-09 20:03

Average art design, next time will be better. . Your game is pretty fun, so please make it more next time. Overall that game is good, good job.

One last note: I always write down honest review, because everybody need that, not just nice craps with some bullshit, but sometime I will appreciate very good games. So if this review insult you, but use it well :) Anyway every game is counting so :)

nakami 2021-10-09 21:22

There is good game design ideas in there but unfortunately the level is really pain full :/ If had the give you one advice to quickly help with the level design is to reduce verticality when if you miss a jump you return to the start of the level (aka the second level). You could also reduce the length of the level or add check points in a platformer no body want to redo 9 jumps just because he miss the 10th.

One tiny (frustrating) thing if you are close to a wall and jump you get friction and it reduce the jump high with means that you have to stop before the wall jump and when you are higher than the platform press a direction. Just remove friction on the side of objects (please ^^)

As it's your fist LD entry I suppose your still a beginner in video game development, please don't get discoursed by my comment I'm only trying to give you advice to do better the next time ;)

maus-games 2021-10-10 10:07

Very cute game with some tricky situations, and a relaxing atmosphere. I got surprised by (the cuteness of) the first enemy and died. :sweat_smile: Immediately dying and respawning at the start felt a bit too harsh as punishment though.

2021-10-10 18:09

Nice environment, I was surprised by enemies, which they can cause lot of troubles: D

quoc 2021-10-10 18:37

Really cool game. I like the cute graphic and the environment. It all fits very well together. Really enjoyed playing it

balduin 2021-10-10 18:42

Really nice game. I liked the use of the spells and how you can combine them to get through the level. The voice of the enemies was also adorable.

skallywags 2021-10-10 19:04

Deceptively cute, secretly evil game :laughing:!!

I was surprised by how good some of the puzzles were, and I appreciated that as the game went on, there was a greater emphasis on using your powers. Initially I could just hop onto the moving platforms, but as it went on they got faster and I had to freeze them and unfreeze them. Same thing with getting rid of the enemies. These mechanics reminded me of Prince of Persia Forgotten Sands, which is a puzzle platformer that has similar freezing / unfreezing mechanics.

I was also surprised by how much content there was, considering it is a game jam. I didn't even finish the game but spent a good 20 minutes and felt like even the first few levels were more than enough for the game jam.

The art is very cute, and I know you guys used SFX and music from other sources, but they still fit the game well to create a cohesive cute aesthetic.

I was surprised by how good the AI was, I felt like it was smart and fast and impressed that it could follow me pretty well.

I wanted to keep playing past the 20 minutes because honestly it was a very fun game, but there were a number of things holding back my experience and I want to voice those here so you guys can improve your game, as I feel like this project should be continued.

First of all, the controls are a little bit awkward. Rather than switching your power with E and Q, I would have done something simpler:

1) Either put fire on LMB and ice on RMB (or vice versa)

2) Or make the power switch a toggle, so you can toggle between ice and fire both on E, Q, or RMB. That way I don't have to use two separate buttons for both. I could mostly look past this, but I feel like a lot of players will be turned off by it a lot.

Secondly, I think a more flexible jump which allows you to control your jump height and duration would have helped a lot with the platforming. In other words, right now if I press jump, it seems that I go up and come down a predetermined height for a predetermined amount of time. Instead, I would like the character to only go up while I am holding jump, and once I let go I would like it to drop down quickly. This will not only make your character feel more responsive, but also actually give your player more fine tuned control over where the character moves, which will make the platforming feel smoother and more fair.

Thirdly, colliders!! The colliders are too big for the tiles / enemies. As a player I want the colliders to be smaller than the actual sprites (let's say 60-80% of the sprite size) so that when I touch a platform or touch an enemy, I have a bit of leeway. There were so many times where I got caught on a corner of a tile and fell down to an enemy and had to restart a level. Same thing goes for enemies, it is too easy to just barely touch an enemy and then die immediately.

Thirdly, considering that you die after messing up once, the levels are too long. Too many times I messed up executing something or got hit by an enemy and had to restart a level like 10 times. It really slows down the game for the player. Either make levels shorter or add checkpoints.

Lastly, I think you have to make a decision - are you more of a puzzle platformer or precision platformer? If you are precision platformer, then feel free to make the player have to jump in specific places and move in specific ways and have that be the focus and the main challenge of the game, and don't make the level design too puzzley. BUT, if you are a puzzle platformer (which I think you are) then get rid of the need for super precise movement. There were too many occasions in my playthrough where I knew the solution to a puzzle, but felt that I had to execute a jump perfectly and it was very easy to mess up. If you require fine tuned execution of the platforming, then you get in the way of the puzzle aspect.

Thank you for reading through my rambling feedback if you got this far. I did really enjoy this game, and I hope this feedback helps you continue developing it. Great job.

tony 2021-10-10 19:15

Cool game, I like the small puzzles and the graphics, although sometimes when you jump and "hug" a wall it acts a bit clunky, but otherwise well done!

malcolm 2021-10-10 21:10

Really pleasing gameplay. With more time I would expect this to develop into a very well fleshed out game.

handserge 2021-10-11 20:27

Such a good gameplay, I have played a few platformers on this jam and this is the most comfortable movement system for me, flow is so nice. Also loved the idea and puzzles! But it was a little bit hard without checkpoints. :D Maybe I'm more of a casual gamer. Artsyle and sound design are superb, as well as the levels! I didn't expect there will be so many interesting ones.

I would add different magic power indication, not only cursor one (for example, different eye color for each power or some colorful particles around the staff), now that was difficult for me to differanciate which power is chosen at the moment. Also I didn't like a button "R" for a restart, because I have clicked that too many times when I wanted to change magic powers ("E" and "R" keys are next to each other), that was kinda annoying. Anyways, great game! :D

vitor-milioni 2021-10-12 10:47

Honestly i just want to agree pretty much on everything with SkallyWags there, it was very well put and hits everything about the game pretty perfectly. That said, it's a great game, looks beautiful and plays just nicely, fantastic entry, well done!

andreman 2021-10-21 19:54

Nice platformer with good puzzle mechanic! (agree with skallywags - it is better to throw ice and fire ball by lmb and rmb)