Beastly Bites

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Well, conceptually speaking and in the content offered on the store for consideration, I thought that this game had potential to be minimally taxing while engaging, so I gave it a whirl. Typically, I do not get into anime-style artwork or games, they tend to have themes and styles that are grating to me, but I thought this was just goofy enough looking that I would be able to look past it. In theory, the game is sound enough, at least for the time I played. Starting the story did strike me a bit offensively, particularly that the villain/boss is a messy eating, gross eating sounds making fat man with his clothes undone. I get that the theme of the game is around food and battling food items with a chopstick as a weapon, but it feel unnecessarily stereotypical and gross to see that as the start of the game. I went on to play for a small chunk of time, trying to navigate the first level(?) and get a better grasp on the game itself. The mechanics... well, they leave much to be desired. The default mouse sensitivity I experienced was too high, leading to easily disorienting changes to the field of view. I found myself backtracking a lot and having to reorient simply because trying to "battle" the enemies would lead to me being turned around or wild POV shifting. There's no jump, the "run" is labeled as dash and works as a dash until it becomes run (so it seemed to me anyway... I get that the translation of menus and such may be responsible for the incongruent labels, but the performance of the option seemed to vary), you flail wildly unless you "target" an enemy (an option that didn't even occur to me that I would have to be worried for or set keybindings for, especially in a hack-n-slash melee fighting style), and the navigation leaves much to be desired. The game contains progress checkpoints that you can pass and not go back through, but doesn't make it clear where you might respawn after death... and it also respawns all of the minor enemies when you resurrect, so if you haven't made it past the gate to the boss fight? You could respawn in enemy sites. Usually games have at least a 30s protective state after respawn, but this did not. You work on battling cabbages gone rogue that look like turkeys (intentionally, I believe)... But it doesn't give you much clear indication of how much damage is being done to you OR the enemy other than a vaguely defined HP box for you in the upper left. There's no clear way to determine where the hitboxes for you or the enemy really are, and the first big boss doesn't clearly show you what hurts you from them, nor where you might need to hit them in order to make progress. Even with full health, minor enemies can easily take you out and there's no obvious healing to find... and if you have lost really ANY health before the boss fight, you're as good as a one shot death. I died over and over because even when I got close to the success of beating the boss, the POV swivel would lead me to swinging wild at times, just smashing buttons. The target/aim function did NOT seem to assist with actually connecting during the boss fight, so seems to be exclusively for singling out targets in a crowded field, so it was of little help. After repeated deaths and struggles to keep the game oriented, I was pretty frustrated. I'm not going to be keeping this game. I really did want to get a kick out of the gimmick and have a lowkey goofy game to share with my viewership on Twitch... but both my audience and I got annoyed and bored fairly quickly. I understand skills and learning curves, and I also understand small teams, indie devs, and school project publications... hell, that's why I mine the new releases for games to play and review, because I know quality review and feedback can be infinitely valuable to the creators... But we will not have this in our rotation. Advice: Optimize and guide the user through the gameplay UI so that they know what's going on (particularly the targeting, as this was something I found by happenstance when trying to rebind keys). Take your time and show your pride in the work. Consider how limiting a lack of strategic jumps/movement truly is in a hacker battle adventure. Be more creative with the art, especially the landscape of the level, so that it can be aesthetically interesting rather than generic, and so that it naturally flows. The movement and story were just too clunky for it to be really enjoyed for me, and thus I will be uninstalling after I finish writing this. Sometimes I offer to help playtest new updates/revisions for developers, but this title is not one I would offer such to, at least not as it currently stands. It definitely needs more work. I *would* consider trying again in the future given major updates and considered overhaul, but the list of changes would need to be pretty hefty. Good luck to the developers as they move forward and gain experience. Good luck to other gamers in the community; maybe you'll have a better time than I did. Much love, TeslaQoil aka Mama Lynn

Nice little game, pretty easy till you get to the last boss, I just wished there was a lot more to the game. But it is good fun for an hour of your time.

For a free hack and slash game, its pretty fun and has a nice art style.

well cute short indie game. right after the first bossfight its a bit laggy but only for a while, all i can say that if there would be a bit more fighting moves, more enemies and the game would be longer i wouldnt even mind paying for it :D also buff the foxes!!! they dont do anything,

-_-

Cute short indie game. I assume this was a class or club project since the publisher is a school. There's a story, decent game play, can't complain too much. Some things I'd like to see done better is camera angles, character movement, and lock on. Every now and then the camera would get stuck under a ledge and I wouldn't be able to see my character. The character's movement wasn't very smooth. She would sometimes spin around going in the opposite direction of where I was trying to go, partly due to the camera being stuck on trees or ledges, and partly because the lock-on mechanism is janky. I'm not sure how they designed the lock on because sometimes it would do it based off where the camera was looking, or it would be off of where the character was facing. All in all, I would recommend it to play something that's short and cute. But the devs could continue tweaking it to make it smoother.

This game made me go meep moop 10/10