Beyond the Mountains

Overall I like it. It's not perfect, it felt really easy to fall off an edge, like the hole was bigger than it looked as an example. But I liked the overall story, world, and characters. The dungeons and world exploration were alright and fun. It was better than some top down zelda-like I actually paid for. It's free and if you like zelda-like games it is definitely worth a try. I look forward to the dev's planned sequel. For the dev, some criticisms or suggestions, I think a pause menu inventory would go a long way. I do like that you can cycle through your items in this without going into an inventory, but not being able to see what you own all at once at a glance is a bit annoying. You would then also be able to show the fish log, and the song notes. Semi related, but a map would be nice. The game wasn't big enough to get lost in or anything, but I always like looking at a well made map in these types of games. Being able to save anywhere would also be nice, at least on the overworld. Even if it teleports you back to a specific spot when you reload, like a frog location. The health bar layout being solid doesn't let you know how much health you have and is a bit annoying trying to figure out. Discrete chunks I think would work better. I like the idea of having the health circle show over your head when your hit so you can see at a glance, but I also think the health circle itself was super ugly and showing on the enemies and yourself doesn't look good. It might just need a better graphic for it if you want to keep the health bars for the enemies. The elemental fork is a good idea, but the execution felt a bit janky. Sometimes the projectile came out to the side of the character and would immediately hit a wall and disappear, or not come out at all and lose the charge. Only having one shot before losing a charge made this way more annoying as then you had to walk all the way back to regrab the element. Overall I think you did a great job on the world and gameplay and most of my complaints are on the UI elements that I think can be vastly improved.