Death Fighter

Congrats on the first game! It's pretty brave to put it on Steam but since you asked for some reviews, you'll get some. I'll also try to give an honest rundown of the good and bad things I saw while I played this. Some things will be a bit petty, some not, but everything adds to making a polished piece, even though this is your first game. For starters, the game is free so recommending it isn't difficult. Especially to give a review to an aspiring dev. I'll always recommend people try someone's first game, regardless of quality. I'm not sure why the game asks for Firewall access though. Pros: - Good variety in the platforming. I didn't manage to get through the entire game. I only saw three levels before I got stuck due to checkpoint issues (I'll mention them later) but what I did see felt like a solid start. - You have the beginnings of an in-depth risk/reward movement system here! I'd like to call it Spike jumping since those things were the most prevalent throughout the game. Taking damage propels you in the direction away from the damage, so I used this a lot to skip over various parts of the levels. You can do something cool with this, whether it be hiding secrets or for actual normal gameplay. Cons: - We can see that the square tiles have rounded edges. However, it seems consistent so it's easy to work with. - While the platforming feels decent, the bosses kind of don't. They feel like the weak points of something that would otherwise be solid without them. They're damage sponges and while I only fought two, they were enough to take me out of the game for a good while. I enjoyed myself when I wasn't fighting bosses so this may just be me. Errors/Misspellings: - "Developer" is misspelled in the options menu. - The options button "Back to main menu" has an extra space between "main" and "menu". - "Enemies" is misspelled in the second and third messages of the tutorial section. - The tutorial might need to be reworded, because the first enemy's message makes the player think that the enemy is a one-shot kill, so seeing that the next enemy is "more dangerous" feels weird. - In the first blue area with spikes, a piece of the ground gave way but I couldn't fit through the hole. - You can see the bottom edge of a spike whenever it's moving up. - Progression is tied to the last checkpoint activated, not touched. Not sure if that's intended, but I talk about this more in-depth in the next section. - Not technically in the game, but you misspelled "Death" in your thumbnail! I think it's still charming though <3 Recommendations: - I don't feel like checkpoint progression should be tied to the last checkpoint activated. In the last level I played, I was nearing the end when I got stuck in an unfortunate spike jump loop and got sent to the start, where I activated a checkpoint that I missed earlier. From then on, whenever I died I was sent aaaaall the way back there, even after easily reaching some other checkpoints later on. You can say "Well just don't skip the checkpoints" but the reality is that if I did it, others will too, whether they want to or not. And this feels rather punishing. - The issue above is compounded by the lack of a "restart level" option. That would also be nice to have. - The tutorial section contains around 75 coins, whereas in the other 2-3 levels I went through I ended up getting way less than that. I don't think the tutorial should have that many coins while being readily available (and unskippable in new games). Because the skins cost so much, players are incentivized to just spend time farming the tutorial because that is by far the fastest way of getting coins. This can be easily fixed in several ways: - Make the tutorial have way less coins. - Make the tutorial a one-time-only coin fest for new players so they get their free 75 coins once and never again. - Put way more coins in the levels following the tutorial to even things out. I know that coins and skins aren't the main point of the game, but they're here and you might as well help players earn them in a bit more enjoyable manner. - A setting to change the volume would be cool, although alt-tabbing to the volume mixer isn't that big a deal. - Please add an option to restart the level! Getting stuck and needing to start the entire game over feels a bit too punishing but if that was your intended experience then I can understand it, then the priority should probably be ironing out bugs. - In the menu where you choose your character, I think the text for "Choose character:" would look much nicer if it's centered above the characters. I hope you keep making things! I love checking out peoples' first games. Good luck with this and other future projects! :D