Pigbook

I don't know if it's just my copy of the game that's broken since I don't see anyone else mentioning this in the reviews, but there is no item descriptions for anything, which is incredibly annoying. Some of the items you can intuit from sprites or names alone like grapes restoring HP or bombs doing bomb stuff, but what the hell does the crab claw do? Is it even supposed to do anything? What about the scrolls that display next to the money at the top of the screen? What are those even called and why do I need them anyway? Another issue with the game: it does not telegraph the main character getting hit well enough. Even in my short time playing there were several occassions where I was simply exploring around thinking I was doing well for myself only to suddenly notice I'm at half HP. When did I take all that damage? I couldn't tell you because the game didn't either. Other games have things like knockback or special sound effects for getting hit, but not this one. Overall it's a shame becuase I can tell other parts of the game have a surprising amount of polish and it looks pretty interesting, but those two annoyances make me not want to continue. If they get fixed I'll consider giving the game another shot and changing this review

I was going to leave a positive rec, however my game always crashes early into one of the later boss fights. This is a mini metroidvania of sorts however there are separate levels (This is sometimes called a Crest-like). You do acquire abilities, some of which are expendables purchased in a shop. Pigbook has some charm, and if not for that bug would be a pretty decent little game. Other issues encountered: -Doesn’t have all of the keybindings for Steamdeck. -I played with an Xbox controller. The tutorial shows keyboard key inputs rather than the controller I was using, but I worked the buttons out quite quickly. -The dungeon maps are inaccurate in some places. You might see that you need to move 2 rooms to the left to get somewhere, and when you move two rooms to the left, well you are not where the map initially told you that you would be. -The world map (different from the dungeon map) sometimes bugs out, refusing to take some of your directional inputs. For instances, you might want to travel left, but to make the left button work again you have to spam pressing in different directions until it fixes itself and lets you move to the left again. -Music is decent but VERY repetitive. There is an issue with the in-game sound settings too. If you alter these settings, the game will ignore the changes when booted up. The bar will be where you moved it, but still be playing at the default volume. I had to go in and move the sliders each time I loaded the game. -When you are scoring combo’s the writing covers the screen and you can’t see what you’re doing. -For some reason the keybind to use items is down on the D-pad. Manageable but weird. Boss crash error: ___________________________________________ ############################################################################################ FATAL ERROR in Vertex Shader compilation ShaderName: ShWeird Invalid shader at gml_Object_oBoss_worker_Draw_0 ############################################################################################ gml_Object_oBoss_worker_Draw_0 (line -1) "