SAGE 2022 - Demo Garbage Girl Louise - First Demo

1. The first bit with the rolling thing is weird. I don't know why they have a little divot right in front of it, you lose speed too fast when you start rolling, and the ramp messes with your speed. I would honestly get rid of small divot. I'd also let you roll along the ground longer.
2. Part of the ramp issue is she doesn't stick to the ramp as she's running up it and it flattens out. She'll end up rising above it a bit, which means you can't jump until you jump the ground, and holding down to roll will just cancel her and drop her down.
3. The ramp thing gets bad with some of the middle of level one's platforming cause of that, where I'll fuck up a jump cause oops, wasn't on the ground as I was running up the ramp. Having some kind of collision_point or single pixel object, directly beneath her, that pulls the player object straight to the ground should help with that.
4. Wall jumping has the usual problem I don't like in games that do it, it's easy for me to start holding towards the direction I want to go before hitting jump, causing me to fall off, but you also fall off if you let go of holding towards the wall. It's kind of awkward for me, and I'd prefer to at least stick to the wall unless I jump off or hold away from it for like 10-30 frames, to give players buffer room. I can't think of any time you'd want to fall off from the side of a wall instantly after pushing into it.
5. I think the acceleration rate should be bumped up a bit more when holding the run button, it feels like I need a lot more land to start building up real speed which again makes some of the platforming bits on smaller platforms a bit of a pain if I stop at all, didn't have enough speed going into it, hit a block, etc.
6. She carries acceleration from other objects, which might be neat but a lot of the time it does throw off my platforming. I'm not sure if this really needs to address though, if the rate you accelerate was bumped up more so I could respond to that stuff.
7. The moving platforms should really move along a global timer instead of separately, dying a few times on stage 2 I noticed they would be out of sync or in different orders than I'd expect, making jumps that were fine in one run be a big hassle the next one.
8. The level design is decent; there's variations in the direction you're going and it makes use of the core platforming bits. The raccoons feel nicely hidden and rewarding to get to. What I think it could use are more sections with variable routes or choices on going through it (example: going along roofs with enemies versus lower to the ground with more focus on platforming, which would both funnel into a linear spot). Or even something closer to early mario levels where you have a platform you can jump on alongside the ground. I think that would make it more fun to replay and explore around.
9. The magic hat projectile only attacking enemies makes it kinda uninteresting. I keep shooting at blocks and trashcans but nothing happens, I think doing that would at least give it another function, one you could maybe work into later puzzles (having to carry it to a wall of destructible blocks to destroy with, to reach some gems/shortcut/raccoon). Or maybe letting you charge the spell projectile so it could go through multiple enemies/blocks. Another aesthetic touch would be if hitting enemies would turn them into white doves that fly away, to fit the magician theme.
10. Oh! I almost forgot about enemies and invincibility timer: I kept taking hits cause I would run into an enemy, jump up to take them out, but then go through and the timer wears off and I take another hit. I think you should separate the player's jumping on enemy collision to be it's own thing that still works even during invincibility frames.
11. Lastly, I'd prefer options on changing the window size, at least toggling to windowed mode with F4. I wasn't able to see my chat while streaming it.

inkdragonworks said:

This was a cute platformer I tried out cause I liked the art style and pacing of it. I've streamed it and replayed it earlier and felt like sharing thoughts I think might help improve it. I'm writing a lot to get my thoughts across, so don't take it like there was a huge problem with it, if I didn't like it I wouldn't have played it twice let alone write up stuff:

1. The first bit with the rolling thing is weird. I don't know why they have a little divot right in front of it, you lose speed too fast when you start rolling, and the ramp messes with your speed. I would honestly get rid of small divot. I'd also let you roll along the ground longer.
2. Part of the ramp issue is she doesn't stick to the ramp as she's running up it and it flattens out. She'll end up rising above it a bit, which means you can't jump until you jump the ground, and holding down to roll will just cancel her and drop her down.
3. The ramp thing gets bad with some of the middle of level one's platforming cause of that, where I'll fuck up a jump cause oops, wasn't on the ground as I was running up the ramp. Having some kind of collision_point or single pixel object, directly beneath her, that pulls the player object straight to the ground should help with that.
4. Wall jumping has the usual problem I don't like in games that do it, it's easy for me to start holding towards the direction I want to go before hitting jump, causing me to fall off, but you also fall off if you let go of holding towards the wall. It's kind of awkward for me, and I'd prefer to at least stick to the wall unless I jump off or hold away from it for like 10-30 frames, to give players buffer room. I can't think of any time you'd want to fall off from the side of a wall instantly after pushing into it.
5. I think the acceleration rate should be bumped up a bit more when holding the run button, it feels like I need a lot more land to start building up real speed which again makes some of the platforming bits on smaller platforms a bit of a pain if I stop at all, didn't have enough speed going into it, hit a block, etc.
6. She carries acceleration from other objects, which might be neat but a lot of the time it does throw off my platforming. I'm not sure if this really needs to address though, if the rate you accelerate was bumped up more so I could respond to that stuff.
7. The moving platforms should really move along a global timer instead of separately, dying a few times on stage 2 I noticed they would be out of sync or in different orders than I'd expect, making jumps that were fine in one run be a big hassle the next one.
8. The level design is decent; there's variations in the direction you're going and it makes use of the core platforming bits. The raccoons feel nicely hidden and rewarding to get to. What I think it could use are more sections with variable routes or choices on going through it (example: going along roofs with enemies versus lower to the ground with more focus on platforming, which would both funnel into a linear spot). Or even something closer to early mario levels where you have a platform you can jump on alongside the ground. I think that would make it more fun to replay and explore around.
9. The magic hat projectile only attacking enemies makes it kinda uninteresting. I keep shooting at blocks and trashcans but nothing happens, I think doing that would at least give it another function, one you could maybe work into later puzzles (having to carry it to a wall of destructible blocks to destroy with, to reach some gems/shortcut/raccoon). Or maybe letting you charge the spell projectile so it could go through multiple enemies/blocks. Another aesthetic touch would be if hitting enemies would turn them into white doves that fly away, to fit the magician theme.
10. Oh! I almost forgot about enemies and invincibility timer: I kept taking hits cause I would run into an enemy, jump up to take them out, but then go through and the timer wears off and I take another hit. I think you should separate the player's jumping on enemy collision to be it's own thing that still works even during invincibility frames.
11. Lastly, I'd prefer options on changing the window size, at least toggling to windowed mode with F4. I wasn't able to see my chat while streaming it.

I do hope to see more levels and for this to continue, it's pretty polished so far and I think a lot of this stuff would make the moment-to-moment gameplay more enjoyable.

Click to expand...

Yoshiatom said:

When I saw this game in the SAGE 2022 trailer, it was the first game that really caught my eye and made me think "I NEED to play this". After playing it, I think this game has the potential to be great but needs a lot of polish in several key areas.

The core moveset is great on paper; I love how it's a sort of in-between of the moveset of Mario and Wario Land games. The problem I have with it is that it's very hard to actually keep up the momentum it lets you build; actions that you'd think would help you keep up the momentum like rolling and wall-jumping instead grind you to a halt. As a result it's hard to chain actions together and it makes the movement feel awkward. You also don't get very much air control at all, which is most noticable if you try to correct yourself after a wall-jump.

I think the level design also doesn't complement it well; it doesn't give you much opportunity to build up or use the momentum well, and quite a few of the setups end up highlighting the flaws of the gamefeel. Overall the level design feels sloppy at points.

One of the biggest issues I have with this game is the sound design; there's a ton of actions and events that feel like they should have sound effects but don't, there's a lot of sfxr sounds that feel like placeholders alongside the less chiptune-sounding SFX, and the music is all over the place (what on earth is that death jingle?) and doesn't loop properly.

Some minor things: I think the intro cutscene could benefit from having some kind of subtitles, and Tunel's first lines have some slight background noise. When respawning from a checkpoint you can move outside the spotlight before you're even visible.

I really hope I'm not coming across as mean or discouraging, I think this game has a ton of charm and I want to see it live up to that and be the best it can be.

Click to expand...