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SAGE 2023 - Demo Key Hunters DX - SAGE 2023 Sample Release!

From notes taken as I went:

- No gamepad support.
- The Esc closes the game without any warning. Never do this.
- The default resolution is microscopic. It's a wonder I was even able to navigate to the option to change it. Might have bothered me less if the resolution setting actually saved, but no, I have to redo this every time I boot the game up (as I discovered the hard way thanks to the aformentioned Esc key issue).
- Sonic has Knux's spinball sprite at the start of the first stage for some reason?
- There's some flawed collision in the first level (see attached)
- Did that Silver Sonic boss even have AI? I didn't see it move once while I was pummelling it.
- I don't know why Sonic is straight up transforming into Knuckles instead of just switching characters, but it's a mechanic that's pretty poorly explained and could have done with a button prompt at one of the Knux-only chokepoints in Chemical Plant.
- Also you can turn into Knux while Knux is already onscreen to have two Knux's, and there doesn't seem to be any kind of logic to prevent this? At the very least you would think the AI Knux would be hidden while doing this.
- Usually putting treasure hunting in a 2D game is a pretty bad idea, but it's somehow the least bad thing about this game. Maybe binding a button to tell you exactly which direction the nearest key is might be a bit extreme, though.
- Sonic had a flat spinning sprite when I entered Foliage Airway for some reason.
- There seems to be some kind of extremely buggy pitfall right before the fight with Super Mecha Sonic. The AI Knux fell into it once and sent me to a checkpoint as though I had died, and it wasn't even the checkpoint I had last tagged that life.
- I didn't see a way to damage the boss itself, and it didn't actually lock the screen into any kind of arena so I gave up and stopped playing there.

The physics at least work correctly, the level design isn't awful, and the mechanics work fine once you DO know of them, so I can't in good conscience say it's terrible - but it's still got quite a ways to go.

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