Overall, i can see the appeal. i like the concept of using the pillars and magic to transport and the "After Echo" being a point of return and a solid state to open doors necessary to progress in the puzzle.
More onboarding would be beneficial (from an approachability standpoint), since this isn't a souls-like (unless it is, then that would be helpful to know ahead of time). For example, i had to die in the level that introduced the red walls to figure out you could dash through them.
Every death increased frustration.
The purple pillars and platforms were pretty intuitive, as well as the yellow ones to open doors. for accessibility, consider using an indicators that aren't purely color-based.
Back to the souls-like comment, there is no recourse for making a mistake, as the solutions to the puzzles have a singular route. i think a "reset level" or a return to beginning function would have significantly decreased frustration because of how death is generally associated within games (with the exception of souls-like games where death is a teaching tool by design.
This is the level that caused me to churn. It felt like the difficulty exponentially increased compared to the previous one and the differences between all of the former levels. Definitely could just be user error, but two green-filled doors at the top right caused the most frustration. i get that you have to leave an after echo on the green platform with the coin, then get to the one with the pillar to the right (off-screen), shoot the purple pillar to get the platform moving, then use the magic shot to get back to where the coin is? If that is correct, i logically understood how to progress there, but the above frustrations made it harder to focus and resulted in more deaths, hence the churn.
The red walls are now fire walls which hopefully better communicates that they are dangerous. I will be regularly making updates to improve both the onboarding and quality of life.
The latest update has a first pass on art for a few levels too! The current art is all placeholder. The final art will have more than just common colors to communicate to the player.
You can actually restart the levels from the menu when press "ESC". I'll make this more clear in future builds.
You made it pretty far! That was the last level in that build. You also had the right idea for the solution.
Thanks again for playing and glad you enjoyed the game. Getting feedback this early really helps me improve the game.
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Overall, i can see the appeal. i like the concept of using the pillars and magic to transport and the "After Echo" being a point of return and a solid state to open doors necessary to progress in the puzzle.
More onboarding would be beneficial (from an approachability standpoint), since this isn't a souls-like (unless it is, then that would be helpful to know ahead of time). For example, i had to die in the level that introduced the red walls to figure out you could dash through them.
Every death increased frustration.
The purple pillars and platforms were pretty intuitive, as well as the yellow ones to open doors. for accessibility, consider using an indicators that aren't purely color-based.
Back to the souls-like comment, there is no recourse for making a mistake, as the solutions to the puzzles have a singular route. i think a "reset level" or a return to beginning function would have significantly decreased frustration because of how death is generally associated within games (with the exception of souls-like games where death is a teaching tool by design.
This is the level that caused me to churn. It felt like the difficulty exponentially increased compared to the previous one and the differences between all of the former levels. Definitely could just be user error, but two green-filled doors at the top right caused the most frustration. i get that you have to leave an after echo on the green platform with the coin, then get to the one with the pillar to the right (off-screen), shoot the purple pillar to get the platform moving, then use the magic shot to get back to where the coin is? If that is correct, i logically understood how to progress there, but the above frustrations made it harder to focus and resulted in more deaths, hence the churn.
Thanks for the detailed feedback!
The red walls are now fire walls which hopefully better communicates that they are dangerous. I will be regularly making updates to improve both the onboarding and quality of life.
The latest update has a first pass on art for a few levels too! The current art is all placeholder. The final art will have more than just common colors to communicate to the player.
You can actually restart the levels from the menu when press "ESC". I'll make this more clear in future builds.
You made it pretty far! That was the last level in that build. You also had the right idea for the solution.
Thanks again for playing and glad you enjoyed the game. Getting feedback this early really helps me improve the game.