All of the visual aspects as well as the story mesh so well, however I did find the gameplay to be broken/buggy for the moment. Once you finish casting a spell, nothing happens. With that said, I very much appreciate the concept and hope it can be patched to work properly in the future. I'd like to see where this one goes :)
Oh so after you cast the spell you need to give the orb to a shifty in order to free them from corruption! There are some hints in the menu and dialogue but I’ll add a note to make that more clear!
Thank you for the clarification! I guess I just wasn't sure what to do after typing out the spell. To be fair, it also took a minute to figure out that the spell had to be typed. Perhaps some more instruction regarding the gameplay mechanics (in-game, of course) would be beneficial for this game.
The story, music and art all work so well together! The characters have charm and the object of the first level is intuitive and easy to understand.
I like how there's the extra challenge of making sure to avoid the creatures as you look for sticks and chant the spell - it's a great way to immerse the player into the world. Another detail I really liked was the menu being a book of spells.
I found the typing mechanic extremely difficult, yet was so interested to see what happened next, that I wanted to keep trying. Unfortunately, it was too difficult that I decided to give up. I haven't been able to get all 3 shifties after trying many times. (And wasn't able to win the first battle at night fall)
In fact, on my last attempt, it seemed I did finish entering the spell correctly, but nothing seemed to happen afterwords - so it might be a bug - or I might have made a mistake at the very end and didn't realize it. In that case, adding some feedback for the player to understand what went wrong would be helpful.
One way you might consider making the game even more enjoyable for everyone is to provide the player with different playing modes. You could get more creative with the names (like how the game Hades has a "god" mode rather than "easy").
For Shifty Witch perhaps there could be an option for "training mode" that is more forgiving to typing errors.
A few ways you might be able to do that is by adding checkpoints into the spells. So if the player gets halfway through the spell and messes up, they can start the spell again from the midway point. Another idea is to allow players to make a few mistakes in each spell.
If the modes are not an option, another way is to ease the learning curve with much shorter spells and progressively make them more complex. I noticed the spells change each time - but they all feel difficult to complete, so I think they need to be less wordy at first.
Hopefully, you found this feedback helpful. This is a great concept and I'm looking forward to seeing where you take it next.
Thank you for all the detailed feedback! I really appreciate you trying to win so many times (I’ve been trying too haha)
Yes we are definitely still working on making the game easier, such as reducing the speed of mini games, amount of enemies or increasing damage by the attacks. It’s optional to get all three shifties, although it does help in battle.
It is meant to start out easy and get progressively harder (tempo game and typing game speeding up for later spells) but right now we are already at the hard part haha so definitely working on that
Thanks for the feedback! Can you share a bit more about what you liked/what you found difficult? We are polishing it up right now so any feedback would be helpful!
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All of the visual aspects as well as the story mesh so well, however I did find the gameplay to be broken/buggy for the moment. Once you finish casting a spell, nothing happens. With that said, I very much appreciate the concept and hope it can be patched to work properly in the future. I'd like to see where this one goes :)
Oh so after you cast the spell you need to give the orb to a shifty in order to free them from corruption! There are some hints in the menu and dialogue but I’ll add a note to make that more clear!
Thank you for the clarification! I guess I just wasn't sure what to do after typing out the spell. To be fair, it also took a minute to figure out that the spell had to be typed. Perhaps some more instruction regarding the gameplay mechanics (in-game, of course) would be beneficial for this game.
The story, music and art all work so well together! The characters have charm and the object of the first level is intuitive and easy to understand.
I like how there's the extra challenge of making sure to avoid the creatures as you look for sticks and chant the spell - it's a great way to immerse the player into the world. Another detail I really liked was the menu being a book of spells.
I found the typing mechanic extremely difficult, yet was so interested to see what happened next, that I wanted to keep trying. Unfortunately, it was too difficult that I decided to give up. I haven't been able to get all 3 shifties after trying many times. (And wasn't able to win the first battle at night fall)
In fact, on my last attempt, it seemed I did finish entering the spell correctly, but nothing seemed to happen afterwords - so it might be a bug - or I might have made a mistake at the very end and didn't realize it. In that case, adding some feedback for the player to understand what went wrong would be helpful.
One way you might consider making the game even more enjoyable for everyone is to provide the player with different playing modes. You could get more creative with the names (like how the game Hades has a "god" mode rather than "easy").
For Shifty Witch perhaps there could be an option for "training mode" that is more forgiving to typing errors.
A few ways you might be able to do that is by adding checkpoints into the spells. So if the player gets halfway through the spell and messes up, they can start the spell again from the midway point. Another idea is to allow players to make a few mistakes in each spell.
If the modes are not an option, another way is to ease the learning curve with much shorter spells and progressively make them more complex. I noticed the spells change each time - but they all feel difficult to complete, so I think they need to be less wordy at first.
Hopefully, you found this feedback helpful. This is a great concept and I'm looking forward to seeing where you take it next.
Thank you for all the detailed feedback! I really appreciate you trying to win so many times (I’ve been trying too haha)
Yes we are definitely still working on making the game easier, such as reducing the speed of mini games, amount of enemies or increasing damage by the attacks. It’s optional to get all three shifties, although it does help in battle.
It is meant to start out easy and get progressively harder (tempo game and typing game speeding up for later spells) but right now we are already at the hard part haha so definitely working on that
it is great but its too complicated for my brain to handle haha
Thanks for the feedback! Can you share a bit more about what you liked/what you found difficult? We are polishing it up right now so any feedback would be helpful!
it just very overwhelming with all the different mechanics that go along with spelling