Kafir (Demo)

nice game

Visuals: 8/10

All in all, I like the aesthetic. The animations are fairly smooth. My biggest beef is the foreground assets, most heavily seen in the castle. They are excessively anti-aliased and don't look like they belong in the level. They are very dark and right in your face, and is quite jarring compared to the rest of the graphics. They also obscure parts of the level in a way that infringes on the player's gameplay.

A stronger contrast between the playable area and platforms, and the background would aid in clarity for the players.

Audio: 6/10

I like the music track that was present on the start menu. It fit the game really well as it had more of the vibe that is often portrayed in media when it comes to ancient Egypt.

I was much less of a fan of the music once I was in the levels, as it no longer feels like it fit the atmosphere of the game. The music for the first area felt drastically more sci-fi. Meanwhile, the second area had more of a modern/near future timeframe. The cave did bring back more of the original vibe, and the music fit better, but would probably serve better out in the first area of the game.

The audio balance in most of the game is pretty good, though there are some areas where the sound effects overpower everything else, such as in the first room with the wall fire spitting trap, you just hear a roaring fire the whole time, while another area in the cave sounded like someone was blowing bubbles really loudly the whole time.

Controls: 7/10

Generally, the character feels pretty good to move around. Varying jump height depending on how long you hold the button down for, pseudo-coyote time to start your jump after the most of your body is off the ledge, generous in-air control, and a satisfying acceleration curve on the jump makes the platforming feel very solid.

Default controls for the most part aren't bad. Though for KB/Mouse, having "B" as the attack makes the player shift their hand in order to attack, and jumping and performing a timed attack in the air is more difficult. It is much more intuitive and user friendly on the controller.

The Interact button also feels a bit odd at times, primarily with the shopkeeper, since you have to interact with "e" and then again to buy the potion, but you have to jump to back out of the menu?

Gameplay: 7/10

The gameplay overall is pretty solid. Gives some backtracking to do as you get new skills like double jump and dash, and can now access more areas that you couldn't before.

One area it falters a fair bit is consistency of communication. There's several areas where the player is on platforms with emptiness below them. Sometimes you can jump down and you move down a map. Other times you take damage and your position is reset. This lack of consistency can result in frustration as you basically have to jump down every hole blindly to find out "is this a death hole or a path to another area?" This causes a lot of frustration, especially in areas where the player grabs a powerup, has a hole in front of them which looks like it should take them back to where they were before, but instead just kills them.

Meanwhile, with spiked areas, sometimes it resets you to the start of the room if you hit them. Other times you are reset part way through the room, instead of the start. And then sometimes you stay standing on the spikes and can run and jump off of them again while you're still invulnerable.

Another minor grievance is having control taken away from me every time I move between regions. On your 10th time going into the cave, you don't need to be stopped to be told "Cave" every time. The text is fine, but losing control feels rough.

UI: 5/10

The UI is pretty minimalistic, which is nice. Less to clutter up the screen. However, as there are only 3 things that are tracked visibly for the player (health, money, and number of potions) they could all be placed in a single area of the screen.

The importance of the different things displayed are also not consistent. A narrow health bar that blends in at times to the background. No visual distinction on the numbers of health potions or money (just plain white text) which also often gets muddied into the background. And a giant red + for the health potion icon, despite that not being the most vital information for the player.

The UI appears to be very placeholder still, so it would be good to have the UI match more of the aesthetics of the rest of the game.

Overall: 7/10

Feedback: 

- I like the game, it has a lot of potential if cleaned up.

- The dash feels a bit short (or some of the expected gaps to use it across are too long) as you MUST use coyote time in order to get across them as you can't jump (roof too low), and even slight mistiming result in you being reset to the start of the room, back past 3-5 of these styles of dash pits. This can generate a lot of frustration for the player.

- There were a lot of instances where I'd get to where I thought I'd be in range of an enemy, attack, and be just out of reach, and then taking free hits while I reposition myself. Perhaps let the player walk forwards while attacking, or don't have the player stop the instant they stop pressing forwards, giving them an additional step or two as their character slows down.

Please finish this! The style and the substance are both pretty tops. You probably already know about most bugs worth talking about here; my only critique is whether I did everything that could be done at present, since at least one visible lever was un-pulled.

I also liked that there was a jump early-on that makes you use the fullness of your vanilla-jump and understand it mechanically better.

Also, I don't know how well this fits with your design paradigm, but as a player if I could destroy the wall and ceiling shooters I would be ever so satisfied with that. Following; hoping for more from this project!