E3 Demo Feedback for the developer's team

The main issue I had with the demo was the monotone attack pattern for the sword. Thought it too boring and lacking in flavor. I'd prefer if the same button either produced different attacks, for example the basic forward slash would be followed by a rising horizontal slash from bottom to top and then a top to bottom horizontal slash would follow last. It could be a cycle that could be repeated or maybe sword attacks could be mixed with with the use of two different buttons for a combo. Whatever works as these are just random examples of mine. All I need is for the sword attacks to be able to become diverse and stylish instead of the single attack pattern present in the demo.

I just played a little bit and I enjoyed it ... to be only a small demo for an expo it shows the great progress the dev team have done, the controls and pretty good, the animations look nice, I could play @30fps on 1080p and @60fps (Nvidia 850m & Intel Core i7), the only thing I noticed but wasn't sure if it has been notified or expected is the collision detection with the walls, it looks like Miriam can go halfway through them...

Aside of that it's a great amount of progress that has been shown in this demo and I'm waiting at least for the beta later xD

Great Job!

I just got one on my third playthrough, seems like a pretty good shard! It's good that you can only have two out at once too, since it does almost as much damage as the Dullahammer shard 

I did run into a glitch with the map though:

Just played through the demo and had a few thoughts...

Overall... it was great! I can't wait for the alpha build!

Otherwise, just a couple of nitpicks. 
Coins could drop a little faster.
"now loading..." font could be stylized.
Controls could be tightened a bit. I found them a little slow. Perhaps this changes as stats improve.
Enemies were a little slow as well.

Lastly, (and I am sure, controversial) I LOVE that Miriam's accessories change when equipped, but I HOPE her outfit will as well. When I unequipped it, I was hoping to see her in some skivvies, as that would have been an indication of outfits changes later on. So, hopefully there will be, and hopefully some will be sexy as @#$%!

Thanks!

Natheist

Sound level adjustments in game are an ABSOLUTE MUST!!!

Tested the demo a few times.

Overall I'm liking the direction the game's headed.

I have several notes, mostly about controller input and frames. Some of these describe why some inputs feel sluggish, and some recommendations on how to fix them.

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Input and animation frames:
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Some actions take up several animation frames to execute, and then several frames to transition to idle. Jump and attack inputs are completely dropped for the whole duration of the [attack -> attack-to-idle] animations. Makes it feel like the game becomes unresponsive.

- I recommend adding an input buffer for attack and jump. If you press attack or jump before an animation finishes (between 5-10 frames @ 60fps,) trigger attack/jump right after the current animation finishes.

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Kicks get animation-canceled during [airborne-to-grounded] animation (press kick when Miriam's falling, around 1 foot off the ground). The leg animation does not fully play out, so the attack's hitbox is effectively zero. It makes it feel as if input is getting dropped. The sword also gets animation-canceled, but it feels less severe.

- If possible, set the kick attack's hitbox to its full size starting from its animation's frame 1. This will ensure that the kick will always feel like it registers your attack input. Adding VFX for the kick (similar to the sword slash FX) will also help to maintain the attack's hitbox even if you're in [airborne-to-grounded] transition. Reducing the animation frames from wind-up to full leg extension by 50% would also help.

- Another solution is to force a 'grounded' attack if you attack that close to the ground, having the full [attack-to-idle] animation play out instead of the [airborne-to-grounded] animation. (This probably wouldn't apply to very high falls where you need to play the high fall recovery animation.)

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Try this: Quickly press left and right repeatedly and press attack. Miriam attacks in the direction she's currently facing. So if you press attack while she's in her [left-to-right] or [right-to-left] transition, you are not 100% sure of which direction her attack animation will face. This also applies to her backstep. If you mash the backstep button, she'll keep on moving in the same direction, even if you're pressing the DPad/LStick in a different direction.

- I recommend this setup: If your DPad/LStick is neutral, have her attack in the direction she's currently facing. If you're pressing DPad/LStick and press attack, have her attack in the direction of the DPad/LStick at the moment attack was pressed. This makes it feel like the attack will 100% correspond to your controller input.

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Right now it's very hard to attack upwards with Directional Shards while jumping. Very uncomfortable pressing RStick and jump at the same time with one hand.

- If possible, have Directional Shards attack in the direction DPad/LStick is pressed when RStick is neutral. Or at least have it as an option in the settings.

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Overall, I feel like the sluggishness is caused by transition animations, and actions being too dependent on Miriam's animation states and less on controller input. It's probably hard to get these tweaked, but they'll greatly boost the apparent responsiveness of the controls if they can be done.

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Visual feedback:
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Overall I'm liking the hitboxes of everything (Miriam, enemies, projectiles.) The Dullahammer's flail attack is a bit hard to see though, as its color matches his body. You normally don't expect an enemy's full silhouette to change so much so quickly.

- For ranged/thrown attacks, it would be nice to have an additional VFX on top of the flail (similar to sword slash FX) to make it stand out more from the enemy/background.
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Some of the thin platforms are hard to see, specifically the upper nets.

- I suggest either making them brighter (the current dirt texture make them hard to see,) or make them a little bit thicker.


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Menu:
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I suggest giving Shards a dedicated entry in the main menu (but still keep the current ability to switch between equip/shard by pressing x.)
So the menu will look like this:

[Equipment]
[Shards]
[Inventory]
etc.

This will also probably need more playtesting, but it might be better to rearrange the menu into this if consumables are a major element in the game.

[Inventory]
[Equipment]
[Shards]
etc.

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I'll play a bit more of the demo tomorrow. I might add in a few more entries.

Also, if you guys want, I can try doing some animated gifs to show what I'm describing in the wall of text above if they're too vague. (I don't have proper video editing software on my laptop right now, so I can't do annotated video capture...)



Cheers.

When I tried to run the demo the game is running slower than it should, I'm using Windows 10 and I meet all the system requirements.

I just recorded the full demo walkthrough, managed to get almost all the shards, and accidentally two secrets. Enjoy or not

First, let me just say one thing....

THANK YOU LORD* FOR THIS GAME!
*of the Night.

I'd all but given up hope of ever seeing an Igavania running on hardware that's oh, I don't know, more powerful than the ORIGINAL PlayStation.
Think about it: even the Dawn of Sorrow couldn't match up to the original SoTN ... probably more to do with budget constraints than the actual hardware, but still...

"This game feels like the REAL sequel to the original SoTN, 20 years in the making"

Now, with that out of the way, the little feedback I can offer:

1. Played it on an underspec'd machine (a Surface Pro 4 i7 8GB), so I had to use a 720p window.

Despite the choppiness, it was still playable (if you don't mind not being able to jump and attack at the same time), but I noticed the collision detection for regular attacks would fail when the game was under a lot of stress (was OK for the fire attack). I mention this because I've done programming for mobile games and collision detection was the issue I had to deal with the most, as a game that was bugless on an iPhone 5 would have collision detection bugs on a lower spec iPod and such - it's what happens when you check collisions per frame, and the engine decides it might as well skip a frame, why not! Now, since the attacks did not hit even though the sword animation came out, maybe the frame with the collision box was skipped? Dunno, but if the frame rate's liable to drop on a minimum spec machine, it might be an issue that's worth looking into, since there are workarounds.

As for me, I ordered the PS4 version, so I'm not really worried.

2. Forgive me if this has already been mentioned, but are there plans to be able to rotate and zoom Miriam's character model on the game menu?

Because it looks really awesome. And you just want to, you know, rotate it (I mean left and right, guys - get your minds out of the gutter) 

3. I could not find any walls that are breakable by using regular attacks. Will there be any in the final game?

Given that it's the "tutorial" level I wouldn't expect any, but the use of cannons to break walls on the galleon made me kind of worried the castle won't have any at all - that all the wall breaks will be "scripted." While it might sound dumb, just knowing that there could be a hidden passage way right in front of you, one that you could access with a quick swing of your sword, gives you a greater sense of adventure and discovery. All Igavania games have had breakable walls, except one: Harmony of Dissonance for the GBA, and that' my least favorite of the bunch.

Overall, the demo was fantastic, and I can't wait for the finished product!

闇の将軍IGA様に万歳！！！
(Long Live Lord IGA, Shogun of the Night!)