Stranded

(Noah Pantoja)

1. The player abilities are simple to use and easy to follow. However there does not seem to be a reason to need to use the slow down time power as the enemies can be easily avoided.

2.  The game feels pretty good but some awkward random teleportations throw me off sometimes. They only seem to happen when entering a bottom or right entrances

3. Different types of enemies as the current one is too easy to avoid even without powers.

(This is Alexis Rivera)

1. I was a little unsure about what the abilities were at first, I thought the arrow ability was an attack for a second.

2.The game controls pretty well, I noticed that moving seemed a little more difficult while using the arrow ability, which I was holding down the key for the entire time/

3. I think an attack or way to defend myself from enemies would be interesting, like a shield they bounce off of maybe.

I found the navigation a little confusing- sometimes it was hard to tell if I'd already been in an area or when it was teleporting me in a circle. Maybe label start at least? 

One bug: I did get stuck at one point when I was all the way to the right of a room with no exits on that side and there were two enemies directly to my left, blocking me from moving left at all, so I could just go up and down. 

The pop-up at the beginning was nice- I would maybe add more of these to explain the abilities relating to K and L. 

1.  I feel like there needs to be a counter of how much a player can use slow motion. Otherwise I was able to keep slow motion turned on for the entire duration of a hard part of the level.

2. I like the chasing enemy. I feel like there needs to be more connection with the player to the map. It would be cool to see static obstacles for the player, that way the player must be careful of where they move, while accounting for dodging moving enemies.

3. There is a bug that if a player constantly touches a enemy , the player wont take damage

1. I was a little confused about using k to navigate, especially since in class I remember how if you take a wrong turn it takes you back to the beginning, so I felt like a lot of times I was going in circles and not really sure if I was actually making progress or not. I just kind of went in the general direction of the arrow until something interesting happened. The slowdown ability would be good to use immediately after going to the next screen, because sometimes the enemies would spot you right away and there wasn’t a lot of time to react. So in a way it was good and bad, good because it works but bad because sometimes I feel like the enemies got some cheap shots and it was a little annoying cause they were hard to avoid.

2. The movement felt good, and I really love the art and music, but like I said above sometimes the enemies are annoying to deal with. One big thing that bugged me is sometimes I’d get cornered and would end up taking a whole bunch of damage in a row, so I think to fix this you could add a few frames of invincibility after getting hit so that you don’t instantly loose 2 and a half hearts when you were supposed to only take a quarter of one. And then to balance that you could just have a few less hearts so it doesn’t become too easy.

3. This might be hard to add but maybe something where you find more clues on where to go? Something to make navigating the maze more interesting. Maybe also add another ability that spices up dealing with enemies, I’m not really sure what though.

Also note: Doesn’t effect gameplay but I noticed while playing I had collected the third spaceship part before the second one, and on the inventory thing on the top right it covered the silhouette of the second piece instead of the third, so not like a super game breaking thing but a small bug that could be fixed lol. 

(This is Henry)

1.) Walking around and picking up items felt intuitive enough.  The "K" ability made sense to me because I remembered the way the maze worked from your previous presentations, but I feel that it could be confusing to a player that doesn't understand that just because the arrow is pointing a certain direction does not mean it's the right way to go.  I ended up holding this key down the entire time, so it felt less like an ability to me.  It might feel more like one if it was restricted in some way, but that might also not be desirable.  The "L" Ability confused me quite a bit.  Pressing it while still on the starting screen (which felt like a safe place to test my abilities) didn't do anything because I wasn't moving.  When I finally started moving and using the ability, I thought maybe it was speeding me up over time, or it was a "slow walk" button or something.  It didn't help that I thought the icon was a hamster wheel, which threw me off more.  Only after going into my first room did I remember that it was a time slowing ability, again something you mentioned in your presentation.  This ability didn't feel super useful to me, mainly because it slows the player down as well.  I basically never used it after figuring out what it was.

2.) Overall the controls are solid and the game feels pretty good.  I think my only major complaint would be the enemies, which start to camp the entrances to the next room when you take a wrong turn, and you can get hit for damage that doesn't feel very fair.

3.) As I mentioned above, the enemies spawn camping the entrances to rooms is the main thing that feels un-fun about the experience.  Besides that, things are pretty much fine.  I remember from your proposal that you mentioned the game would be more story and mystery focused, and as this vertical slice lacks those elements all that's really left are the movement mechanics.   I imagine the time slow ability was an effort to spice up gameplay, but as I mentioned above I didn't find it particularly useful.  It may not be what you're going for, but something like a dash or dodge roll that gives you brief enemy immunity could be a more interesting movement option.  Either that or allowing the player to move at full speed may make the time stop ability a bit more fun.  Either way though, I understand that as a story-based game that may not be what you're going for, so feel free to ignore this suggestion if you like.