The Magicians Thief - Prototype

I really enjoyed this! It threads the needle in being just the right amount of difficult, it took me a fair amount of tries between each checkpoint, and also on the boss. 

After getting used to the movement, fall speed and just how far the air-dash takes you, handling the character feels great and it felt like each challenge was set up the right way to show you what the character can do, which is a great thing for a first level: it was less like "how am I supposed to do that", and more "that's what I'm supposed to do, but man it's gonna be a bit tough". I saw some little parts where you can optimise and make skips too, which is going to be cool for the speedrunning crowd.

My thought while playing was also "Hmm, this seems a bit harsh, 5 hitpoints to get through all that?", and maybe the checkpoints should be closer, but actually that is solved with the pause screen option to refill health every room. The placement of the checkpoints is actually just right considering that, there's a natural rise and fall of tension/relief when playing. My only consideration on that would be "should the first level overall be this hard?". With a standalone trial it's fine as it occupies a decent amount of time, but it could be offputting for a beginner when they start with this and can only imagine that it's going to become more difficult as they progress.

My only other piece of feedback would be to potentially add some more elements to the backgrounds, not necessarily to add visual noise for the sake of it, because the aesthetic is already good & because colourful backgrounds would distract from the on-screen hazards. But it could be a way to potentially weave in some interesting background details in the less perilous areas, or empty-ish corner of some rooms, maybe even serve as a way to loosely feed in some narrative/world-building.

All in all, I'm really excited to see how this develops!

4/5.

It's unfortunate to say but the platforming (more specifically the level design and its pairing with the platforming) is really annoying, I can't put my finger on it specifically (other than saying I have a medically prescribed skill issue), but pretty much every platform will have a death and the game is pretty specific about your movements.

Maybe that's just the type of game it is, maybe it should flow better and afford you some wiggle room, or maybe I should grow some balls and stop whining like an embryo.

I will note that everything but the platforming has a lot of work and character put into it (which is why I bumped this from a 3 to a 4)…but the gameplay criticism is unavoidable and it infuriates me quickly.

Hi, Derek!

Your game seems great!

I am an English - Spanish (Latam) translator and I am trying to get experience in videogame localization. Would you be interested in localizing your game into Spanish? If so, it would be my pleasure to do it for free. All I would ask for is some credit so that I can build my portfolio (:

I can't beat the boss... I have to get good enough at this game to beat the boss...