Comments - Tinkerton

I like to think of tutorials in binary. Either you don't teach the player anything and let them figure it out on their own (Super Mario Bros, for example, but that game had the benefit of having only a d-pad and 2 buttons), or you teach the player ALL the basic controls. Some games use shift as a default for jumping. For FPS games I use C for crouch and F for use, but the defaults are CTRL and E respectively.

It's important not to leave anything up to chance or assumption. You don't know who your players are, what games they played before (if any) and what/IF they'll try to figure it out. The responsibility of the designer if they say "OK, I'm going to teach you how to play this now" is to teach the player everything they need to know how to play. The complexity later arises from the mechanics, gameplay and its nuances. It costs almost nothing and covers everything.

A good example is what I noticed in the video after posting my comment. I noticed that while in combat, you can perform a dodge move. Because there wasn't a prompt saying how to do it, I could assume (if I knew you could even do it) and try any one (or none, if I haven't played much/any games) of these things:

-There is a dedicated dodge button that can be seen in the control options (assuming you can only dodge backwards, because that's what we see in the video)
-There is a dedicated dodge button that can't be rebound and is thus unknown until mashing on the keyboard randomly
-You can use the jump button while in combat mode to dodge backwards
-You can use the jump button while locked-on to dodge backwards
-You can double tap an arrow key to dodge in a certain direction at any time
-You can double tap while in combat mode
-You can double tap only while locked-on

You can see how just putting a simple prompt eliminates all of these possibilities and any doubts and helps me understand something that might be crucial to survive later on. Also makes me less likely to quit the game in frustration because I wasn't privy to all the basic rules the game uses.
Sure, it's a bit more 'dodgy' (heh) than the jump button, but all controls should get the same treatment none the less.

I just love the way this game looks and feels, but that said, there are some small things bothering me the way they are now.

The enemy designs (while striking and unique) use a color scheme that seems to blend with the background. The lock-on helps mitigate this somewhat, but the player should always be able to tell where the enemy is and what he is currently doing (which is kinda hard because they all look kinda slouched or "melty" and, I assume, move in an "undead-ish" way). If the designs use teal, as the background does, readability takes a hit.

Kopper doesn't have this problem because he has gold bits that help him stick out.

Another little bother are the tutorial prompts (though I assume this is far from the final version). The player is expected to raise the shield against the wind, but the prompt that tells the player how to enter combat mode appears way later, in the first fight. This could be a good opportunity to teach the player how to block in a safe environment. There's also no prompt that says how to jump.

Just small problems really, I'd hate to see such a promising title get dragged down by miniscule issues like this.
Most of all, keep up the good work, it's looking great! :)