Twilight Bastion

Finished the Demo on stream and I have so much praise for it.  FYI this is all for the very first initial 0.1 build that came out Saturday, May ‎4, around 5PM.

The game feels really good when it's running smoothly.  I love Boy Boy Boy and the other characters.  Virgil's stank face is fantastic.  You managed to write a fairy companion that was endearing and not at all annoying.  The aesthetic is perfect and I think the lighting is amazing.  The platforming, while a bit stiff, still feels very satisfying when you do it right.  Parrying kind of seems high risk low reward, but that's likely because I was just using it on beginning enemies and they die easily anyway.  It will likely be way more useful on enemies that are harder to kill.

Bugwise I ran into a few, which is totally sensible for a 0.1 build,  so I'll try my best to describe them as well as post a link to the VOD of the stream I did so you can see what I did.  I tried my best to reproduce the bugs several times when possible.

• I saw someone else mention the falling animation bug that would kill them.  More often for me would be an issue where if I jumped on an object I could not land on such as a cage or a save crystal, my character would enter the falling animation, then slow down their horizontal movement speed, and by the time I fell off of the object I would land as if falling from a great height, but take NO damage.  My character would then get stuck in the animation at the point of being on one knee and then never get up.  The game would also not accept any inputs other than camera rotation.
• I encountered numerous crashes on saving the game.  Nearly every time I saved in fact.  These would corrupt the save and cause it to spawn me in all sorts of wacky places.  Anywhere from under the floor resulting in death, to in the sky where when I landed it would revert me to a pre-game start state at Lv.1 with no items.  Sometimes the enemies were shuffled around and others I was stuck in combat with enemies that no longer existed.  I got around it by copying and backing up my save file every time I made a verifiably good save, then replacing the bad one each time it corrupted.
• There were also several situations where dialogue would show up in the wrong places and then soft lock the game such as Virgil's dialogue appearing when investigating the chain and blood smear as well as him repeating his old dialogue when talking to him and not allowing me to leave the conversation as the camera panned dramatically.
• The camera would randomly decide to take an isometric and more vertical placement after respawning, but would revert to the proper position when changing scenes.
• If rolling through doorways you will spawn on the other side with a superficially elongated stamina bar that decreases to normal after a few seconds.
• Not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but there seems to be no collision to the platform with the item on it that you use beams to jump to in the room with the ball and chain.  I tried jumping to it several times and just fell through the platform each time.
• Also, you can fall right out of bounds if jumping at the wall alongside the box that you jump on to get to those beams.

If you want any clarification just let me know, I'd be happy to reproduce or send anymore data you need.  This game seems amazing and I want to help any way I can.

Well, I tested the demo and here goes my considerations:

• I know you're aware but... plaese add a window mode (´ ω `)

• I would be nice if there were a "Reset Camera" button to make the camera look back to the character's front. Along with it could be options of "reverse turning camera orientation" and a "free camera" which lets you move the camera at your will. Don't get me wrong, I'm more comfortable with the auto-camera mode the game has, like it was on ocarina of time, I just saying that could be other options...

• You could add a Retry Option after the death screen. I know it's a thing of PS1 era returning to the tittle screen after a GAME OVER. It gets kinda annoying to press START and select the Continue after the 14th death... 

• The Dodge Roll is pretty good, I really appreciated the invecibility frames are really generous and I vote to let it the way it is. It's just fine.

• The Parry is good too, taking account the enemies have few patterns which are memorable and easy to learn, It just need timing. I died sometimes but never thought it wasn't my fault. The Parry is fine too!

• The Magic System being a "input command" is something I don't know if it's really good on the long-term, I can see this might allow you to use a certain variety of different spells without managing them too much, just input the command and BAM *spell casted*. But I don't know if you'll get my when it may bug people's mind to input them in the middle of battle. (I saw you're aware of the cast bug that makes character actionless)
  
• I really didn't like the Platforming sessions (mainly in the very first room). I think it's not the forte of this genre you know? falling from a relatively small height and getting a massive damage isn't the what I'd call fun, even more in the beginning. I just what I think, I'm sure you work it out afterwards.

I bunch of bugs happend with me, but that's expected.

• Sometimes I entered in a room and the camera came out of very far turning like it was drunk;

• I casted the Fire Spell on an enemy and it bugged, 122 of damage was being displayed from the fire damage, but it wasn't really 122 damage because he didn't died instantly

• One time I entered in the First Boss room and I just died and the Boss died too (the death and victory texts appeared on screen simultaneously)

• Some times I was loading my save and the game simply crashed.

• When I entered the Boss Room, all the texts fonts gone invisible for some reason, I opened my inventory and there were only the windows and icons without texts... But I reloaded and it got normal again.

• There's a certain cage on the second room past the first save room. I've jumped on it and I didn't land on it, the character continued in the falling animation "sliding" on the cage and sometimes when I got off and landed on the floor I received Fall Damage... what the hell?

• When I was about to close the game, I was returning to the room before the First Boss after defeating it, the enemies in the room were "out of place", I used the lock-on the the camera was pointing to a place the model wasn't, but I saw the Shadow was where the camera was pointing. I tried attack and really hit them even got to kill them... It was like their models were really out of place.

I managed to record these 2 last bugs I listed:

Fun game, nice vibes. Really has that feel of a classic PS1 title. Short little demo but was fun, died a good few times. It has that clunky feel to it that I like with deliberate attacks and movement. The roll is interesting because you can roll freely rather than being locked into a direction, which I do like, but as the game seems to focus more on deliberate slow attacks and movement, it makes me wonder if it fits. As it's arguably the most free flowing dodge roll I have ever seen in this genre of game.

Some feedback/bugs. I noticed when I got hit by the big boss at the end, my character would just be stuck in place despite surviving the hit. Sometimes the character would also be stuck in place after casting a spell, mostly when just casting the spell without an enemy. Other than that, very solid and looking forward to more.

I did end up beating the demo, but man I felt like everything was hard to do. I really love the atmosphere, but gameplay seems a bit weird. I think the camera impacted me the most during... everything I did. The camera angle you had on your twitter page might be better, I'm unsure. For sure the game needs to be brighter. I could not see anything without going the extremes in the settings. Parrying I couldn't do because it was too hard, rolling is fine, but really you can just walk away from a lot of things. the Ogre hits you once and you get bugged until you die. I'd say good job on the first public demo, but the bugs I came across and roughness for the controls made it feel like work sometimes. Keep up the good work and keep improving!

Hmm doesn't seem to work for me, windows kinda freaks out as it tries to change resolutions and then the game crashes I guess? Or fails to open at all. I tried disabling full screen optimization and admin mode but no dice. Also tried putting my res to 1080p first and disabling my second monitor

Windows 10

4k

3060 

ryzen 5 5600

Sorry mate, hope this info helps a little atleast. Goodluck on development game looks cool