Red and the Phantom Castle

I like the little dev commentary bits in the museum :D

Would be great to have some chilled out music in the museum. (Oh you have to pay for it? It stopped after a bit. Aw...)

Could just add as part of the text as a reminder. Not always easy to tell what changed as I tend to be facing a blank wall when I buy stuff.

Seems to be collision weirdness around the central circle even when nothing is there.

I like the shoutouts, very sweet. :D (I guess my music wasn't used? I don't remember hearing it.)

Really confused by the museum. Lots of empty plinths and text, but nothing on them. Instructions disappred before I saw them I guess. Not ideal...

New characters appeared at the end, but I never saw them before @@ (Again, characters ahve collidable sculpts which get pushed out of place.)

Koi and Lou still say TBA, but... they're already voiced right? Was that a mistake?

(Also don't know what "focus colour" means, from the rest of the game.)

Music change was unusual. Suddenly got sad in the middle of the fight?

I guess breaking that red gem thingy was the overall goal? I don't think I picked up on that.

Funny to have a whole new combat mechanic instead of using what I already know, but I guess that's okay. I didn't have anything to go on for deciding which action to take though so it felt random.

"OK! Let's do this!" (instantly dies) XD

Aw, the music stopped ;/

I was confused by who was who in the next scene. Phantom was black with white eyes, but that flipped for a bit and then flipped back. So the characters looked very similar.

Oh, am I finding keys from other rooms for the next door?

In the minigame, I thought the orbs with trailing red were orbs of colour. Oh, they ARE? Needs more feedback. XD

Not easy to see that the spikes are actually taller than your jump.

In first-person mode the constant bobbing could be turned off. It has some strange footstep sounds--metallic instead of stone? Cape flaps in front of the camera sometimes--could make it invisible to avoid that.

Camera flyby of the castle is very cool! At one point though it clips through a sculpt so shows that white vignette.

Trying to open the door straight ahead doesn't work despite there being a prompt.

I thought at the start the princess was shown as a statue. Maybe I misunderstood because she was all white?

Couldn't see down, from coffin lids so I didn't know it was safe to drop down after them.

Seems there's performance issues in the spooky graveyard scene. Music is and physics is in slowmo. (Music can be fixed by turning on "ignore framerate" on timeline, but it's worth fixing the perf anyway so the game plays properly.)

Stuck at the tower leading up? I thought the ledge on the left was part of the outer wall, and couldn't jump on it, and how it would help me get to the higher one on the right. Just generally difficult to tell what the geometry is in that part.

Fire doesn't hurt me? Oh. Only in that first bit?

Could play the boss music while the boss is right behind me, before the minigame starts.

It was mentioned in the mountain level that I would need "enough gupa"... I don't know what gupa does, or how it helped me.

I was su--uper close to the end when the timer ran out. The orange even started. Would be nice to give a bit of leeway?

Showing a button prompt makes me think I can press it to do the thing. So showing it when you can't press it can be frustrating. And then when I can press it, there's no way of knowing.

In the next scene I don't have the sword anymore?

I was pretty confused in the boss battle to escape the mountain. It sounded like he was getting hurt, and sometimes animations would reset, so I ended up just tapping the buttons a lot and I guess I made it through? 😅

I was su--uper close to the end when the timer ran out. The orange even started. Would be nice to give a bit of leeway?

Not clear what he's doing while I hold L1.

I can walk down to the end of the container, but there's no reason to. Maybe block it off sooner.

After water, moved away from cam to fight baddies. Was very hard to figure out where to stand/jump to get the pickup.

Camera moves to hole before I get in range so I can't see myself.

Unsure why he's all sooty after going down the stairs?

I can't move with just the stick while in the water, different to previous water. Super confused, thought I was meant to jump on boxes and there was a bug so I kept rewinding. Make a popup to make sure the player knows that, or letting still work.

Give visual+audio feedback when a baddie gets hit to reward the player and make sure they know something is happening. Same for getting hit.

Fell down by wood beams, falling down is usually bad so I thought I'd die. Seems I'm meant to fall to continue?

"Mount Menace" is hard to read because it's super glowy.

I thought I could only go left/right because the camera angle is quite side-on like the previous scene.

Walked away from the camera. You could add pickups to reward such exploration.

Sounds like Red went there to ask people things, or get help, but he didn't try to do that and skipped to saying they didn't like him and he'd have to do it himself. Would be great to show some interaction with people.

Camera focusses on people in the background but I can't hear them. Wasn't sure what I was meant to pick up on, there.

I'm not sure why the cloak would make people not like him. Maybe that'll be explained later?

"You can't jump"... why not? And it seems I can jump. You could make the button so it stays intuitive. Sorry, I'm confused by this...

Pressing circle doesn't work if you're not already running?

Frog cutscene cutting cameras is disorienting.

Idle side-to-side animation looks weird in cut-scenes. Maybe have it happen periodically while idle.

Objective unclear while playing, so difficult to know where to head. Hard to read layout (because of grade?); you can use red flowers to draw the player's attention. Wasn't sure when I was "allowed" to go up the tree. Or even why I was discouraged.

Button-mashing makes attacks never do damage. Ideally, get to full punch+damage ASAP. Add node just before timeline, turn node off with long keyframe in the timeline to block it restarting the animation until you allow it.