PyWeek - skaapsteker - feedback

Despite a few flaws, this game is very good. Graphics are excellent, although something as simple as a border on the floor/wall tiles would have been a significant improvement. Collision system is a bit messy, I often got stuck, and combat felt a bit too simple. I like the idea of nine tails.

This game had an Okami feel to it, which I'm guessing you might have been going for. I wasn't able to get past the top floor of the second room, but the gameplay I was able to do was good.

Weird collision detection made this COMPLETELY unplayable a little bit into the game. What I did get to play was great though.

collision detection was sometimes not that accurate
first game from this pyweek I played through
had some tension
good balance between puzzles and action

I am giving Production low, because the file set was totally confusing as which one to try. With help, I was able to extract the 'correct final' and give a try. The design was good.

Very ambitious game, and the art and theme was superb. Really buggy though. Crashes, flaky
physics and combat made the game frustrating to play.

Except for the slightly glitchy collision detection this is a great game!

The physics engine you used detracted from the game- I don't think it's a good choice for a platformer, especially one with such delicate platforms. Beautiful graphics, music, sound. One of the most complete feeling games I've seen. I had trouble finding how to run the game, and I got TypeError: _close_dialogue() takes exactly 2 arguments errors quite a few times.

love the art style.. great work

An excellent effort! There seem to be some physics glitches, though -- I found that the fox got stuck a lot on the edges of platforms and in tight spaces, making it less than fun to get around. Also it's easy to find your way out of a level without realising that you haven't completed everything and no idea what you have to go back and do. Some places I got stuck: * I didn't know that the geisha needed a fan merely to be able to talk to people. * I only found out that tearing the kimono was possible, let alone necessary, by reading the walkthrough, and then I found it very difficult to accomplish -- it seems you have to be in exactly the right place, not too close and not too far away, and then attack. * Having destroyed the cannon, the natural thing to do is proceed to the exit that it was blocking, not go back and talk to its guardian. * Generally it's not very obvious that the way to get tails is to do things to mess up people's lives. Logic is missing somewhere -- aren't you supposed to be a _good_ kitsune?

could not find the wing tail.

That's an amazing amount of content! Very impressive! Usually implementing that much content would get a 5/5 on production from me, easy. But your platforming mechanics were so buggy, making it so hard to control, I just can't. The game was running at about 10fps for me; I'm not sure if that had anything to do with it. I really had fun exploring the interesting world you'd created.

The graphics were excellent and I also enjoyed the music. The fox-tail power-ups were a nice touch and an interesting interpretation of the theme. The controls/collision detection was a bit awkward though -- the fox kept getting stuck on things and maneuvering it around the level became bothersome enough that I quit playing about 30 minutes in. At one point the fox shuddered through the right wall of the level and came back out on the left side. Also kind of annoying that escaping to the menu screen and then resuming the game causes you to start back at the beginning of a level with all of the enemies respawned. I collected a lot of those little cubes and am not really sure what they were for. I think this could be a really great game if the collision detection were fixed to make the control a little bit more fluid. I'm sorry I wasn't able to make it to the end.

I found this game to be very glitchy. It was fun to collect all the tails. Finding all the suger
cube things was fun also, and listening to the whiny characters :). The platforming bits were
hard to accomplish because I either got stuck in the ground, the people or the ceilings. I got
stuck every time I landed on some sections of the levels, (where you had to go to complete
quests!). If the platforming wasn't so buggy it would have been a great game. :( PS. the art was
really, really good, especially the whirls and circles on the levels.

Beautiful art, as you said. The walkthrough was helpful. Thanks for that. It helped for when I forgot to talk to the dude after I destroyed his cannon and had no idea which tail I was missing.

I liked the concept of getting more powerful as the game progressed, and it was cool to actually see the tails on my butt as I got more.

The physics engine glitches were annoying, but I understand how tough it is to work all those out in one week.

This is a solid PyWeek entry.

Absolutely fantastic art! The game looks amazing in screenshots. The platforming is very
jerky and this breaks the professional look in motion. The story is lovable and the sub-quests
each have interesting situations and characters. The tail powers are a bit uneven. Flying and
shooting are super useful. Shape-shifting is only used in one quest. The rest don't make much
of a difference. Maybe they should have tied into sub-quests or had more use in combat. There is
certainly untapped potential. Platforming and combat could be made much more interesting
too. I give the low innovation score for the gameplay (basically simple fetch quests) and
because the style is so similar to Okami. But I enjoyed the game a lot! Thanks!

+ polished
+ mixed gameplay

- THE COLLISION ENGINE MAKE ME SWEAR AND SWEAT BLOOD, OH GOD WHY?

It seemed fun until I got stuck and couldn't move in the third stage.

I really loved this game. The Japanese theme, the puzzle-platformer style gameplay and the
humour in the story all contributed greatly. Of course it looks nice as well, and fits into the
nine times theme nicely. The only thing that lets the game down is the player movement (i.e. the
collision detection with the world.) I had a look at the code, and I have to say the physics
engine is complete overkill for this style of game. Simple rect vs tile testing would have been
fine, without any of the getting stuck and spongy movement. The game is awkward to play because
of this. (Note that most of your issues are caused by the per-pixel, per animation frame
collision testing, which actually just causes you to get stuck on your tail or nose all the
time.) I marked down Production because of this. Finally, my only gripe with the gameplay is my
last block of tofu that I couldn't collect because it was stuck under a broken vase. More games
of this ilk would be great! Edit: I notice some players are getting stuck on the puzzles. I'd
like to say that I think the puzzles are about right as they are (not too difficult, fairly
obvious if you think for a bit and try a few things before giving up) and perhaps such players
have not developed their puzzle solving skills, because most games on the market these days
have no puzzle elements and come with a walk-through. (I didn't use the walk-through ;) What I
am trying to say here is, please don't react by dumbing down the puzzles!

Nothing too thrilling but at least mildly entertaining, and very pretty and nice music. Would have been rated higher f you didn't have to spend half the time fighting because you easily get stuck in walls

Hi.

I had some fun with skaapsteker. The visuals are a critical aspect, and were cute and fairly well done. The music loop was pleasant and fit the setting, and interestingly did not grow old.

I liked the layout of the status bar, though I would have appreciated some mouseover tooltips to remind me what the skills did and what keys they are bound to.

The performance was very good, so smoothness of frames did not suffer. And the parallax layer with fancy art was a *very* nice touch. Kudos.

The story was written well. Good spelling, grammar, and made me chuckle in a couple spots. It's always nice to see some thought and polish here.

I had difficulty controlling the fox's jumps. The fox got stuck a lot, which was very frustrating.

The levels were too similar to really keep me interested for long. On the second level I could not reach the high box, and I remember thinking: oh no, I need the flying tail and now I have to remember where to come back for this box. I can't think of any suggestions to improve this aspect. Maybe a popup map would have helped, so I could see the overall layout; and objective locations if you really wanted to assist the player.

Unfortunately, it did not take me long to lose interest in continuing. I think that if you fix the jumping mechanics, and add a map with some hints so the levels look less similar, it would keep me playing a lot longer.

Overall, in the short amount of time we had I think you all did a pretty good job on this. Nice work. Hope you find my comments helpful. :)

very good work