Soul Hunter Beta

The game Soul Hunter was a very interesting game and a game with potential as it reminds of Mario in how the player walks from left to right having to fight different enemies that get in my way. Even the level layout is very similar as the creator has chosen to make Worlds and have 8 separate levels in them, so far I got to experience all of World 1 and this is my thoughts about it.

The tutorial is good as the instructions keeps me engaged to world by showing the buttons through signs and there isn’t anything majorly difficult, the only difficult part for me was around the end where there are spikes on the wall and I have to fall down the middle, as I was stuck there for 4 minutes, I think some kind of indication would be good here or have the camera zoom out a bit so that I can see what is coming. An example of this is World 1 Level 7 with the mushrooms due to how the camera is locked onto the player it can be a bit hard to see where some mushrooms are leading to overshooting or undershooting it, I think having the camera zoom out a bit when you jump or in general would be really helpful tool for that level.

 

Currently the game doesn’t have a difficulty scale or different characters/ items to use, in the future I would recommend looking into making at least different weapons for the player so they have different ways to tackle the levels, since it feels like there is only one way to play or adding a difficulty scale could be good as some of the levels are quite hard, like World 1 Level 4 and Level 7 as you have added a lot of plant enemies that shoot tracking balls which are very hard to dodge and get away from as you get bombarded by them, the only way I got past it was just trying to speed run through the level which also meant avoiding the enemies, and if that was the intention I think making simpler levels would be better as the terrain can be hard to traverse, and there wouldn’t be a point to explore or appreciate the maps you have laid out, when I felt like wanting rage quit and just speed to the next level. I feel that you game also need checkpoints or milestones so that I don’t always start at the start of the level, like World 1 Level 5 where I have to collect 3 different keys it was very annoying to always get to the orange die and having to start from the beginning, this was a very repeated process as the level had quite a few things that made it hard and again forced me to just try and speed run it.

 

Unsure if this is a bug but around World 1 Level 1 when I hit an enemy of the platform he seems to get stuck between the platform and wall. The hidden room on Level does it have any importance cause it doesn’t reward the player for finding it and word that is read is “Narrativa” which I out is Narrative, is this meant to be here? 

Additionally, the enemies need an incentive as they currently have no purpose that benefits me except standing in my way, like how Mario has the mechanic of killing enemies giving you points or coins which goes towards giving Mario more lives, your game also need something like that, you could remove the bunny making enemies drop hearts like Lego Games, or add in a shop system and have the enemies drop coins that can go towards buying items.

 

Except some of these problems I had, I think this game can be fun if players manage to get through these problems I came across; I definitely think some of the things I mentioned need to be reworked unless the playstyle you wanted to do was something similar to Hollow Knight in which case your game is quite for that, you just need to implement different play styles like a bow, a shield or some passive that gives players more creativity so it isn’t a blatant copy of Hollow Knight but at the same time doesn’t  just make players speed run to try dodge and avoid everything. The boss was quite fun with the different phases, the healing and just getting used to the timings but I do think the travel to the boss can be a bit tedious but not too much of a problem, I’m just considering how lesser try hard players might struggle and give up faster. Except that the gameplay is good.

For the UI and menus, I like the font used as it is simple and nice, plus the health bar and pretty much stamina bar are placed in places that doesn’t interfere with the gameplay. Pause screen looks good but the “Menu” button on the pause screen feels to close to the Resume button, try spreading all the buttons more equally, same for the “Options” screen, buttons feel a bit close to each other when there isn’t a lot of space being filled up. The volume slider doesn’t work.

The music and sound effects used was very immersive, just wanted to know if this is your music or something borrowed as I don’t see credits anywhere.

There were a few spelling mistakes which were, in the options section separate the “Full Screen” it shouldn’t be one word. “the” in the “the Balance” should also have a upper case “T”. You used “It’s” when it is meant to be “its” during the narrative at the start of the game. “World 1 Level 6” and “Level 7” has a spelling mistake “Wolrd”

 

So far that is all, keep up the good work.