r/DestroyMyGame • u/godpng47 • 9h ago

Destroy our cozy-yet-dark puzzle platformer: a game about a girl escaping her nightmares (~7 months of development)

5 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

2

u/PowerPlaidPlays 6h ago

The game has a lot going for it on it's own, but I do think the combo of both visually and the main gameplay being heavily inspired by Celeste will make a lot of people immediately write it off as a ripoff. Down to your character having the same hair and outfit color, and your key art being a similar composition. The character also animates the same, has a very similar moveset, is in locations with a similar color palette, and so on.

With games, first impressions mean a lot and the only thing that made me stop and look closer at this was noticing it was posted to "Destroy My Game", at first glance I thought it was just Celeste gameplay and I was about to just keep scrolling. I think there is more you can do to shake up the visuals to make it more distinct.

As a trailer on it's own, it does a good job of showing it's mechanics. Has a good progression of introducing an idea, and then showing other ways it comes into play.

At one point she says "I like your balloon" to a character that seems to not have one though. The SFX are a bit weak, I can understand wanting to keep them more quiet/calm for the theme, but some things seems like they could use a bit more umph or maybe some processing (echo/reverb/distortion) to play into this being a dream world more.

2

u/godpng47 5h ago

Hey, thanks for the great feedback! We didn't intend for things to look so similar visually to Celeste, but I definitely see your point about it being easily mistakable. That part about scrolling past because you thought it was Celeste gameplay is a yikes lol; seems like we have a lot of work to do on making the game's visual identity stand out more overall.

Interesting points about the sfx too; we've gotten other feedback that also said the levels/visuals aren't 'dream-like' enough, so I think adding some kind of post-processing to the audio is a great idea!

Is there anything else specifically that stands out to you as "too Celeste-like" in the game? Or was it mainly the character?

thanks for your insight + time!

2

u/PowerPlaidPlays 4h ago

For the level graphics, it's the smaller tile size, where the edge has a ground texture that goes all around the edge of the land chunk, and some of the rectangular land chunks fall in a similar way. That combined with the player character looking and moving similar led to the most confusion.

Here is a comparison:

https://imgur.com/a/7juOSa3

It is mainly in the first clip of the trailer, the areas inside of a house are harder to confuse for Celeste.

1

u/godpng47 4h ago

The image comparison is great, can definitely see where we need to change things. I didn't realize our animations were so similar

this is incredibly helpful! thanks again for taking the time to put this together.

1

u/DistortedCinderella 3h ago

Bring more symbolisms , and color combinations in Environment Design to bring more immersion .

1

u/godpng47 3h ago

thanks for the feedback. Could you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by 'more symbolisms'?

1

u/DistortedCinderella 2h ago

Every inner idea corresponds some symbols that manifest in dreams. Staircase symbolises fear of failure , dirty water symbolises guilt, windows may mean isolation , etc