Untitled Magnet Game

It's shaping up well Mark! I didn't played the previous demo, just fyi.

I don't know if it's intentional but the throw mechanic feels smooth with analog stick but suddenly starts to snap and that feels really bad. If this isn't intentional I'd suggest you to design everything around D-Pad maybe?
If it is intentional and you want to enforce certain angles at high throw force I'd suggest you to interpolate the line instead of it just instantly snapping to the desired state.

The movement feels good but maybe it can be improved a bit by speeding it up a bit while retaining the jump arc as is.
The high jump feels a bit too floaty in comparison to the tap jump.

The only other things I've noticed is the magnet going through platforms but the character not being able to jump down through and the character starting without the magnet on the hub, it's better if he's already holding it for ease of use.
It happened to me a bunch of times that I moved without grabbing it and had to walk back to get it, hah.

I think the aim/fire mechanic would be way more fluid if you separated aiming and firing (as in, RMB aims, and releasing it cancels the shot, and LMB fires). It would be a lot more intuitive to me because a lot of games work that way. Maybe changing polarity could be done with the mouse wheel or MMB?

Also, I thought needing to throw the magnet upwards to enter a level was clunky and cumbersome. I would much rather it just be a simple door. 

I liked that there was a grace period for jumping after leaving a platform, but I feel like there should be one for jumping onto platforms as well.

You should definitely be able to aim while moving. I know it'd break some puzzles, but I think it would add a lot of depth.

PS: That was cheeky at the "bonus" level.

The levels aren't really re-playable, which might help with retention. For example, games like Angry Birds, Cut The Rope and others were sticky because they had more than just the linear path from start to finish; you could improve your score by trying levels repeatedly until you attained a 'perfect' score.

My new game (Paladin's Passage) had the same problem initially: once you completed a level, the only reason to go back would be to get a better time, which wasn't really incentivized. I completely revamped the level progression, eliminated the idea of lives, letting players replay levels as often as they wanted, and put non-linear goals (partially-hidden collectible 'secrets') in each level to incentivize replay to try to get a perfect score.

I agree with some of the other comments as well; the controls are still a bit janky. It is tough to get 'flow' going. Also definitely needs some sounds: music, environmental, etc.! Even a placeholder of something royalty-free would be an improvement.

As a fellow video and tactile game designer I didn’t find any major problems, it was a solid puzzle experience. If there are any notes, it’s on things you’re probably already working on fixing.

• Hub is boring, but I’m sure you’re working on what it will eventually look like
• Fonts are inconsistent, but those are placeholders
• The black-swipe screen transition into a level works, but it doesn’t do one on level reset which is kinda jarring

The Puzzles were good, not too hard. I finished the game in 6 minutes, the 6th one took a disproportionate amount of time (the one where you have to stop the rising box with the door), but once I figured it out I went “ohhhhhhhh” out loud, which is a good sound.

I liked how all of the solutions were obvious once they were solved. Like, once you figured out what you needed to do, it wasn’t like “alright, now let me try this 6 times to see if it works” it was more “does this work… Yes! Awesome, next puzzle”

I thought the player moved and jumped pretty satisfyingly, it needs to move a little slow to keep the slow, methodical puzzle-solving theme going.

I'm not a puzzle player but I thought the levels were generally very good, nice difficulty curve. However, the last level I solved by doing random things until it worked. Felt slightly different to the other levels, I didn't feel lead to the answer. 

The movement and mechanics seem very well designed, I like all the unique items and the magnet felt very emphasised. However, the jump felt kinda floaty? The peak of the jump he feels weightless, although this may be an animation thing not the actual mechanic. 

You should definitely be able to aim while moving, its jarring to be locked while aiming, as you cant make minor adjustments and I often ended up having to be forced to restart even though I knew it wouldn't work. I also think you should be able to cancel the throw. Not sure if this is a function already but super frustrating to not be able to cancel a throw I know isn't going to work. 

Everything looks amazing and very clean. Possibly the hub world should be changed? It feels a lil clunky to get into worlds by throwing magnet, maybe just auto open doors or require no aiming for level selection.

Overall, felt very fun to play and the concept is super interesting, could definitely go places with more timing related puzzles. Keep up the good work :D

A few things I noticed:

• For some reason, resetting the tutorial level took 3-5 seconds, but was almost instant on every other level
• On the hinge wall in the tutorial, I noticed that if I try to go back the other way too quickly, it sometimes doesn't activate until I move away from the wall and try again
• The aiming trail doesn't always line up with my mouse (usually it's below where my mouse is) - not a huge issue but kinda annoying at times
• On my second playthrough I noticed a pretty big bug in that I could no longer throw the magnet (this happened on the "lift up" level - my arms would fall parallel to the ground and I wouldn't be able to do anything, even after dropping and re-grabbing the magnet)
• JokerDBlue posted this below (or above, wherever this shows up), but on the hub world and thank you level, holding the ctrl button causes the reset icon to grow infinitely in size
• If you hold F, the magnet will switch polarity twice: on the initial press and whenever you lift the key

Some nitpicks:

• It took me a hot minute to figure out that I was supposed to hold ctrl to reset the level instead of just tapping it, and part of that was that tapping it still caused the animation to start (I actually thought it was being buggy until I figured it out). I think it might be better to either make the animation more varied (so like a little meter that fills the arrow the longer you hold) or just hold off on the animation until the button's been held for a little bit to make it less confusing
• I like the art style of the game a lot, but I feel like there's some weird disconnect between the cartoony feel of the world and the crispness of the ui (the reset and polarity buttons and the text) - I think it'd look better if you just made the ui feel less polished (that's not the exact word I'm looking for but hopefully you understand what I mean)
• I feel like the current levels are too short, as in they each only have one gimmick. They work perfectly as introductory levels since they're not too difficult and give a good view as to what to expect from later levels, but later on I'd like to see either some larger levels (spacially) or some more complex levels (as in they have more steps crammed into a smaller area - Baba Is You did this a lot and I absolutely loved it)
• I completely missed the level names on my first playthrough, so I think it'd be nice if they either appeared above the door in the hub world or showed up for a few seconds upon starting a level

Praise:

• The art style is amazing - everything looks very cute and cartoonish but at the same time is extremely well-polished
• The existing levels are difficult without being infuriating - I love the outside-the-box solutions on some of them, and the sixth level was my favorite just because it took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do and even then it still felt like I was cheesing the system
• I really like the inclusion of the hub area - it makes it feel more casual and gives it a more of a "these puzzles are sort of on par with each other difficulty-wise" vibe, whereas with linear progression I would have expected each new level to be strictly more difficult than the previous one
• Movement feels really good - it's nice and snappy while still keeping its fluidity

I generally really enjoyed it, for an early demo its overall pretty good. I liked the idea with the hub, however i felt that i had no incentive to skip a level, and there it felt a bit (tiny bit) tideous to run through the hub level every time. 

I played on my macbook, and the window was really big, when in windowed mode (i suspect that you have the standard resolution set to something that fits on your monitor), so big that i couldn't see the fullscreen button that you had implemented in the main menu. I did get it to fit my screen, but a resizeable window would be very nice.

But overall great job with this demo, i also really liked the graphics and the feel of the character.

The background parallax looks strange, especially when there are doors. The doors also cover up the smoke effects and aiming lines, which feels and looks a bit weird.

The fact the hub is non-linear is cool, but it's hindered a bit by the fact that you basically pick levels at random, and you have no incentive to play all of them once you have enough keys to progress. 

You also have no insight on what is within the level before you select it, so you're essentially picking stages at random until you get enough keys. This works in other games where the hub is presented as a map with branching paths, because it somehow makes deciding which path you pick feel more meaningful, and some levels are locked behind others. Maybe some levels could give out multiple keys? Or maybe the hub itself could be more interesting or complex to navigate, to make picking and choosing levels more interesting? Maybe certain levels could unlock keys to other areas of the hub? Dunno, just throwing out some ideas off the top of my head.

The tutorial introduced a pipe as the solution to the level, and I made a mental note that this would be the objective of the game throughout, but it turned out not to be true, even though pipes appeared later on in stages.

I think the movement feels good, jumping feels nice. But there is a weird gap between pressing the throw button and the player character actually beginning their wind up. This makes initiating a throw feel really awkward.

I think it actually plays quite nicely on mouse and keyboard, but the default controls need a little work - the less I have to move my hand all over the keyboard, the better.

The visuals are nice. I like the facial expression on the character when you aim, If you wanted to expand on that, the magnet's expression could change while it is in mid-air (it might already, but it's kind of hard to tell?), and also immediately after a collision. Maybe on the anticipation before the throw as well. The colour palette is good.

This is a bit of a weird one - technically returning to the hub being in the main menu makes sense, but for some reason it felt kinda weird. 

Great job! love the video series. I hope my feedback is useful!

Hi Mark first things first: You did a really good job and this demo is really great so far.

I made note of some good things and some things that either weren´t that good or just of some little issues.

1. To start with the good things first:

• There were no things I found that were that broken or really bugy

• The control of the character feels really smooth and you really feel like you are in control of that robot
• You introduced every main mechanic great by making the player experience that and introducing more advanced mechanics
• You have many versital level concepts and you make the player think of an individual solution for each one (not by presentating an obvious solution but by making the player testing everything out and as I said thinking)
• You introduced interesting objects that interact differently with the player and the magnet

Two other things that were positiv is that you can´t change the magnet to +/- before it  is completely attracted by an active source nearby

and that the player gets attracted by a "magnetic push gate" if he´s holding the magnet

2. The things that weren´t that great:

• After holding E for throwing and then entering and closing the menu you insta throw the magnet (would be better if it completely cancels the throw or just doesn´t throw it and you have to aim as before)
• If you pass a "push gate" and then instantly turn to the side you came from the gate doesn´t let you through until you moved a bit (just a tiny issue)
• The throw dot line of the magnet goes through the edge of the pipe however it is solid
• After selecting fullscreen closing and opening the game it is still in fullscreen but on the button is the wrong selection. The button would normaly say windowed if everythig was correct but it says fullscreen however you already are in fullscreen
• Before the loading screen is completely gone you can move (I think it would be more enjoyable if you can´t start before the loading screen is gone)
• Sometimes it would be way better if the player could drop the magnet instead of having to throw it so it doesn´t bounces away from the players target
• I only found out on accident that you can actually cancel a throw. So if there is a way to tell the player that mechanic I would love to see it in a future game or demo or wathever.

3. To come to a conclusion:

Even if the length of the good and bad sections are more or less even I would say that the sections with the good points absolutely outweights the negative points with no doubt. It already feels like a demo with a finished game waiting to be released. Everything looks and feels great. You really are in control of everything. You have really good puzzles and great objects you can use in those puzzles. To be in control of which level you play is also great for example if you are completely stuck somewhere and don´t know what to do you can just come back at another time.

I hope I could make you feel proud of yourself for what you accomplished and feel great because YOU really deserved that.

Greetings Daniel

Feels quite good! Controls are intuitive, though I did map my magnet so I could use it with just the mouse. I would love to see some longer puzzles in future versions, but otherwise I think this is very inventive! I really liked the solution to level 7, but it is a bit finicky to get right without getting the magnet stuck out of reach.

The character feel is much improved which was nice, however I feel like it could use a bit more "snappiness". Maybe move just a bit faster, change directions a bit quicker, etc. That being said, I believe sound will greatly improve this or possibly completely solve it altogether.

 The puzzle design was good and I felt a few "aha" moments, but overall the puzzles just feel good, not great. 

To be fair, I just played through Baba Is You so maybe take this with a grain of salt, but after completing this demo nothing really felt memorable to me. To compound this problem most of the levels felt very samey.

In my opinion, this game totally has the foundation it needs to be something special, but I can't shake the feeling that something is missing that would take it to the next level. Unfortunately, I have no idea what that is.  

Good work and best of luck!

The controls feel good. I like that the player stops and then the animation has a follow though. To me this makes it feel realistic without having the control feel sloppy. You also had a good balance between puzzle and platform. Me and my chat think you could use another run at level four, as it was a little too confusing. Other than that some audio would also really make this thing shine. Either way, very solid MVP 2. Cheers!

I really liked the demo. The puzzles were difficult enough to maintain me entertained, but not too much to be frustrating.

The game next demo definitely needs some sound effects, specially for secondary feedback of things happening in the level, like magnet changing polarity, or platforms moving.

In the hub, it feels weird how the background moves a different speed than the gates (that one would think that are in the same depth as the background)

Also, I would change the way the trow button works. Because for a short demo it's no such big deal, but for a full release game, it would be annoying how you have to maintain pressed the trow button to see the path of the magnet.

The other thing I don't like, is how the "double state buttons" (or levers) works. It doesn't always change to the side I like, or it is difficult to trow the magnet specifically to one half of the button.

What I really liked is the feel of the magnet. It feels heavy, but with powerful attraction at the same time. Also, the movement feels great, i had to habituate to the "long" delay making the biggest jumps, but once learned, i really liked it.

I hope this feedback helps you in some way.

Very nice puzzle game. It plays good and the levels are clever. 

I had few issues. The ramps are confusing. You can just drive up any incline in the game, but to me the ramps blend in with the background. I was jumping them up like they were stairs, always took me a moment to realize I don't have to do that. 

The tutorial was little confusing at the end. You have to throw the magnet up the green pipe to finish it, which made me think you need to do this at the end of every level. I was fixating on that quite a lot and was sometimes even planning the solution based on the fact that I need to get my magnet back after I get the key to finish the level. Which obviously you don't need to do, so the levels are often impossible to solve with both key and magnet in your possession.

While we are on that topic, selecting levels by aiming and throwing the magnet is too much of a hassle IMO. I wish it was simpler, just pressing a button on a prompt would be nice.

And last, unless you are planning to give R and W some separate function, please make R the default reset key (why is it CTRL ?) and bind jumping to both SPACE and W. Thanks. 

Not bad, noticed that if you throw yourself at a ledge while holding a magnet you can get caught slightly, as the character and the magnet have collision but the tether between them doesn't. Might be a space for a new mechanic, a thin floor piece (zip-line) that has to be traversed with a magnet. Maybe having to alternate polarity to progress down the line. Another issue, when holding down for aimed throw, you come to a stop; i.e. no aimed throws on the move. Not sure if it is intentional design, but It might be limiting on design space for puzzles. also, If you go to replay a level, there is no key or placeholder. Only way to leave a level you are replaying is to esc. and return to hub. That maybe fine, but it needs at least a phantom key in the replayed level to show what the objective of the level was, otherwise its a question without an answer. The reset level button might need a better indicator, currently there is a slight delay when pressing control before it engages. There isn't much feedback on if it is registering your button press, it took several seconds to realize that it was a press and hold prompt rather than a simple push. Might need to adjust the level hub or increase the characters move speed. 6 levels was about 1 level too many to walk past to get to the next level. Maybe spawn in the middle with 3 pipes to each side, and next batch of levels is a pipe overhead? Sorry for the wall of text. good luck with the game!

Feedback: The character feels really nice to play and move around with, there's nothing that feels janky or annoying about him at all.

However, I will say the screen resolution is a tab bit annoying; I think the game should open in full screen and have an option to make it a resizable window.

I'm also really grateful for remappable controls because while the game does feel good to play using a controller (thanks to the bumper and trigger buttons) playing on the keyboard wasn't all that fun in the beginning. I wasn't a fan of all the different controls I had to master and keep track of, it all seemed overwhelming whether it was between jumping or switch polarities. It wasn't until thankfully there were remapping controls that I was able to get into it.

Being able to change the magnetic switch to the RMB and jump the MMB helped a lot with keeping everything simple. 

Aim and throw with the LMB, jump with MMB, and changed polarities with the RMB.

The first shifty thing you walk into to shift doesn't shift if you are already walking into it when it finishes its animation. Idk how to explain what i mean by shifty thing but it's literally the first game object after the game teaches you what button it is to jump.

I soft lock myself in the tutorial by throwing  the magnet to the door at the left LOL 

in general the puzzles were nice 

Felt much better playing this version (2.0) in regards to control, character movement and progression. Well done! 

My main issue was figuring out how to interact with the scenario at some moments, like figuring out at which point I should throw the magnet to interact with a button and change its polarity but accidentally throwing the magnet someplace unreacheable and having to restart the puzzle all over. 

• Good Feel
• Bug on level 4 where throwing mechanic was disabled, unsure of cause 
• Got stuck on level 1 because it was unclear that magnets could pass through the vertical platform
• Puzzles are relatively easy to soft lock yourself but they are not big enough that resetting is too difficult

Really fun! The character controller is much better and whilst the art may not be final - the magnet and robot have a good amount of expressiveness. The simple act of throwing the magnet to unlock a door for a level is small but makes the game feel more based around the magnet, similar to how in mario odyssey you need the hat to just dispense moons into the ship.

The puzzle elements were great, especially the gate that is moved by the magnet.

I didn't notice any major cons or issues, i think the game plays and looks well and so long as there are fresh mechanics for more puzzles (and sound design) it could go on the market in a moments notice.

The initial tutorial section is well made and I think the idea of needing to throw the magnet into a pipe to unlock a door out the level could be good for other levels, since you would also have to account for retrieving the magnet. However this could complicate things and would require some small tests to see if its positive or negative for the puzzles.

Great demo, thank you Mark!

Overall a good start. 

One of the things that I got hooked up on was in level-0/totoral I did not know how to get through the final door to the hub for some time. When I saw the pipe all I could think about was Mario and how you would need to go into it even with the other door there, so I kept trying to jump up to it. It would have been nice to have something to say that you need just the magnet to go up it.

Seeing as I'm probably the only person who played this game on a square monitor instead of widescreen like the game was designed for, I'll take it upon myself to tell you that the game is pretty bad in some places when you can't see the leftmost or rightmost parts of a level. Specifically level 2, the same as the fourth screenshot. I couldn't see the switch on the right or the screw on the left. I beat every level in the game before level 2, just cause I couldn't see what I was doing. The loading screen was rendered useless because I could see above and below it, so I could see the levels load in. My suggestion: make it so the view scales down so it is always within the width of the player's monitor (that would mean putting the black bars above and below the frame when it's fit to the monitor. I think you get what I mean.) That's how I solved the issue in my game. Or else give a semi-freecam mode, but I find that a bit overengineered for the problem.

On a positive note: I love everything you've done with this game, it feels so polished that it's fun even when I don't get the aha moment and just brute force things. The art is great, the character feels perfect, and the puzzles felt like puzzles I'd never played before. You have made a very quality game.

Oh and by the way, if you're getting a lot of feedback about the last level it's probably because those people, like me, didn't notice the block would be stopped by the switch. I happened upon it by accident, so making what is and isn't possible more obvious (in cases where most working memory is already taken, like in the last level) is probably the best way to go. Essentially, we stop taking in new minor details when our working memory is already full, so as not to fill it further. So clarity is key.

Resizeable window on OSX would be great! I was messing with the fullscreen buttons and got the game stuck in a sort of unplayable resolution. 

That last level is a doozy, but overall i enjoyed my time with the game. best of luck!

Great game. Looks good, feels good to play. Nice and smart puzzles. 

Two complaints, though. The sloped buttons are difficult to jump on because of that weird angle. I guess they are sloped so that the magnet would slide off once it had pressed the button, but that doesn't mean that the player character has to interact with the button in the same way.

You could make it so that the player character doesn't even collide with the button and they just have to drive over the button hitbox to trigger it. The game would flow much better like that. Of course if the player doesn't want to trigger the button, they can just jump over the hitbox. Easy peasy.

Also, you should be able to aim and throw the magnet while moving. The game would flow way better like that.

Cheers.

It controls really well, and the mechanics are awesome. My main complaint is when you figure out the solution to a puzzle, and accidentally miss a jump you have to re-do the whole thing again. This isn't much of a problem now but when the puzzles get harder and longer it could be very frustrating. Maybe add a baba is you style reverse, just not grid based.

• design is good
• puzzles are fun, but level 7 is significantly harder than the rest 
• character movement is fun

There is one problem I found, that you can go back to previous levels, but you cannot get out without using the menu and that's a little bit weird

But it's a really fun game so far and I liked it

The Good

• puzzles feel much better this time
• movement feels much better
• had a few ah-ha moments
• themes feel more cohesive

The Bad

• Didn't like the default of 'opposites attract' when mixed with the fields showing the symbol that is attracted to it. For some reason this didn't sit right in my brain
• The toggle switches are too touchy. There was quite a few times where I would switch it, go to move, and then accidentally switch it again

Oooh, nice puzzles!

Main observations so far: I love the chunkiness of the animations - objects slowly start moving and then rush into place with an inaudible slam - but I do feel a bit frustrated at the start of levels having to wait for the magnet to arrive and pick it up (them up? what are the magnet's pronouns?) manually every time. I kind of wish that the magnet would fall into the robot's hands as the level swipes in so I could just go immediately upon resetting a level or returning to the hub. (Loved that in Celeste, where "start running instantly" was always a correct timing for timed puzzles.)

The feel of resetting a level is good, though - it's not instant but it's quick. Which I appreciate, because I had to do that a lot.

it has been a few hours and I have managed to break the game 

but for a demo this is an amazing game controls are great puzzles are fun and accessiblity is great 

my only complaint is that it is way too easy to softlock yourself 

about the screenshot there is a bug in the game that lets you jump way higher than you are supposed to only using the magnet and please do not remove it completely it is decently hard to do and would be a neat trick in speedruns

love it, I started with the last level to challenge myself and found that some of the middle levels I struggled with a little more. definitely think the hub world that you settled on is a brilliant way of handling the approach to non-linear progression.

the puzzles definitely seem like they revolve around the magnet more than anything else with the platforming complementing it rather than overpowering it.

someone mentioned below that running into the rotating walls slowing you down being a bit of a flow-breaker. it could be cool if the magnetic ones pull you towards them and almost catapult you off. can't wait for the next update!

pros:

• puzzles are very fun
• movement and animation are very smooth
• characters have so much... well... character!
• very satisfying when I get the ah-ha! moment on a lot of the puzzles.

cons:

• the last level is too hard for me.

and that's it! this is a very fun game, and I can't wait to see what happens to it next.

I loved this demo! Here are a few things I noticed

• The game crashes when trying to rebind a controller button without a controller
• The mouse is still visible when playing with controller
• It doesn't feel great when you try to run through the rotating doors and it takes away all your speed as if you've ran into a wall

Hello fellow dev, can see the spark of something promising. Here is my feedback, hope you take it in the spirit it's intended.

Entering and Re-entering Levels:

-Currently the player gets trapped should they re-enter a level after completion. While they can use the menu to exit, something like having a 'ghost key' as the end condition should be present so players may re-attempt should they desire. Additionally, It is my belief that players should never have to touch the in-game menu for anything unless they desire, so having an in-game way to exit to the HUB would be nice - such as the door lol. Intuitively I wanted to press up at a door to enter/exit, and use the pipe to unlock the gate, but the pipe was essentially the door and the door was purely visual. 

HUB and HUB Feel:

-The game is a puzzle platformer, but the HUB is a flat hallway. All aspects of the game should provide some sort of gameplay, so the HUB is a great place for simple platforming. Players find enjoyment in just hoping around, so this would be a great place for players to cool off between puzzles with a playground of sorts. Expanding past this idea, the HUB additionally could be a puzzle itself, where players need to figure out how to unlock the gates to the levels. The pipe's could be the locks, and the player needs to figure out how to open the gates to attempt the levels in whichever order they choose.

-Level 7 is dramatically harder than the rest. If you are going to put in unrequired extra hard levels, I'd suggest marking it someway in the HUB (such as making the gate red), so players understand they are taking on a bigger challenge. Doing this helps players know that should they fail, the level was designed harder, rather than their intelligence wasn't on par.

-The finish line gate doesn't really make sense as designed. Visually, you use old timey keys in your tech facility, to open the final gate, but the individual keys are also needed to open each level? Maybe gate each level with something else (or not at all), and change the final gate to open with 'completion' powerlines streaming from the individual levels. Simply changing the key to a powered generator, and changing the Mario sewer pipes to a mail vacuum tube might help with the visual language that is trying to be communicated. Lastly on the topic of HUB art, it has parallax scrolling, so it looks like the gates are floating in place when you walk past them.

Gameplay and Gameplay Feel:

-Getting the clear condition felt abrupt in some levels, as it didn't feel like that should be just the end. I felt since it was a puzzle platformer, that I would have to get the clear condition, then platform back out of the level past the mess I made - proving I fully understood the central gimmick of the puzzle. This would allow more moments for the player to mess up in the homestretch creating those 'lmao I'm so dumb' moments that were unfortunately missing. Funny mistakes are almost required in a game that has a cute art style like this, as well as other ways to inject some levity.

-It wasn't immediately apparent that jump height differed whether or not you were holding the magnet. This made the character feel buggy until I realize it, and even still felt off knowing that detail. I can imagine some players not figuring out the variance in jump height thing, and putting the game down out of sheer bad control feel.

-One level had a metal box with a magnetism symbol on it. As most people associate metal and magnets already in their head, this redundancy actually made figuring out how the metal box worked more confusing, since it could be mistaken for a unique object to your game world with the additions.

-There were a few areas I got stuck in and couldn't platform out of, forcing me to restart the level. Restarts can feel like failures to players, so it's best your levels don't require them in instances. More testing for environment soft locks.

-Lastly, played on an Xbox controller, and the level restart was set to 'LB', but the symbol around 'LB' was round, not matching the shape of the controllers button. While obviously the most minor thing to point out, it's important to point out every minor thing, as game feel can be eroded by stacks of minor things like these that are written off as unimportant. Many AAA games leave very minor things in their games, and I believe this mentality has lead many devs to cut corners in quality in other aspects of their games. Your the teacher youtube guy, so want to help you continue to bonk out bad practices in the industry.

Overall, good work. Obviously there is still a long way to go before this is a complete game. For this to become something I'd pay money for, I'd personally want to see more personality, character, and humour baked into it. Currently, feels on the reserved end, and I'd encourage leaning into the weird once you're happy with the overall mechanics and whatever else you need to add for your videos. I never played the original, but stand alone it's got a solid framework form something good.

Tiny bit of screen jitter was the biggest outright issue I could see.

Moving while aiming makes sense but would make puzzle design potentially harder so maybe a slow down instead of a complete stop.

Something that I think would be nice would be a door entry animation, it was a bit odd watching my character run straight past the door before transitioning.

Key animation is difficult to notice, hidden by geometry/too fast a transition. Obviously an audio chime would be nice as well for some added satisfaction.

The level select has some layering errors i.e. the magnet being thrown underneath the key monitor.

I personally found the character to be a little stiff to play around with, they aren't fun in a vacuum (more of a platformer problem than a puzzler problem)

Mostly critical, but I enjoyed the demo! You're doing great and you're awesome also.

I found a bug : When you are reloading the level with ctrl. while the key is collected, but the level isnt quit yet, you can get softlocked. you spawn into the same level, just with the key missing. quitting to lobby wasnt an issue and the key was properly counted. win10 version