E3 Demo Feedback for the developer's team

Oh, one more little thing from me...

For the item icons (i.e. the leather breastplate, potions and so on), I was kind of hoping that these would have more of a pixel look to them as kind of a throwback to how they have appeared previously. I know the game can't have very much in the way of pixel art in it, but thought it'd be really neat if the item icons retained some of that.

An example of what I'm talking about is attached, if someone isn't familiar with what I mean. I used a subweapon icon rather than an equippable SotN item as an example as they were a bit larger res/more detailed.

Overall, I really liked the demo. It shows a lot of promise.

A few suggestions:

Graphics/design issues:
- Each room should feel more unique. This would also aid in exploration because it would be easier to differentiate each room.
How about:
  A kitchen area (with pots and pans hanging from above that sway as the ship moves)
 Captain's quarters (pictures on the wall, various trinkets)
 etc.

- The ship feels like only Miriam would actually be able to move around inside it, and there are no signs (as far as I remember) of how the crew would have once moved around (stairs, rope ladders etc). Although level design in terms of gameplay is important, it didn't feel like a believable environment to me.

- The first time I saw the boss's monstrous head peeking through the side of the ship I immediately felt it was out of place. The garish colours clashed badly with the earthy tones used elsewhere, and I thought the boss was comical rather than imposing. Maybe just a tentacle reaching through would be more interesting, as not seeing the boss's face until the boss battle would increase the tension.

- We never really get a good look at the boss, so the fact that it has two heads is somewhat lost due to one head always being out of shot. This diminishes the impact of what is actually quite a creepy design. I think the half woman/half monster thing could be played out a little better, maybe with the sound of her singing in the distance at various points during the level, so that the player is expecting to encounter a beautiful siren. When the player reaches the boss area and the cut scene plays, they view her from behind, and she seems fairly normal, but then she turns around to reveal a hideous face. THEN the rest of her looms out of the water, revealing her monstrous torso and extra head. Making the humanoid part smaller (same size as Miriam) would help make it more creepy, and perhaps she can undergo a transformation before the final stages of the boss fight, increasing in size to use the mouth-water-cannon thing.

- I would also like to see a wider variety of attack animations, or an expansion of the standard attack system. Tapping a single button and having a single attack animation repeated is a little bit lacking by today's standards. I don't expect full-on combos, or to have her moving forward while attacking (could be available with certain weapons), but maybe directional inputs could be used to expand the number of attacks.

- All of the standard enemies seem to share the "turn into orange embers before disappearing" part at the end of their death animation. It would be more interesting to have a wider range of death sequences, as this will get old quite quickly.

- The Dullahammer is obviously based on a sea urchin, but a lot of western gamers not used to eating/looking at sea urchins will miss the reference. Perhaps he could roll onto the scene, and "transform" into his humanoid form? I like the idea of the gooey innards being his weak point, and just making contact with the spiny exterior being enough to cause damage. Cool enemy.

I'll leave it at that for now.

I'm really looking forward to seeing more of this game in months to come!

Hi everyone, 

At first, I would like to thanks IGA, Mana, IntiCreates, FanGamer and everyone in the forum who made this demo possible and I enjoyed it a lot ! The hype was real, though I learnt my PC is too weak to handle Bloodstained properly (I will talk about this point in the other thread about bugs and glitches).

I won't talk about good points because I think all has been said. The gameplay is fun, the music is entertaining, the game itself is beautiful... GOOD JOB !

About the 'negative' feedback :

INTERFACE
• HUD deserves a little more of work to improve it, make it better, soften it... Place it more on the upper left corner. Give it a little more thing that makes us think 'Oh ! This is Bloodstained !'
• MENU same thing, I think it can be improved, being purer, clearer, prettier, more classy, more gothic, more IGAvania... I am satisfied, but not absolutly, I think we can have more / better.

GLITCH / FEATURE ?
• See screenshot in spoiler : As another user pointed out,  when Miriam sticks to a wall, she kind of get through with that blue shade (I will note it in the other thread as well)... 
    What's wrong with this : 
 - It doesn't look good or legit.
 - You can actually hit a monster through walls and I think it's important that you fix that because I actually killed an Amy behind a wall.
 - Feels like a flaw in the game.


MONSTERS / BOSS 
I agree with most of people here :
• Morte is quite abstract and maybe need a clearer form though it has to keep its muddy shape.
• Dullahammer is way too weak according to its appearence. It should be a lot tougher : 
 - More HP
 - More CON
 - More STR
 - More range to fit its weapon

• Vepar looks good, but is not as strong as it looks... Need to be a tougher first boss. Same as Dullahammer, except for the range.
 - More powerful spells with another look when close to death ? Glowing water balls, injected with poison... It's up to you ! 

DIRECTIONAL SPELL / SHARD (FIREBALL FROM MORTE CANON) : Miriam looks very very rigid when using it. She deserves to be more flexible, having anoter, fiercer, posture, IMO.

SUGGESTION 
• Equipping the leather armor doesn't make any change. Miriam can keep her cloth, but can she have a tweak like a leather part on her belly / chest / shoulders when equipping this armor ? 

Here is my overall negative feedback. Please note I'm very happy and satisfied with the music, the graphics, the gameplay, the aesthetic, the character and monsters, the level, the sounds, etc... I love it !
I just think it's more useful for you to know what bothered me.

Cheers ! Congratulations, you made an excellent job so far and I can't wait to play the full game. Thank you everyone and keep up the good work ! The road is still long to go ! 

So I really liked most of the demo, here's just my two cents on what I think needs to be improved:

I totally don't buy the rope nets. They don't feel like they're physically in the game world as they act just like any other platform. They should physically go down a bit when jumping on and off of them. I've noticed something similar with the diagonal hanging mast which you can walk on. The collision on the ends of the mast should really be spot on. Right now, Miriam hovers above the mast when standing close to its edge. These things are immersion breakers for me as I am reminded that I'm just playing on a low poly grid map with graphics on top of it. Please update the collision map to represent the environment more closely. Objects with different physical properties should feel different while playing.

How am I actually supposed to use the directional shard in mid flow? My thumb is on the four buttons all the time because I need to jump in order to get around so I have no finger to spare for the direction control. I'm not sure if this is a problem that can be solved through simple re-mapping as it would require something like jumping on shoulder buttons which would feel odd for the rest of the game. If it's a shard type that should be used only as a stationary thing I believe that it still disrupts the game flow and pacing as I need to stop moving normally, move my right thumb away from its regular position and think about a new thing to do with my right thumb. After using the attack I have to reconfigure everything again... You get the idea.

The water in the background needs a rework I think. I'm not really convinced of the blurry, low detail look of it. The Fog in the far background shouldn't just be a solid colour either since that kind of looks like Ps2 era fog.

Overall I think this was a fantastic demo. Most of the time I totally got that IGAVANIA-feeling and I quite liked the way you creatively used the new 3D aspect for interactive backgrounds, enemies crawling onto the ship, Vepar destroying parts of the environment from behind and so on.

One thing that irked me is that it doesn't have support for Fake Fullscreen (AKA Windowed Fullscreen, AKA Borderless Windowed).
You see, I like my games filling the screen; windowed is ok, but a full screen is 20% cooler. However, Fullscreen mode and Windows machines just don't get along: best case, alt-tabbing out of the game or back in will lag and be an usability nightmare; worst case, it has a sad tendency to glitch or even crash, depending on the program.

Whereas fake fullscreen has the main advantage of fullscreen and none of the inherent problems. It's sad that there still exist games in 2016 that don't support it natively.

HI everyone. I loved the demo, I found the game very fun overall. Love the art and the environments. I have two suggestions:
1. I agree with a previous comment about Miriam´s face feeling too stiff during the boss cutscene. Hopefully it´ll be better animated on the final game.
2. I really missed having some voice effects for her. When she takes damage, when she attacks, and when she dies. That would add a lot of emotion to the gameplay.
Kepp up the great work everyone!

1st try with the demo: I could not figure out the keyboard controls. It turns out that playing with a mouse is required.

2nd try with the demo: I found the keyboard + mouse controls awkward and I couldn't get very far. It's not just that a gamepad provides a better experience (of course it does) it's that wasd + space bar is terrible.

The menus are too clumbsy. At the very least they should use the gameplay buttons and hide the gamepad controls if there is no gamepad plugged in. Show me what to do for the control scheme I'm using please.

I'd probably want the ability to reassign the controls to different buttons, too. I'd like to not use a mouse!

Is it just me or is there a lot of input lag on the attack animation? And just the attack animation. Miriam responds well for just moving and jumping, but her attacks take too long to appear. The problem is even worse in the air where you need a tall jump just to get the attacks out in the first place.

My sword was going through many monsters with no effect. The only reliable attack I had was the slide, which of course you don't want to use.

-Miriam's normal attacks feel too slow. She lingers on the back swing of the sword for too long. It almost feels similar to when Alucard would swing a 2-handed sword in SOTN.

-It feels like there is a fraction of a second delay when making Miriam move left or right from a standstill, as though she begins her movement animation immediately, but doesn't actually move.

-Not sure if it's just my pc, but the sound effects of Miriam's footsteps go away if you hold the right stick in any direction while running.

-The description of the Head Flail ability has an error, both when first receiving the shard and when highlighting it in the equipment menu: "Uses the head of a the headless knight as a flail."

-This was already mentioned by someone else, but I agree that it would be a very cool effect if the nets that you can jump on as platforms actually moved when jumped on.

-I also agree that for the tone of the game, some of the colors/textures look a little too bright and "cheerful".

If I reiterate what others have already said, it probably means it's worth looking into.

Most of the demo was good, some great Castlevania polish on it from SotN and AoS

• Being able to aim in any direction with a spell feels really strong for me in a Castlevania game, since a majority of the combat in this game is based on positioning
• I love how the Seema crawl up the side of the ship or the boss breaks in through the background, it's a great way to break the tedium of backtracking. Special events similar to the Skyfish from Aria of Sorrow would be fantastic.
• Damage is fine, I would argue for making the enemies hit a tad bit harder but for the most part it feels right killing most things in two hits. Hopefully this trend stays in the harder difficulties.
• Enemies have different death animations depending on what killed them, Mortes will bubble up then explode when killed by fire. Very nice.
• OST is solid
• Cosmetic items like the headband or Scarf are fantastic, you might want to expand on it by letting people change their appearance regardless of their current equipment to avoid clown suits.