but also quite confused as to what was going on. Second playthrough I set it back to normal and lo and behold Mr. Boss guy is there to give me a grade haha.Anyways, I think the game is gorgeous and runs super fluidly! Didn't have any hiccups I ran into. My two thoughts for things to consider are:
1) Make sure the town feels relevant. Perhaps this is just a byproduct of being a shortish demo, but my first playthrough I went down to 11 and just never felt any desire to balance exploration aspect with the "I wonder what's going on in town" aspect. At first the overweight thing was really nerve wracking for me because I love to absolutely sell everything and deciding what to drop was hard. But then I had some special equipment which was generally better than what the town could give me, and I didn't really see much point to going back to town. I do think this feeling would be partially mitigated once you have some kind of townportal in place.
2) The bats are such a pain for early monsters. Especially on the screens that are just a long pillar with rooms on each of the 4 corners and diamond crossing platforms. I had two bats swarm me when I was trying to get back up one of those rooms and it got pretty frustrating. Though I think that may stem from your inability to do anything after getting hit in the air. This mechanic is a nice throwback to old platformers, but I think if there was even the slightest bit of control in the fall it would go a long way in creating that feeling of efficacy. Anyways, the bats were 1000x more annoying than the eyeballs.
Some things that stood out as being really neat:
1) I like that you finish you swing animation when you land. Castlevania's and other games of the sort often have lag canceling landings, and if feels good not to be able to be gamey like that.
2) I really like the give and take of magic as a resource. It felt well a little scarce but not too scarce and I could imagine how it could play more interestingly as you get new spells.
