Roller Katz: BF - Episode 1 -

Hey there, thought I'd leave a comment about your game after playing it on the Nintendo Switch. I can see it having potential as a title, but there were a few things that made me raise an eyebrow in terms of the design choices while playing it.

First, the trick system. It's simplistic, fun, but it's under utilized. When seeing the screenshots initially, I thought the game was about collecting items and earning style points in an open world to achieve certain goals within levels. The first level did that, but the later ones didn't. Would be nice if the game gets updated or if it gets a second episode, these two aspects can be utilized more. Would also be nice if the style points / trick points did anything. Like maybe unlock alternate colors for Kiara and the like. Because at the moment you don't really have a reason to do tricks in later levels.

Second, the camera control. It felt very stiff, and didn't exactly function like a normal camera would where turning it would rotate the view around. But instead it would just kinda go left and kinda go right before hitting a limit. Which for a game built around moving fast, is not that great if you wanna move quickly towards another direction. This is even more of a problem for levels that require you to shoot something moving.

Third, the overhead map. It's a little weird to me that it uses a 3D map instead of a simplistic 2D one. I feel this is resource heavy and would improve the game a lot more if it was just a 2D overhead image of the levels as opposed to a 3D one. I found a lot of level geometry and scenery assets tend to obscure the view of where you are because of it.

Fourth, animations. While most of them are fine as they are, three of them felt like they needed more work or need to be swapped. The neutral stance for Kiara, when she's standing still, feels very stiff and dead. Coupled with her big smile, it looks really off. Next her "rollerblading" animation when at top speed looks very unsatisfying as a player. I would've expected for her to keep rollerblading in terms of her movement when at top speed and not go to a "hoverboard" like stance. It would be nice if that animation would be swapped by her normal rollerblading one. And lastly her shooting animation. It looks very spastic and unnatural, I would've imagined her to just aim forwards and slightly recoil her arms a little in an alternating fashion instead of her flailing it around.

Fifth, conveyance of game mechanics. While most of the basic stuff is conveyed in an okay way, the whole "attack the red part of an enemy" thing in the last level of the game wasn't. Never once in the previous levels you were taught to attack specific red spots on an enemy. Upon reaching this level, I legitimately thought the game was broken and got lost for 120 seconds before realizing I had to attack the red spots on the "boss" in that level. Probably should re-work this mechanic into past levels so the players don't end up wondering what to do.

Those are the main things I noticed while playing. Here are a few more, but are more minor nitpicks to me :

-The art style is nice, but I wouldn't necessarily say its anime. There's really only one character there that fits that aesthetic and that's Kiara. The rest of the cast are too cartoony for me to say that it's anime style. Additionally it is kind of odd, in a character design standpoint, how Kiara looks more human in terms of her face while her creator and others are anthropomorphic animals. I don't know if this is some sort of plot point that will be addressed later on down the road or was a stylistic error, I thought I'd point that out just in case.

-The scale of the levels are unreasonably big in later stages. To the point that the characters feel ridiculously small and out of scale with one another. For the enemies, I can forgive it. But for the buildings, roads and cars it feels unnatural. Like the cast look like they're 3 feet tall or less.

-You can potentially break the game by having one of the bosses, enemies, or cars hit you in certain angles. sending you flying away out of bounds.

Overall, I had fun with your little game despite the flaws. Hopefully the stuff I commented on gets addressed in an update or whenever episode 2 gets released.

Are You copy Neon Tail?