#Blud Review (mante)
Outstanding art and animation, fun and simple gameplay, clever writing.
Even though this is probably the last thing the devs want to hear just after having released their baby, I have some feedback for them so I'll just dump it here. I think it'll help with the problems people seem to be having with the gamefeel and combat:
- FIXED
- Attacks should be cancelable by the dodge roll at any point during their animation, even the finishers. I get the idea that you wanted us to commit to attacks at the risk of getting hit by other enemies, but it slows down the pace of combat a lot as well as being frustrating. I don't think managing distance in combat suits the game: It'd be more pleasant to leap from one enemy to the other, killing everything as fast as possible.
-The umbrella shield sometimes gets locked in a specific direction, I'm not sure if it's a bug but either way, you should be able to orient the umbrella in all 8 directions while holding it instead of release the button and deploying it again in another direction.
-Pencils are FUN. But there's SO few of them scattered here and there. Plus they're pretty weak, so it'd be nice if they replenished over time? Anything to be able to use them more often.
-The shovel digging animation is a bit slow. This is a minor complaint but it'd feel better to use if it didn't lock you in place for so long (I know, that's 0.5 seconds but it adds up to a lot for my ADHD brain).
-It's been said before in reviews, but a Sprint button would be amazing. Currently, spamming dodge rolls is the only way to go a bit faster, so you spend your time rolling through Carpentersville which looks a bit silly and feels a bit exploity. Why not re-use the walk animation and speed it up a bit, coupled with a faster walk speed? Boom, you've got a sprint. Maybe while keeping the B button pressed?
EDIT 1 - - -
-Some enemy attacks lack telegraphs. For example, the small black vampire heads instantly deploy their "spiky tongue" attack when at range, leaving no choice to the player but to roll away based on their estimation of when the enemy is going to be at range BEFORE it attacks. This creates frustration because you're expected to react based on unclear metrics (Range of attack is not displayed and attack is instantaneous). Either the attack is slow and there's no need to telegraph it too much, or it's instantaneous and absolutely requires a long telegraph.
EDIT 2 - - -
The first patch adds invicibility to the roll and a much needed auto-target/lock to finishers, this feels much better this way! I'm still praying for a sprint button like mentionned above, it's frustrating to spam the dodge roll with its recovery animation in between breaking the momentum. I know this feels like a to-do list coming from a self-entitled stranger, but I swear it's not, thank you for this first patch.
- - -
I think BLUD is a good game, but with a few tweaks it could be great.
I will update the review if I find more things.