I don’t think he’s brushing it off @Starduster. I think he’s just confident in showing off his method of beating the mini boss because most of us were complaining on his page. It was a genuine gesture for him to show us a way to beat it. I’m sure he will tweak it as time passes. Remember it’s still just a demo. They are still a ways from the final release.
Even if they did, I'd much rather leave a stage thinking "man, I want to play around more" than thinking "oh god fucking finally". Not to mention, as previously shown, longer levels flatten difficulty curves and make using the stages' gimmicks a chore.
Levels are too long and there aren't many interesting obstacles, despite there being interesting geometry to roll on and out of, there isn't a sense of danger or anything to really make me go "hold on I need to pay attention here", so it's a lot of just, running and rolling through slopes and not much "game". Like someone else in here said, (I think Palas?) every level is a combination of Green Hill and Chemical Plant and Hydrocity. It makes them pretty boring when they're so long and there isn't danger or more involving obstacles. There are a lot of level gimmicks that use your momentum, but there's nothing wrong with something that requires more "traditional" platforming thrown in, especially if the momentum-based gimmicks are just for automated segments and simple "speed checks" to gate an alternate path. Coral Garden Act 1 took me 8 minutes to clear which is -crazy- long especially when I wasn't really struggling with anything, and especially when you're running through a lot of it and not really stopping much. I feel Sonic levels overstay their welcome somewhere more or less around 3 to 4 minutes in on a "good run". It depends though on whether the level is more puzzle-y and slow-paced and how much variety there is in it, but I think that's a generally good metric. Enemies are small and hard to parse and often you breeze past through them without even understanding them. it's very hard to tell that an enemy has spiky bits/parts that you're not supposed to hit unless you're going pretty slowly and looking at them attentively. They really require stronger silhouettes and designs that communicate their concept at a very quick glance. I'm also not a fan of the trend of having so many optional challenges in modern platformers. It's fine once in a while, but games like Pizza Tower are basically built around the ranking system and the optional challenges in a way that if you aren't doing them, it just feels like you're just not interacting much with anything, and this game feels a bit built on that ideology. Partially because Classic Sonic has a bit of that design with its alternate paths, but, again, there is a serious lack of danger or more involvement with the level obstacles, and they're mostly there just to gate upper/lower path access, meaning you can just ignore them in case you don't care about it. I also don't need to go on about the bosses, everyone else here agrees on them. Everyone also talked about Luminoucity being hard to parse but I really have to emphasize that I can't parse anything about that level. What is solid, what is foreground, what is background, what is interactible, what is trying to communicate something versus what are just cute background flourishes. You can make a busy-looking city level as long as you coordinate contrast and color in such a way that communicates and groups the different elements appropriately, but Luminoucity is a really glaring example of a level that doesn't do that. There's a lot of pizzazz and sleekness and work into the game's presentation but I can't help but feel that's a lot of beautiful effort that might get scrapped if a lot of elements are redesigned or rethought... I don't believe in being "anti-polish" and just making functional doodles for graphics, but putting too much polish into presentation (especially of something that isn't close to being finished) makes me wince and worry a bit, as I've been a part of a lot of unfinished projects partially because of attitudes like these. I would love to get my hands on more finished games, on artists iterating on themselves more quickly. A lot of these criticisms are issues that many other fangames also have, so I hope this isn't seen as though I don't appreciate that it is so pretty, good-sounding and smooth-playing. I wouldn't have downloaded it and played it if I wasn't really really attracted to it. But these are things that seriously bothered me when I played it.
I think some of the game design are in tribute to and following in the footsteps of Before and After the Sequel, Mania somewhat too, and most of all Sonic and The Fallen Star. Whether this is intentional or not, it makes everything about the game make sense to me. Maybe especially regarding the bosses, the Before and After games had all sorts of bosses that were way outside of Sonic conventions and i remember not liking that aspect at first. But it was years and years ago, so now it feels like an established, albeit still very unpredictable, style of bosses for fangames.
I don't know if the Galactic creator/s are reading this thread, so I don't know if there's any point posting here, but I had a solid time with the demo! I don't agree that it's hard to tell what's going on in Luminoucity, the walls and backgrounds are visually distinct. On the other hand, the single bonus stage was almost impossible to parse with most of the screen being two (similar) colors. The special stage worked well and felt good, it just needs a lot more layouts to keep feeling fresh, like in Superstars. I've only tried Sonic but he felt great. The leaf shield I guess is an instashield? No idea what the purple bubble shield does. I don't mind how long the stages were, but the timer shouldn't be there, it's not helpful to tell me I'm in overtime if it doesn't even matter. I liked all the detailed graphics and fun little gimmicks, and having a coral reef was an especial standout, one of my favorite Sonic water zones.
So Sonic Galactic release a update patch for their second demo build. These are the following that they listed so far. * Level Select * Bonus and Special Stage rendering improved (very less likely to crash the game) * CGZ1 Boss claws are more lenient to hit underside * CGZ2K Boss doesn't softlock * LCZ1 Boss adjusted hitboxes and lowered health * Huge save data bug upon finishing the demo and playing another file is gone * Music added to placeholder spots that lacked it * Fixes towards bugs in the Competition Mode * Tutorial Stage text moves much faster * CGZ2 button colors changed to be more visible * CGZ2 level tweaks * Softlocks to pipes in CGZ1 and CGZ2 should be way less frequent * No more oddities when entering a special ring and continuing to keep moving * Bonus stage and Special stage no longer break after entering them past your first completed stage
