The Order Of The Enchanted Gift

[olive glen]

itch.io: https://midnightdovedev.itch.io/the-order-of-the-enchanted-gift
This a cute little Christmas themed game I made inspired by an IRL event I participated in where we wrapped gifts for people.
Any feedback is welcome!

[lyric ferry]

That cover looks really cute!

My first impressions are:

Good

• The theme of the game is consistent, the sounds and music, the art, everything is Christmas themed. And the beavers/otters or whatever are cute!
• There is a clear game loop; you construct gifts to the otters which ask for various specifications of wrapping paper etc. I only played for like 5 minutes and wrapped like 1 gift (because the cursor pointer is a little icky) so I dunno if the game gets harder as you progress.
• Bonus for the options menu

Mediocre

• The controls and the order of stuff to do took me a while to figure out. Without help of the tutorial written in the description, I probably would've taken 30 minutes to get one gift done.
• The cursor size is a little bit big compared to the screen size, but I assume this is because of the WebGL build. Probably would look fine in a fully fledged .exe, like you also pointed out in the description.

QoL/Feature suggestions

• High score counter/leaderboard/both
• In-game tutorial
• Maybe a casual campaign with a few levels (possibility for a more diverse story, and an ending of some sorts)

Bugs

• When you lose the game, you can still use the buttons and tape & wrapping stuff, and possibly even construct more gifts although I haven't tried to fully construct one because the UI is kind of in the way. But this is one bug I found.

Hopefully this gives you at least some insight as to how your game looks to the average player!

[olive glen]

Thank you for the feedback!
Do you have any suggestion as to how I could make the controls a bit more intuitive? I was aware it would most likely confuse the player, but I just wrote instructions in the descriptions and hoped that'd be enough 😅

[lyric ferry]

Hey np!
As for the controls, I think this may be a little bit too far-fetched but maybe creating a side tab or something with categories like "wrapping paper", "tape" (that is, in the case of multiple tape types) and "stickers" would be more intuitive to the user. Or if you would prefer to avoid a complete revamp, make the clicking part with the mouse pointer more accurate and maybe some sort of animation when they do press the mouse down.

Also, you didn't ask for this but the tutorial could just be a simple popup with a "Don't ask again" option that describes the gameplay loop, like what order the stuff should be done in, or even better a step-by-step introduction (like when they choose the correct sized box, instruct the player to use the tape and so on).

[olive glen]

I'll probably go with the pop-up as it's the easiest haha
Thank you again for taking the time to play my game!
Have a good day!

[lyric ferry]

Thanks, you have a bright day too!

[olive glen]

I added a tutorial pop-up, as requested
Fixed the bug where you could still interact with the gift even after the game was over
Fixed the waves survived counter (it was off by 1)

[lyric ferry]

That's awesome, good luck with your game!