A downloadable game for Windows

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Blow The Last Tree is a puzzle platform where you absorb elemental powers to explore and solve various puzzles to reach the Last Tree.

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Blow The Last Tree.zip 143 MB

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The Good:
The foreground art is so lovely.
The puzzles are tested and teach us how to play.

The bad: 
Drama: It lacks drama.  The intro waste a perfect opportunity to call out your audience and show them why they care.  Make us cry or plant a rallying flag.   Use that time to say something important.  Environmental story telling could do it all,  no cutscenes needed.  Create some intruige and mystery,  make the player curios to continue.  Right now I don't feel that.

The background art : You've missed the opportunity to tell the story and generate curiosity.  I would like to see you explore the concept drawings a lot more and find a way to bring the background art into the visual storytelling.  While I understand the blankness of it,  it's very boring and contributes a lot to the next problem.

Gameplay:  It feels like a quiz and that quiz has no reward.  Gameplay loops are your friend.  

Not very tactile or cathartic: Perhaps adding more elements like baddies and power-ups could help space out the puzzles and bring an element of tactility to the game.  I'm also not sure why the mouse needed to be involved.  

Square environment needs to go:  The square tiles are wrong on so many levels: mechanically they impede movement, the stop the flow, and when trying to push objects around they were annoying lips and bumps,  very much ruins the flow of gameplay and visually are very inorganic which makes them seem careless, out of place.  Your most common art should be really good and those tiles are very not that.  Slopes and organic structures make way more sense and again are a chance to visually tell a more interesting story.

Low on juice:  This is a tactility thing again.  The wind/water stations need to visually react to the player being near them.  Another missed opportunity to tell the story and lore, too.

Save points: Needs them.

Stretch it out a lot:  You really don't have to introduce these puzzle elements one after another like this.  Stretch it out by adding more "filler" content and making these particular puzzle challenges focal points in an otherwise much larger level.  Also find ways to compositionally FOCUS on the challenges when they are new like locking the screen after save points.    Of course, look at Super Mario Bros 3 for a perfect example of how to accomplish this:  The first level in their obstacle introduction loop only introduces a new concept mid-way through and even after that it just reframes the same challenge in a few different contexts and then it's over quick.   The next three levels just mix up everything that's already there and sometimes introduce new art work or optional challenges.

Passable:  The best games make most of the big challenges optional or semi-optional.  You can pass on most bigger challenges and come back to them later when you've got better at the game.  Very important especially if there isn't to be a "death" or "hard fail".

Teaser video:  You need a small video of the game that piques curiosity.  Lots of people will not download it without a video.

Installation: Installing a game is always dicey and Windows did it's typical side-loading routine: "VIRUS THREAT NUCLEAR WASTE UNSIGNED TRASH FROM A  SCUM HACKZ0RZ WHO PROBABLY LIKES PINAPPLE ON PIZZA" when we try to open the zip file or run the EXE and that will deter.  It's an important warning these days and many will think twice.

Cheers

Hi, thank you very much for the feedback! We will take these into consideration in the next future projects, thank you very much again!