Etherbound Feedback!

[Duck_Rice]

Hey Everyone!, I'm the developer of a game called Etherbound. It's a local multiplayer fighting game that was developed in Gamermaker Studio 2. I would really appreciate any feedback! Go check it out on itch.io. It's currently out for Windows and Mac. Thanks!

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Here's the link to the trailer if any of you are interested

[Deckhead]

Hey man, so I just downloaded it and played it. My partner and I just played a few rounds, it's heaps of fun. The controls are a little bit beyond me, I couldn't get the guy flipping.

My attempt at constructive feedback:

• It's hard to tell the two guys apart after a few flips and parry's. I would be better if the orange and red headbands weren't so similar, and maybe if they were bigger, or the guys were just wearing different colours or something super obvious.
• Some of the controls I'm not sure if I was doing anything. So for example, I couldn't flip. I'm also not sure if I was doing the countering or not, I seemed to knock the sword out of my partners hands a few times.
• I couldn't see a way to make the window bigger or the game full-screen, that would be great.
• The animation and the speed is super good. I like how things tend to slow down as the fight progresses.
• The attacks all look super smooth
• The little stages are well done, there's not sso much detail that they're too much. You can use a muted palette for the background and a brighter more saturated palette for the characters to make things stand out a bit more as well
• The music really suits the graphics style

[Duck_Rice]

Thanks so much for the feedback! I really appreciate it. I 100% agree with not being able to tell the 2 players apart, I'll try my best to distinguish them more in the next update.
I think the fullscreen mode is a great idea, one that didn't even cross my mind before, I'm not sure how I'll do it yet, but ill work on that too.
The color advice is fantastic, I was having a lot of difficulty with background colors because of the white of the player characters can sometimes blend in with brighter backgrounds.
I'll try to make the flipping more intuitive and to supplement this, I will most likely make a youtube video on exactly how to execute each move. This will probably become more important later, as I have 2 more attack methods in mind. By the way, to flip, you have to hold down, and then either the left or right key, which determines the flip direction.

Anyway, thanks so much for the feedback, I'll keep all of this in mind when making the next update.
By far the best feedback yet.

[Deckhead]

Adding a sort of tutorial where both players need to execute each move might help. But then of course, adding a tutorial mode, if you didn't plan for it, can be hard to shoehorn in later.

[Duck_Rice]

That shouldn't be too difficult to implement and would be very beneficial. Thanks! I'll add it in a future update.

[100goats]

This is a good start for a fighting game.

I like the sound effects and music.

I am really interested in fighting game so I have many suggestions.

Suggestions

• Make more characters that have different personalities and have their weapons match their personality.
  For example, Vega from street fighter is a narcissistic villain who uses a claw and long reach to play dirty.
  Ryu is an honorable disciplined fighter who uses basics of fighting with his fists. Both have different play styles based on their weapon.
  
  This makes it fun for the player by expressing their individuality through their characters and relating to their characters in some way.
  Video for how to pick a character with good advice.

• More stimulation visually or aurally. This is the fun memorable part of fighting video games. Character grunts or screams. Character winning poses.

• Give each stage different theme music and relate it to a character's origin like street fighter or smash bros.

• There is a lot of empty space above that is not being used. Make a stage that has a platform at the top and another platform at the bottom.