Toybox feedback & discussion thread (SPOILERS)

[Butter1484]

The Toybox was a very good experience, I've enjoyed the time I've spent with it so far. That being said there were a few things I feel could be improved for the final game.

- The swimming felt slow, especially when going up or down
- I know that animations will be added for pushing objects so that was okay with me they weren't there at the moment, but I didn't really like the physics of pushing the ball around.
- Let's talk about the camera angles. I personally think both are good in their own ways. The straight on from above angle is good for things like pushing blocks around. The other one looking at an angle is more dynamic and flexible and could be used in more interesting ways.
- It felt almost a little too hard to roll up the tower because of how it's hard to make tight turns while rolling
- Several times I found myself wishing I could switch to a first person perspective just to have an eaiser way to look around

Other than those things I thought everything was really good. I liked the look of the game, the animations were great, and the music was fantastic.

[partymanx]

I loved playing the Toybox! I'm really satisfied with how the platforming feels, I am really excited to play the final game! I ran into a few issues though:

- When entering a roll during a camera transition, the camera will return to where the roll started, this happens in room transitions as well.
- Character and camera movement are fixed to a 60hz timestep, while I don't know how the camera works (is it on fixedUpdate()?), Yooka's rigidbody should be set to interpolate movement to make it a little smoother for players with higher refresh rates. Otherwise the game feels like it's stuttering when it shouldn't be, and there's a disconnect in the smoothness of the animations and the movement.

[xtremelampshade]

Feedback:
Pros:
-I personally preferred the 45° angle to the other two camera styles, though I could see them each being useful situationally.
-I liked that the movement was very smooth, and that the particle effects did not result in any frame drops.
-I greatly enjoyed the humor of the game.
-I like that mistakes are punishing like in classic platformers.
-The animations for just about everything was pleasing. Great job!

Cons:
-I missed having the ability to go into first person view. That would make navigating and exploring the areas much easier and comfier, like in the old games.
-Occasionally the camera would get stuck behind a wall. This was especially prevalent in the areas with the steam that would speed you up. The camera would sometimes get stuck where I entered the area and would stay behind while I ran ahead and would disappear around corners, leaving me to guess where I was going.
-The swimming mechanics left something to be desired. Being able to swim in a very specific diagonal direction was just not an option. It was also disappointing being unable to go swim at different speeds.
-Laylee's animation when rolling can get awkward when stopping and rolling slowly. Adding an idle animating for the rolling mechanic, similar to the "bobbing" of Banjo and Kazooie, would solve this.
-This happened to me twice: When ascending the tower you need to roll to get up, I got the 50th quill while on one of the ramps, and when the text came up to alert me of that, the game made me exit the rolling motion, and when I regained control I slid down the ramp and off of the platform to the water below, and had to climb it again. Changing it so that text boxes like that don't change the position(?) of Yooka and Laylee would make this more fluid.


I loved the Toy Box! I had the biggest smile on my face the whole time I played it, as I felt the same way I did when I was 7 years old and played Banjo Tooie for the first time. Thank you so much, Playtonic. Thank you.

[Jademalo]

Just finished, really enjoyed the hour I spent with it. Obviously there are some problems, but I don't think it's anything terminal. Generally things just need tightened up.
The stuff below is in order of importance.


- The camera is far, far too close. One of the biggest issues I kept having was that when you jumped, the camera would be so close it would cut off where your landing blob actually was, making it almost impossible to make a lot of jumps without guessing.
It's even worse when hovering, it pulls in to an insane degree.

- The X axis for the camera really needs an axis toggle. Even after an hour, I couldn't get used to it. Every single damn time I moved it the wrong way, lol. It made some areas like the roll climb structure a massive uphill battle. (sorry)

- The camera just needs some work in general. It has a habit of getting stuck on geometry, it can sometimes get stuck really close to the player, things like that. The camera reset button didn't work very often either, to the point where originally I thought it didn't exist, lol.

- Ground stomp doesn't immediately send you straight down, you retain a bit of momentum while Yooka is busy doing the animation. Because of this, I overshot switches a large amount of the time, even if I pressed the button perfectly on top of the switch.

- The option for having traditional swimming controls as well as the current ones would be nice. I kept trying to move like I was in a 3D space like in other games, but that might just be habit. It works for what it is, and getting out of the water I swear works better than in other games.

- In the camera test rooms that told me to come and whinge on the forums, I preferred the third. It felt more dynamic than the second room, and less claustrophobic than the first.

- There seem to be a few weird missing animations. The most obvious one is not moving while using the roll, everything just freezes. Landing feels a bit strange as well, it feels really floaty. It's just an animation thing though, and not the actual physics. It feels quite hard to figure out when you've "hit" the ground.
Another one is pushing the box. The box also feels extremely light, as if it's a feather.


That's pretty much everything I noticed. You could just pretend the camera issues are a "Classic 90s platformer camera", lol. The biggest problem I had with this is the same problem I had with the Hat in Time beta, It's going to make the wait for the game SO HARD, lol.

Can't wait for the final game!

[tyranni533]

A few thoughts going forward:

-The animation for the roll while standing still and holding R2 is a still frame, no animation. Could use Laylee trying to balance while Yooka is curled into a non-rolling ball
-Could maybe use a ledge grab
-I prefer the BK swimming mechanics of a paddle or a dash. It gave more control
-If we can invert Y, we should be able to invert x
-Is the 2nd jump while holding in too generous of a jump?
-Needs a first person view

Otherwise, for a pre-alpha game, it runs smooth as hell.

[karashata]

One thing I forgot to mention about my playthrough of the Toybox that I only remembered because I saw it working properly during a playthrough by someone else. The attack combo didn't work for me, and I double-checked that the Plus content was installed and enabled just in case something didn't quite install correctly.

[Jasper]

Overall, very solid experience! Humor was spot on, movement was super natural, and the level design and challenges were fun.

- Camera needs work. My own issue is that it's hard to "zoom out" to make more distant jumps or even see your blob shadow in some cases. If I set the camera to the most distant / high view, and then move or jump, it seems to re-level. Additional camera range on the Y axis would also be appreciated -- in a lot of platformers you can make your own hero model super small on the screen to pick up on the environment, and that seems missing here.

- R bumper for first person mode isn't a proper fix and doesn't have a strafe. A strafe mechanic would have made some frustrating camera moments easier.

- Swimming was fine, but it would be nice to have LT/RT be dive/raise.

- Objects like the purple ball are frustrating to control and are missing a blob shadow. I overshot a lot on this puzzle.

- Sound design of quills and "you solved a puzzle" noises is a bit off. Overall the sound design is nice, but these stuck out as a bit too loud, long, and stock sound-y.

[Shimo]

So, just finished the whole sandbox, but for what ever reason couldn't find where that last button was located at. My hardware had a ton of graphical glitches and no audio at all in this prealpha. So if you guys haven't experienced that in the office I would suggest sending out a hardware questionnaire to all the backers. As for game play, every thing feels really tight and responsive except for the rolling. It feels a bit rough for turning around and seems to turn like a semi truck with 2 containers behind it. And in the test room with the different terrains. I don't know if this is intended as the final movement animations or not but I would personally not recommend having a continued walk cycle after letting go of a direction on ice. It makes it seem a little confusing to some people. Here's an example of the graphical bugs I was getting too. https://www.dropbox.com/s/ig5agu1ymv9ot ... 6.png?dl=0 I also got random textures on boxes and other objects.

Cheers and keep up the hard work guys!!

[Punksthetic]

[Einherjar]

Here are some of my criticisms from the demo:

-I like that there was a camera reset button, though I felt that there were times where it didn't work right or didn't really help. The camera was pretty bad in some spots and I wasn't even able to manually move it so that felt kind of bad
-I think there should be an x-axis invert option to go with the y-axis invert; it took me a while to get used to turning the camera and I had to stop a lot because of it
-Swimming felt sort of sluggish, though that might be a "you need a new move in order to swim faster in the future" kind of thing probably

Going on to things that I really appreciated:

-The entire soundtrack while playing made it really feel like I was playing an old Rare game
-Everything associated with the ball tower and the subsequent ball pushing area was really cool
-I really appreciated all of those secret rooms with the enemies and particle effects and the environments

also one other thing: at the area with the enemies, I took out all of them and heard some kind of jingle but i don't think I got anything from it; did I miss something?

edit: one other thing i just remembered: sometimes when you go too fast, especially around corners (like those jump sections on the edges of buildings that had platforms that required the feathery flap to get to), the camera kinda gives up and doesn't even try to focus itself in a way where you can actually see yourself and that was kind of a problem

[Metalex123]

I tried to do a review on the game on Steam, but it said that ''You must wait until this product has been released before writing a review for it.'', so I'm just gonna send my review here instead... It's my first ever review on a game... Here it is:

The Toybox is awesome! Sometimes, it can be challenging to find some Quills but it feels great finding them all. The only problem that I had was that sometimes, when I was facing back a wall, the camera freaked out a bit or didn't want to move at all... Oh and I tried at first playing with a PS3 controller (since I don't have a 360 controller...) and some controls were at some weird places (Jump = Square & Start = R2) and some of them weren't even programmed on the controller (no buttons to attack or crouch...), but I finished it with the keyboard instead. To finish this, I'd say that the Toybox was amazingly good and it took me right back to my childhood with games like Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo-Kazooie. Now I can't wait for it to release!

[GameMageMeeks]

I put together a video of some of the criticisms I have for the game.

For your viewing pleasure:

This video also doubles as a drinking game! Every time I say the words "like", "weird" and "odd", take a shot! I promise you won't die!

[Jengerer]

[OtakuShowboat]

[GeneralWalnut]

[LinearZoetrope]

[smkhalil2]

Let me start by saying I absolutely love the design of Yooka, he's just so vibrant and unique looking, totally original in execution and is both functional and adorable. Laylee on the other hand is not so visually appealing. I hate hate the pig nose, it makes her look so awkward and out of place next to the more simple faced Yooka. Mostly, I just hate the nose. It is too big and ugly, and makes Laylee look like a dude, an ugly one at that. Please fix the nose. And maybe give her cartoonier/girlier eyes/eyelashes, she looks like purple Voldemort with a pig nose without them. To summarize, make the nose smaller/more subtle.

[LysolPionex]

Biggest issue: Camera X-axis. Oh my gosh it was so hard to control, to get used to the camera going the opposite way of what I'm used to. Please...PLEASE add the option to invert the X-axis!

Other than that, I had no major issues.

[LysolPionex]

[Punksthetic]