Christmas SAGE 2023 Susan Taxpayer - Christmas SAGE Demo!

Took me way too long to get around to playing this. I loved it! This was a very interesting take on the Wario-like and the looser Mario-esque movement gave it a unique feel. The only jank was obviously SMB2X jank, though as pointed out the ground pound jump timing is a little strict (I know it's being worked on, it's ok!!).

Loved the aesthetic too. The graphics were very cute; they struck me as less Pizza Tower and more goofy Twitter shitposts. Music was also fantastic and I appreciated all the silly sound effects in it.

Amazing all around. Can't wait to see more!

Immaculate love letter to Wario Land and the whole corporate hellscape theming it's going for. The characters are all charming as hell and the gameplay was very smooth, though the game would benefit from a little more animation frames, but you could honestly argue the lack of is part of the charm.

Please keep up the amazing work, and I'm excited to see this grow!

I saw that people talked a lot about this one, so I thought I might as well play it since it looks interesting, and yeah, I'd say it was a very good playing experience.

The gameplay is just a reskin of Wario, well duh, it uses the SMBX engine and I am... completely okay with that, aside from the hassle of having to install SMBX in order to play it, I can think it as a total conversion and I think that the level design the game offers is quite solid, at first I was confused but then I realized that I should search for every nook and cranny I can, why I am discovering this so late? well, I'll tell you later, but needless to say it's necessary to have your brain working a bit to find everything.

The graphics are very good and very colorful, I think the cartoony style fits with the game a lot and it's not shaded or anything, but this is minimalism done right so sprites are easy to read and the animations are fluid, a case where less is more.

The music is very good, while it's not something I'd listen outside the game, it goes perfectly with the usual gameplay and the comical antics, not much to say here.

As on an aside, I should rate the humor, I'd say the writing and the slapstick in the game is very funny, it didn't get me lauging out loud but a lot of the dialog made me crack a smile, well except for this bit that made me laugh:

Glad to see this game has important life lessons!

The game is not perfect tho, for two things, first is a minor and the other is a major one.

The minor caviat being that susan is a wee too slow for my taste, I don't know if it's that or that the levels are too spacious, maybe she could benefit from running slightly faster, and also that I'd like if I had more time of opportunity to make the stomp jump thingy, because many times I'd fail it.

And the major one is that at first the controls seemed unintuitive and unclear, but that's because... I saw the tutorial later, yeah, if I see a door and that's the first door of the game, I am going to assume that's the first level I should play, but no, what I should had done is walk to the right and play the tutorial, which I didn't knew it was a tutorial because it was the second door! Like I wasn't clear if that was the tutorial of the game or not, because of the name of the levels, if it had a sign saying "learn how to play" or "tutorial" or something, I'd know instantly.
So for the next time I'd like you to put the door of the tutorial first and make it clear that it is that, rather than making it ambiguous, albeit somehow even without the tutorial I figured how to 100% the level, so at least the controls are solid, but someone with less experience(or insanity) will not be able to figure out.

Nevertheless a lot of effort was put into this project, I'd like to send a very "well done" to you, Punkitt.