Suggestions

[|Agent]

Hey, love the game. But I have three suggestions.

1) When the player changes forms using the number keys, can you have Naija actually sing the song before changing? Like, if the player presses 9 (or whatever) for the energy shield spell, can Naija quickly sing the four notes required to cast the spell? This is mostly for flavor reasons, I guess.

2) On the song screen (where you highlight one of your songs and the game shows the notes), can you have the game trace the notes as they're played, showing how you would "draw" the song using the mouse?

3) Can you change the controls so that a game pad's d-pad can be configured to activate different forms? On my controller, the d-pad is treated as a hat switch.

[Alphasoldier]

1) The number keys are for instant switching, if she'd have to sing the notes first it'd take too long, to make her sing afterwards it would be silly seeing she doesn't sing in any from but her normal one. A sound plays when you switch to different forms however, I personally find this more than sufficient.

2) People draw out their songs differently, simply making lines to how one would make the shape is IMO silly and kind of unnecessary.

3) This will most likely be possible but you'll have to figure out what control is called what and most likely change it in the usersettings.xml file manually. I think it's not entirely possible to have something that switches through all forms by just pressing left and right though.

Anyway this game is very very finished, soon however it will be open source, your suggestions may be implemented if there will be a group interested to improve/enhance Aquaria.

[|Agent]

I will keep these suggestions in mind for when the game is open-sourced, then.

I suppose I don't like the idea of instant form switching, for fairness and story/immersion reasons. I don't know why I consider it to be unfair, because this isn't a competitive game, but the story reasons are clear enough. If it is the song that does the magic, I figure Naija has to actually sing it for the magic to happen. She can use 1/32nd notes, though. 

As for drawing each song in the song window, there are two advantages. First, it makes it crystal clear, without listening for the longer gap, that the game is repeatedly playing the song; you do not have to listen for the longer gap. Second, I think it will help those who rely on mouse motion muscle memory to remember the song. But maybe not; I use a gamepad myself.