The 3-hit whip window is an intentional way to encourage players to also use spells instead of relying exclusively on your whip. Unfortunately you don't get to play around with any spells in the demo. Like you point out, you can invest a bit more effort & abuse the charged shot to get over that 3-hit window limitation.

It was one of the point I wanted to underline (others already did that). As it is now more than a way to disempower the whip/melee attacks it seems a bad design mechanic of gameplay even if intentional. I mean there is no visual or sound indicator, the player always expects something like "ok, now after a little pause I wait for that bat and I whip out is face with a perfect blow!" Bim! You press the botton and nothing happens (no indicator, not a nice thing) and bim again the bat bite your face. Here is a bat, but () later in game it could be something more dangerous even with one hit one kill and it isn't good not having a fast base attack to spam in those cases. Magic is fast as it is designed and polished, but I don't think it can be as fast or better as "common/basic" as a whip attack.
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It is the entire fact of no response after expecting something. I don't know if later in game you can grew addicted to that without problems and I don't know if it is possible to use the same mechanic with a visual indicator or something like that, probably is the broken base of 3 attacks that give that not pleasant feeling.
Try to retake that in consideration. Did the testers pointed out anything about that combo?
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Hi, hopefully it's okay if I piggyback my own demo impressions in here, to avoid cluttering up the forum with extra threads; apologies if I accidentally mention something already in the works or that was already covered elsewhere.

- The game runs without any apparent issues on my non-gaming laptop, and there seem to be a good amount of options to tweak for anyone who does have trouble. It also sensed my third-party X360 controller just fine, though at the moment only analog movement/menu navigation appears to be supported; hopefully d-pad controls will be available as well.

- You probably hear this a lot, but the game looks and sounds great; the spritework and animation capably evoke fond memories of 32-bit 2D gaming. The more "realistic" character portraits took a bit of getting used to compared to the more cartoony/stumpy sprites, but I kind of like the dissonance, it gives the game a  bit more of a dreamlike, or "watching a performance" feel, assuming you were going for something like that, heh.

- My only minor complaints on the visual front concern overall visibility - I like the little emotion bubbles that characters sometimes sport, but they frequently cover the characters themselves, which is a bit distracting IMO, I might suggest placing them directly above characters rather than beside them. The colorful font is generally pleasing to the eye, but the relative lack of contrast can occasionally make keywords and other such elements a bit tricky to differentiate, so you may want to consider including at least one or two simpler/more readable text options, if only to accommodate those with vision issues and the like.

I also like the little fireworks displays whenever an enemy is defeated, but especially when dealing with a lot of small enemies (i.e. bats) the pyrotechnics can make it a bit difficult to keep an eye on everyone, so perhaps a smidge of toning down is in order. During the boss fight it took me a bit to realize that the smaller rocks that the bigger ones break into can't hurt you, so perhaps a visual cue to make that more obvious would be warranted. Finally, the way damage numbers flutter and arc for a bit before falling offscreen also adds to the visual noise, so an option to disable that would also be appreciated.

- Sound-wise, the only negative thing I could think to note was that I found Alicia's shout upon taking damage a bit piercing; no idea if anyone else has said the same, but to my ears it was just a little bit shrill. Maybe a slight lowering of its volume would do the trick.

- Controls also felt good to me overall, though the "quick 3-hit combo followed by lag" structure of the primary weapon threw me off somewhat, especially since the lag still happens even if you leave a bit of a space between attacks; it's hardly insurmountable, but off the cuff I tend to think I'd be more comfortable with a "steadier" attack rhythm, where every strike has the same amount of startup and downtime (once I got the charge shot I ended up using it most of the time, simply because I found it more "reliable", for lack of a better word). Mind you, this could be another personal quirk, so you might want to poll a wider range of testers on this, or perhaps include different weapons or an option toggle to cover all your bases.

- I liked the way the game didn't outright explain every gameplay nuance to the player, but hinted at or passively demonstrated them while leaving some room for the player to figure it out; the "trick" with the spitting enemies comes most immediately to mind. I tend to have kind of a thick skull when it comes to this sort of thing, so the fact that I was able to follow the breadcrumb trail in this particular case hopefully means you're on the right track when it comes to accessibility in this area, heh.

- Small bug: if the "play music in pause menu" option is enabled, the music will continue to play alongside/over the in-game music when the menu is closed. Setting "play menu music" to "off" easily fixes the problem, but figured I ought to mention it regardless.

Phew...I think that covers most everything I could think to mention from the demo. A lot of it is fairly nitpicky, but hopefully at least something in there turns out to be helpful; if you need anything expanded upon and/or clarified feel free to ask. Thanks for sharing the demo, looking forward to the finished product.

Hi Leander,

Sorry for the delayed response, I've been without power because of an earthquake. Did you manage to get things working? I think Lukas took care of fixing this for you. Let me know if you're still having problems via email: mail -at- alonsomartin -dot- mx.

Thanks! It says something like "the email address is not in our data base".

Hello!

I just bought the 20$ version via Paypal that says "Access to the All-Backers Demo". Where can I download the demo version?

Haven't received an email yet.