That was a very cool platformer oozing celeste influence. Very well done project that looks amazing and plays pretty well too. I sadly didn't see the end though as it got a bit brutal towards the end. I think my gripes come with the difficulty as well (although I hope my advice wont be taken from a place of just not being good enough). The hitbox for the flower is practically the entire flower, which although makes sense, makes the game also feel very punishing. I can brush up against a spike and instantly die. I think a little leniency is a must in these types of games to avoid feeling unfair. My second grip was that I couldn't for the life of me figure out how the wall jump actually worked. I could wall jump once per wall? But it had a cooldown so not really, and I could hold a wall even if I could jump off it leading to an untimely demise over and over. Seemed very finicky and I don't know why the amount of wall jumps was limited in the first place. These combined with the fact that I had to wait for the storm to recharge my anger in the middle of a hard platforming section without a way to pause (like a celeste wall climb) made the game feel very unfair. The levels we're very fun, but the storm mechanic felt like it destroyed the whole flow of quick snappy platforming. I did enjoy what I did play though and the art and movement felt crisp. Great job! (Sorry for the mostly negative review. I just see great potential in the project and wanted it to be a little more enjoyable)
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Thank you for playing! About the hitbox of the flower, actually, the hitbox of the flower for the spikes is 1 pixel larger than the main CharacterBody2D hitbox, and I had to decrease spikes hitbox to compensate the difference between these hitboxes, so it’s hard to control how big the spikes should be, maybe that’s the problem, I’ll try to balance it more. Walljump works like this: You have only one jump on the same sided wall, but you can recover it by jumping to the opposite sided wall. Was inspired by GATOTAG from GMTK 2024 for this mechanic. I think it can create some interesting levels, and is more or less balanced solution for the jam game, I’ll see what fits better. And why did you think that there was a cooldown for it? With the storm mechanic, well, I think it’s fun to combine fast paced gameplay with this kind of slow, strategic mechanic. I think it’s fun to kind of think beforehand how you should jump, to recover more anger (or stay calm in some cases). Overall, it’s my first platformer, and there were only two days left for designing levels, so level design can be a little clunky. Thank you so much for such a great review, I’ll try to take everything into account!
I played gatogag to see what the inspiration for this system was and saw what you guys were talking about. I think the main difference between the wall jump in this and gatogag was that gatogags wouldn't allow you to slide on the wall you jumped from as well. This made sense as in addition to not being able to slide, there was a visual component of the character facing away from the wall no matter what and being unable to grab the wall. I think a visual component would help immensely. Also thought there was a cooldown cause I sometimes randomly got back the jump after staying on a wall too long. Might be misremembering though I wouldn't look too into it. For a first platformer I have to say this was great though! Got to ask though. Why did you make the hitbox of the flower so big? Or did you guys use the same one you used for your character body's collision. If that's the case, I advice making those two separate, as to allow more flexibility in your future testing (like reducing the hitbox if that was what you guys wished to do). The storm mechanic could definitely be cool. I think the concept is excellent. Personally though I think the implementation was more inconvenient than enjoyable. Don't let that discourage you guy's from running with it though. I think this game has great potential and I'm glad you guys (the devs) are so open to feedback.
There are actually 4 different hitboxes for the player (screen transition, the one in case you get stuck in the wall and character body 2d one), don’t actually know why I made spikes collider so big, need to decrease it in the next update. Yes, completely agree, visual cue would help a lot, I’ll make it too. About cooldown, it shouldn’t be that way, that’s weird, might be some sort of bug. I think better level design and higher anger timer would make storm more enjoyable.