Cool platformer but there is a lot of stuff to still work on. First, jump inputs get eaten way too often, especially in areas with strong wind where you want to jump as soon as you hit the ground. Adding jump buffer and maybe even coyote time would make the game feel way more consistent and would definitely make the game feel more responsive. Second, the wind is inconsistent at least in the last level I experienced which was the one with spikes and strong wind at the beginning. Wind doesn't have the best reputation of being fun, so you have to make sure it at least feels fair, and I personally think it wasn't. Not moving a constant speed when I hold left and jump just sucks. Third, the movement feels stiff due to there being no concept of acceleration or deceleration. I believe you were trying to replicate Hollow Knight's movement with this. However, it's good to keep in mind what made HK's movement work. The jump's were very floaty and adjustable (depending on how long you held jump) and interacted with stuff like dash, double jump, and pogo. Also, HK's movement was mainly made for combat, not platforming. It's great for that, but I think there's a reason things like path of pain are locked behind what is essentially an easter egg. Lastly, the pixel art did not have consistent pixel sizes, as the player had weirdly stretched pixels while everything else felt fine. In pixel art, consistent pixel sizes are a MUST. Speaking of the player, some sort of run animation would be nice no matter how basic. Just standing and sliding the entire time obviously didn't feel great. The wind also would have been so much nicer if made by a gpu particle. Setting these particles to have a horizontal velocity would make them look much nicer, and you could also easily adjust the gravity for specific emitters to show how strong a wind is (which was also an issue). I talked a bunch of negatives I know, but I really do just want to give good feedback to a fellow platformer dev. Great job at submitting and I hope you make even bigger and better games in the future!
Viewing post in Say, a Windy Day? jam comments
Thanks for all this great feedback and playing! I'll address (by that I mean either concede or cope lol) some points here.
- Jump inputs being eaten - yeah I didn't optimize the movement well it was sort of one and done when I first made the movement. I should probably focus on having some better movement next time.
- The whole left and jump not being constant thing was intentional - it allows a LOT of momentum to be built up and you can still make the jump from rope to rope in that climb section.
- Hollow Knight's movement was not as much an inspiration as it was an afterthought unless I was subconsciously inspired which I don't rule out since HK is one of the best games I've ever played.
- Pixel sizes - I designed the character within 2 hours of submission deadline and then I put them in the game and realized that the proportions made some jumps impossible and was within 2 hours so no time to really redesign so S T R E T C H it was. Lack of animation is for the same reason. Surprisingly not too many people commented on that.
- I used CPUParticles2D node because I didn't really know which to choose and I didn't want anything super crazy - I set the horizontal gravity to 0 manually and set the horizontal velocity to a flat value which matched the speed I wanted them to go.