Hey, the game looks nice, and it has a lot of potential, but I felt the controls were anything but intuitive.
I'd expect rotating with left and right, and speeding with up and down, not the opposite. Add to that other 4 buttons for dash, shoot, grind and jump, it's just a huge mess. Maybe with a controller it's possible, but with the keyboard it became overwhelming.
My suggestions:
1. Change the rotation to left and right, remove speed up and speed down
2. Make grinds automatic
3. Don't penalize the player for missing the grind, maybe slow it down, but don't damage.
4. Do something about shooting that makes it never miss the target, and kill the first enemies with a single shot.
I tried like five times and couldn't beat level 1.
Hi thank you for trying the game and for your suggestions!
Regarding the speeding up and rotating with different keys, the controls are fully rebindable (maybe this is not communicated well? Maybe I could change the main menu button to say " Rebind Controls") so you would be able to set it up so that you can rotate with left and right and speed up with up and down.
I'll consider your other suggestions as I try to improve the game balance :). It's my first try and this is has honestly been the hardest thing to do.
Also, unfortunately there's no controller support yet, it's something I may work on adding at some point.
Thanks for your reply.
Changing the controls helped, but it's still too much :P
I recommend automating some stuff, like:
if there's not reason to NOT grind, make sure player grinds automatically.
Make shots either never miss the target, to to keep shooting all the time, without pressing the key, or, at least, allow the player to hold the shooting button.
Ideally, speed up and down would also be automatic, but this might change too much the game