I managed to complete the first level, which I’m not sure if the end as it simply displayed “what did you think was gonna happen”. I liked the concept of swinging around to break files, but I feel there is a number of things that could be improved.
For a game who’s primary movement is the swinging mechanic, I hope the swinging could be improved on. The swing’s radius range is actually smaller than what’s displayed, as I’ve tried multiple times to click on something that is close to the edge of the range and it not grappling to swing at all. The grappling hook should be thrown out in the direction the player clicks regardless of it could grapple onto a wall or not. I’ve played some games with similar mechanics, like Terraria’s hooks and Rain World’s Saint character’s tongue, which use a similar grappling movement style. Some mouse click correction would also be great, as certain platforms are so tiny that even if I feel I clicked on the platform, with how the camera moves with the player, I end up missing and have to redo that part of the jump. Perhaps clicking in a small range of the platform auto grapples you to the platform itself, to make it more forgiving.
The tutorial section with the Shift and mouse click was quite confusing, and I had to look at previous reviews and your reply to said review in order to get an idea of what to do. I was stuck pressing shift jumping on the file, going toward the file etc. for awhile before I realised I had to reach a certain speed threshold.
The momentum that you get from swinging around actually feels really great when you let it build up, but the initial first grapple seems to be quite disappointing. Maybe a way to sort of “fling” the target in the direction so it goes a little above instead of just to where was clicked might be a good thing. Also, many times I’ve tried grappling to the edge of a platform, and trying to jump to get up on it and was disappointed it was not a mechanic. Larger maps might also help if you want make full use of the good momentum you have of the swinging mechanic, larger open areas for the player to swing around. With maybe traps (like spikes) instead of platforms that break your momentum.
The main menu with the play button also does not seem to scale with browser size, as it automatically does a sort of full screen to the current browser size, I’m left with a gap at the sides of my browser that’s just grey. The game itself does scale with the browser size (albeit showing more of the map with a bigger browser size) so that’s great.
I feel with the right tweaks, this could be a really fun minigame, as the swinging itself was great when the chance was to have fun with it was given to the player! Great work for the game jam!