Congrats on finishing the jam! I had a lot of fun playing and almost got to the end of level 1!
I think I should preface this comment by saying that I do not like rage games and especially not Jump King or Getting Over It. Even though both games are "fair" I have some difficulties enjoying them. For Getting Over It the control scheme causes my tendonitis to flare and I don't have the control that the game desires so it's usually a bad time. For Jump King, although the jumps are fair you can't really visualize or cancel so it can lead to frustration. I feel like this implementation got rid of both of those issues.
It felt very fair and I liked that you could preview how your throw would affect the axe. The axe felt like it had weight. I liked that depending on where you threw from the handle it would affect the spin of the axe. Music was good and I didn't feel an ounce of rage :)
Some areas of improvement:
- The lamps are not in the same pixel resolution (please)
- Sometimes I thought the axe should've landed when it didn't - maybe it needs a tweaking?
- It would be nice if we could see the percentage climbed to know how close we are to the top
- I think the pixel in the middle of the axe should be removed if possible - it made me think that I could only throw by clicking on the middle
Some additional ideas:
- If you would like to have this work for streamers more, I would recommend integrating with twitch or youtube chat APIs and spawn messages similar to the crow mechanic from Jump King mods
- As long as the game and gimmicks in additional levels maintain the same sort of fairness found in the first one then people are more likely to stick with the game than backing out
- I feel like in the beginning the level design should be very strict with the type of navigation the player needs to get around. For example the first section of Jump King is designed to teach the player about the gaps and the length of the jump to clear them. Something similar with using terrain types to bounce, or spinning the axe in a certain way would be good for a first/tutorial level.
Great job!