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XCVG4 years ago(+1)

Gonna be honest, I went in pretty skeptical and didn't enjoy it much at first, but it really grew on me!

The character is difficult to control and at first I didn't feel in control at all. It took me a while to get the hang of it but once I did it became very satisfying and fun. I still sometimes feel the character is overly "sticky" and it's hard to make precise jumps but when flinging up shafts and between walls the stickiness is appreciated. Maybe it needs some tweaking but the basic mechanics work well.

I think the only reservation I have is that I'm not sure how well things will work if enemies or hazards are added. It's relatively easy to get where you want to go once you have the hang of it, but still very difficult to make precise jumps. I think if you're approaching this as a mechanics demo/test that would be the next thing to play with.

I found navigating the level to be insanely confusing and didn't finish it, but I understand this is more of a mechanics demo and that isn't really the focus.

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Klee Baumhover4 years ago

Thanks for the reply, and thanks for being honest, it means a lot.


About the character being difficult to control, there are plenty of things I am too used to from working on it that I really needed to test on new players, so that is the main purpose of this submission (thanks for figuring that out)

Wall jumps being sticky is kinda a problem I'm still figuring out. I changed it last minute because I worried jumping off walls would be to hard, but I think I over did that. 

The slide (if you even used it, nothing in game mentions it) is kinda annoying because the only way to cancel it is with a jump. Probably going to add a way to cancel it with an opposing input. Also it really should only happen when you have enough speed or give it should you a boost if your going to slow.

Other things being problems are the interactions of dashing into a jump. If you didn't try it, you should. Mixing Gunvolt and Celeste leads to absurdity. Dashing diagonally into a jump has some intentionally massive speed boosts, to a level I'm not sure about now.

That leads into your other points which I absolutely get. 

First thing of note is enemies and obstacles in future stuff. Biggest thing there is that with the character being based of Copen from Gunvolt, dashing into an enemy will not harm you, instead being a means of readying for an attack after bouncing off them. Mixing this with hypers and wave dashes with Celeste means you are putting yourself at risk by jumping out of the dash, meaning its not a good idea if you are going to slam into enemies. 

Stuff like spikes and lava will be kept to a minimum because they don't mess with the speed factor of the game.

 Also, the speed is intentional. Not to go into more detail than I already have, the core of the game I am making is a Metroidvania based around speed, and designing all aspects of the game around that speed. Precise jumps are likely not going to be something that is required often.

As for the level, it was made for this jam and it isn't great. It tested and proved some experimental engine edits I'm working on, but other than that its kinda garbo, has one good moment, that's it. I can only recommend playing with sound. You'll know if the level changes that way, big ol' rock breaking noise. (I didn't want to add screen shake...)

Also, when its voting time for the jam, do take another stab at finishing the level, the one cool moment is the end.

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XCVG4 years ago(+1)

I've never played either Gunvolt or Celeste so the comparisons are unfortunately going to be lost on me.

I definitely feel you about getting used to things during development and needing players to test them to get a useful opinion on them. I've had actual bugs that I just kinda got used to and forgot about until people told me about them.

I tried the slide a bit but I couldn't really find any use for it. That makes sense that it would be used later when enemies are in the game. I haven't played the games you mentioned but I think I understand what you mean here, it sounds like some games I've played or seen played.

I definitely did get the impression that it was meant to be more about speed and maybe rhythm than precision. More of a Sonic than a Mario I guess. I think as it stands it's too easy to slam to a halt but I think you already mentioned that. I think it could be a lot of fun though obviously there's still a lot of work to do to make that happen.

Playing with sound definitely helped- the first time I played I thought I was going mad because I didn't realize the level was supposed to be changing. It still really needs an indication of what causes the change (am I hitting something?) and what the change is.

The level lacks landmarks which makes it hard to tell where you are, but I'm assuming that's mostly because it's been thrown together quickly. I think the biggest thing I don't like is the layout- it doesn't really seem to have any direction to it. I feel like I'm supposed to be going up if I'm climbing a mountain but it's full of weird loops and backtracking.

I'll try to give this another shot if I have time.

Do you have any plans to develop this further?

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Klee Baumhover4 years ago

Not going to give as big of a response as previous but here goes:

Slide was originally the primary form of conserving speed, but do to the addition of jumping out of a dash, it is kinda worthless now. I am probably going to remove it because it has caused too many problems.

As far as landmarks and layout go, I was using a very minimal tileset when making the level, so making landmarks became almost impossible once I started detailing everything. Too few tiles to use, and my attempts at making landmarks kinda failed. In the full game that shouldn't be a problem, but I'll edit the description with some hints.

As far as developing further goes, the prototype has fulfilled its purpose and I feel that I can take this project further, but updating the prototype wasn't originally part of the plan, but I'll do updates near the end of the jam. I wanted to get something out sooner in the case of stuff like this, but I'm busy till like Sunday so thats probably when I'll fix all this stuff. Don't want to leave it like this.

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