So I played through again to check and playing those first levels again after mastering the mechanic is SO much fun. You guys did a great job! On my original play through I got stuck on the second to last level but the one in the screenshot also caused me some trouble. To me it felt like the controls were unresponsive. Playing the last level, which is supposed to be a freebie I imagine, still gave me difficulty but I think it illustrated the problem. When you're re-joining (as the orb travels to your spirit) you can't split but during that time I am often hitting J and expecting too. The player loses all control in that time which makes it really hard to chain together tethers. I'd suggest just being instantly teleported to the spirit or being a lot more generous on the time when you can re-tether again. Hope that helps!
Viewing post in TetherGeist jam comments
Got it. Thank you so much for adding clarity. You've already sparked some ideas for me on how to fix this. We'll definitely play with your idea of having the spirit rejoin instantly instead of having a delay. I also think we might experiment with input buffering so the player pushes J while in the returning state, they immediately starts a new tether when they rejoin. Smash Bros uses input buffering like this and it makes it feel super responsive. I've found it to be a very player-friendly affordance that makes for great design. Thank you again, this is huge!