Hey Mandy! Thanks for such great feedback.
It sounds like overall you had good difficulty progression with this, so I'm thrilled about that. I've definitely had stuff way too difficult in the past, which has led to folks giving up early and not getting to enjoy fuller experiences. Your comments made me feel like I'm making progress in this regard and it's really validating.
On restarts and area progression: Great points. These are things that didn't occur to me while testing and now that you've mentioned them, it would really benefit from improvements.
You mentioned improvements to the HUD, I agree. I'm curious to know if there is something specific you had in mind or something particularly that stood out as irritating / visually gnawing to you?
OMG my spelling game continues to be terrible. Good catch on "Cick" :)
I actually had arrow key players in mind after your input on previous jams! I didn't know what would make a comfortable jump button though? Right shift? Right control?
Good catch on music not looping.
On the starting area: I personally like that you're able to use it defensively and that you as a player found ways to take advantage of that. My concern, like Ben, is that right now it's too easy to just hang out there forever and never move into the arena. I'm thinking this can be addressed with upgrades and level design. Ideally there would be upgrades that help you out defensively and some arena level designs that have natural advantages for defensive builds (breakable cover, a period of invulnerability when first entering the area, deployable cover, etc). Basically right now you can hide out at the start forever, that's a low-effort, high-time way to make progress... I'd like to find solutions that are higher-effort but higher-reward :) As you pointed out, that would be the challenge in designing this.
Again, thanks so much for your kind words, time and thoughts writing this.
Viewing post in Welcome, Archer jam comments
No real thoughts on the HUD. It just needs graphic design love and a better font. Nothing was irritating, it just felt small and too minimalist at the top. I understand you don't want anything in the way but at the same time you don't want it tiny and stuffed in corners.
Probably the best key would be the right control but keyboards vary so the best option would really be to let people select their own key(s).
To be fair, in modern archery no one is running around because the stance is very important. Defensive players advance slowly, systematically clear out a section, move forwards when it's safe, and like to snipe (and defend areas but there's nothing to defend in this game and that's fine). There always came a point where I had to venture out because I couldn't reach or couldn't see the final bots so for game design it would be figuring out how to place more of those types of bots and likely use scenery to help with that too.
A much as it as really helpful for me as is I think Strider should be adjusted if you want to push players a little more - maybe you can only gain health when a bot dies or maybe there are one-use health "pools" in the environment that you have to reach in order to heal, or maybe you just can't heal in the staging area so people would have to duck out a little bit, at least. It's tricky because one time I had a bot right above me on a platform (seriously, it could not have been closer - the platform wasn't even in my initial field of view and I couldn't understand why I was dying), and way too many of them on the other side, so I did have one level where I had to act particularly fast and it was very dangerous.
So... experimenting and testing, I guess. As the game stands now, though, I had a really good experience and the difficulty progression was perfect for me. And the game was fun - let's not forget that crucial aspect!