Not sure how I feel about this one. Story seems decent thought a little long, I like the idea of the visual design and what you were going for though it...just doesn't look right for some reason, The power is cool though it's not to useful. It's a lot of mixed feelings about a lot of things. The dash mechanic is pretty cool, though I would like it if Squirly moved slower while dashing so you don't run into enemies that much but also for the dash to last longer. Aside from that, the game still feels pretty slow. I would like it if the spawn rates of enemies would continue to increase along with the spawn rate of coins and power ups, just to make the game ramp up more and so it does end.
Viewing post in Version 1.6.422 - New playable character: Suirrly! comments
Very good observations, thank you! I’ll think what I can do here.
just doesn’t look right for some reason
Yeah, for me too. But I tried like a dozen of different eyes style and they all look weird and out-of-style. Maybe there’s simply something more to that than just the eyes? The face is too cartoonish compared to more anatomical body. Not sure.
moved slower while dashing so you don’t run into enemies that much but also for the dash to last longer
I tried that when balancing her, and it becomes a bit more random this way. Shorter dash is like 1-2-stop-1-2-move-1-2-stop-1-2-move (like waltzing :))… When I increased dash to 2 seconds I just never know when to move and when to stop without looking at the dash meter. And if I decrease dash speed it becomes significantly less useful - now the average speed is (if hitting the rhythm right) around 2.5 (between Foxy’s 2.0 and Cheety’s 2.7), reducing it below that just doesn’t make much sense to me, though I agree that it’s hard to control the character at such speed. Maybe I will eventually come up with some better balance?
the spawn rates of enemies would continue to increase along with the spawn rate of coins and power ups
On a small scale I can balance that, however, the max spawn rate for enemies is limited by “how much mana can the character regenerate” that means - how many powerups are on the gameplay field, which has its reasonable limits.
I’ll try to increase the initial spawns. Though a more interesting solution will hopefully come from the next two characters that would feature actual area damage and thus will add “multipliers” to enemies spawns (i.e. not just increase them by 15%, but double-tripple the quantity).
Still I’ll try to play with “difficulty curve” to make the game end quicker. That indeed makes perfect sense.
Story seems decent thought a little long
Absolutely agree here. I was trying hard to shorten it as much as I could, but it’s still way too long and I know that :D. I need to take my mind a bit off it, so that I’ll see more clearly what secondary parts can be cut down without harming the whole narrative.
Luckily it went much better for the next character (the story is almost ready and I already started painting her) and seems like the “wall of text” for the last girl though huge now, can easily be cropped to a reasonable minimum.