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yumaikas1 year ago (4 edits) (+1)

So, I have a few thoughts w/r/t the early parts, since I’m not clear of them yet (and am struggling to clear them):

  1. If I’m going to be asked to jump over an enemy please don’t make that pixel perfect by putting a ceiling right above them. You have a nice big jump arc, I’d love to be able to use it in the early parts. I never got better than a 50/50 there.

  2. If I’m going to be kept from having a weapon early on (which I also did did in my game), please make it so that I can get to a weapon without having to play a big guessing game as to where it is, with enemies I can barely escape.

  3. When you’re designing moving platform sections (I’m thinking of the first room with the red water), I’d love to not have to wait for an enemy to move up for 5 seconds? I think the second platform jump tends to have an enemy right where I need to jump?

  4. Having a fixed jump height really makes it hard to do some of the more precise jumps in that red water room.

Overall, at least the first part of this game feels like progress is measured in Game Overs.

Which is a shame, because there's an *amazing* aesthetic and music going on here, and the game looks like it gets really fun later.

So, I got past the first part, I still think what I wrote above applies. The staff is an interesting set of added abilities and such, especially being able to pogo off of parts of the stage. I did hit a softlock, though. I may come back to this later.

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Cubellia1 year ago

Very fair and detailed criticisms, thank you! I think lowering the minimum jump height will address a lot of the issues you presented here, and quite possibly increasing the amount of starting health.

I think my initial thought by placing enemies that can be barely escaped WAS to try to herd the player in the right direction without it being technically impossible, but almost everyone has complained about the difficulty getting to the staff, so I'll definitely find a way to ease that. Only one enemy is supposed to be a complete roadblock, I think the jumping issue makes the other ones feel harder to avoid than they should be.

Where/how did the soft lock happen?

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yumaikas1 year ago (2 edits) (+1)

Softlock

So, the softlock was in a room where you’re supposed to use the web-boot thingies to jump up, the backwards momentum on them got me accidentally stuck under the corners you’re supposed to use.

I was stuck under one corner, then I’d use the backwards momentum to try to get out, and then get stuck under the other corner. It was kinda funny, in a way.

I never did figure out how to get those boots to work on the first time, it was always a bit of a fiddly thing.

Thinking over the early game a bit

So, using enemies to block off paths is totally valid, it’s mostly the dodging difficulty that makes it harder to parse which enemies are meant as blocks, and which are just there to add some challenge. I think the jump height is fine enough for dodging the floor enemies, it mostly becomes an issue when the ceiling is so low that you can’t take advantage of it, and are bonking into the ceiling. Then the jump is a lot more precise, in the sort of way I’d use as more in a secret-hiding troll area, more than the main path. This is probably where the large character against a low resolution probably hurts the most.

As far as having a hard time guessing where the pole is, there’s 5-6 doors between you and the pole, many of which involve likely taking damage the first time you go through them. And the intended path still has enemies and a death pit (because the likelihood that players reach it with more than 2 HP is slim). Like, it’s almost as blocked off as many of the other paths when it comes to “Danger == Dead End”. It’s almost less risky to go to the Blue Realm (and I went there before I got the pole at least once), even though you can’t make much progress once you get there. And then, after all of that, you have to do a dance of tricking an enemy to destroy blocks to let you at a pole, which also risks health. Like, damn, you’ve got yourself a whole mini-dungeon before the player even has a sword.

It’s a lot to expect out of players up front. The sequence could work, if the mechanics and level design were opened up a bit and tuned to be a bit more generous. Like, maybe get rid of the damaging water, and only have one or two spike enemies on the walls? I think with that, and adjustments to low ceilings, having to clear a miniboss without a weapon would be a cool encounter.

In fact, having things be a lot more generous up front gives you a lot of room to tighten them up to ramp up the difficulty later. Early areas staying easy and becoming easier isn’t a bad thing to have in a Metroidvania.

The Legend of Zelda NES starts you off without a sword, but puts it in the first cave you, so that you have to go out of your way to avoid it.

Miscellaneous other thoughts

And, at first, it’s not clear that your door-opening move doesn’t also do at least something damage-wise, I did try to use it to attack enemies a couple of times. (Especially with a player character that looks a bit of a magical girl, what with the crown and such). It’d be kinda cool if you could stun enemies with that move.

Another thing that seems like it’d be handy is to have a bit of a lower hitbox with the pole to make it easier to hit the fishy/spiky enemies? It still felt a bit hard to hit them.

I also think that it’d be awesome to have a variable jump height, so that once the player lets go of the jump button, they go into the fall state, rather than always going as high as possible.

Health pools being red, and danger water also being red felt a bit of a troll, though it did mean that I didn’t die in a place I expected to, so there’s that.

Alternative starting sequence that came to mind, but could be used elsewhere

  1. Put the pole at a dead end
  2. Have a bunch of enemies spawn after you pick it up
  3. Make the first checkpoint only available using the pole after you clear enemy room
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Cubellia1 year ago (1 edit)

These are great points, thanks!
Also I gotta say your formatting is very nice, thank you for taking the time to do that. I should probably start doing that myself lol.

I've gotten a lot of reports about the web shoes doing that.😅 I've got some ideas on how to fix it up and also make it feel less fiddly.
It is a shame that the liquids ended up so similar in color, I didn't even think about it until the first playtests. Early in the game I added the red as '''lava''' and was hesitant to deviate too much from the monochromatic color scheme. The idea for orange/gold healing pools came later, and while I did try to distinguish it a bit with glitter, the contrast wasn't great. I think I'll probably change it to green acid or something.

I might be wrong but I think the door-opening move does actually do damage, the hitbox is just so small it's impractical. I was worried the player might try to force their way through the enemy blocks. Making it do a stun is an interesting idea, I'm not sure the best way I could communicate it, but I'll mull it over for sure. I think realistically I would like the player to be able to fight with it if they're skilled enough?

All of your ideas to make the path to the staff easier are great, very simple to implement, I'll give them a shot. (Well, maybe minibosses aren't so easy, but I did want to tackle those anyways!)

The attack is definitely going to change, I think I'm probably going to implement a slash attack with a broader range instead of (or as an alternative to) the poke.
Variable jump height is a must, I agree.

Thanks for the wealth of feedback and ideas!

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yumaikas1 year ago

Well, if you want to block the player in, you can always have more ways that doors lock, so there’s doors that need a lever vs doors that expect a torch to be lit, that sort of thing.

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Cubellia1 year ago

True!

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