Post by someguywhocanfly in RECURSOR: Alpha Demo comments

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To be honest I feel the controls are extremely awkward and stiff. They don't feel responsive at all and I keep dying due to basic lack of control of my character, and I'm not exactly new to platformers - they're my favourite genre and I've played near every metroidvania you can think of that's half-decent.

I see a lot of people talking about Melee, so maybe that's something I'm missing, but I used to play Melee a lot as a kid and never had any problems with the controls.

Specific greivances I have:

Only two jump heights instead of variable heights - very awkward when trying to platform precisely. Hard to time shots correctly with the gun to hit targets and such

Walking/Dashing is very awkward feeling and the gap between speeds is too big

Default xbox control scheme is super weird - B and Y to jump? Why? And if I remap it it changes which buttons I use to navigate the menu too which is super annoying.

The game in general seems cool and I like a lot of the mechanics in theory, but to me the gamefeel is so off that I just can't enjoy it. I died in some room where glowing floor and wall panels hurt you because I find it near impossible to accurately navigate around platforms with these controls.

wills1 year ago

Hey thanks for playing the game. All the mechanics in the game are near identical to Melee, including the 2 jump heights, the walk and dash difference and importantly the lack of an input buffer. This design is quite unforgiving and has a steep learning curve, but I do think it is very rewarding when mastered.

It's tricky because I think smash gets away with this more because for a beginner the chaos of it all is the fun. Plus since the mechanics were designed with fighting in mind, there are numerous restrictions to give risk to movement which is important for the fighting design. It's only when you master the movements and employ exploits like wavedashing that movement really opens up.

Since this demo release, I've already made a lot of changes to improve the game feel, and I'm always learning what does and doesn't work. But I don't think I will stray too far from Melee's design because I do think there is value in its initial perceived stiffness to its fully realised mastered fluidity. I know a lot of people agree with this too, but it's just a bit niche (unfortunately for my wallet)

As the the xbox controls, ye thats my b. I was trying to mimic gamecube layout (this is what I use), but that was not the right call for the default controls. Also remapping changing menu inputs is stupid I agree, sorry about that.

someguywhocanfly1 year ago

Yeah I read more comments after I posted mine and I suppose I was a bit hasty to judge, it seems like this game was made with a very specific audience in mind. I did used to play Melee a lot as a kid and I remember being fairly comfortable with the controls, but it's been a long time so I suppose I don't have that familiarity anymore.

Is everything the same as Melee? Air mobility and all that stuff? Dash and walk speeds? I might have to go back and play Melee to compare because I don't remember Melee ever feeling like this, then again Melee wasn't really requiring precision platforming in the same way as this (although I do remember the smashing targets activity that you're paying homage to quite well).

I did try it a few more times with the mindset that this is meant to be like Melee and I was enjoying it more, I guess it's just a game that takes practice to get good at. Honestly man cool game, I do think I'll keep playing the demo and trying to improve, the mechanics and aesthetics are pretty cool. Combat feels a touch shallow right now but it's an early build so I'm sure that will improve with time.

wills1 year ago

Your initial impressions are still very valuable to me. I'm very into melee and surrounded by people very into melee, so it's not always easy to get that perspective. I want to broaden the audience for the game whilst keeping the mechanics true to melee.

Yes everything is like melee, the character is pretty much a mashup of a few different melee characters.

Thank you again for playing, and yes I hope to make the combat much more interesting than whats in this demo

itch.io

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