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I'm a big fan of your art style. I'm also going to bring up the jumping as it seems everyone else did as well. It feels like the character has a bunch of balloons tied around him when he jumps, especially with the long jumps. Here's a short list of other things I noticed while I was playing:
(played through twice, died on level 3 to the bats both times) 

-Perhaps increasing the speed the character falls to be 1.5ish times faster than it is now, I think it would feel a bit more natural. -The death mechanic is a bit too harsh for my tastes, I feel like if I have a pool of 3 health, I shouldn't die and get reset to the start of the map once I get hit. I should just lose some health and then get reset when I die. (which may have been your intention, but it kinda bugged me a bit while I was playing)

-The bats are waaaaay too broken. The fact that they can start chasing you before you even see them really sets you up for failure, especially when they're coming at you from multiple directions and you only have the ability to really dodge one of them. Perhaps slowing them down or not letting them notice the player until they're illuminated by the light could go quite a long way in making the level feel a bit less unbalanced.


And here are a couple little suggestions I thought of while playing:

-It would be cool if there were hearts or something that you could find in somewhat difficult to reach areas that would restore or even add an extra heart to your health.

-The shield item that you get in level 2 would be cool as a permanent upgrade for your character. Perhaps it could just bump an enemy off it and make them walk in the opposite direction and then have a cooldown before you could use it again. I dunno... just a suggestion. I think it would be cool if you could do something like that and then bump an enemy off your shield to make it walk over a switch or some other similar puzzle.

All in all, I'm interested in seeing what you have planned for this project. I'll definitely keep my eye on it!

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Hi, thank you very much for taking the time to play through and writing this feedback (sorry about the bats, must have been frustrating).

Regarding the art style: all the BEAUTIFUL background and grass wasn't made by me, it was made by jesse-m and the gems were made by piclet. I made the rest: moving entities, activatables, items and music. If you have any questions on how I did it, I would be glad to share!

About the floaty jump, everyone noticed it feels weird, I was thinking about removing the delay to jump again after you fall and smoothing movements, maybe it is enough for it to "feel" better. I'm very reluctant about changing the mechanic completely (e.g. by speeding up the fall) because it would break many of the level design based on the jump (such as the large gap on level 2). But if it's still not good after removing the delay, I'll consider speeding up the fall (and modifying all levels aswell :'/ ).

The death mechanic is indeed very harsh, as suggested by Here's Andy TV, I'll modify the death system, only reseting to the begining after you lose 3 health.

About the bats: Yes! They need a lot of changes. I thought about making their movement be a sine wave, in order for it to be killed in a more easy way.  "not letting them notice the player until they're illuminated by the light" man, this is an AWESOME idea, sounds obvious now, but it simply hasn't come to my mind! I'll sure do this.

Regardings your sugestions...

... about the heart items: Yes! I was thinking about it too, maybe add some secret areas too where you can find hearts.

... about the shield as an upgrade: It sounds awesome, but I don't think it fits the game scope for now, If I finish this game and the release makes at least a little success, I would create a sequel with some new mechanics such as this one.


Again, thank you very much for your feedback and suggestions, means a lot that you took your time to try this tiny game of mine!

You're more than welcome! Now I'm rather curious to know what tools do you use to make this game?

I'd also echo the consideration that you should take a look at those levels. If you change a game mechanic, then I think you're definitely going to have to change the levels, and I personally don't think that being reluctant to change your level design is a good idea at all.  In my opinion, you should definitely reconsider your reluctance to change your mechanics and level design. In the process of changing things, you might even find new and more fun ways to use the mechanics you already have or even come out with a whole new concept based off of the changes you made. The possibilities are endless and I'm not a fan of locking myself into having one way to do something. Maybe you don't even need to change the jump at all, maybe you could just make the jumps in the first couple levels less precise and let the player acclimate themselves to how that specific mechanic works before you start throwing pixel perfect jumps at them. Maybe the jump should be half a tile longer or shorter than it is in order to give players a bit more leeway with their jumps in general. I dunno... at this point, I'm just throwing stuff out there to see what sticks.

Level design is my absolute favorite aspect of making games though, so if you want to talk to me about it, then I'd be more than happy to! In a lot of ways, your game has similar movement mechanics to the project I'm currently working on. I make and get rid of levels in my project more often than I change any code at this point... but that's beside the point. Are all of your plans for the levels to be fairly short maps? If so, how many levels are you looking at making for your full game? Do you have plans for boss encounters or anything like that?

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Man, your point of view about reluctance is amazing, I agree with what you think about it. Its just that this way of thinking must be taken in a very cautious way, because in order to finish a game you *must* have a well defined scope, otherwise the chances are you never finish it because new ideas pop all the time. I talked about this on this old reddit post of mine. But I agree with you that sometimes it's good (and even needed) for the scope to change a little bit. I'll definetely change the levels if the jump is not good, thank you for sharing these great thoughts!


The tools I used to make this game are Phaser (TypeScript), Tiled (for the map), Piskel (for the art) and Beepbox (for the music and sfx). It's fully open source, you can check all the code here: https://github.com/diguifi/Dude-SideScroll

I'm at work right now, but I'm willing to play your game and answer your feedback post since when I saw it! Will play it soon and check your level design techniques! I'll also answer your post with some feedback :)

Yes, I do plan short maps, I plan a short game in general. It was supposed to be just a learning project (never used Phaser, nor TypeScript before) but it got so cool that I evolved the idea and started to make this game.

** MINOR SPOILER AHEAD **

I plan 2 boss encounters, but if you don't play the game "correctly" it will be only one boss.