Post by ZiggyZackary in Wha? An update?? comments

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As my review and previous comments show, I really look forward to the final game and just how much things have changed from the previous build to now. More interaction with the stage, more obstacles to worry about, and a bit more flavor to give it that Night Club style is pretty nice. Seeing that stages getting a very nice polish, while being expanded upon, have been making me very excited to see whats in store for Carol.

I will be honest though and say I am curious about a few things with my main concern being how difficult will be handled. This bothers me personally as I felt it was a little concerning to reach the XXX stages and see the biggest change was the removal of recovery commands. While this does make the game more challenging, the ability to recover from a fall which was a big issue in some stages. The stage that this bothered me the most, and led to me finding a bug that had soft locked the game, was the Employees Only stage. The low ceiling and obstacles presented made it easy to slip up, lose all your drinks, lose time, and have to fight against a puddle and one of the waitresses just to make it on time.

I've read this and other stages will be remolded, but if this XXX difficulty will make a return will stages accommodate it?

vonfawks5 years ago (2 edits)

I don't have difficulties in at the moment, but across all stages the lowest ceiling height is now higher than it used to be, so it's easier to jump over stuff. And in general stages just have fewer hazards now, as I think it's more fun to find the optimal path and finish quickly than to have to be super careful. (Also, puddles go away after being slipped on once...)

However, there is also an arcade mode that lets you play all stages in order, with bonus games happening every few thousand points, like a regular arcade game. But in this mode, there's no grace period and slips always cause you to fall like in XXX. I'm still kind of messing around in my head if there will be lives or not, but because of the general reduction of hazards I think it's pretty fun, because you have to pay attention to one specific part of the level rather than be cautious all the time.

I've considered making

ZiggyZackary5 years ago(-1)

That's very nice to hear about the changes. I think the problem that had me with Employees Only XXX was that the puddle was difficult to jump over due to the low ceiling and puddle. Even in the regular versions of the stage it was difficult to work around the puddle since colliding with a wall while sliding still count as a slip. It was the stage I didn't like much in the beginning, and was the one stage that led to the game crash I found involving the timer acting up.

For the Arcade mode you could have it to where you're given misses ( Mostly so you don't have to type lives out, and can use X's for each miss given to read XXX when given your third one ). After reaching a certain point amount, one of your misses is removed or you gain a bonus for having no misses upon receiving the bonus. Too many misses, or you run out of time, and the game is over. That way, the player's focus is on finding out the best way to maximize time and score through serving correct drinks, finding paths to completion, and even getting some last minute drinks to take to the exit.

In my opinion I do think the obstacles being removed is good as the one thing that did bother me about the slip minigame ( which was why I preferred the simplified version ) was that having to take your hands off the arrow keys and enter a set of 3 directions in quick succession isn't so easy. I felt tapping a specific direction was a lot more manageable under the stress of losing all your drinks.

One idea I could share when looking at your idea of "finding an optimal path" through a stage, you could have a small window in the beginning where you get to run about the stage ( At least 5-10 seconds ) before the stage begins proper. Either that or a pan of the stage to get a small rundown of what to expect. This won't be available in the arcade mode, but for casual players it could be nice to study to stages for when things get serious.

( Sorry if I'm pretty much creating lists upon list of my personal ideas and the like. Having played a good amount of the game myself I'm quite excited to see how things go and stuff. As well as wanting to look forward to the rest of the development )

itch.io

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