I like it when you're able to build momentum and plow through sections of tiles at a time. This makes the first couple of levels and the majority of the Party levels the most enjoyable aspects of the game as it is satisfying to push swathes of blocks along the level. The music felt fitting for this type of game.
The later levels with their obstacles (yellow; magenta; black with spikes, and brown) make it incredibly tedious to play through, as hitting an obstacle halts your momentum or outright reversing your progress. This confuses me on what speed I'm encouraged to play at:
- the first set of levels, and the first few levels after the difficulty increases, have fewer obstacles and can allow for momentum to be built up . The level layout is a single long length in one direction, and there is a timer. These factors would encourage moving fast to complete the level in a shorter time
- the later levels in the set, especially the latter half of the 28 levels, have immovable obstacles, have very short gaps between sets of obstacles, and relatively small space to avoid the set of obstacles. These factors would encourage moving slowly to give the player a chance to react to oncoming obstacles
A possible improvement would be to decrease the player's size and the obstacle sizes to give them more leeway when moving between obstacles. I think the control joystick, pause button and the speedometer can be placed on the same side of the screen, with the the timer, the level progress counter, and hit marker on the opposite side to keep the UI elements balanced.
Another improvement would depend on whether you change the game to encourage higher speeds or slow movements:
- if encouraged to move fast, then the obstacles should apply their affects only once before disappearing. Some of the obstacles should also apply penalties differently so that some momentum can still be maintain, but will reward quick reflexes.
- For example, the spiky tiles would allow the play to pass through, but inflict a time penalty/score penalty; the brown tiles puts the play ahead of the current set of obstacles with the same momentum, but in a different x-coordinate so that the player becomes disorientated when they lose track of the character model.
- if encouraged to move slowly and methodically, the player speed cap should be capped at around 10-20 for regular levels. This speed range was as fast as I could move and have time to react to obstacles. The speed can be temporarily uncapped for Party levels only.
Overall, I like the concept of the game, but I'm not sure how you would want player to play it.
An arcade style game that encourages you to either smash through things or tread with caution.