I like the aesthetics, as it reminds me of Super Monkey Ball and Kula World. I really enjoyed the music, as it didn't feel too obtrusive and felt appropriate for the setting. The controls felt responsive, and having extra control mid-jump helped prevent overshooting jumps.
I finished the game after 30+ deaths. A lot of the deaths were due to the camera's positioning making it difficult to determine whether I had cleared the hammer obstacle and managed to stop before the subsequent obstacle, the tolerances for landing the jumps being rather tight, and simply spending time experimenting with the jump distances and obstacle hit boxes. Possible improvements would be to:
- have the camera be further from the character to get a better sense of distance
- add a pattern or marker on the floor surfaces to give the player visual markers to help determine the safe and danger zones of obstacles and to time their jumps
- improve the margin of error for jumps by increasing player's jumping power or reduce the gap between platforms
Having infinite retries and near instant respawns was a great decision, as it was encouraging me to return back to the course and retry the obstacle that bested me beforehand. However, the positioning of the checkpoints felt oddly out of the way, and having to wait for the moving platforms became tedious and lead to gameplay lulls and impatience. The checkpoints could be closer to the main path of the course, and there should be a few more moving platforms moving along their path so that the time waiting for the next available platform is reduced.
Overall, I enjoyed the aesthetics and music, and the short downtime between failing and retrying can helped reduce frustration from failure.
A retro-inspired platformer with strict margins of error.