Love the intro art! Great jam game! It was fun to platform through, although I quickly found myself ignoring most of the enemies once I realized how fast they are spawning from most areas, I think it might feel better if the crabs only took one hit if they are that numerous? It was interesting to play though as attacking let me move through enemies so I just rushed past them all and felt pretty fun to play with that playstyle.
Thanks for the feedback! I'm happy and grateful you played our game.
I got excited thinking about game design stuff, so sorry for rambling on below. 😅
There was an old platformer on the SNES, ActRaiser 2, that I thought of with the whole "enemies don't hurt you while in post-damage invulnerability" idea. That game has very interesting movement and player action variety that gives a lot of depth to your decisions while progressing through levels and fighting bosses.
I don't think the gameplay here lives up to the full potential of the mechanics, but I think it did lead to some of the interesting decisions I wanted.
One of my goals was to have the enemies present different kinds of challenges within this system:
- Fish can be tricky to hit, especially as they oscillate upward (esp. because the player's jumping attack reaches diagonally downward). They're supposed to challenge your ability to line up with them (or avoid them), but they don't present a persisting threat.
- Crabs move in a pretty predictable way. Since they're ground-bound (outside of silly air spawning shenanigans) they're mostly positioned to be in easier reach of both ground and air attacks. I considered destroying them after 1 hit (which would really make them goomba-like enemies), but I think making them survive (and pushing the player engage with the invuln system) gives a significantly different challenge compared to the fish:
Fish challenge you to position well before attacking, but crabs mostly challenge you to move effectively after the hit - hopefully by just running or jumping past to whatever's next, or by lining up a second attack (poor crab!) - The Octo-Samurai is supposed to be the big test of your enemy-invuln-managing mastery: having the health to survive lots of hits & movement that chases you means you may have to engage with them a few times, even if you're trying to speed through the level.
I do think that the way I organized the levels don't always make the most of these traits (seeing crabs fly all over the screen makes them lose some appeal, probably). I also think it would be nice to have some more "basic" obstacles too. Levels that are a little less compressed might be a good way to give more pacing, maybe?
It's all fun stuff to think about. I've been going on for too long, so I'll stop here. Thanks again for playing!