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(+1)

Honestly pretty fun.

Overall the character control felt better that the previous submission as moving and jumping is pretty smooth. And I greatly appreciate the coyote time as it gives jumps that extra little bit of 'margin for error'.

There is a minor issue with sticking to walls you even slightly touch after getting wall climb. Its not much of an issue unless you want to attack a rock. Moving into a rock next to you just faces you away, even on the ground so you cant actually attack it without first moving away.

As for level design the first half to 2 thirds felt great. 

After getting wall climb I went east then to the north and looped back round to the west after getting cloud jump. Out of curiosity I back-tracked from the west path back round to the cloud jump ability using only wall climb proving that starting either direction would have worked. Honestly I'm impressed that there were multiple paths like this to get upgrades this time round. 

In the latter portion however I got a bit stuck. I missed wind ride for the longest time, then after looking very closely at the map I found it in a room I missed. But when exploring the new paths with wind ride I found nearly every single path to be blocked by those thunder clouds. While not major I will admit that it felt a little bad that this new ability was immediately hamstrung at almost every turn by the requirements for another ability. I will also admit I was getting tired by this point so maybe I just missed something.


On a fun note, the teleport is a really cleaver ability. It allows for quicker and easier back traveling in a fun way, and comes at a point when basic navigation and platforming is getting a little tedious. i.e. letting the player break the game when they are basically done anyway. If it weren't for this ability I wouldn't have bothered with 100% completion.

I would recommend either pausing time as you throw the teleport lightning (like with aiming) or granting the player i-frames. When trying to use it to avoid the boss's screen wide attacks I would often get hit by the time the lightning bolt even reached where I wanted to teleport to.


Here's the order I found the abilities in if it helps:

wall climb

cloud jump

lightning bolt

dash

boulder break

double jump

wind ride

super lightning (kill clouds)

teleport

Hello,

Wow! Seriously, you have thoroughly dissected the game in a way I just love. Congratulations for your analytical skills and attention to details.

I agree very much with your feedback. I answer you to a couple of points.

Backtracking the path back round to check that there are multiple paths to acquire abilities speak volumes of the quality of your review. Indeed, in Meteora, once you get the first ability (Wall Jump), there will always be at least two different paths to get to the next ability. I have done this level design like that, purely thanks to your feedback on Goats Gorge. So credits given. Thank you.

Second point, you also got totally right the feeling with the Wind Ride ability. Even when I was building the map, I was telling myself that it is the ability in the game with the least rooms for use, and that the thunder coulds were too close. Fair point taken. I know how to do differently for future projects.

Thank you the kind words on the Teleport ability.

You did the default sequence. To tell you as curiosity, there is a sequence break that allows to obtain Teleport right after Double Jump, which obviously fully opens the exploration and it is fun to exploit. Also, the abilities can be obtained in several different orders, and 3 out of 9 are totally skippable and you can finish the game without them if you find the right routes. 

Just curious, how much time did it take to 100% it?

Cheers

I'm glad to hear my feedback was useful, and honestly I am impressed that you had multiple route to most abilities. Because yes, until the wind ride ability I rarely felt like I was being locked into one specific route as I was in goat's gorge. So strictly from a design point of view the layout of your rooms felt pretty good (excluding the aforementioned thunder clouds blocking off nearly all the wind ride routes).

I will add onto a point I've seen from other users' feedback; more background details could really go a long way in fleshing out your game. For one it would give players more memorable landmarks to help with navigation, the first Zeus shrine for example stuck in my mind until the very end so I knew exactly where to go after getting teleport. 

In a similar way you could even have background details allude to the direction/location of different upgrades. But overall for a month long jam, there's nothing wrong with  focusing only on the barebones mechanics and level layout.

As for play time, the in-game timer says 73 minutes, however I did leave the game on in the back ground a few times when taking a break and I don't know if your game's timer ticks whilst paused. So for now I'd round it down to 60 mins, which for a jam game is a decent length of time.


A small parting note: most of my feedback here is strictly tailored towards the level design/layout of the game world, as this is what I'm currently focused on for my Mousey Tales. And honestly, I've already begun rethinking a few problem areas in my own level design based on what I've seen in meteora.

Hello,

We need more background and landmarks in Meteora for sure, no excuse about that. A couple of difficult moments in game progression and exploration mid-game could be a bit easier if we added a landmark, which was in our initial plans anyway. It means that you understood the overall level design and saw that those were missing.

Timer stops when the game is paused, so it looks like you 100%-ed it in a bit more than one hour, which gives me very useful information and you are definitely in the fast half of playthroughs.

I did the level design in Goats Gorge and Meteora and your last sentence means true honor to me, thank you. I would love to know more details about your level design philosophy in Mousey Tales and also to try your game again when available. I have some questions to ask you about your game just out of curiosity. If you use Discord, please add me if you wish: joseph_mormar Otherwise we can keep in touch over here.

Cheers

I'd be happy to hear your thoughts and opinions on Mousey Tales, and I am up for further discussing topics such as the design philosophies of our games in more detail. Rather than discord, I'd be up with you emailing me via: shadowhawkdragon@gmail.com

Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I prefer to keep my discord private.