I’ll start with a recap of my experience: when I first tried this game last week, I was deterred from finishing it. I had a lot of trouble with the moving circle-platforms as I kept slipping off them, they just seemed very janky. I kept falling into a pit that seemed to have a buggy room transition, as I ended up inside the wall of the room below. after some struggling I managed to get out, but the way back to the circle-platforms was really tedious. I quit the game after this whole ordeal happened for the third time.
I tried the game again today, and I realized that standing still was the trick to those moving circle-platforms, so they didn’t give me much trouble this time. I beat the game in 22 minutes on normal.
for the feedback: the “no art” visuals work well, although it can be a bit busy at times. I think it could have leaned more towards minimalism, but I realize that’s a personal bias. the music got a bit repetitive, and there’s a lack of sfx.
I enjoyed most of the mechanics, especially the core dash/attack. unfortunately, I found the most viable strategy to be spamming dash through enemies, as every room gives a full heal and the checkpoints are very forgiving. I wish the combat was better tuned, as right now there’s no reason to fight anything except for the bosses. the dual-purpose action is really nice, and having to counteract the movement from dashing while attacking is an interesting concept. it’s a shame that it’s only played into with the triangle boss.
here’s my list of nitpicking:
- it seems like the only way to get the double-jump back is to touch the ground. it would have been nice to get it back after rolling on a wall or swinging with the hook as well.
- the jump is a bit boring, it feels very floaty, and there’s no variable jump height.
- it should be possible to cancel roll by pressing jump or dash/attack.
- building up momentum with the hook is really cool, but after letting go there’s a lot of deceleration which doesn’t feel very good.
- it would be nice to be able to shorten/lengthen the rope of the hook while swinging.
- having jump and talk on the same button is a bit unfortunate, sometimes I accidentally talked with people when I wanted to jump.
- having the abilities on 1 and 2 seems weird, I think it’d be more convenient on e.g. Q and E.
to end, I wanted to address the control scheme. I get that this game was designed for spamming clicks on a mouse, and controller is “not recommended”, but I beg to differ. the default controller bindings seemed incomplete to me as I wasn’t able to move, so I played around with rebinding things with a third-party tool: left-stick/d-pad for movement, A for jump, B for roll, X for hook… and more interestingly, I put each click on two shoulder buttons so I could alternate between them: left-click on LB and LT, right-click on RB and RT. I don’t think I could have spammed mouse-clicks for 20 minutes straight, but with this controller setup it was just a blast. it felt great to spam buttons and fly across the screen.
