My personal notes thanks to your comment (Redirect me if I misunderstood something):
- Need to give the player a better sense of the world right away.
- Movement skill floor is working as intended, but introduction needs to be there.
- Movement isn't fun yet. Maybe improved when survival elements & jumping get added in.
- Small hard to read sprites. I will probably start by improving the zoom and SFX, but will probably require many other edits to get right.
Yes, that’s a great summary. After sleeping on it, from what I’ve played, the key adjective of the game would be “deliberate”, every input very meaningful. I think one challenge will be overcoming the expectations, certainly not analogous but I every twin-sticks shooter I can think of moves at an equal speed regardless of facing direction.
I also realized after reading your reply that I didn’t actually know how far the projectile went, the burst of smoke made me think it was a shotgun, so I just played again and realized it goes to the end of the screen afaik, I was definitely only shooting WAY closer than I needed to be. I defeated the creature after another couple tries, and now I don’t know what to do, nothing seems to have opened up. Especially given the speed, the area feels too large since there doesn’t seem to be anything to do.
Lastly, I realized that after shooting, I’d frequently accidentally reload instead of facing right, I had to conciously keep my fingers on the home row. At least for me I can see playing with gamepad going way better since that mistake won’t happen.
It’s a bummer I didn’t get to any actual metroidvania elements but after getting into the “deliberate” headspace, I can see the appeal and started to enjoy myself.
