itch.io

Hey, I thank you for getting back to my comment. I'm happy to see that you liked my feedback. I know that in a very early alpha state a game like this will often be more of a proof of concept than what we will see as a final build. I hope you stick with this, as it was very good. I'm not sure what you have planned for this now with all the Itchio drama and censorship, but I have faith that you'll figure something out. A good rule of thumb for Metroidvania-like games like this, which would obviously be later in development, would be to tease in earlier areas spots that you can tell you'd need to use another movement tech ability. I'd also say try to think about how all things flow for smoother movement. Maybe you want to give immunity or phase out frames on a dash to make combat more snappy, or add a grapple swing ability and allow the player to jump one or dash off of it to give them movement. Usually, the games are slower at the beginning, but each ability that opens the world up more makes traversal faster and more fluid and sometimes it's even a good thing to have a player double back through a previous area but now with the new abillity to see how much better and easier it is as you can zip through it.

 I'd say it's safe to say for now design your "playground" first and get down the concepts of what movement tech and abilities you want to give the player. Then think about how they could be used throughout the game to make things better or more exciting. Then build the course, and finally start making the clutter and texture assets you want to "liven up" and make it accurate to the world you want it to take place in. If you look to even some of the best games in this genre, most of them are long hallways and split up platforms with a nice texture, background, and enemy variety, but what makes them shine is the tech and flow of the game under all of the nice paint. I think you have the basis of what it would take to make a great game and one I'd enjoy immensely.