you can make thegame easier by adding a health bar and making it so you dont die instanlty when you touch the enemy and u rather lose health the game also has potential to be a game like celeste maybe add multiple chapters and different bosses and this enemy will be one of those bosseses
Viewing post in Macey and Strudel jam comments
i think the lives system and your proposed health bar are mechanically the same. the difference is that with your proposed system, the game doesn't soft-reset when you get caught and instead the player can continue as normal. considering the idea, it would make the game more immersive, and also probably less punishing since you're not forced back to the start. I think this is a good idea. thanks for the suggestion!
(Also, Did You Know? the lives system was added last minute. in response to me observing the difficulty of the game during playtesting. it was very close to being significantly harder :p. thank god we added that.)
(unfortunately we didn't have time to do a second playtest, so i think the game is a bit too hard after i increased the speed of the mace after decreasing the number of rounds you have to play until you win. sorry about that.)
i realized it was too slow because i just mindlessly went to round 8 without placing down anything and realized i was barely paying attention. and i don't know your skill level or any results in regards to difficulty from any playtesting you might have done. which is why i figured to trust my intuition more. i think the only problem is that i increased it too much. probably would need to lower the max speed by 0.05 u/s per round. i know that doesn't seem like a lot but im certain it's pretty noticeable. the current is 0.31 u/s/round iirc.
Also i have no idea what the average skill level of the game jam rater is so i just thought my assumption that they were at the skill level where they can beat it after about 3 game-overs was fair. that they would, in that time, memorize the layout of the map enough (i don't think it's particularly large) in order to avoid the spikes or cover them up with the bridge, and figure out a route they can make that makes it easier to play through. maybe im wrong and 3 game overs is too much. actually it might be now that i think about it because its probably an overestimate of people's patience and too optimistic that they'd actually enjoy the game. ugh i don't know is it? i don't want to make the game easy but i also don't know how difficult something really is until i observe someone else playing it.
also we don't actually know how long it took for the players to beat the game, or if they even did in the first place; they just say it's difficult or point out some jankiness in the controls. which is fair but that would also be useful data.