Concept is - interesting. Platforming - nooot good. Why should i "eat" fruits on keybord numbers? It`s very confusing, and i don`t see any reason to make it auto consumable. But keep it up, like it!
Viewing post in Sol´s Adventure jam comments
You’re right that in the current build, the fruit system isn’t very intuitive. I do apologize for that.
Originally, the idea was that fruits wouldn’t be auto-consumed, because we wanted players to try to strategize about when the best time to use a certain power-up would be, since there was going to be a timer that would start as soon as you consumed a fruit, rather than the effect lasting the whole level as it is now. This is also why, in the last level, there are two oranges (which makes no sense as things work now). However, by me putting the fruits right where you need to use them defeats the purpose of the fruits not being auto consumable.
We also planned to add short minigames between levels where you could earn extra fruits, so the number-key activation was meant to support storing and choosing power-ups rather than using them automatically. Since those systems didn’t make it into the final version, I agree that the current implementation feels more confusing than helpful.
In hindsight, auto-consumption or giving fruits at the start of the level would probably have communicated the mechanic more clearly. If you have any input on how to make the game more intuitive while maintaining the original features we wanted to implement, I would really love to hear them. I'm glad you enjoyed it, despite the messy platforming.