Thank you so much for that video review. I love seeing you play it and give your thoughts in real time. It helps so much when I see people go in blind and how they learn the levels/design. I've been adding to the game post jam and some of the things I changed/added are:
- Variable jump height
- Makes dodging a lot easier and overall controls more snappy and responsive
- Spike and level layout
- All of the jumps are "possible" but some are super unforgiving with how pixel perfect you need to be
- I made all of the jumps simple and easy but still able to fail if there's quite a bit of mess up
- One spot in particular is the two flying manatee looking things (they were supposed to be hawks but I just stuck with the chunky bird look haha) that are in the thin part on the right of the tan level and you're supposed to shoot down at them in the air but alas, it's never explained that you can do that
- Tutorial level
- I had this planed for the Jam release but it was just out of my scope
- It essentially explains the controls and mechanics at the beginning of the game so players will know they can shoot up and down without having to accidently figure it out.
- Boss AI rework
- The bosses are a bit ridiculous sometimes when their attack patterns go ham on you so I made a couple tweaks to make them more forgiving
- I'm also adding a way to implement the dash and make it useful for the final boss fight. I'm playing around with I-frames that work with classic enemies but not with spikes so the platforming in the dash levels is still a challenge.
- Controller support!!!
- I realize the keyboard controls are super difficult to handle but I've never added controller support to a game before and just didn't have the time to figure it out during the jam period so I'll definitely flush it out for the full release
- Options
- Another thing that I ran out of time for
- Looking to have the option to switch the controls around and sound/music volume control
- Artwork
- A lot of aesthetics were added to make the levels look more alive and alien since the levels looked kind of barren at the original release
- I didn't realize the main character looked like a naked man until you mentioned it. I was laughing so hard when you said that! Its supposed to be an astronaut but I think a rework is needed for sure here.
Other than that, thank you so much for your video review and I'll take all of this into account when I release the full game! Also, I realized I wrote a lot here so I'm basically going to use this comment as my Dev notes...