Hey Wesley, thank you a lot for playing this version of 'Round The Mind!
Your feedback is extremely appreciated and I saw some concerns you had about game design, the structure and general gameplay of the game. I'll go into detail about basically every point you talked about.
Do note that the version you played is a year old, and the newest version does come with changes I will detail in the bullet points below.
As for your comment:
- The dash move being wild to control is intentional. I wanted it to feel like it's a move that you really tame and become acustomed to and as the developer, I can basically control it how I want, but I do understand your position that as a new player it feels really hard to control and that the hold and release system doesn't feel quite appropiate for it. It's understandable, however, considering the more advanced moves that are able to be pulled off with practice, the hold to release system works better from my own testing. I will however try to make the dash much more responsive to player input to not feel completely uncontrollable when first playing the game.
- Tutorializing moves is a big problem that even the current version of the game (v0.5.1b) has, I completely agree with you. In a demo releasing this December, I want to rework the current first level to actually tutorialize that different button combinations make the player character perform moves, on top of adding an option with all moves the player has performed to show them how they can do them again.
- The game's health system works like Super Mario Odyssey's: there is no health, your only punishment is losing coins/bolts. As with the advanced moves, the December version will teach this to the player.
- The bar you saw in the trailer is under Options -> Accesibility -> Diegetic Indication. If you turn that setting off, the bar will appear. From internal testing in my discord server people wanted a more diegetic indication that was closer to the player sprite. In the version hosted here, that is the case.
- As of v0.5.1b, there is controller support! I would advise waiting a few days up until i release 0.5.1f as I'm improving joystick movement and fixing a bug where the controller font buttons wouldn't show up.
- I'll gladly make it so the game starts for the first time in windowed. As for the Alt + Enter issue, there should be a fix for it in 0.5.1f too.
- The "double jump" is actually only one jump. It functions like an infinite coyote time. (Again, tutorialization needed, wait for December demo for that)
- The version you played had a really unfinished version of the first cutscene, which is why you felt confused. Again, can't stress this enough, December demo.
- That music fade out glicthed should already be fixed in the current version!
Reiterating, thank you lots for playing this experimental version, if you want to follow the game as it progresses further in development, following the main page for the betas is a good place to do so.
Have a nice day!
- philRaco