Air-control is a matter of preference, yes. I was stating my preference and why I think it led to me not having as much fun with the game. I don't believe that has to do with hand-holding.
Finally got around to playing this. I had a great time! As with the genre, it can be kinda confusing where to go and what to do at times but I never felt 'stuck' for too long where it got frustrating. I was invested enough to keep playing. The layout of the map is pretty simple but still had good use of 'landmarks' so you can keep a sense of direction.
One thing I had some trouble with is the character controller; the player has air control when rising (with the hover powerup) but not when falling. This made precisely landing on platforms over an abyss pretty difficult to do, mostly because it's hard to tell when you stop having control of the player's movement when you're in the air. I eventually got the hang of it, though.
Another issue I had was with the cooldown on powerups. It feels arbitrary the amount of 'energy' each powerup uses. Since the enemies are really spaced out, it never required any strategy to conserve energy. I was mostly standing around waiting for it to fill back up before I could move on.
The best part of this game is the design of the powerups and how they all interact. At one point, I threw a sticky grenade at one of the floating heads and missed, hitting the ceiling, but I was able to make the head hover right into range before detonating it. Also getting a kill by detonating the grenade while it's still mid-air is really rewarding. The way the powerups interact in this game is very well done. And the enemies are intimidating enough without being overpowered or constantly in your face.
Ended up using Wine to emulate the Windows version. Works pretty well; can tell some of the shaders have a bit of artifacting, but game runs well so far.
In-game settings: VSync and Fullscreen with 1x pixel scaling has the best performance.
Also might I say, WHAT BEAUTIFUL PRESENTATION!! The game page is so well done. I pulled out my ancient Windows laptop just to play this but unfortunately couldn't get it to work. So I'm left with using my Mac.
Unable to run the game on MacOS Tahoe 26; I've gotten to the 'Open Anyway' window, but even after that (and using admin permissions) it says that the application can't be opened. Not sure all what might be happening or if this is an affect of the beta update.
It is a horror game, but pretty light compared to most on here. There's 1 or 2 actual jumpscares in the whole thing, most of the horror is in the atmosphere.
There is more to the guy over the fence; the secret is a little obscure but if you get stuck there are explanation videos about it (involves a hidden code). Though, you are the first person I know who has gotten the lamp easter egg!
Thanks! I'm working on it right now. I don't have any updates at the moment, but I will release a trailer for it at some point on my YouTube channel :)
1. Make a lot of games. If you make stuff, you figure out what you need to learn next, and then you learn that.
2. Windows 11
3. I made the game and uploaded it. I did not market or do any work to advertise the game.
4. I have made tutorials in the past but I found them a bit time-consuming. If you want good tutorials, check out 'The Shaggy Dev' on YouTube.
Word of advice: make games regardless if they're ever popular. I'm very fortunate to have an audience following my games, but in the end of the day, I enjoy making games because it's fun. Focus more on having fun :)
The player controller keeps your current moving velocity whenever you leave the ground, and this makes platforming difficult if you make a slight input in the wrong direction just before jumping (which happened a lot for me). Being able to input direction in mid-air would help a lot.
The player speed is calibrated just right considering the size of the environment, but the acceleration could be a bit quicker. It takes half a second to go from standing still to full sprint, which feels a little laggy.
Outside of that, I was quite lost in the balcony section because it takes a bit to jump onto the railing. The capsule collider caused me to slide off an edge if I didn't land with more than half my character, which led me to believe I wasn't supposed to cross the balconies at all.
I would think about changing the collider to a cylinder instead, which has a flat bottom instead of the capsule's rounded edge. But, cylinder colliders can cause issues like getting stuck on walls if you're not careful, so I say use your best judgement.
Another way to improve the balcony section is to change the chair collision shape to a ramp. This would actually compliment the capsule collider you have now, while the cylinder collider might have some collision trouble.
Lastly, the jump reaches the right feeling height, but the gravity is very heavy and interrupts the arc which makes the jump feel unnatural. I don't have as much experience programming jumping, so I can't speak much to it, only that it doesn't feel as reliable as it should be.
All in all, I think you guys actually did a decent job. These are just some of my nitpicks.
The character controller does not allow you to change direction in mid-air, so your character will commit to the direction you are moving before you jumped.
Without checkpoints, this means jumping and nearly missing a platform makes you restart at the very beginning, which can be a little frustrating.
Looking back, there's a lot I'd do differently, so I'm thinking about making a video on the topic instead. But I'm not ruling out releasing it altogether.
I think I'm the only one who found the room with a copy of System Upkeep? I typed the code by accident so I'm not sure where you should be able to find it.
