I personally prefer a story opening. On top of that it is breaking the third wall right from the beginning which is horrible story-telling.
Independent of that, building a character controller which lets the player jump higher when standing still might work if it gives you some cool game play later in the game. Otherwise I would reconsider that decision because I think it takes a lot away from the dynamics. Not jumping high when running is counter-intuitive; usually it’s the other way around. And it takes a way the entire aspect of timing running and jumping from a platformer. That said, I didn’t play your newest version yet, I only started it up.
I will play it now.
As I can see some stuff changed.
Here I would think I could jump over that first little platform. The dark gray bricks are hard to see.
Also the info text about how to interact played after I already pushed the stone away.
Cool, that there is lemongrass, but remind me how I can look at my inventory. I don’t remember the button from the start sequence in the bus.
Same with these little, tiny cubes one can stand on. Very hard as first puzzle, better for later game. Let the player get invested first before demanding the slightest efforts.
I also couldn’t see these cubes first, because of the color.
It keeps saying there is lemongrass even tho I removed it.
I can move the brick around, while standing on it. That seems unusual. Of course that can also allow the player to unblock himself.
After figuring out the cubes, then jumping through them and balancing on them, now I see I cannot jump through the wood. But what I just learned is that I can jump high when standing still. So now I don’t get to practice what I just learned I guess.
I have to search a totally new way out of the cave. The trick here would be to make the escape obvious and let the player explore the game in a way that would feel rewarding. Trying obvious things still makes the player feel smart as long as it is some sort of discovery.
Ok, found it. There is some problems here with this being the intro… I hope I don’t have to balance these bricks again if I die in the upcoming parts.
As a test I ran into the first slime a few times. Nice! I didn’t die. And I can explore more.
I feel the first split in the cave is a bit too early and it that I have to run down to read the sign after going up. Feels like a detour.
The text shakes while I’m on the ladder. Probably because the character goes higher in increments and the text is set to a fixed offset above the player.
When being revived it just puts me into a place without further significance. Can be intentional, but I kind of ask myself, why did I get reset to there? Maybe add a landmark or something that lets me know I will reset to there.
I expect solid cave ground in the following picture, not holes I can fall into (after the yellow pile and under the wooden plank). I would remove them from there entirely. It just causes inconvenience. And even later in the game it would be nice to see the danger of having no ground.
Some of the bricks here (see below) are foreground, some are background, but I don’t know which is which until I try to run into them.
I made it a bit further down the cave, but got reset all to the beginning of the cave.
I made a few more attempts to explore the cave, but it feels a bit slow to move (wish I could be faster) and having to stop in order to jump high makes it feel even slower. I try to make precise jumps but I fall down holes again and again. For now I take a break.
Nice iteration on the gameplay. I liked it and made it further. Maybe I am just getting better at the game.
