Is this influence system similar to picking out the best target to attack?  Or is it where the most action is going on in the map?

My game's maps were too small to need such a feature, but I did add statistics for each class the player uses doing damage and using specials.  If a class was being used mostly for damage/specials, the AI would be programmed to target that one with certian abilities first.

It's finally done!  Thanks to everyone who provided feedback and support.

Since Strat Tech is now complete, I'm going to work on Twin Reaper some more.

I had a whole list of new additions/changes I wanted to do, and I've got most of them done since this morning.  Finally added in floor tiles.  No more walking over an endless void :p

New enemy sprite!

I hope it comes with a free pack of lozenges.

Pretty cool, it was fun playing co-op with myself (insert forever alone face).  You may want to add a vsync option, as it was making my video card get pretty hot despite not having any sort of taxing visuals going on.  Probably rendering with an uncapped frame rate.

So I broke out my SECRET WEAPON this morning (spoilers: It's a Saturn pad hooked up to a USB adapter) and managed to get past Pick Up on my first try.  It was much, much harder on a keyboard.

The levels after that are actually much easier until the next tier of level difficulty, so I'm not entirely sure having something that difficult in the middle of those easier levels is a good idea.  Also, not everyone is going to have a USB Saturn pad to bust out and use .. :p

I think your game may have a missing font issue.  I noticed this font everywhere, which I think is the default font Flash uses when it can't find a font.  Apologies if I'm wrong and this is the font you intended to use .. http://rydia.net/udder/!crap/possiblyWrongFont.png

There's always SLIGE .. http://www.doomworld.com/slige/

I was lucky enough to grab a free copy.  I hope you are putting together a demo version, though!  Demo versions are cool, all the cool kids are doing it >_>

Some feedback:

I like the main game mechanic, it's pretty fun.  The art style is ridiculously cute.  It's not often an indie game can pull off a cute art style without looking like it's overdoing it, but this is genuinely cute.

The game uses quite a lot of CPU when double-sized, even with the game set to the simplest graphics settings.  In-game it's using 9-10% of my Core i7 920.  That's almost a whole core (12.5%).  Strangely during the level select, it uses even more, around 23%.

Game doesn't save your options when you quit.  Don't know if this is because I'm qutting by clicking the X button on the game window or not, or if it just doesn't save options.

Hold the Door: It's not entirely obvious, even from the puzzle's title, that you can place a baby on the disappearing/reappearing blocks and push the switch to stop the block from reappearing.  I assumed the reappearing block would destroy whatever is currently occupying the empty space.  I thought the puzzle had something to do with putting the baby on the switch, which ended up being Hold it Down ..

Pick Up: Having to do the technique where you drop the baby onto the ledge while mid-air 4 times in a row is a bit excessive, IMO.  Especially since it's hard to change directions while mid-air.  It's hard enough to pull off the first time.  Unless there's a much simpler way to get the babies down there, and I'm just doing it wrong.  I think having to do it twice is enough.

Edit: From watching the trailer I figured out you can carry multiple babies, so I guess that cuts down the number of times you have to do it.  Still, I shouldn't have to watch the trailer to learn this is possible .. lol

More feedback later.

I am again stuck, in the first mine area.  I can't figure out how to get past the silver blocks, and all the secret passages I found only lead to bonus items.

The silver blocks aren't part of the main route through the mines. You don't need to get past them yet.

Ahh!  I was totally distracted by all the flashing hearts and didn't notice the wide open door area.  It also kind of blended in with the background.  It may be better if that door has a glowing border around it or something, to make it easier to notice.  Maybe move all the hearts to the lower area.

Runs fine on my Windows Vista 64-bit system. 

Get ready for another feedback dump.

I noticed the game takes up ~470 MB of RAM.  It also takes ~10 seconds to start up while loading everything in the game.  I don't really like the concept of loading all of a game's data at startup when it takes up that much memory.  Consider cutting this down and loading some resources dynamically.

I don't like how the character turns a solid red color when hit, it doesn't look similar enough to other games hit invulnerability state.  Make the character flash between two shades of red, at least.

When moving from left to right rapidly, the quick camera panning can really start to be an issue.  It will even whip to the left and right when you tap left, then right.  The camera panning should be a bit slower than that.

Even after I found Lira's double jump, she still felt like a really weak character.  Her low attack power just doesn't allow you to take out enemies fast enough at close range before they also damage you.  The double jump is useful for getting up high, and that's about it.

The bees are really annoying to fight.  They're hard to hit and seem to swarm around randomly.  They're also really hard to see, at points I had no clue why I was taking damage until I noticed the tiny 3x3 sprite buzzing around.  That they only do a tiny amount of damage doesn't really make up for the fact that they're just plain irritating to deal with.  The worst part is that there doesn't even seem like there's a good strategy for fighting them.

It feels like the overly generous amount of health items scattered around and dropping from enemies is kind of a band-aid to deal with the various issues with the enemies that I previously mentioned, because at times it's difficult to avoid taking damage.  It should be possible to do a no-damage run of this game without resorting to creeping forward every inch so you don't accidentally alert a bee too early, or get surprised by a mushroom shot , or even the mushrooms themselves hiding in the grass.

The part with the tons of spike balls going around a maze with grass covering most of the passages is like the difficulty level of the game suddenly went nuts for no apparent reason.  It's frustrating to deal with due to the visibility issues of the grass (you can't accurately judge your position, or the spikes), and delaying for any amount of time causes the spikes to hit you.  If you miss a jump, which is easy to do, you also take damage.  The short invulnerability timer really doesn't help here, either.

Even if you think this part of the game is fair, going from relatively easy to punishingly hard in an instant is not cool.  After that, it's right back to easy stuff, so it really feels out of place.  I REALLY recommend removing this section, or making it much easier by removing most of the spikes and grass blocking your view.

Might want to add a "Current objective" thing to the pause menu that tells you what you should be doing or where you should go.  For instance, after killing the first boss, "Go back to the gateway".

Guards in the first part of the mine are really easy to deal with, just stand at a distance spamming your attack and they eventually walk into it.  They stand there slashing their sword at thin air while you kill them.

Secret passages in the mine are much harder to notice compared to the grass world, which had bright, obvious yellow flowers near them.  I'm guessing this is intentional, though.

I am again stuck, in the first mine area.  I can't figure out how to get past the silver blocks, and all the secret passages I found only lead to bonus items.

Wasn't able to progress past the first boss, since I couldn't find out how to get out of the cave area I was in.  Couldn't jump up to reach that door that was slightly out of reach near the boss entrance room.  Did I miss something important?  I know I collected a key, but couldn't find any locked doors or objects to use it on.

Yeah, you missed something. Lira can double-jump. (This may also answer your concerns about her being a weaker character.)

Whoops.  In that case, it would be nice if the pause menu where it shows the characters also shows whatever unique features/skills each character has, as a kind of reminder.

Pretty fun game, I've compiled some feedback while playing it ..

Bricks you can walk through should be transparent.  (An exception should be made for bricks which are supposed to be secret passages, etc)

The text message you get when you pick up the gloves is really long.  Consider reducing it a bit.  You may even want to consider auto-equipping the gloves, and only let the player get more info when he/she has two weapons to choose between.

The Pause menu screen could use some text as well as icons.  This is especially important as the text message you get shows the name of each menu item, but the names aren't in the actual menu.

I don't like that it's called the "Pause" menu screen.  It seems confusing because it's not an actual pause feature, it's a menu to choose stuff from.  Consider changing it's name?

You should be able to hit Z at the Pause menu to leave it, since you can also press Z to back out of it's sub-menus.  Currently just plays an error sound when you do so.

The mushroom guy's purple shots can be obscured by the grass, and it's really hard to see them sometimes.  They should always be in the foreground, and probably be a bit brighter also.

Dying at the same monent as the first boss does causes the crystal things to gravitate towards and be collected by the spot where you died.

Mushroom guys popping up under you during the first boss seems kind of cheap.  You take damage if you don't know they're about to pop up there.

You get a new character right before the boss, but using her to fight the boss is way harder than using your starting character.  Doesn't make much sense to me.

In fact, that second character just feels really weak in general.  I found the game much harder while using her.  Maybe she gets more useful later on in the game, but not when you first get her.

Wasn't able to progress past the first boss, since I couldn't find out how to get out of the cave area I was in.  Couldn't jump up to reach that door that was slightly out of reach near the boss entrance room.  Did I miss something important?  I know I collected a key, but couldn't find any locked doors or objects to use it on.

Will leave more feedback if I can figure out how to proceed past the first boss, or if some tips are given .. lol

I've got an nVidia card, so let's just see what happens I guess. lol

Couldn't get it to work in Firefox 11.  The game starts when I press space, but after that, none of the keys work.  I can't move anywhere.

Trying it in IE 9 was even worse, I got a bunch of debug text on my screen and the game didn't even load .. D:

Edit: I got it to work in Firefox 11 by un-clicking the Sound checkbox.  However, I'm unable to even climb out of the opening area.  I reach a certian point and then get stuck; none of the keys work anymore.

http://rydia.net/udder/!crap/spiderGameStuck.png

It seems like moving diagonally prevents this from occuring, but if you get into this position, you can't even get out by moving diagonally.

I hope you fix these base control issues so I can try this out for real.

No, I haven't written much about the AI in Strat Tech yet.

A quick overview: There's a separate XML entry for each class, that has a list of instructions for the AI to follow.  Which abilities to use, how to use them, how to sort the potential targets, etc.  That's given to the AI code which executes each instruction from the list in order.  If it reaches the end of the list before the unit runs out of energy, it loops back to the beginning.  It will loop 3 times before giving up.

There's also some code to determine further if an ability should be used or not.  It's kind of simple, the hard part is that almost every ability needs to be accounted for and special cases written so that abilities aren't used inefficiently.  And there are a LOT of abilities (100 of em!)

There's also a priority system so that certain classes will be used first.  There's probably a lot more I could write about it, but this is the basics.  I can write more and provide some code samples if needed.

I want to make games that are very personal to me. I had a good idea for a game mechanic in a platformer to reflect something personal to me, but I can't think of a good way to build interesting constructs around it. How do I recognize if a mechanic is good? I can't tell if the mechanic itself is bad, or if I am just not experienced enough to be able to implement it in a good way.

It can be difficult to determine how a given mechanic or addition of a mechanic will influence the overall game rules.  It helps to be able to rapid prototype ideas in order to test them and see how they feel.  Try to think in terms of "How will this affect the player?  How will the player attempt to optimize their own play to take advantage of the mechanic?  Is the mechanic interesting and requires thought/skill to use, or is it tedious and feels like busywork?"

So, that leads to the question... how do you become a better designer? Should I start by cloning the games I loved as a kid?

Break down the games you like into all of their component game elements and then examine each one to see how it works with the others.  Try to work your way from the disassembled design elements back up to the whole picture of how it works together.

Also, I've been playing games my whole life, but I haven't had time recently because I've been programming so much.

If you're hardcore into a project, working on it all day, you may have very little time or energy left to play the kinds of games you like.  That's just how it goes.

UPPAHCUT!

IMO you should switch Z and X, so Z is fire and X is melee.  Makes more sense to me that way.

A Windows port would be nice.