So you wanted the controls to feel like climbing up a building, instead of feeling like you're playing a good game?
Actually, yes. If by 'good game' you are referring to a game that people are immediately comfortable with because they have already played many similar games. 'Standard' controls may seem better because players have learned what to expect from this type of game, but I wanted this game to be different from that. I wanted the controls to help emphasize the fact that you are climbing a building, and the climbing is equally as challenging or more challenging than fighting off the aliens. In other words, I wanted the controls to reflect the fact that climbing a building is hard and fighting aliens is hard, so doing both at the same time is very hard. The climbing has as equal importance in the game as fighting the alien bugs, it's not just an excuse to do so.
I can see how the controls can be considered as bad controls, but I put a lot of thought into them and am happy how it turned out. From watching people play the game, I typically get the sense that people have a hard time controlling at first, and later on get used to it and better at controlling the character, which is exactly what I wanted. I also tried to design the levels to take this into account; the first parts don't require as much precise or quick movement, but allow the player to get used to climbing and practice (at least this is what I was going for.)
About the enemy designs, though. Although they're not bad, I would have much preferred killing dudes instead of random, soulless mutants. And outside of that, the enemies are pretty sparsely varied.
Well this is a matter of opinion I guess, but the original game we remade had the player fighting against bugs or something so that is where that came from. Thinking about it now, it could have been cool to have some sort of humanoid creature as an enemy that crawls around on the building like the player does.
That--other than the controls--is the biggest problem I have with the game; the repetitiveness. I've only gotten through most of level 2 (don't know how many levels there are) and it's already gotten a little tedious. Same enemies over and over again, crawl up here and destroy this generator, crawl down there and grab this item, rinse and repeat.
There are 3 levels in total, so you were probably about half way through. I completely agree with you here, the game drags on a little bit too long and there isn't enough variation. Originally, the game was about finished with one level and one boss, but we decided we wanted to add in a few more weapons and levels. So I completely redesigned the first level to take into account the game was going to be longer, and added 2 more levels and bosses. Probably around the time of doing the beginning of the 3rd level I was getting the sense that the game was dragging on a bit and would probably benefit from condensing the levels down. We didn't have enough different gameplay ideas to keep things seeming completely fresh throughout the entire game. At that point, the actual development of the game had been dragging on for a while and we decided to just to leave the levels as they were instead of doing another complete redesign. I thought it was better to keep the game as what I thought was 'pretty good' than possibly risking months on doing a redesign. There is also a good chance the game would never have gotten finished at all if we took that path!
Thanks for giving feedback on the game! I have actually been meaning to post this game in the feedback section, because I haven't really gotten too much in-depth feedback from someone taking a critical look. So your feedback is much appreciated!
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