Rescue: The Beagles [FINISHED-BETA]

I've been playing Rescue the Beagles pretty regularly since I first discovered it. The whole 2D navigation over a parallax scrolling world is genius and amazing.

I also particularly like that the nonviolent solution is rewarded. The friend who linked it to me was horrified at the higher scores than him I was getting immediately, until we discovered the 'placid flow' in the readme.

This game gets you into the flow perfectly, with all of the constant and immediate little bits of feedback. Also with the way it always feels fair. I may die a lot, but I always feel I could have avoided it. The little announcement noises the enemies make as they enter the screen are great as well.

However, on your first few tries, it feels absolutely punishing. The negative feedback that helps with the flow when you're good at it really works against getting it during the learning process. As you're still figuring out how far you can fall, and at what points you can climb up, you're getting interrupted due to dying because a beagle walked off screen. And then just as you might be forming a hypothesis about the falling distance, and about to test it out, you get a game over and are sent back to the main menu.

I think there are things you could do to make the experimenting / learning experience less punishing without compromising the excellent game mechanics for the rest of the game. Maybe alter just the first level to accommodate first time players? Infinite lives just for level 1, for example - Not going to be any help to someone aiming for a high score, but means a first time player isn't going to get booted out until they work out what they're doing.

Although I imagine you've stopped work on this now, and won't be wanting to make large changes like that any more.