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[Goodbye]

http://www.mediafire.com/?2ozcsq0ccy8namj

I had this concept for a hardcore platformer a while ago and, after making this short demo, left it for dead. Should I bring it back to life or forget it?

Please download, play, and respond.

[Starflier]

I'd say stick with it, though if you do, please make the wall jump a little easier to handle

[D-e-X]

Yes, but this is WAAAY too hard... and the controls are just provoking, I don't feel like I have control at all. The wall jumping should be made better as well. However, this could be a good game if you just tweaked the controls to make movement better. The difficulty shouldn't go from easy -> expert right away either, make the transition a bit less noticeable, so that the player has time to get adjusted to it and not rage-quit because it gets hard too fast. If a game is fun and easy the first time you play it, you'll want to come back and progress. If it's too hard the game itself will not be that fun anymore, and it doesn't make you want to continue playing.

[dEnamed]

There's a place for butter soft candy platformers and there's a place for hardcore platformers. Judging from the Demo, it's somewhere inbetween the two. It's not super easy but not really hard either.
Controls are an issue in my book however. They feel floaty and unresponsive, if not a bit laggy. This is in part due to the extreme and unpredictable "sliding" of the character. Sometimes when I hit the movement key, the character zooms all over the level even though I stopped pressing a key about 2 seconds ago.

Anyways:
I'd say keep going, under two recommendations:
1) Settle for a difficulty. Make it either hardcore or easy. Your choice but games inbetween usually attract rage from both sides.
2) Rework the sliding of the character and perhaps the walljump (although I didn't have problems with it).

[Stoney]

Stick with it, I personally really like the art style. But as others said before me, please improve the wall jump.

[kidchameleon]

Wow the art style is great, I'd say stick with it. Be careful binding the shift key, some peoples computers get a "sticky keys" pop up when shift is pressed too much. Happens on Windows XP definitely...

[AuthenticKaizen]

nice!
reminds me of invert and invert inc.

[Goodbye]

Wow, thanks for all the comments. It seems like a good idea to bring it back to life after me and my brother readjust the physics. As for the difficulty curve, I think that's the fault of the tutorial levels. Maybe if I just merged them into one or two harder levels, that might fix it. It might be a good idea to replace all of the levels when the physics are fixed.

As much as I like the compliments on my art style, I honestly wanted to know more what people thought on the side of the background-color-changing concept. This game is at odds with a Pong party game concept we've started working on and I might have to choose between the two. Most likely I'll be able to work on both.

Otherwise thanks for the comments and please, keep 'em coming. I'll probably turn this into a topic for feedback for the game as soon as it's fixed up.

[Frank Griffin]

I say drop it.  I love video games and I did not love this one.  The game was wayyyy to hard.  I am happy it was this hard up front.  It would suck to play for 30 minutes and then get crazy hard stuff to do.  I did not like the shift thing either.  I also did not like the all black and white thing.  I would rather get killed by monsters than simply dying due to the terrain.

What this game needs is some big guns and stuff to kill.

[kidchameleon]

I honestly wanted to know more what people thought on the side of the background-color-changing concept.

I like it, but there can be times when I get killed from an enemy or spike that I cant see, meaning I get killed when its not really my fault.

[RichMakeGame!]

I sort of like the idea, but not the execution so much

for me, like kidchameleon, I hated hitting spikes or enemies I couldn't see.

what I think I would enjoy, is being presented with jumps that look impossible but when you switch you see blocks you can land on, and have to remember their position when in the other colour. What frustrated me was trying to dodge things I can't see *and* aim for things I can't see. mixing these two into one jump makes it really difficult.

I think you should design some levels where each jump you have to make you're doing one or the other, but not both at once.

[Starflier]

As much as I like the compliments on my art style, I honestly wanted to know more what people thought on the side of the background-color-changing concept.

I like that there's a memory element, in that things you can't see are still there, so you need to remember where they are or die. If you focus on that as the source of difficulty, rather than platforming challenge this could be a very fun game. Having to remember where everything is AND make a next-to-impossible Super Meatboy jump could turn out to be annoying.

[Goodbye]

what I think I would enjoy, is being presented with jumps that look impossible but when you switch you see blocks you can land on, and have to remember their position when in the other colour. What frustrated me was trying to dodge things I can't see *and* aim for things I can't see. mixing these two into one jump makes it really difficult.

I think you should design some levels where each jump you have to make you're doing one or the other, but not both at once.

That makes sense. I'll keep that in mind while redesigning the levels

I like that there's a memory element, in that things you can't see are still there, so you need to remember where they are or die. If you focus on that as the source of difficulty, rather than platforming challenge this could be a very fun game. Having to remember where everything is AND make a next-to-impossible Super Meatboy jump could turn out to be annoying.

...or maybe aim for a healthy integration, not using both at the same time but switching between memory and platforming difficulty?

[Starflier]

...or maybe aim for a healthy integration, not using both at the same time but switching between memory and platforming difficulty?

Well, or make the platforming difficulty come out of the memory challenge. The thing is... There's a LOT of platformers out there. I'm pretty sure just about everything you could call a jumping puzzle has been done. You have a relatively unique concept here, and I feel like it would be best served if the focus were put onto your gimmick mechanic, rather than the ones we've all played before.

That said, putting some basic jumping puzzles early on, in levels that don't require much color inversion - just to give the player time to gain a feel for the character - would be a nice way to ease players in.

I read this set of articles recently, they might be of some interest: How are puzzle games designed?