I was browsing steam and this game called Abyss Odyssey came up. Looks and sounds amazing! with very poor reviews. Skimming over the reviews I see people struggling to put their fingers on what exactly doesn't feel right, so they use terms like "the character feels heavy" or slow. So I'm looking at the videos trying to figure out what the game does differently. I think I'll buy the game just to study it.
I hypothesize that at least one of the factors giving this impression is the jump profile (jump while moving forward). On my illustration below, this game seems to fall on B profile. This profile doesn't give you a lot of air freedom, your x speed is too low compared to y. Normally we see A and some games, like super meat boy, use C. C is the exact opposite of B, as it gives you too much air control to the point where a delicate tap of the direction will send you flying the other way. And A seems comfortable.
Maybe the character in the game is just slow overall. So simply increasing movement speed would fix its sluggish feel, while at the same time pushing the jump profile towards A.
But speed perception is inherently relative, we compare all the speeds we see on the screen. So I'm more curious to know if the sluggish feel could also be fixed by lowering the height of the jump instead of increasing the x speed. That would be quite interesting! fixing the sluggish feel by effectively lowering the total velocity.
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