If there's anything I can improve in the time I have I will.
Well. On one hand, it's quite cute and once you get into it, it's pretty fun - the whole experience gels together very nicely, and the mechanics mostly seem pretty solid.
On the other hand, I didn't feel any particular urge to go back and try again after the first couple of goes, 'cause the game didn't explain itself to me.
I think I'd mostly put this down to a lack of any real indicator of progress. I have no idea half the time whether I'm 99% of the way through the level or just 5%, but without any clues as to how well I'm doing compared to last time I don't feel encouraged to "try and do a little bit better". If I knew I was getting a little bit higher each time I tried it would be a start, but even then without knowing how tall the stage is it really isn't that much less disheartening. I've finished it a couple of times, and I still don't really have much of a sense of how far through a stage I am at any one time. I suspect this is probably the same thing as you mention other people have said, that the levels are "too high and seem endless at first".
Combos I think probably need more explanation, on the title screen or in a readme or something. It wasn't until I'd come back and read more of this thread that I realised they existed at all, 'cause the sedate pace of the music and the satisfying arc of the jump were if anything encouraging me to take it slowly. I'd not have worked out the three-or-higher-makes-you-invincible at all, I don't think, and I'm still not sure as to how
exactly they work. I mean, I figure that once you start moving downward you lose the combo, but can you jump a second time at
any point during the upward motion? Does attempting jumping introduce a dead period during which you can't try again? Presumably his feet need to be over the white section of a cloud to jump from it, but even then... sometimes I seemed to be able to jump immediately after the previous one, sometimes not. If anything, the short lookahead distance and the height of the jump discourages me from comboing anyway, 'cause there's always the chance I'll jump up blind, find that the only available cloud's on the other side of the screen and I can't reach it, then fall downward suddenly-vulnerable into an unavoidable swarm of red spiky things.
(Similarly, what are the rules for falling? Sometimes I seemed to not be able to jump upward again as I fell through a cloud, and sometimes I could.)
The thundery clouds confused me a little. Sometimes it seemed I could stand on them fine, other times they hurt me. Do they hurt just when they flash?
What would I change to try and improve these? I think probably:
- Increase and/or make more visible the sparkly effects you get from being invulnerable. Consider making Minus knock the red spiky things out of the way (complete with black flashing on them the same way you get when you're injured) when you come into contact with one while invincible, just to reinforce that there's an effect there.
- Stop centring the window on Minus himself; centre it on Minus when he's not moving, then as his upward velocity increases centre it a quarter or third of the screen up from Minus. Similiarly, as he falls centre it a third of the screen down from him.
- Introduce some kind of altimeter or percent-progress bar (or other indicator). Possibly with a marker on it showing your best progress so far for that seed, so you can see when you're improving.
- Write a readme. ;-)
Also, the 'close window' X doesn't work.
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