This reminds me of League of Evil (for mobiles) but with more extreme momentum like Super Meat Boy. I've never been a huge fan of that style of jumping, but the game plays all right. I did not actually plug in my controller for this, and I didn't find the keyboard too annoying incredibly to play with, although it's obviously not ideal.
I only played six levels because it's not really my type of game, but I do have some thoughts.
-The first four levels or so are really uninteresting. I realize they're probably meant as tutorial levels, but that doesn't mean they can't at least have lighters to collect in tricky locations or something. I also feel like once a player knows the controls and has seen that they have to control their momentum in the air, they don't need more levels teaching them the same thing. I guess it may depend on your target audience, though.
-I'm personally not a fan of locked challenge rooms that require playing through the main game. My reason? Sometimes I want a break from doing the normal levels and want to try a random challenge, whether or not I'm actually ready for it. To me, it's like if you made people play through a campaign to unlock a game's multiplayer mode. Unlockables aren't inherently bad, but stopping players from experiencing other modes is a bit annoying (at least to anyone like me). Even unlockable levels are a bit of a pain, since early levels are usually pretty boring and overly simplistic, but at least they're part of the same mode so having a linear progression makes some sense.
-I felt like the gore seemed a bit out of place. It's not that I hate gore in games, but just that it only shows up in one situation, so it just doesn't fit with the rest of the game in my mind.
-I really like the designs and animation. That character's got a surprising amount of personality in his face. Different objects/effects using different resolutions, though, doesn't look so good.
-It's small thing, but the lighter in-game doesn't match the look of the one on the level select screen.
-The delay between selecting a level and the actual game starting seems unnecessary. I like the idea of the character moving like that, but maybe the transition should start while he's moving, rather than when he gets off-screen. If there's no reason to make players wait (like loading), I'd think it's a good idea to just get to the gameplay quickly.
Even playing the more straight-forward levels at full-speed with no errors, I'm usually at least 0.25 seconds over. I've only beaten it on one level I've played, even though the first few are so straight-forward.
There's a part of me that thinks the goals should be a little more lenient, or there should be multiple levels of goal (medals?). Having goals require perfection means that many people may not get to feel any sense of accomplishment based on their times, and that's kinda discouraging. If the goal were a little easier to reach (maybe 0.5sec more time to complete levels), then they could feel they accomplished something and may still want to beat their own times after that.
What made that more discouraging was that when I actually did beat a time, it didn't look like it was recorded anywhere, and the time-to-beat for that level was still the old time.
It may seem like I'm just picking out negatives, but that's because they require more explanation and sharing thoughts about those things is more likely to help than pointing out what already works. I will say that the game handles quite well and mostly looks good. It also seems to run great, although I haven't played the more complex levels yet. It seems quite well-made. I was also happy to see an custom icon. A lot of Game Maker users seem to ignore that until later, but it's a nice touch that makes your game seem like you've put thought and care into its development.
thanks for taking the time to play and share your thoughts,
and it's okay to point to the negatives, I want to hear that as well.
also, thanks for them positive words as well.
let me answer a few of the points you raised.
- just a reminder, a lot of what's in the game is still temp, and that includes locking the challenge rooms.
I haven't decided yet on what's the best way to go about it yet, for that reason I left the option to unlock them w/ F10 for now.
- "objects/effects using different resolutions, though, doesn't look so good."
could you be more specific, would like to hear.
- well actually, each lighter in the game looks different, I'm guessing you only came across the 1st one,
so, the one in the menu is meant to look different and simpler than the rest of 'em.
- when you beat a level's time, it is noted in the level select screen w/ a little flag besides the lvl icon.
and the time-to-beat doesn't change as it is a fixed par-time. but maybe I should re-consider that.
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