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[SirNiko]

Played through and enjoyed it a lot! Just a couple of comments from me:

Reiterating Feeble's point about the camera, it makes it difficult to see what's ahead, especially considering the relative size of the hero to the world around him. Having the camera lead the player would be a huge asset.

The controls are pretty good! Since 'up' does nothing, I might add 'up' to jump and 'space' to fire to the existing controls. A personal request would be to also implement support for controllers, especially plug-and-play for an xbox controller, my controller of choice.

The multiplier concept really works well! The player has the conflicting need to press on to keep the multiplier high, while holding back to not barrel into danger.

Lives and health seem pointless to me. I'd eliminate both, and just leave it that getting hurt damages the multiplier but lets you continue. That, or make death restart the game from scratch. More importantly, as it stands now, it seems like the optimal way to play through the game is to run through perfectly, get the highest score, then die at the end of the level so you can play again and earn more points. That means a one-life perfect run will score less than three lives played to mediocrity. I wouldn't add points for having leftover life or lives: that'll just encourage lots of resetting.

The final boss felt a little too drawn out. Three hits seems like it should have been enough. It also seemed like you basically had to wait for him to reveal his weakpoint. It'd be nice if there was a way for a clever or risky player to kill the boss significantly faster to maintain a high multiplier.

All in all, a great game! The implementation of an online leaderboard is a good draw for players seeking to show off their best time, and the short duration of the game is good, so players can play over and over while devising the optimal route for getting the best score.

-SirNiko

[Mr. K]

Thanks for all the positive words, everyone!  I must say, this is vastly different than I'm used to.  Been trying to make stuff for years and always got a pretty mediocre response.

Anyway, I'm gonna break down a lot of what you said and how it applies to the future of COIN, because I plan to slowly but surely keep updating this past the contest.  (It'll be a bit though, as I feel I need to get back to my main project that I've forsaken for a while)

The Camera: I will continue to be improving this.  In the demo, the camera did indeed lead the player, but it was not based on speed but direction and turning around made it fly in the opposite direction.  The current setup was a compromise I made that kept the existing system but toned it down, thus the camera doesn't follow quite fast enough since I slowed it down so the turning was less disorienting.  I think I've got an idea now on how to make it work much better.

Controls: Xbox 360 controller support was planned but didn't make the deadline cut.  It'll be back, since I have one of my own and tend to use it for gaming on the PC anyway.  Unfortunately, though, Construct only has support for that right now, so any other controllers will have to resort to programs like Joy2Key for the foreseeable future.

Lives & Health: OK, I don't really have an explanation on health, I just added it because all run-n-gun-sort platformers seem to.  I like the idea of hurting the multiplier.  But lives were just a holdover from when I thought this was going to have more than one level (which, one day, it might).  I did realize the potential for abusing it... right after I released it >_<  This shall be remedied.

Final Boss: Not many of my projects ever got far enough to have a boss, so I'd say I'm pretty inexperienced in boss design and how to code a good sequence right now.  Thus, I went for something uber-simple that was pretty much a 2-hour job start to finish.  I'll continue to expand my abilities (and be less lazy about the whole thing)

But hey, for as short of a project and as many corners as I cut, it came out pretty well, and still has life in it as I make room for improvements.

[MrRoboman]

That was great!! I really like how the coins encourage fast play by restoring your HP. Great job!

[Melly]

Game was pretty fun overall. I like the multiplier idea, as it encourages building skill and collecting coins as fast as possible. I could rarely see the enemies coming before running into them though, and the final boss is a bit on the monotonous side. Still a very enjoyable game.

[Endurion]

Crashes on startup for me, actually 3 times in a row.

XP Pro, NVidia GeForce FX5500

Are there any requirements you expect?

[Mr. K]

The game really just needs a 64MB video card.  It uses some Pixel Shader 2.0 effects, but will run even if the card does not support it.  The GeForce FX5500 should be good enough. I've even run this on a laptop with a crappy mobile GeForce 4.

Make sure your DirectX is updated by running this.  Games made in Construct use an updated version of DirectX 9 that your basically have to choose to install.  Microsoft has inexplicably never chosen to push these new DX9 updates through any automatic updater, so nobody has them.  COIN would usually prompt you to get this if you don't have it, but if it's crashing I'll assume it can't.
If that doesn't work, try updating your graphics card drivers.

[Endurion]

Dang, dxwebsetup doesn't do anything, says it's up to date already. And I'm not trying other drivers; it took me plenty of blue screens to find this working version. There really is a reason why NVidia took plenty of hits for the FX series.

Sorry.

[Oddball]

Liked: Interesting scoring mechanic, which altered the way these run and shoot games are usually played. The levels are well designed, and combined with the coin collecting mechanic encouraged you to make decisions that really did affect your score.

Disliked: When getting hit in the back the character still recoils backwards instead of forwards. This made no sense and threw me into the water a good few times. Not sure if it's supposed to but the game just quit whenever I lost all my lives. Possibly that's a bug though?

Conclusion: A good game, but there are one or two little frustrations that would stop me playing it long term.