TECHPACK Adventure (SAGE '21 Demo)

I played your game and i like it. I love the early arcade style. Good job!

I love the aesthetic and most of the "game feel" here. Old Namco arcade games are a criminally underused type of retro aesthetic, and the wall run lends just enough of a twist to make the fairly simple gameplay stand out. Unfortunately, the jump can kind of hold it back, and messes with the otherwise satisfying flow of the game. There're a few reasons for this.


#1: Techpack accelerates like a spider on the ground, and a barge while airborne. There's a difference in grounded and aerial handling in pretty much every platformer, true, but here it's just too much. It makes landing feel really uncomfortable and fiddly, as I'll be slowly drifting to the side one second, and then zooming off of or into something the moment I touch the ground.

Solution: Probably the easiest one. Simply close the gap between the ground and air acceleration values by a bit (or a lot.)


#2: The Ground Slam. To be more particular, the resulting bounce. It's just high enough to prevent you from jumping at a critical moment, while also being too low to actually clear anything. Another problem is the inpu. Too many times, I found myself slamming straight off the edge of a platform I meant to jump from, or accidentally chaining bounces together while frantically trying to jump over an enemy.

Solution: Either increase the height of the bounce or remove it entirely. Also, map it to down+jump, or just down, instead of jump.

#3: Static jump height. In basically every platformer, letting go of the jump button while you're still moving upward will cancel a portion of your upward momentum: AKA, "the longer you hold the button, the higher you jump." I don't know if not including that was a reference to some simpler, older arcade games, but... that's a modern feature you might want to add, especially considering the more modern level design you already have.

Solution: Yeah add that.


Bonus tip: instead of only letting the player jump if they're on the ground, implement a "coyote time" mechanic. It's slightly long-winded so I'll just let you look that up. It'll mitigate a lot of the aforementioned "but I SWEAR I hit the jump button in time!" I experienced with the slam attack.