First time player but love to see some momentum based king shit in my platformers. The swinging had to be my favorite mechanic as an umihara kawase head , and the last level 'difficulty spike' was definitely my favorite in terms of how it pushes you to use your stars to retain your momentum. I managed to at least 2 star all the levels and I feel like the difficulty is just right. It was very unintuitive to me at first to shoot the star blocks by boosting away from them and it never quite became natural to me but thats a skill issue. The menus remind me of kirby 64 as well, which i appreciate.'m not sure if collecting stars serves a purposes yet but i like the way downwell does it of allowing you to unlock new color pallets/characters as you play. I dont have many suggestions because this is extremely solid as is.
I kept thinking it would be more intuitive if jump in the air was double jump which used up one of your stars. As is it now you can kind of cheese some obstacles by spamming up shoot. Like neutral jump in the air would be the current up+action, and side + jump in the air would be the current action in the air.
Also if the stars came back with landing or hitting a powerup, it would be more satisfying and puzzle like instead of you can kind of grind out a big gap with jump spam.
It would be nice to see the cutoff time for the stars in the results screen even if you exceed it.
Good game. I like the big selection of sprites and color palettes.
I'm not sure what to comment when it comes to the gameplay because everything seems good to me.
I've found one major issue with the audio. It sounds like some sort of static or perhaps a short portion of an in-game track that keeps looping non-stop and gets worse over time until you go back to the main menu. Dropping the sfx and/or music level doesn't stop the cacophony either. It doesn't sound intended.
Hey there! Someone else mentioned this bug to me and it should be fixed in the latest upload. Did you download the game recently or the first time I posted it?
newest levels seemed good, i absolutely cannot get a good grip on the water physics but it's a skill issue i think. everything else seems to be going well
controls great and throws a lot of fun extra mechanics at you to keep things interesting and are all very intuitive and easy to grasp. i feel like the main character is too overpowered though (or the camera isn't zoomed out far enough). especially in later levels i get flung into an area with 1000mp/h and die because there's a scenario that i can't see coming and thus can't solve in the 0.5 seconds the game gives me which unfortunately makes it a very trial and error type of game.
Hey there! It's sometimes hard for me to notice exactly where there's little time to react since I make the levels and know their layout before even playing them. If you could tell me in specific levels or sections within levels where this is an issue I'd appreciate it a lot.
yeh my game had that problem as wel at certain points (and will have that problem again)
"underwater - maneuvers" at the start has water with an immediate saw at the top off-screen. luckily at the start so not very frustrating, but still. "wilds - vines" pretty much every point where you have to leave a grapple-thing is a leap of faith.
"wilds - double use" same leap of faith problem. that saw just before the end is very cheeky. i would actually applaud that if it weren't for the leap of faith grapples i had to do before
"wilds - freeform swinging" this is the last level i cleared. every scenario waiting off-screen is preceeded by leap of faith grappling and you have to keep a certain amount of momentum going otherwise you're dead anyway. questions i have while swinging that first grapple-thing: am i going fast enough? when am i supposed to let go? what angle am i supposed to be at? all unknowns.
the rail grinding has kinda the same problem where i kinda need to know to charge before i see the need to charge, but i didn't finish any of those levels.
possible solutions: smaller swinging circles(this might cause problems with release timing), have the camera zoomed out even further beyond, make the mandatory speeds you have to achieve less (just make me be able to scrape by with 1 star), have a "look at level" function like celeste has so you're not surprised by cheeky little saws. with all the trial and error i'd still say this was a fun demo for the most part.
last thing. could you make it so you can fart stars while swinging? that would be sweet
First time player, only thing I found is that when you beat a world and go to the world map, it still says “unfinished” while showing how many stars you got. It displays the time correctly if you select another world and then go back. Extremely polished, with unique and well-executed gimmicks, impeccable flow, and the juiciest UI in gaming. I usually prefer slower games (I found Pizza Tower, for example, too fast for me), but this felt great, the character’s size and the way the camera moved made the speed not a problem. I also managed to get all stars :D I feel like I stole the game with how much content there is in this demo, so you’ve got my purchase guaranteed.
Seems like some of the ambient audio tracks kept starting without stopping. It stops once I move on from the Spaceship, but starts again shortly after.
That aside, menu is fantastic and the gameplay is everything I would ever want from a speedy precision platformer. Just that I am not someone who really plays precision platformers.
I played up till a little past the first introduction of the blue lines (or whatever colour you usually play it as, the number of colour palette choices was pretty crazy), but everything up till then was surprisingly really intuitive to understand. Love the star fart key blocks teaching you that you can fart to go downwards faster too.
Comments
First time player but love to see some momentum based king shit in my platformers. The swinging had to be my favorite mechanic as an umihara kawase head , and the last level 'difficulty spike' was definitely my favorite in terms of how it pushes you to use your stars to retain your momentum. I managed to at least 2 star all the levels and I feel like the difficulty is just right. It was very unintuitive to me at first to shoot the star blocks by boosting away from them and it never quite became natural to me but thats a skill issue. The menus remind me of kirby 64 as well, which i appreciate.'m not sure if collecting stars serves a purposes yet but i like the way downwell does it of allowing you to unlock new color pallets/characters as you play. I dont have many suggestions because this is extremely solid as is.
Keep up the good work!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2616387231
I apologize if I sounded too harsh, but I really can't adapt to inverted controls. Turned it from skill-based game into a rage game for me.
The world selector with 3d models and new swinging mechanic is very cool. Controller works. And I like new characters, that's very cool.
What I liked:
Suggestions:
Best wea I ever played, VVVVVV falls in shambles to Leap Galaxy
It's nice cute and fast platformer.
I kept thinking it would be more intuitive if jump in the air was double jump which used up one of your stars. As is it now you can kind of cheese some obstacles by spamming up shoot. Like neutral jump in the air would be the current up+action, and side + jump in the air would be the current action in the air.
Also if the stars came back with landing or hitting a powerup, it would be more satisfying and puzzle like instead of you can kind of grind out a big gap with jump spam.
It would be nice to see the cutoff time for the stars in the results screen even if you exceed it.
Good game. I like the big selection of sprites and color palettes.
I'm not sure what to comment when it comes to the gameplay because everything seems good to me.
I've found one major issue with the audio. It sounds like some sort of static or perhaps a short portion of an in-game track that keeps looping non-stop and gets worse over time until you go back to the main menu. Dropping the sfx and/or music level doesn't stop the cacophony either. It doesn't sound intended.
I recorded one level to show the issue.
https://files.catbox.moe/o2ucgf.mp4
Hey there! Someone else mentioned this bug to me and it should be fixed in the latest upload. Did you download the game recently or the first time I posted it?
I think I had the older version because I downloaded the game again and the sound works fine.
newest levels seemed good, i absolutely cannot get a good grip on the water physics but it's a skill issue i think. everything else seems to be going well
controls great and throws a lot of fun extra mechanics at you to keep things interesting and are all very intuitive and easy to grasp. i feel like the main character is too overpowered though (or the camera isn't zoomed out far enough). especially in later levels i get flung into an area with 1000mp/h and die because there's a scenario that i can't see coming and thus can't solve in the 0.5 seconds the game gives me which unfortunately makes it a very trial and error type of game.
Hey there! It's sometimes hard for me to notice exactly where there's little time to react since I make the levels and know their layout before even playing them. If you could tell me in specific levels or sections within levels where this is an issue I'd appreciate it a lot.
yeh my game had that problem as wel at certain points (and will have that problem again)
"underwater - maneuvers" at the start has water with an immediate saw at the top off-screen. luckily at the start so not very frustrating, but still.
"wilds - vines" pretty much every point where you have to leave a grapple-thing is a leap of faith.
"wilds - double use" same leap of faith problem. that saw just before the end is very cheeky. i would actually applaud that if it weren't for the leap of faith grapples i had to do before
"wilds - freeform swinging" this is the last level i cleared. every scenario waiting off-screen is preceeded by leap of faith grappling and you have to keep a certain amount of momentum going otherwise you're dead anyway. questions i have while swinging that first grapple-thing: am i going fast enough? when am i supposed to let go? what angle am i supposed to be at? all unknowns.
the rail grinding has kinda the same problem where i kinda need to know to charge before i see the need to charge, but i didn't finish any of those levels.
possible solutions: smaller swinging circles(this might cause problems with release timing), have the camera zoomed out even further beyond, make the mandatory speeds you have to achieve less (just make me be able to scrape by with 1 star), have a "look at level" function like celeste has so you're not surprised by cheeky little saws. with all the trial and error i'd still say this was a fun demo for the most part.
last thing. could you make it so you can fart stars while swinging? that would be sweet
First time player, only thing I found is that when you beat a world and go to the world map, it still says “unfinished” while showing how many stars you got. It displays the time correctly if you select another world and then go back. Extremely polished, with unique and well-executed gimmicks, impeccable flow, and the juiciest UI in gaming. I usually prefer slower games (I found Pizza Tower, for example, too fast for me), but this felt great, the character’s size and the way the camera moved made the speed not a problem. I also managed to get all stars :D I feel like I stole the game with how much content there is in this demo, so you’ve got my purchase guaranteed.
Seems like some of the ambient audio tracks kept starting without stopping. It stops once I move on from the Spaceship, but starts again shortly after.
That aside, menu is fantastic and the gameplay is everything I would ever want from a speedy precision platformer. Just that I am not someone who really plays precision platformers.
I played up till a little past the first introduction of the blue lines (or whatever colour you usually play it as, the number of colour palette choices was pretty crazy), but everything up till then was surprisingly really intuitive to understand. Love the star fart key blocks teaching you that you can fart to go downwards faster too.