Here are some stream-of-consciousness notes I took while playing Wheevil. So they are mostly in gameplay order:
- Why introduce Z as jump when spacebar also works? Spacebar felt more natural to me.
- Perhaps add slight drag once you reach the top after a hug-jump-climb sequence. Feels too easy to overshoot once you reach the top.
- Trajectory history visualization is neat.
- Digging the music.
- Feels a tad floaty when running back and forth on a flat surface.
- Press ‘m’ to close the map? Seems like any key press should close the map, unless the keys are used for something else later on?
- Pacing: There is a lot of upfront tutorial work. Perhaps pace it out with some regular levels in between concepts?
- Did you consider double-tap for dash?
- When I press dash without an arrow, I’d rather my guy not dash (or have a window where it waits for a direction key).
- I really like the swinging.
- I’m pretty sure I’m pressing ‘c’ within the swing radius, and often it doesn’t do anything. (The Timing Is Key level was a major violator.)
- In the Timing Is Key level, the timing constraint felt too tight. Or it’s unclear when I have to latch. A lot of trial and error.
- For an inexperienced person like me, I think adding a little airtime at the end of a jump to coordinate a move could help a lot with combo work.
- The up-dashes are killing me. I keep wanting to hit X first, then up, but then dash pushes me left/right. Adding some time checks or multi-key input would help.
- The forest level with the short ledge and long ledge above was fairly difficult.
- I’m liking the map screen as the game progresses, but I also wonder if it’s needed? At some point, will I need to reference it to navigate somewhere? Still, it’s nice to have an overview.
I really liked this game and think it could be a ton of fun. The main thing that got in my way was the unforgiving controls. For a casual like me, precision requirements are definitely a barrier. Yet, despite the difficulty I had in certain parts, I played for longer than I expected. In fact, I was initially just going to sample the game and not actually play, but I kept going and wanted to give some feedback. Great start.