Gravitry - Hardcore Platformer

[Sarcose]

Personally, I love GLaDOS/Portal/Aperture Science inspired design. I want more and more of the cold, analytical, meta-narrative from Portal.

Maybe to satisfy filthy haters you could implement an option to turn it off. (Plot on/Plot off) Of course, this would contribute to speedruns drastically.

[Ulydev]

Personally, I love GLaDOS/Portal/Aperture Science inspired design. I want more and more of the cold, analytical, meta-narrative from Portal.

Thanks for your feedback!

[quite="Sarcose"]Maybe to satisfy filthy haters you could implement an option to turn it off. (Plot on/Plot off) Of course, this would contribute to speedruns drastically.[/quote]

I thought of it, but that would totally break the spirit of the game.

[micha]

After all the rather negative feedback, I wanted to give some feedback too.

First of all, congratulations for actually finishing this game. I haven't really finished any proper game, so Hats off!

I very much like the technical implementation of the game and the visual style. Everything looks polished and deliberate.

What I do not like so much is the game design. I am a fan of hardcore platformer games (Super Meat Boy, N, 1001 Spikes), but I did not get hooked to Gravitry. Let me try to be as specific as I can, so you can take away something. I think there are two aspects, that you could improve:

• Your game is hard, but looks easy. That makes it frustrating. In Level 1 I was thinking: These are just three jumps, why do I keep falling down and have to repeat? Compare this to Super Meat Boy: Already the first levels look super dangerous (saw blades everywhere), but are not so difficult (you cannot even touch most of the saw blades). Can you maybe make some levels that look difficult, but are easy, and then increase the difficulty?
• The controls feel too floaty. This is not a problem in itself, if you give the player the time to learn the controls. Once again in comparison to Super Meat Boy: It has super floaty controls, but gets away with it. How? The levels in the first world don't require the player to land on small platforms. And even later in the game, the platforms are usually at least 3 tiles wide. I suggest you change your level design and the pacing so that the player has time to get used to the controls (if you want to keep them like they are). I an currently working on a platformer (see signature), and I had exactly the same problem. I gave the game to some playtesters and almost all of them said, the controls were bad. Then I changed the level design (and kept the controls as they were) and now it is fine.

And finally, one lesson, that I learned from my project: Have some people playtest your game! Early! When I started developing, I only tested my game myself and became very good at the game. That made me blind for the problems that new players have. When I did my first playtest, I was already so far into the project, that I did not want to change the controls anymore. I would probably have been better to test earlier and to incorporate suggestions from testers.

And as a small note: I did not understand the control scheme (shift for running) when I played first. I got stuck in the second level and had to read the explanation here in the forum. Can you maybe find a visual representation (for both the shift-key and the running-symbol) that makes it easier to recognize? Oder move the explanation for running into Level 2, where it is needed for the first time.

[Tesselode]

At the very least, can you make the dialogue happen in the background without interrupting the gameplay? You would have to change how the dialogue boxes work, but that would solve the only real problem I had with the dialogue.

Also, you should let me make some new music for you!