ANARYU'S PROFILE

I don't think any other game will ever leave as strong an imprint as Another World did when I was a kid and we first played it on my friends Genesis over the Sega Channel.

I don't think I've ever played another game that's ever given me the same feel for the story (even with words) that it did; certainly not another platformer.

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I bet it's either skyscraper or astral conjuction

My expectation as well (though I sucked at BOTH GAMES.)

On combat you mentioned one thing that was an issue due to poor presentation more than anything, and that's the difficulty hitting enemies with certain skills (a bug with a Fireball for example.)

Certain skills hit by a pixel-type of collision detection, others by an area, small insects and targets are much easier to hit with the area-type skills like Gust, mines, a Fireball exploding on an object they're, or melee weapons.

The pixel-type collision ones tend to be a bit more powerful but are harder to hit small or fast enemies with.

Melee weapons are not nearly as easy as ranged due to their shorter range and odds of being hit more often, but the payoff is that they have a very high "surprise critical" rate - if you hit an enemy with a melee weapon before they know you're there, you will do a massive amount of damage, usually killing even tougher enemies in 1 hit. (Melee also makes any hits you take do half damage, so you can take 2x as many blows.)

Both of these facets are NOT presented clearly enough that the player ever picks up on them though, definitely something we should have included some mandatory skills and a quick tutorial on.

Things I've learned for future games:
1. For different collision types make them marked more clearly on the attacks and ensure there's a small tutorial area where they are shown effectively how to use both so it's clear
2. Enemies have vulnerable times when they can be sneaked up on, these need to be more rewarding for melee than ranged (why risk sneaking up with a melee when you can sniper rifle from well outside their normal range) - this would probably be in the form of additional rewards for melee kills.
3. Make melee defense bonuses more visible (maybe a shaded number so the player knows they're taking half as much damage vs. full damage)

* Additional suggestions or thoughts on those?



I'm a bit surprised by the fact that you didn't find magic as useful, there are certainly less spells to choose from, but they're extremely potent spells with damage usually higher than it's guns counter-part, especially as you get into the higher-tier spells like Flame Pulse and Geyser which have secondary effects or multi-hit like Bolt, etc.

I'm not sure what to do in that department except maybe make the usefulness of magic more apparent or mix enemies up so they have strengths/weaknesses to physical vs. magic? Or maybe removing MP healing items and focus on a faster MP regen?

* Additional thoughts about why you felt magic was underpowered would be welcome.

Thanks for the feedback everyone; I think this has a lot of potential if given more polish and the engine given more options that are as easy to use.

I don't think I'll be updating this particular game much, but a second game with all the improvements is definitely in-plan. Maybe I'll redo what is here as the introduction to that too so the ideas don't go to waste.