these underwater mines... are they supposed to inflict some kind of "stunned" status?
It's not immediately obvious thet you have to mash buttons in order to recover; the "mash" bar is barely visible at first glance, and the actual stun effect looks more like a glitch. I thought I triggered some kind of bug when my walking speed got abysmal and couldn't turn around.
There isn't supposed to be a stun effect, no - they're just supposed to deal heavy damage, so that's definitely a bug. I'll look into it, thanks for reporting it.
You know, considering how rare/valuable surviving males are supposedly becoming due to the virus, you sure do kill a lot of them.
I am planning on a fix for this by having every human enemy do the captured animation instead of getting "killed". That said, I do want to say that men aren't rare
yet; the game takes place about a decade or so after the virus starts so there are still plenty of adult men around at that time, just no more being born.
I hated the blaster throughout the entire first half of the game. The slimes at the beginning make the worst impression, and I think that has to be intentional. The designer seems to subscribe to the idea of irritating the player with limitations to motivate them to find better movement and combat options later on. But those slimes really are a disgusting accompaniment for the beginning of the game. They can't be hit directly, so instead you have to constantly twitch around to position yourself for angled shots because they jump all over the place whenever you finally get a bead on them. The melee swing is more reliable but also irritating because it's slow and sluggish and it moves you into whatever you're trying to hit.
I'm very sorry it came across that way, irritating the player is not my intention in the slightest. The early game enemies are designed the way they are to try and teach three lessons about the game: how to aim and use mobility in a low-stakes environment; that it's not always necessary to kill every enemy; and (after the Force Shot is obtained) that the Force Shot is an excellent way to handle hard-to-hit enemies instead of just spamming the default blaster at everything you see, without explicitly requiring the player to use that weapon to fight certain enemies. I'll go more in detail on each of these ideas, hopefully that will help explain my thought process behind the design - putting it in a spoiler box because it's a lot of writing, and I don't want it to take up too much space.
The other persistent thought while working through the levels was definitely "when am I going to find the damned double jump, or at least a wall jump upgrade already?" Of course it became clear that the game would likely not allow it until the end given how it makes the other movement powerups obsolete. But the continuous teasing of inaccessible bonuses and passages is just another example of designed frustration. I think it's particularly because you keep seeing these inaccessible locations everywhere instead of being compartmentalized, and they're not marked on the map, so you have to try to remember each one so you can come back whenever you finally find whatever unknown upgrade it is that will get you there. You can't know what upgrade is coming up next, but you go through 4 whole regions seeing countless places that need something like a double jump without ever getting it.
To me, putting unobtainable upgrades in visible locations so you can see them early, but not obtain them until later, is a hallmark of Metroidvania design. Maybe it's more frustrating because the game isn't done yet and lots of areas are incomplete, so there's not always things to find in those blocked off areas which makes them feel less rewarding, but to me it is quite literally one of the most appealing parts of Metroidvanias. The game's content is nowhere near complete yet, and you'll be naturally revisiting every major area of the game as part of the story, so you'll have ample opportunities to re-explore early areas with more upgrades as we develop more content; hopefully this complaint will be less noticeable as we design more content, but I do want to be clear here and say that I will not be changing it going forward.
Also, we
do have a robust map notes system that allows you to write down custom notes on any square of the map you want, so there's no need at all for you to just remember things, you can write them down directly within the game for later reference.
Heya, i've scouted the whole map for 0.40 now and i believe i've found a bug. At X36, Y68 in the aquatic caverns there is an upgrade only accessible when approaching from the right, and only by crouch sliding through an entrance.
There is no boosting or sliding possible underwater.
In more general terms, please reconsider the entire unterwater segment. It's a horrible slog, especially when you consider that at that point of the game you have finally obtained some mobility options. Well eff the player, except for the ledge grab none of them work underwater.
It's not a bug. If you can't access an area or an upgrade, it's because you're lacking an upgrade (or because that upgrade doesn't exist in the game yet, which is the case with the one you're talking about). There are plenty of upgrades in the game that I've placed now but are unobtainable currently, knowing that you'll be able to access them later using upgrades I have planned for later in the game. Unfortunately that's just part of early access-style game development.
I will not be changing the underwater segments heavily or removing them, they take up a comparatively very small part of the game. That said, I will look at the numbers again and reconsider how heavily your movement speed is restricted.
Thank you all for your feedback. I will look at enemy HP values and consider changing them in areas it feels appropriate.
