yay, victory! Thank you for thos valuable two cents, and hope you do great at your big demo tomorrow

Indeed snappier! I ran across a small complication, bc, by design, this state can be recalled from itself by button-mashing. That was causing the "new" animation to appear stuck in the first frame. I then made a second animation that only plays if you enter this state from itself (right wall).

Thank you for the dossier. I got what you mean, i think. Will try killing some of those BILLION initial frames before the animation reaches the key pose and record a video for you.
The "rambling" just made it evne more entertaining btw.

thank you so much for saying this. There's still so much to be done on this game, reading this really makes the journey a lot more enjoyable. Regarding the wall-climb animation, do you have any example (either some other games, or a napkin drawing) of what you'd suggest?

Glad you also value that! Got this from meat boy and VVVVVV. Iit kinda feels like learning an instrument by focused repetition. It allows for a more demanding skill floor, prevents players from having to re-do parts they already beat, and its also way more satisfying to see the progress

kaizo*

Its way easier to locate the fun -- in this case by trying to make a kayzo level with your game elements -- than to craft it from ground up.

Thank you! Wanna give it a go? we have a demo on itch (soon making the steam page also).
untarctica.itch.io/demo

i sometimes do it the other way around: i make the enemy i'm testing basically impossibly hard (fast, tough, nasty) and then see what kinds of player actions i, as a player, end up using to try to survive the encounter. Then i go back and fine tune the challenge.

Oh, 2d plats are very consuming to develop. Reenforcing a "fun zone" mechanics is hard on itself, but when the game aims to have several competing ones, if becomes kinda exponentially harder to make content. Its disheartening when an enemy works great with gameplay "a" but then breaks gameplay "b".

What kind of game are you developing in the back burner?

That’s probably the best thing a game designer can hear about their game — thank you so much, Eric!
For Untarctica, we’re going with a slower walk speed and keeping the agility for more deliberate acrobatic combos, kind of what Mario 64 does i think. I can post more about that if it’s interesting!

Thank you so much! We indeed have a demo, and would be super cool to watch you give it a go live for charity!
untarctica.itch.io/demo

Let me know the stream schedule and address then!

It behaves internally like a ledge-climb assist, aligning the character to the top of the block they're pushing against -- in code we even call this state "vaulting". But we're not making any ledge-grab animations especifically for it, so its analogous to a quick ledge-climb, but without the looks.