Demo thoughts

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Brief thoughts because I only have interesting ones on a small portion.

I played the original DKC for 20 minutes on a plane once and that's the extent of my DKC knowledge. Everything here is very intuitive and I got used to doing the tricks immediately.

Played the demo to play a difficult stage I saw a video of. The collectibles were fun to find, not too difficult to where I had to look anything up. Despite playing so that I could play the difficult stage, I had a lot of fun finding the collectibles. Probably more fun, actually.

The difficult stage that intrigued me struck me as just alright. This could be due to the fact that the mechanic most of it is centered on is really simple from an input perspective (input when you're lined up with the gap) and the cannons result in a lot of downtime. With precision platformer levels where I'm required to do strict inputs, especially one with long screens like this one, I expect a balance between a more learny first half and a more reaction-based second half interspersed with short breaks, making the first half engaging to retry and the second half more exciting. You can see that balance being attempted pretty well in the first playthrough and it's probably limited by the level not really being that hard. It is part of the demo, after all.

However, my problems stem from the cloud and comet (not the coins) collectibles which were an absolute chore. They're both placed right at the end of the screens and they both require specific solutions and precise inputs that are more "brain-on" than the rest of the stage. The cloud collectible took me about 20 tries, and by about try 10 I was 100% consistent at the first 25 seconds of the checkpoint. Just to clarify, I wasn't frustrated, I was just really, really bored. I like the jump but it would be better placed somewhere in the middle so I don't have to slog through the tutorial-like first checkpoint each time.

The comet was slightly better because the second checkpoint was more engaging, but it wasn't much better. (To clarify, the solution I used to obtain it was to ground pound from the air, do the air slide, then do the duck jump over the bee guy and land on the button. If there's a way to get it from the ground then ignore all of this.) This one comes on screen so fast as to be unreactable, and even when you do know about it, the peak of your jump is still really hard to gauge given the camera. There's a lot of time to prepare for the inputs, but the respawn areas for each checkpoint have absolutely no space to practice any movement, so your only practice is going to be attempts at the collectible. This actually causes problems for the entire level and I really hope it isn't a recurring theme in the full game. Usually, these types of ending collectibles are done by having a precise jump that you can retry infinitely, but that puts you at high risk of dying. I think a collectible like this would work better here, so you could dodge the level win button on repeat playthroughs for attempts at a tough spiky jump with the reward of the comet.

Both of these felt like tongue-in-cheek "look at how tough our game is!" collectibles, especially the comet. But again, I wasn't frustrated, I was just really bored. I assume I don't need to explain why a collectible being optional doesn't excuse it being boring. It felt like I was practicing for a deathless challenge, and I could probably reopen the demo right now and complete the level deathless in under 10 minutes with how much I replayed the majority of the level. I thoroughly enjoyed most of the demo and I'll be buying the game on launch, but I really hope the level design for the other hard content doesn't have weird things like these since that's where most of the appeal stems from for me.

[PeekingBoo]

Yo thanks for playing! Those are some fair criticisms and with the demo being over a year old at this point I've received a lot of feedback from players.

The cloud was intended to be something of a secret more than a challenge but I can empathise having to loop around over and over from the checkpoint to try and get it would get a bit boring if you're capable. The loop around was an intended 'gotcha' mechanic if you didn't drop into the barrel and I figured it served as a convenient way to go back and retrieve the cloud. One change I made to this is opening up access on the left of the cloud so that it keeps its intended place as being in a secret hidden location but is much more accessible from stage start and checkpoint. It's arguably much simpler to obtain now but I think it lends itself to discovery much better.

Before I talk about the comet, I'll mention Windswept does feature silly troll moments at different points in the game but out of the 60 stages (40 main, 20 postgame, where this hard stage belongs), I think there are only 2 that have some kind of troll at the goal post. I definitely agree that having too many cheapens the experience so I wanted to make sure not to go overboard. Most of the other trolls are in the nature of shield bees tinking you off a ledge in short bonus rooms where the impact is minimal.
Every stage included in the demo was there to gauge how players responded to certain stage types and mechanics, the ones who really enjoyed the game got exposed to the icy labyrinth and if they were still having fun, they'd get the dropdash gauntlet.

So with that in mind, that comet coin situation at the end of the game was a test. I wanted to see how players reacted and how resilient they were to attempt the whole stage again now that they knew they had what it took to win. General consensus is the troll will stay but with a tiny nerf. The cannon will instead launch you up a bit higher so that you're floating in the comet's vicinity for an extra half-second or so. In the context of the full game you would have done around 50 stages at this point so keeping an eye out for the comet and applying the context of the stage to collect it is a running theme players will hopefully be more attuned to by the time they reach this point. But giving an extra half-second couldn't hurt, so I may as well!

Hopefully what I've said gives you some peace of mind about the direction I'm taking things - one final thing before I finish up here:

(To clarify, the solution I used to obtain it was to ground pound from the air, do the air slide, then do the duck jump over the bee guy and land on the button. If there's a way to get it from the ground then ignore all of this.)

You did it correctly! You can also reach it from the ground but it's a little trickier to achieve in the cramped space.

I'll wrap it in a spoiler tag so that you can choose whether or not to bust the game wide open with the forbidden knowledge.
From the ground would be: (leading with Turtle) --> Piggyback --> Jump --> Throw Upward --> Dropdash --> Piggyback again --> Jump --> Throw Upward