"Unfortunate Development" = not good level design

[Ale]

I love the game and I think overall the level design is awesome. There are some areas, though, where I think level design could use some serious improving.

1. The on and off gravity is not fun. Either have gravity or don't have gravity, but having to wait for the gravity to turn back off in order to keep advancing upwards is just boring. It's not challenging, it's not fun, it's just boring.
Don't get me wrong, I love the zero gravity gameplay and it's a lot of fun. But having it turning on and off and the player having to wait is just frustratingly boring.

2. Too many tentacle things. If you're going to make a game in which progress saving is so limited (you save the progress only when you hibernate and in order to hibernate you have to be fed, and on top of that there's the karma progress, which you lose every time you die, etc), then you have to carefully design your levels in order to not make them frustrating.
The thing is, every time I die, I end up back to where I hibernated, which is like 4 screens away from where I keep dying. So every time I die I have to walk 4 screens of nothingness (no challenge, no difficulty, just plain walking through nothing) until I get to the difficult part and die within a few seconds. I spend more time going through nothingness than actually attempting to pass through the actual difficult part. That is adding boringness to frustration, it's not good.
If you're going to have an extremely difficult area in the game, then at least put the hibernation chamber right before it, not 5 screens before it that add exactly nothing to the gameplay.

Ps: the very difficult part I am refering to is the vertical area that leads up to "memory conflux". I'm trying to get to FP, so I'm going upwards. Maybe I should try going through Recursive Transform Arrays? I have no idea, since this game is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cryptic. Why does it have to be so cryptic? I only know these paths because I dowloaded a map online. Without it I would have quit this game a long time ago.

[Poothoottoot]

You seem to have already hit on what you should do, unfortunate development is a harder but shorter route.

Going through the Transform Arrays is safer but will take a bit longer for the section also I wouldn't worry about your karma at this section you'll see why assuming you haven't already looked it up/gotten there.

Personally I liked the failing gravity mechanics to force jump timings in Unfotunate the tentacles could be a bit rng if you made it past though that I wish was improved.

[Smkn-G1]

the problem with UD, is that you can't see whats a screen ahead of you... so you can't tell if you're about to jump into a bad guy, that realisticly, slugcat should be able to see.

[eb]

Originally posted by Xandeta:

I Why does it have to be so cryptic? I only know these paths because I dowloaded a map online. Without it I would have quit this game a long time ago.

You know you could have found these paths by, you know, going the other way when you decided you had enough of Unfortunate Development. I didn't know turning left instead of right was "so cryptic".

[Ale]

Originally posted by eb:

Originally posted by Xandeta:

I Why does it have to be so cryptic? I only know these paths because I dowloaded a map online. Without it I would have quit this game a long time ago.

You know you could have found these paths by, you know, going the other way when you decided you had enough of Unfortunate Development. I didn't know turning left instead of right was "so cryptic".

Sorry, I'm not feeding any trolls today.

[Poothoottoot]

Originally posted by eb:

Originally posted by Xandeta:

I Why does it have to be so cryptic? I only know these paths because I dowloaded a map online. Without it I would have quit this game a long time ago.

You know you could have found these paths by, you know, going the other way when you decided you had enough of Unfortunate Development. I didn't know turning left instead of right was "so cryptic".

To be fair if you find unfortunate and use the shelter there going to Recursive would be backtracking and not the first thing people will decide to do. So "Going left" is a decision that would have to be made earlier. Unfortunate Development suffers from the static screens especially on the final jump of the area, while the daddies aren't normally a huge issue (small chance they happen to be reaching across when you jump) there's a outcrop of solid metal in that area that if you hit will make sound and cause them to aggro on you. Said outcrop cannot be seen from the screen below either.

I get the frustration in all honesty and other than that final jump I liked the challenge of Unfortunate, felt good to mess around in 0g then have a couple extra mechanics thrown at me.

[Ale]

Originally posted by Poothoottoot:

Originally posted by eb:

You know you could have found these paths by, you know, going the other way when you decided you had enough of Unfortunate Development. I didn't know turning left instead of right was "so cryptic".

To be fair if you find unfortunate and use the shelter there going to Recursive would be backtracking and not the first thing people will decide to do. So "Going left" is a decision that would have to be made earlier. Unfortunate Development suffers from the static screens especially on the final jump of the area, while the daddies aren't normally a huge issue (small chance they happen to be reaching across when you jump) there's a outcrop of solid metal in that area that if you hit will make sound and cause them to aggro on you. Said outcrop cannot be seen from the screen below either.

I get the frustration in all honesty and other than that final jump I liked the challenge of Unfortunate, felt good to mess around in 0g then have a couple extra mechanics thrown at me.

Yes, I liked the zero G too, what I didn't like is that it keeps turning on and off. When gravity is on all you can do is wait for it to turn off again, so I don't see the point, in my opinion it just delays and makes the gameplay sluggish in that area. I believe that if the gravity was off all the time in that area my frustration would decrease at least, say, 30%, because I would take half the time to get to that last jump so I could try it again. Having another hibernation chamber right before that last jump would be even better.

As to the "just go left" business, that guy is a known troll, he's just trying to make people mad. Better to ignore that type of thing.

[Poothoottoot]

I figured I'd address it trolling or not since it's better that way. Anyway hope you made it through whichever way you decided to go.

[Ale]

Originally posted by Poothoottoot:

I figured I'd address it trolling or not since it's better that way. Anyway hope you made it through whichever way you decided to go.

I haven't played since, but haven't uninstalled either. I think I'll come back to it in a few days. Thanks!