Re: [WIP] Nagai Yamiji (Walljumping fixed!)
So I just beat the demo, it was pretty difficult (I was playing on normal). I didn't really have any problem until two rooms after that wall jumping video you posted. The one with the long conveyor bottom with a lot of wall jumping. This was rather brutal in my opinion. I assumed that there'd be a wall at the end to prevent me from just running through the area and I actually quit playing my first night in this room out of frustration.
My second night playing I managed to get the jumping down to where I could get halfway through with some effort and after falling into it again I just ran to the right to see what was there. After realizing I could just run through it at the cost of some damage that became my preferred strategy. But the little loop to get the first black rune was even more brutal.
Once you get it and go all the way through the loop the fact that if you mess up you drop right back into the loop again is extremely frustrating. Not being so great at the game I had to go through that loop many times before I finally got the hang of getting out of the place. The main problem in my mind is the graphics of it, that ledge is so high it looks like you've missed mid jump even when you didn't, it made me fumble quite a bit thinking I had messed it up.
I think there should be a save room right at the beginning of that jump so you can practice it without having to go through the previous areas or the loop again if you mess up. I'm all for difficulty but after messing it up a few times and having to start a few rooms back I started to feel like the game was just wasting my time by making me run the loop and previous areas over and over again.
As it is now, I'd say your difficulty selection doesn't have much effect on the gameplay. The vast majority of the damage I took in my playthrough came from the wiggling grass stuff that usually accompanies the harder jumping challenges. The enemies being both avoidable and grindable make their damage (whatever it is) a non-issue by the ease of just pumping points into constitution compared to the incidental damage you take by messing up your platforming. If you're struggling with learning the jumps, it doesn't matter how much health you have you're going to die until you get it right and the amount of progress you lose is solely based on the scarcity of the save areas.
That's a much more solid degree of difficulty than damage rates on the various enemies in my mind, and completely overshadows the differences in the current degrees of difficulty you have set. It also discourages playing anything other than a con based character until you have the game's jump challenges mastered. Instead of messing with the damage rates, I'd actually add/remove save points based on difficulty. Maybe even adding an early double jump skill for people playing on easy who just want to play casually and don't have the patience or time to learn how to master the jumping mechanics.
But anyway, despite my criticisms I think you're doing a great job. I'll be happy to buy your game whether any of this changes or doesn't. I had a good bit of fun with your demo and I can tell you've worked hard on it and I have a lot of respect for that. Keep up the good work.
