DevBlog 7: First Bit of Feedback
The critique went generally well with feedback rather valuable. The user played the "game" (I will not go into the semantics here, but 'd feel wrong calling the build as it is now) for the full 15 minutes of my critique, which is a good sign. However the user felt that the game would benefit from having a user controllable free camera. This was an interesting point, as the exclusion of such a feature was something I had intentionally done. Jet Set Radio future (the game I draw most inspiration from) had used this specific control scheme with a fixed orbital camera, and I had no quams with it. Infact, I personally loved the way the control scheme forced the player to move in the way an aggressive inliner (a trick rollerblader) would, looping around and easing into turns, moving your body rather than your view. The user however did not enjoy this. There was a time I had tried to get my roommate into Jet Set, and he had the same quams about the camera in that game as my tester had with my own. That being said, I may just have to let that bit of functionality (or lack there of) go.
Other than that it seemed she enjoyed the animations, but did not feel enough connect when maneuvering (largely due to the camera), so more tweaking is in order. She was particularly critical of Faye's jump, which definitely needs work. The best part in her opinion was grinding, "which felt great, despite the actual loss of [user] control".
Unfortunately I had left in the incomplete wall jump, and she used it to break the game, and fly away from the map (as is it didn't set to be done only once, so she spammed it).