Windows beta 1 now available

I'm far from finished my game, but all the core gameplay is complete and I need to finish the level design, backgrounds, music, sound effects, etc. Now is a good time to share a beta with some friends, and start collecting feedback. So I've cut out all the Xbox dependencies, and I've published a Windows beta and given it to some friends.


Here is what I've learned so far:

• It is too difficult! I've been playing it since January as I've been building it, so I know the controls and the levels intimately. But what normally takes me 40 seconds took one of my friends 12 minutes. I need to find a balance between incorporating cool elements into the early levels to keep people's interest, and making it easy enough to support a learning curve.


• Rather than returning to the last door when the player dies, I need to have other points midway through each level where the player will spawn if they die after that point. Someone commented that the game is too slow, and I think this comes from his frustration when dying towards the end of a level and having to replay it over and over.


• I might consider adding difficulty levels, because there is a clear difference in skill amongst my friends, and the game is a little slow for the more skilled players.


• Wall jumping needs to be refined. Currently, if you're in the air and facing a wall, you press jump and the character will leap off the wall. But everyone's intuition is to press jump and to move the character away from the wall, and this often leads to the wall jump not registering properly (because the character has already left the wall by the time they try to jump). I've already started making refinements to how this works, but I may need to do more.


• The controls take a bit of getting used to. If you jump through the air the character will maintain their horizontal velocity (unlike many other games, that quickly bring the character to a near vertical fall) unless you steer them back in the opposite direction. I don't really want to change this, but I'll continue to observe players and see if this is a problem.

I'm glad to see people finally playing my game, even if my first review is "It's like watching paint dry" (thanks Brad :). I'll continue to refine things over the next few months.