For once upon a tiny time, I feel like there were 3 things that could be worked on. Firstly, i feel like a tutorial showing the different stages could help get into when and how the stages work and also how mechanics work without being rushed. Secondly, if the turrets were slower but they remove corpses automatically, it could give a good incentive to refill them while also needing you to be aware of enemies getting past them. Finally, they might be able to use unharvested crops as a defense for the house, incase enemies get past the turrets while you're busy, but that also means that you would have to decrease how much ammo you want for your turrets. For Sir Golde, the main thing that i really saw as an issue was the amount of urchins when getting to the sword. If there were more urchins on the journey to the sword it would feel more like a puzzle when getting around them and giving you an incentive to use the magnifying glasses for larger puzzles with more moving parts. For Ariadaeus Run, I felt as though they really could have had more paths early on but with less rocks. The rocks themselves were good at keeping you on your toes but if there are different paths and walls then that would also work with keeping your attention, especially if you're dead on collision. A more diverse set of paths and less rocks too would open the road to faster movement so you could feel like you're not just doing parkour and feel more like you're racing.
Once upon a tiny time: It seems like a tower defence, so maybe lean more into that instead of trying to reconcile that with a shooter. The player could have a weak gun that is okay for early waves so that you can get enough fertiliser to power your turrets, but waves should get big enough such that it's impossible to rely on the gun. Building turrets should also probably be a thing, so that you can scale to larger and larger waves, eventually making the gun pretty much obsolete, and making the only way you can defend be by engaging with the farming. Sir Golde: I think the whole premise is flawed. The game already happens in a maze, kind of, and it's relatively zoomed in (you said that in the video actually, I wrote this a bit before fully watching the section), so you will naturally not be able to see a that much and will get confused. The fog adds to that, but probably not much. I think that maybe this would work better if you walked between rooms with a fixed camera, and had a mini-map (like Zelda), but then every 10 seconds forgot random parts you've explored and put on the mini-map already. Forgetting the whole map would probably be too much though, and you would just play as if you had no map at all. Ariadaeus Run: I think that the speed mechanic is supposed to be risk/reward, when you're faster you can see less of what's ahead, and also need to react faster when the obstacle do come up, but you get to dodge the laser easily. But slow mode seems to be making dodging too easy, while fast mode makes the laser too easy. I think changing the scroll speed without changing the player's position could help, since it would make speeds be closer to each other in difficulty, and maybe making all of them faster could also be better, so that going fast avoids the laser but makes dodging really difficult, and going slow still keeps the game fast enough to be fun.
Some great thoughts here! I really like your ideas about Once Upon A Tiny Time. It really could be a neat idea if the farming were the main focus instead of the gun. Already I'm imagining having different types of plants you could harvest for different ammo types. Sir Golde is interesting. Having different rooms with a fixed camera actually might solve some issues. But, what do you think about previous rooms that you forget actually changing completely? Like you forget them and then you go back and they're regenerated into a different layout? Might be kinda cool if done right. Interesting that your idea for Ariadaeus Run continues to allow the fastest speed to dodge the laser for free. I imagine most people would think that even the fastest speed should be required to dodge the laser as well. I want to lean that way as well because it feels like being allowed to dodge the laser for free makes that mechanic useless, but your point about things being harder to dodge while going fast kind of balancing out the need to dodge the laser is an interesting one.
Sir Golde was cute and seemed like something I would have liked playing on coolmathgames when I was a kid; if there was strong level design I could see it being a good time waster
For once upon a tiny time, I feel like there were 3 things that could be worked on. Firstly, i feel like a tutorial showing the different stages could help get into when and how the stages work and also how mechanics work without being rushed. Secondly, if the turrets were slower but they remove corpses automatically, it could give a good incentive to refill them while also needing you to be aware of enemies getting past them. Finally, they might be able to use unharvested crops as a defense for the house, incase enemies get past the turrets while you're busy, but that also means that you would have to decrease how much ammo you want for your turrets.
For Sir Golde, the main thing that i really saw as an issue was the amount of urchins when getting to the sword. If there were more urchins on the journey to the sword it would feel more like a puzzle when getting around them and giving you an incentive to use the magnifying glasses for larger puzzles with more moving parts.
For Ariadaeus Run, I felt as though they really could have had more paths early on but with less rocks. The rocks themselves were good at keeping you on your toes but if there are different paths and walls then that would also work with keeping your attention, especially if you're dead on collision. A more diverse set of paths and less rocks too would open the road to faster movement so you could feel like you're not just doing parkour and feel more like you're racing.
Once upon a tiny time: It seems like a tower defence, so maybe lean more into that instead of trying to reconcile that with a shooter. The player could have a weak gun that is okay for early waves so that you can get enough fertiliser to power your turrets, but waves should get big enough such that it's impossible to rely on the gun. Building turrets should also probably be a thing, so that you can scale to larger and larger waves, eventually making the gun pretty much obsolete, and making the only way you can defend be by engaging with the farming.
Sir Golde: I think the whole premise is flawed. The game already happens in a maze, kind of, and it's relatively zoomed in (you said that in the video actually, I wrote this a bit before fully watching the section), so you will naturally not be able to see a that much and will get confused. The fog adds to that, but probably not much. I think that maybe this would work better if you walked between rooms with a fixed camera, and had a mini-map (like Zelda), but then every 10 seconds forgot random parts you've explored and put on the mini-map already. Forgetting the whole map would probably be too much though, and you would just play as if you had no map at all.
Ariadaeus Run: I think that the speed mechanic is supposed to be risk/reward, when you're faster you can see less of what's ahead, and also need to react faster when the obstacle do come up, but you get to dodge the laser easily. But slow mode seems to be making dodging too easy, while fast mode makes the laser too easy. I think changing the scroll speed without changing the player's position could help, since it would make speeds be closer to each other in difficulty, and maybe making all of them faster could also be better, so that going fast avoids the laser but makes dodging really difficult, and going slow still keeps the game fast enough to be fun.
Some great thoughts here!
I really like your ideas about Once Upon A Tiny Time. It really could be a neat idea if the farming were the main focus instead of the gun. Already I'm imagining having different types of plants you could harvest for different ammo types.
Sir Golde is interesting. Having different rooms with a fixed camera actually might solve some issues. But, what do you think about previous rooms that you forget actually changing completely? Like you forget them and then you go back and they're regenerated into a different layout? Might be kinda cool if done right.
Interesting that your idea for Ariadaeus Run continues to allow the fastest speed to dodge the laser for free. I imagine most people would think that even the fastest speed should be required to dodge the laser as well. I want to lean that way as well because it feels like being allowed to dodge the laser for free makes that mechanic useless, but your point about things being harder to dodge while going fast kind of balancing out the need to dodge the laser is an interesting one.
Sir Golde was cute and seemed like something I would have liked playing on coolmathgames when I was a kid; if there was strong level design I could see it being a good time waster