Downwell! Gun Boots! Treasure Collecting! Falling!

[SecretAsianMan]

I've found the wall jumping timing to be really forgiving actually, to the point that I keep doing it on accident.  Then again I'm used to wall jumping in Super Metroid which is much less fluid.

 

Also I seriously can't wait to get off this shift and start playing this some more.

[clyde]

also how the heck do the iphone controls work? is it all touch based? do you have to tilt it to move? seems real fiddly if its the latter, but real screen obscuring if the former...

Buttons on the bottom of the screen. It is a problem, my thumbs block the bottom of the screen which shortens my potential time to react. Also I sometimes hit the wrong direction because my left thumb loses its place during long combos.

[Wooben]

weird that they wouldnt just shrink it and chuck it on the sides... bottom of the screen is the most crucial part to look at

[Patrick R]

The trick to wall-jumping is that, unlike Super Metroid, you only get to do it once. It doesn't reset until you land or bounce off something. So it's easy to wall-jump once, fall a distance, and forget and try to do it again.

[Bjorn]

The trick to wall-jumping is that, unlike Super Metroid, you only get to do it once. It doesn't reset until you land or bounce off something. So it's easy to wall-jump once, fall a distance, and forget and try to do it again.

 

That explains a lot for me!

[Patrick R]

Also I just learned from the latest episode of Idle Thumbs (the hot tips and cool tricks segment) that you need to have full ammo.

I really question some of the decisions to not explain any part of the experience to players.

[Wooben]

 you need to have full ammo.

 

I feel like this is more of a side effect thing of otherwise more intuitive mechanics.

You can only walljump while flipping. You get flipping by either taking a running jump or bouncing off of something. You lose flipping by shooting or walljumping. Once you recognize the animation, you realize it is actually quite simple and concise... "you need full ammo to walljump" doesn't mean you are constantly checking your counter to see if you can bounce off the wall, its more that if you do shoot your guy loses his somersault momentum, and then you will instantly recognize that a walljump is no longer possible. I think a more appropriate statement would be 'you will always have full ammo when walljumping'

[Patrick R]

I made a long post that got lost.

 

Shortened version:

 

• I don't think the game's total hands off approach to teaching the player jibes well with some of the less obvious mechanics, like wall-jumping or gem-high. It's not as if "flipping=wall-jumping" is an obvious logical leap, and due to the fast paced nature of the game it's easy to not notice the difference between different falling animations.
• I bet it's really hard, as a developer, to find a balance between the joy of discovery and frustrating and annoying your players.
• I think Spelunky is the only game of this type I've played that really nails that balance perfectly.
• At least Downwell isn't as bad as Binding of Isaac in this regard, a game I've put 21 hours into and still have no idea what half the items are supposed to do. "Should I choose between the Ace of Spades or the Skinny Mushroom? Well actually I've never perceived the effects of either, so whatever, I don't care."

[Wooben]

Agree on all points. I only really cottoned on to the flipping thing because it reminded me of super metroid, where you can only walljump whilst somersaulting as well (input is also identical), and i imagine its a connection that the developer counted on people making to grasp the mechanic. 
Just finished hard mode, had a ton of fun with it all round, but might not come back to it until they (hopefully!) release a daily challenge mode

[SecretAsianMan]

I'm actually ok with the level of instruction in the game.  If wall jumping or gem highs were necessary to advance or enjoy the game, then yeah I'd say they should be explained somewhat.  Right now I consider them more like tricks or advanced skills which while fun aren't required at all.  You could complete the game without knowing either one of those existed and it would still be fun.  In something like Issac those things aren't so easy to ignore because they're literally dropped right in front of you and there's so many of them that you'll probably need a wiki until you learn them all.

 

I really hate it when basic and necessary things aren't covered or are hidden under really obscure mechanics but I feel like that isn't the case here.

[Patrick R]

I would agree except they don't exist in a "you don't know anything about it" and "you know all about it" binary, and that leads to people thinking that the wall-jumping in the game is just fiddly or shitty because they know it exists but don't know how it works.

 

And Gem-high is one of the few things it actually does message to you in the UI, so the fact that I still don't really know what it actually is makes me feel like I'm missing on some core mechanic and diminishes my experience. If it was just a slight change to your animation or sprite, that'd be easy to ignore, but the fact that there's text and an item dedicated to it makes me think it's something important that I should know about.

[BadHat]

After playing for ages on Levitate style I just tried switching back to Usual.

 

How do people combo with this? I feel like I'm wearing lead boots. (Wait I probably am.)

[atte]

 

Hard sure is hard, but it's nice how it changes things up. There's more pressure from the top so upgrades that causes bullets to fly up feel much more important on hard.

[SecretAsianMan]

I would agree except they don't exist in a "you don't know anything about it" and "you know all about it" binary, and that leads to people thinking that the wall-jumping in the game is just fiddly or shitty because they know it exists but don't know how it works.

 

And Gem-high is one of the few things it actually does message to you in the UI, so the fact that I still don't really know what it actually is makes me feel like I'm missing on some core mechanic and diminishes my experience. If it was just a slight change to your animation or sprite, that'd be easy to ignore, but the fact that there's text and an item dedicated to it makes me think it's something important that I should know about.

 

I'll grant you the gem-high point since it actually does show you that in the game.  Still I feel that too much instruction would take away from this game since it's relative simplicity works in its favor.

 

Then again I may be saying these things because I didn't go into the game blind and had some foreknowledge of it so there was less for me to "figure out".

[Patrick R]

Again, I think the way Spelunky does this is great. Totally optional tutorial that covers the basics and a few idiosyncrasies of the movement system (like running over single block gaps) that you play through once and never think about again. Maybe if to the left there was another hole labelled "Tutorial" that you could jump into, that had basic info painted on the walls that you fall past. 

[SecretAsianMan]

Again, I think the way Spelunky does this is great. Totally optional tutorial that covers the basics and a few idiosyncrasies of the movement system (like running over single block gaps) that you play through once and never think about again. Maybe if to the left there was another hole labelled "Tutorial" that you could jump into, that had basic info painted on the walls that you fall past. 

 

But as you said, those are the basics.  There's a lot of other more advanced stuff that's not really explained at all in the game, such as the conditions necessary to reach Hell, the "true" end of the game.  You can still "beat" the game without them but a lot of stuff is left unsaid.  Those are the things I'm comparing to Downwell's wall jump and gem-high.

 

Also I don't think the tutorial was optional, unless you only did the daily challenge and never the main game.  The cave to enter normal adventure mode isn't open until you complete the tutorial.  After that then it becomes a separate door that you can enter at will.

[Patrick R]

I just think the wall jump and gem-high (which are both mechanics) are wildly different than Spelunky's hell runs (which is an alternate meta-game). I would compare wall-jumping to, well, running over 1 block gaps, I guess. But I guess I misremembered the tutorial process, which maybe just points to how unintrusive I found it, that it never felt forced on me or diminished my experience.

[SecretAsianMan]

I think one could argue that maintaining gem-highs could also be called a meta game even though it has an actual effect, as could the combo system (above 25 anyway).  I'd compare wall jumping to something more like whipping arrows or landing safely on spikes with a cape, mechanics that are in the game and can contribute to higher level play but aren't explained at all nor necessary for basic play.

[BadHat]

So what palette meta are you all rocking? I was running Aqua but I switched to an OldnCold build and it's working out pretty well.

 

I just unlocked the 20th palette and I still haven't beaten area 3.  

[Wooben]

vivid is my fave. feel like its the most readable so far.

And I can second the tweets atte posted. Originally beat the game with armspin and thought i might try doing runs with all the styles... turns out the larger number of enemies that end up chasing you from the top of the screen in hard makes floatiness a real liability.

[graddy]

Area 4! Only had one health so dies quick :/

[Ewan]

Never got into Spelunky but this game is going down well with me.

[Problem Machine]

It seems like just by surviving long enough you get all the charge you need (depending on playstyle I suppose) -- with that in mind, do you think it's worth buying charge at shops, or do you think just always getting hp would be better? I've been just buying whatever I have money for but I dunno if I'm getting enough benefit to justify the gems

[Ninety-Three]

 

I think one could argue that maintaining gem-highs could also be called a meta game even though it has an actual effect, as could the combo system (above 25 anyway). 

 

Wall-jumping may be minor, but the combo system is so essential. Not just for the mechanical benefits, but because of how it makes you play. The game is a million times more fun when you're trying to go fast and stay airborne, rather than descending meticulously.

 

 

 

It seems like just by surviving long enough you get all the charge you need (depending on playstyle I suppose) -- with that in mind, do you think it's worth buying charge at shops, or do you think just always getting hp would be better? I've been just buying whatever I have money for but I dunno if I'm getting enough benefit to justify the gems

 

I always buy charge (at least in world 1 and 2). If I'm full health, sometimes I even end my combos at 15 because I'd rather get +3 charge from three 15 combos than +2 charge +2 hp for two 25 combos. The way I see it, if I got +100 hp, that would mean +25 max hp, and I'd die in 29 hits, which is a lot. But if I got +100 charge, I'd be able to shoot for forever, so I'd never take damage in the first place. I'd rather build towards tons of charge than tons of HP.

 

[Problem Machine]

Is shooting forever actually that useful, though? Usually if I'm that careless with my shooting I end up doing something I don't want to, like knocking away or destroying something I wanted to bounce on, aggroing an angry skull, or bursting a bubble container too early so the bubbles scatter. Health is guaranteed to be useful, even if the marginal benefit starts to fall away.