I enjoy a good platformer. I especially enjoy a good platformer with a unique gimmick that doesn’t feel like a gimmick! I think I have an idea. It probably feels like a gimmick, though.
All right, so the AMAZING FEATURE here is that instead of relying on jumping or wall jumping or double jumping or – heaven forbid! – triple jumping to get around, I’ve got a different sort of mechanic for extreme air movement. There’s an object that you can knock around via the equivalent of punches or kicks, and at the press of a button, you can propel yourself in that object’s direction. So, for example, Â to get over a large pit of spikes, you might knock the object (which I’ll call a magnet henceforth) across the pit, and then activate the magnet to pull yourself over the gap too large to jump with your weak legs. If you fail to knock the object far enough on the first try, you could theoretically propel yourself in its direction and knock it around in midair, allowing you to adjust your air movement on the fly. It sounds sort of complicated, but is pretty simple in practice!
Well, anyway, here’s what I’ve got so far! The controls pretty straightforward. Arrow Keys to walk around. Z to jump. X+Arrow Keys to “punch”, knocking the object in any of eight directions. Z while in air to activate the magnet. What I have here is just a little playground to show off the idea. I think it works pretty well if you allow some wiggle room for lack of polish!
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