PogoGirl Devlog #20: After Demo: Air Charges and Super Stomps

The Go! Go! PogoGirl demo has been out for over a week now, and I want to thank each and every one of you who has given it a shot. I really appreciate it!

I’ve also received a lot of positive and constructive feedback which I’ve taken to heart. So, in this post I wanted to go over some of the changes I’ve implemented based on player feedback!

Air Charging

To charge a bounce, PogoGirl had to be on the ground. Well, not any more! Now you can actually start charging in the air and fly off as soon as you hit the ground. This makes for a lot smoother and faster gameplay, especially when you chain charge jumps to get around!

Stomping

In order to do a stomp you had to press the corresponding button at the peak of your jump. And even though I had already made the timing more lenient, some players still had issues with nailing the timing. That got me thinking…does it make sense to lock the move behind a skill gate in the first place? Not really! So, now you can stomp at any time and go nuts!

The original intention of the stomp was to give players an alternative to gain height. A charge jump is easy to perform but takes a while (well, now it takes less time, see above), and a stomp was meant to be a quicker, but tougher alternative. However, the fact that you could only do a stomp at the apex of your jump actually made the move less useful, as you couldn’t reliably use it to land on enemies or narrow platforms, for example. So, now you can do a stomp at any time!

And to make it even more useful, switches in the game are now chunkier and require stomps to press:

As you can see, it takes three stomps to activate them.

What, that sounds tedious?

Well…good news! If you get the timing just right, you can do a super stomp that will not only ram the switch into the ground with one hit, but also give you the same height as a fully charged super bounce!

This way, everyone can use the stomp, but those willing to learn the timing can do an extra cool stomp. Best of both worlds! I think.

I do have more changes in the works that need further testing, but these are the two big ones that have proven to make the game better. In hindsight, it seems obvious…a game about bouncing and fluid movement is improved when players have more flexible control and quicker moves? Get outta town! But when you’re in the thick of developing a game, it can be really easy to miss things like that.

That’s why it’s important to get feedback from your (potential) playerbase, and that’s why I want to thank you all again for playing the demo and letting me know your thoughts! Your positive feedback has encouraged me to take Go! Go! PogoGirl a step further than I had originally intended.

What that means?

You’ll have to find out…but PogoGirl seems super excited about it, as well she should be!

And one more thing: This Monday (June 14th) I will update the demo to include all the changes mentioned here!

Thank you for reading and stay tuned…big things are coming. Be excellent to each other, and party on!

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