Caveman vs Cave™ Devlog June, 2022

These are development notes for June, 2022.

Gameplay

After a period of testing and feedback I had to apply some changes to balance the game.

Golem Attack Speed

As I was testing things out I discovered some possible future issues the current enemy attack speed would incur. I'm planning multiple different types of monster types and the current golem type, in its current state, would become more of an annoyance rather than an obstacle to be defeated.

It is difficult to balance a game to avoid the risk of turning off players. And the current attack speed on the golems was just too annoying. I will be slowing down their attack speed, and instead have a different version of the golem as a tougher enemy type once the player progresses deeper into the world!

I believe this will make the game flow better, instead of constantly being blocked by a golem that is impossible to get past due to their constant spam of boulders that eat up the player's attacks.

Player Movement

A discovered an unintended bug or side–effect after changing the player's acceleration in the January patch: https://ahmadwehbe.com/patch-notes/wehbes-endless-platformer-patch-notes-2022-01-16/

The acceleration seems to have been applied not just on ground movement, but also to the player's movement in the air, which is a big no! This ruins the intended player control I am looking for and makes it almost like cheating!

Part of the movement design is to plan your jumps, being able to control yourself mid–air kind of takes away from that. It makes the game feel like "plastic" so to speak, i.e. not tough and sturdy. It's difficult to find the right word, but maybe "too floaty" is the correct term, feel free to correct me.

Anyhow, I changed the acceleration to only apply when the player is on ground, and restored the mid–air acceleration back to it's former setting before the patch in January 2022.