After nearly a year, a Gravity Runner update! The original version is still where it always was. The new version can be found here:
http://greenmaw.com/webgames/kyun/runner.html
There have been a lot of changes!
For starters, I made the game a little bit easier by reducing the rate at which it speeds up. I also made the play control feel more like it has more impact on gameplay -- speeding up moves you farther to the right, slowing down moves you farther to the left, switching gravity isn't instant and gives you a moment of weightlessness. This doesn't make it directly easier but it makes it feel like you're having more of an influence on it, and that kind of feedback should make it easier to develop your skills.
I changed the scoring system a little, too. Points accumulate faster now (so you should all be beating your old high scores easily, although the high scores saved in your browser will have been inflated to compensate). Speeding up now gives you bonus points and slowing down reduces your point gains -- it was always supposed to work this way, but I wasn't aggressive enough with the bonuses/penalties so it ended up that you would always get the same amount of points per distance covered. Hopefully this should make the game feel more encouraging.
I also put a lot of effort into making the game run more efficiently. Laptop users should notice less battery drain and less CPU heating, and people not using Chrome (which already ran the game well) should see everything moving more smoothly and the controls feeling more responsive.
More obviously, the game looks totally different now! I decided to give it a bit of a Trisphee flair since you guys are currently my biggest audience. I came up with a new concept for the visuals, and Illusion provided me with some sprites to use. I'm particularly happy with the animations. They make the movement more visible and gives the character (now Kyun) a sense of interaction with the world. He squishes when he hits the ground! He stretches himself out a little to start a jump! He pushes himself to go faster! And flipping gravity now isn't nearly invisible, so you can have a better feeling for what's going on.
A minor negative: Touchscreen and WiiU support haven't been updated. They probably don't work. I'll get to it once I get the rest of what I'm working on taken care of so I only have to make those changes once.
|