Screenshot Saturday WIP, exteriors finally coming together a bit:
Bonus cool points if you know what inspired it
I'm not sure what inspired it, but I really like how it looks! It somehow reminds me of Ultima a bit, except with a legible perspective :-D
I find myself facing a constant tension between wanting to avoid the really "sillier" platforming game conventions -- such as enemies that do some repetition forever (going back and forth) or traps that maintain a constant pattern (like a hazard that keeps shooting in predictable intervals) and all of that kind of stuff -- and wanting to actually utilize some of this stuff and sort of "give in" and allow some more of that platforming heritage into the game.
The problem with keeping things as grounded and serious as possible, avoiding those platforming conventions, is it becomes very hard to come up with enough ideas to keep things going and keep things varied. For that reason, I'm close to adding in some things here and there that I didn't originally think I was going to.
I think I understand/know the feeling, having been through something similar recently. The best advice I could offer is that sometimes conventions/cliches work because they are, well, cliches... and that doesn't mean they are tired, but simply that they *work*, and in part have been recognized/ingrained as a specific yet integral part of the experience. In your case, I understand that you wish to make enemy movement and the like as "un-patterny" as possible, but this to me goes somewhat against what a platformer should do, as it's not simply about reaction against the unpredictable (which is kinda frustrating to me as you don't feel you're learning, simply failing over and over against something new each time), but memorization (think Castlevania 1: all of the things that are flying at you seem random at first, but you eventually figure out their pattern and navigate through that without taking damage, which is way more satisfying as you feel you've overcome something - and as far as platforming goes, I think it's a good example of memorization of both patterns, and player skill, which seem to be more like what you'd like to develop). I don't know the specifics of what you intended not to add, of course, but I'd say not to be afraid of trying out things that have been used already and not to stay in an intellectual stance of doing things differently for the sake of doing things differently. Of course this can work and sometimes add a lot, and be a breakthrough, but sometimes relying on what players know can allow to turn *that* on its head, too.
(In my case it was my conondrum about health bars, and represent damage as health portraits/audience reactions instead, and while I still think the concept as potential as a better realized thing completely focused on that type of feedback, going back to the classic feedback of "hurt"="decrease bar" has some player satisfation and 90's throwback that I didn't account for and which totally fits in my plan. And so in the end, these stay in, and the health portraits are out - memory save, woo!).
So in your case, I'd say to try adding the things you didn't thing you would, even if it's just to test them out, and see if it fits as is/if you can play around with those same conventions to surprise the player differently, using what they expect!
