The sound guys are geniuses, and the audio in the game will involve visual manifestations in tune with the rhythm. A lot of work went into making sure the audio changes depending on what the player does.
I am the combat programmer who was recently put in charge of the combat design. Mushroom Men is still going to have strong platforming and exploration elements, but naturally, I'm very excited about the shape of the combat design in the game.
Providing good feedback mechanisms for attack reactions as well as tangible connections between cause and effect on AI actions is core to the design of the AI's interaction with the combat system.
In addition to the macro design aspect of supplying orthogonal combat tools, there are also going to be a lot of subtle micro-design nuances to Mushroom Men's combat system:
This is an excellent old article on attack cancel mechanics:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/ne...php?story=17243
A Partial Cancel allows an animation to be canceled at specific windows during the animation. The two most common conditions for a Partial Cancel are Pre-hit frame (the animation can be canceled any time before the first frame of the hit) and post-hit frame (the animation can be canceled any time after the last frame of the hit).
A Complete Cancel allows an animation to be canceled at any time during the animation. I'm generalizing, and there are special nuances that exist in certain games, but for the most part, these conditions are used 99 percent of the time.
The "Buffer" method stores and executes the users command when the cancel window is valid. The "Buffer" method, in a well-designed game, can be canceled itself with other commands before the cancel window is valid, to ensure the highest quality of responsiveness.
The "Instant" method accepts and executes the users command on the frame of input when the cancel window is valid. The "Instant" method allows the player to delay the timing, which adds to the overall responsiveness of the game.
Mushroom Men uses partial attack-cancels with the buffered method for blocks and instant method for rolls. I also made it so that you can cancel any injury animation into roll... similar to the way that Soul Calibur allows you to land on your feet after being knocked down in certain ways.
A lot of work went into the timing aspects of the animations as mapped to user input. If you attack during an attack animation before the next combo is possible, it will buffer that input and remember that you intended to chain the attack, if you delay your attack input until after the previous attack is over, then you have a window upon which your attack input results in instant transition to the next attack animation. This ability to delay attack chains allows you to control the rhythm of the combo however you please.
The core value of the combat system is to avoid making players feel like they are fighting the controller. I believe that sometimes, it is okay to give up damage-per-second consistency and fairness in a single player game if that means empowering the player to feel fast and flexible in a game that fully supports combat intentions. After all is said and done, Mushroom Men is in no way intended to be a hardcore fighting game... it simply incorporates some elements of fighting games in order lend freedom to the player in plausible situations.
I think we're doing fine on the LotCheck stuff. There is a separate team going over the requirements with a fine toothed comb.