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please mare it so that people can change their key-bindings. fast switching between 'x' and 's' for dash-slides is really awkward.

Heyo, should be P or right click for dash, X was put in on request from a left-hander, I will for sure be adding a full suite of custom control options but it's like... insanely hard for some reason

Amazing game, Is this the full version or is there more to come?

Thank you! This is borderline still a prototype, cause its main purpose is to get feedback so I can improve. 
The final version of the game would be called 'STRATA' and hopefully be more on par with something like Dustforce, Super Meat Boy etc in terms of visual fidelity and polish. Content wise I'm looking to hit about 3-5 hours for a first time casual playthrough, probably some time in 2026 I imagine.

That's in the perfect world where I can pay and artist's salary for 1-2 years, so funding.

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Well gl, I cant wait to see where this goes, I've been loosely following the game for almost a year now, again though, Amazing game, I hope to see this in a few years thriving and doing well!

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Interesting game but I have no idea how to get past the first gap in level 3

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There's a hint if you climb up the skinny wall climb section above to wall-e Eve-looking guys.
If you wouldn't mind, I'm curious about what your emotional response was to getting stuck there, do you feel like you wanna try and overcome it or did you bounce off?

Cheers for playing!

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Could you please release a build for linux

Good point I shall get on that asap

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Don't have build support installed and it's 3am here so might be a ttomorrow job. Edit: Done!

The linux build doesn't seem to work very well for some reason. It could just be my setup, as I am using nixos, but I'm unable to walljump, or access the options menu.

Very weird, I'll try and fix that in the next couple days, thanks for your patience!

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Fellow nixos user here!

It works fine for me using steam-run if you don't mind unfree (according to SO nix-ld should also work but I haven't tried it yet)

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So... how do i play it I/O.  You've kept me from this treasure for long enough. I need this. You know I need this. I'm done asking. I demand to play this video game. I have never heard of this game before

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Fixed now, apologies!

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rad thanks mate

It was pretty fun, but I couldn't beat it because I didn't understand how slide jumping works. I don't even get what sliding does, it seems to make me kind of faster, kind of slower, and for no apparent reason, so at the start of level 3 I just can't make the jump at all. I'm curious to see where this goes though.

It's likely you're releasing slide before pressing jump, try basically never letting go of the slide button and see how that does ya

where is the discord cant find it.

How do you dash in mid air?

Nice concept. Only played a few minutes so far, so can't really judge the movement. The moment in the second level which is actually shown in the screenshot on this pace seems very difficult to clear. 

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i love the chair

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Finally someone found the chair

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Also seems like lots of people don't like the neutral jumping, idk why though because its really not bad at all. 

I tried to play on Mac but couldn't get the download to work. One of the folders on the drive (the Mac demo) was  empty, and the other (Mac version.app) wouldn't open. 

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Game's settings screen's resolution is incorrect despite everything else seeming to be fine. Couldn't play the game due to the fat post processing stack running really poorly. Please fix the settings menu and add a toggle for the unnecessary FX.

Adding that option will be easy so i'll get that done, on my machine the thing that's taking up most of the budget is my crappy code I will not lie

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idk if I'm doing it wrong, but wall jumping feels slow and clunky compared to the rest of the game, and I cannot figure out how to do a weird jump on level 2, I get close, but no matter what I do i cannot get the jump. Are the any videos showing what I could be doing wrong?

you have to dash through the spikes not doube jump, then double jump to get to the end

I completed the demo and I have to say I think with some further polishing of the gameplay that there is something here. I really like how the game makes you pay careful attention to the the structure of the levels and in turn allows for organic discovery of new routes. Funny enough I'm working on a similar genre platformer right now called Clown Meat (not out, but has a steam page) and it was interesting to see some of the overlap in ideas in the design department. A big focus for me when creating levels was to add many different paths that were naturally hidden in the terrain. I found that it similarly created a great deal of replayability, opportunity to improve, and rewarded exploration even for players not super experienced with platformers.

A few critiques I have off the top of my very tired head:
- There is way too much opportunity to soft lock in this game. I understand that there is a button to solve this, but every time I realized that I was stuck it felt like an irritating walk of shame to have to initiate the games fail state for it. I believe most instances of this can be solved with intentional level design. One hole comes to mind that I got stuck in that could have reasonably be replaced with spikes of a bottomless pit. 

- Some of the bottomless pits were really deep. I don't really have much to add to this one I just don't understand why some of them took like 5 seconds to fall down. Created similar frustrations to the soft locks.

- I personally felt that a lot of the vertical movement felt unengaging. The wall jumps give you very little height and the jump pads are just railroading the player in direction they're aimed at. Not the biggest deal if the game is strictly focused on horizontal movement (for the most part), but even in the speedruns that I saw those moments where you have to move vertically seemed to kill the pace a little bit.

Additional things that I liked:
- Sliding and maintaining momentum by hopping felt really clean.

- How you can dash through jump pads without activating them. Made them feel like secret obstacles that were engaging to precisely execute around and helped to distract from ledges that they were nearby (made me feel like I was discovering sneaky routes).

Overall, very cool game and best of luck on your development journey. I know you've given me at least a little bit to reflect about on mine  : - ). At the minimum I wish I had given further consideration to mechanics that allow you to build up very large amounts of momentum.

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Just wanted to say there's already a game named Strata on Steam. It has around 250 reviews there, so doesn't seem like it would be easy to run over

hey all, i've made a video about Strata speedrunning if you want to check it out! honestly it only scratches the surface on all the precise movements that were required to get the world record.
-blitceed

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Really love the game. I know it's just a demo, so I'm giving feedback on what I noticed during my gameplay.

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Just understood how the are supposed to work, so never mind this above, but you should still do something about the wrong way to do them - holding A or D and timing your jumps, just make it impossible to do it that way so people don't waste half an hour like me to try climb walls, because it feels like it just was supposed to be hard to climb and it is possible that way.

There should be some indication you touched the ground, as you don't really know when you can start another dash-slide-jump combo and you often just dash, because you are in the air and cannot slide and it kills your momentum.

When you dash off a platform you are powerless to do anything, I think you could try giving a 1 frame timing (with buffered jump during the dash) to jump even when not being on the ground. #Played some more and I really despise this.

You don't have to touch to wall to fall slower.

Quality of life - You could make the mouse vanish when you touch the keyboard so it isn't visible on the screen as you don't use it and you don't need it.

Probably Bugs:

It doesn't register your position is eligible for a wall jump when you touch the bottom corners of the wall.

When you spam the dash button really fast, sometimes you can enter a strange state in which you are sliding without pressing the slide button, you cannot dash, and you can exit this state by jumping or pressing the slide button and it will un-slide you.

When you try to dash and jump at the same time (probably frame perfect) or with slight delay (2 consecutive frames or something similar) strange round particles start coming off you and you are unable to do anything (jump, dash, slide), you can unstuck yourself by resetting (r), dying or falling of the edge (probably it just needs to register that you touched to ground).

When you try jumping during the dash it will make you unable to slide after you exit the dash animation killing you momentum and destroying the dash-slide-jump combo, as you won't jump because it doesn't buffer your jumps during the dash and you won't slide because of the bug. #This too

Sorry for English btw

ive been playing for about a month now and I totally agree with you- in previous versions, it was a lot easier to neutral up walls, and it felt a lot better, but you could use it to cheese some of the last section, so I/O removed it.

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I saw your video on youtube about how you made 10 hours of gameplay from 30 seconds of content, the video was interesting and got me interested in the game as well. The movement, at least from what i saw in the video looked very similar to celeste (you even mentioned it), that made me even more interested in the game. So i downloaded it and i have found a couple of problems, i understand this is a demo but there are some things here that make me frustrated. First of all, the neutral jump in this game feels very inconsistent, its hard to explain but it feels too "angular" as well. When neutral jumping in celeste you get a smooth and round jump back to the wall, however in this game when you do the neutral jump it looks more like a triangle which feels weird in my opinion. Second, the DSJ feels very smooth and nice to do, it has a lot of wiggle room which i like. But what sets me off about is that you need to be on the ground to do it, i feel like a diagonal dash would help make it feel a bit more consistent. Even letting the player very slightly change the direction of the horizontal dash would make it feel better in my opinion. Third, this is maybe an issue on my skill rather than a problem in the game, but i found the game not registering my inputs. I think its because there isn't enough input buffer room. What i mean is there isn't enough room for me to buffer my input before landing, which would result in me either falling to my death or messing up a DSJ. Fourth, this point is more about the GUI rather than the gameplay but i feel the need to show it anyways. The settings menu is the problem here, its too out of the way. It feels more hidden, maybe adding a button to go to the settings menu in the main menu would help? Also the settings menu itself is a bit annoying to deal with, it needs to be a bit more clear what button is which (One example is when i set an action to the right trigger on my controller, it says joystick button from what i remember. Which doesn't really make sense). I also found the button images don't update? Whenever i set something to a different button it doesn't update to the correct image unless i do it a second time. And that topped off with the weird button names makes it hard to know what keybind is what. The conclusion here is that while i understand this is a demo, there are a lot of things to work on that would improve the feel of the game. I do see a lot of potential in this game, so i hope you continue to work on this!

my ps4 controller doesn't work with the game besides jumping. I can't even move left or right on the controller, and I have beaten an (almost) grandmaster Celeste map on my controller, can't even do an ultra on my keyboard. I find DSJs really hard on keyboard, and have no idea where this fabled "controls menu" is supposed to be. 

Aww rats, sorry to hear that. It should be on one of the settings buttons or accessible with F1 regardless of your input method

That's what I did. I used F1 to open the options, and tried both setups. With the keyboard setup, nothing on the controller worked. With the controller setup, that's when I had the problem of only jump working. I also forgot to mention that O was my jump button, when it should be X. Very unplayable on my ps4 controllers.

thanks for the feedback, I'll work on a fix when I can.

Rebinding everything manually should work, if it doesn't then that's a problem.

How do I rebind manually? 

Yeah the system could be more clear. By selecting one of the ability buttons the game will start listening for inputs. From there, you can press any button or trigger to bind that action to it. One bug is that if a button is bound and you bind a stick or trigger, it will also keep the button binding. You can get around that by also binding an unused button.

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I've been working on a game like this for afew weeks when I saw your youtube video on my home page, when I watched it, I realized... That you are WAY better at this than me, (I've only been using unity for like a month) and that my game still needs a "LITTLE" work. Good Job and awesome game!

Also if you don't mind me asking, How did you get so good at level design, and how in the world did you make the movement so, smooth and soft, but also responsive and fast?

Thanks so much!
Don't worry, after a month all I had was very basic horizontal and vertical movement. This is me more than two years into my journey. 

For level design, I have a few resources for you.
I made a level design video a few days ago but not many people saw it. That's like a good overview of the philosophy and process I use personally.

GMTK's level design videos are all fantastic, highly recommend you watch those. 

Let's Talk Game Design is another great channel. That one has a lot of 2D Platformer-specific stuff. 

As for the movement mechanics, LOTS of trial and error. I probably spent over 300 hours on the movement alone (between implementation and tweaking variables). 
Here's how I do jumping: video

A great overview of 2D movement

GMTK on the theory behind good movement

Good luck!

Thank you for the recommendations and I will definitely check them out, and thanks for making such an awesome game, can't wait to see where this goes!

First, why does the Escape key restart and P for the dash in the keyboard control? I can't exit the game to the main menu...

The learning curve is too steep, you throw me to a large map with the unknown.  The movement is not as satisfying as I think. I feel like I need many hours to master the game but the game doesn't tell that to me.

And after the corner slide, you can't dash? intentional? it bad.

Too many soft locks with force you to restart. 

The boost mechanic as you describe in your yb video is interesting, but I feel like it is required to beat the game somehow. With is okay but feels like this is an advanced mechanic where you aren't required to beat the "game" but are required to beat the "time"

Not as good as I think, I don't feel like spending hours mastering this game, the game doesn't give me some reason to master it. Still a early stage of game dev through could be change.

you can exit to the main menu by pressing F1

also what soft locks are you talking about, I can't think of a single soft lock except for if you fall off the map

if you're talking about ledgeboosts, they're definitely not required to beat the game, and even if they were, they're really easy to do

it's a speedrunning game, of course you're not required to beat the game but instead the time, because that's what speedrunning means

the reason to master it is to beat your PB, or to beat the WR, because it's a speedrunning game

This is a soft lock, and somehow I can't P to dash here :/ 

I know what it means to "Speedrun" the game. But before you Speedrun it, you must know how to play the game. And the game doesn't teach well. An example is speed-solving a Rubik's without knowing how to solve it first 

r to reset lmao

Hey there! Just played through the demo and I'd like to report a small bug (I think) that I found on my playthrough. Judging by how inconsistent it feels, I'd imagine this is a bug. If you change your direction after a wall jump (whilst in the air), you can gain height as it gives you a small boost - very similar to neutral jumping from Celeste. This is cool tech if it's intentional, and if it's not, then it's a cool bug.

It's intentional ;)

Nice; critical backdoor security exception when executing the demo. Even when launching it with all defenders disabled, it makes the windows freak out and insta delete the exe. Might want to ship it as a zipped build on default, or use a different installer maker.

Very frustating initial controller layout using the triggers and an odd choice of buttons for accepting etc, trying to rebind made it all the wrong buttons aswell, not sure if this was just a me issue but sadly its basicly unplayable for me if i cant rebind the keys. Ended up shutting the game down out of frustation to write this in hopes that either its litterally just my setup thats acting funny or maybe if i encountered a bug i could let you know.  Positives that i got from the short time of playing, game feels responsive, effects feel straightforward and give good feedback as to what im doing. ill give a better review if i end up getting things working or if there is a patch.

i dont like leaving negative sound reviews, i love your project and i think you are making awesome progress so id love to be able to try it out propperly in the future <3

Great little game. I discovered it through the YouTube vid I/O made, came because I was curious to try it, and, honestly, the main reason I'm finding myself booting up the game now is  for the music... The soundtrack is phenomenal.

Regarding the gameplay itself, here's my experience in case it is useful for the development (this is my first time posting on itch, I'm assuming this is where i can give feedback, but, if not, I can move this!):

1. Positive: The indirect way the game design teaches you about the mechanics of the game I think was done really well. I picked up the game after watching the first video breaking down the design philosophy behind the game, and I was still surprised at how effective the level design was at teaching the movement mechanics;

2. Negative: That said, there was one mechanic that I really struggled with - it took me a long time to figure out how wall jumping worked exactly... Because of this, I actually found Level Two significantly harder than Level Three. I think the fact that it's something you can do the game introduces effortlessly, I did my first wall jump without giving it a second thought. But it took me a long time to understand that when you first wall jump there's a brief moment where your character sticks to the wall, giving your fingers time to change the inputted direction... I did eventually figure it out with trial and error, but i found it very frustrating. Don't know if anything can be done about it, but wanted to mention it;

3. Bugs: there are also two bugs I ran into. The major one is that my sliding is inconsistent... It doesn't feel like it always registers. I don't know if it's user error, or something to do with my keyboard, or something else... Its just, since this is a game about movement, not being able to control movement smoothly stands out... I can try to capture some video footage if it's helpful. Secondly, as with DarkAtrium, the level selection menu, the settings menu, and also the image with the control buttons at the start of level one all clip outside the edges of my screen (playing on a 2k monitor in case that matters). It honestly doesn't impact the gameplay experience at all, just mentioning it. 

4. Suggestions: lastly, a suggestion: i think it would be really cool, and helpful, if there's a visual way to show the user when the dash has been used up, and when it can be used, like in Celeste. 

Excited to see where this game goes! 

wow, what a fantastic comment to start my work day with.

I'll need to give it a proper read and reply in a little, but for now - thank you so much!

when i opened the settings it looked like this and wont let me leave settings(I have not zoomed in, this is my entire screen)

aw

w rip, f1 again will leave the setings, sorry it's messy on some aspect ratios

Sadly couldn´t try it, because my PC has something against it for some unknowable reason and therefore lags like hell. Still hoping for a Steam Deck port though.

Deleted 200 days ago

It will say that for all itch.io games if you click more it will tell you why (unknown publisher). I still wouldn't run it without a virus scan here is mine. 

Linux support when?

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Soon, latest will be when I have funding but aiming to do it before then, it's on the feature list

Unity has linux support I think, so you should just be able to click export to linux - unless they've changed it since I last used unity.

Hey leo, Is it okay if we can put this game into our bundle? Cheers, D Games

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Hi there, sorry for the slow reply!
That's more than okay with me, thank you.

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My run in level 1

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Awesome! Why not post it on www.speedrun.com/Strata and hop in our discord? https://discord.gg/GudwNuc9

gamepad doesn't work, unfortunately, I wanted to play the game with a gamepad

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Should do on current build, you'll need to go into settings and hit "default controller"
If not, new build will be out very soon.

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It first said it was a problem with Windows Defender, so I temporarily turned it off, now it's saying this,

OS: Windows 11 Beta Insider Build                                                                              Browser: Opera GX                                                                                                                              Version attempted to be installed: 12.3quite goofy isn't it (10.9 works lol)

Hi there!
So I may have updated the game *while* you were downloading it, try 12.4 now!

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Seems like space is slide, and S is Jump? I'm guessing it's just a couple of lines being swapped around accidentally 🙏

os: W10, version: Test Build 12.2 MASSIVE INPUT OVERHAUL.exe



Yep, that's a result of the overhaul. Thanks I'll put it in the description!

I just got the gold medal without dashing or sliding xD.

Oh fantastic!
Allow me to cordially invite you to upload the first run to our '0d0s' category on https://www.speedrun.com/Strata and brag about it to the discord: https://discord.gg/JhhtVxrW

my best time is 16.2 and 2 of my friends got 15... literally how

found a really really easy to pull off triple jump bug

Great find! That's a high priority bug I didn't know about.

That also earns you the second ever "game breaker" role in the discord if you're interested in joining.

https://discord.com/invite/zVvzgBfa

It isn't letting me install through the itchio app? It says

cannot read property 'build' of undefined

and when I tried again I noticed there was a bit that says "Install" and a box that says "Select" to its right but when I click the box it doesn't give me any options to select

very weird, there's a backup download link in the game's description if you want to give that a try

lag

Lmaoo

It's actually screen freeze just stacked but I imagine doing that would tank the frame rate, I'll take a look at it, cheers!

Very fun, current pb is  18.86 after about 5-10 mins of playing. Movement feels nice, just wishing i could rebind controls but that's not something i really expect this early on.

Have a weird bug where the first blue block has turned completely invisible. It still has collision  and behaves like it should but it's just not visible.

(+1)

Of course i post this and then go on a streak down to a 16.56 in the next few attempts

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