Player control

The grappling hook was a trial-and-error process to get the feeling just how I wanted it.
The hook constantly pulls you towards the contact point, but still allows non-vertical input to influence how you swing.
Personally I liked it with an even harder pull, but due to player feedback I lowered this and made the airblast more effective.

Speaking about this airblast you can right click to fly backwards. It makes sense as its... a blast of air, but is also a more fun spin on a classic dash system.
The skill ceiling raises a lot and it feels great to use with the "ski'ing".

Player feedback let me know that falling felt not good. With the faster hook speed it wasn't too bad, but the hook was too hard for some gamers.
This is why I chose for the option to go into a Tribes style Ski-mode. This allows you to frictionlessly glide over the floor, and not only being a way to save a fail but also giving opportunities on cool skillful play.
Also a double jump just for fun!

UI... but not really

One thing I've never liked about speedrunning games is having to track UI. It takes away your attention and is often more of a drag than something appealing and fun.
To fix this I took a page out of the VR-development book. Games like Arizona Sunshine and Half-life: Alyx have always inspired me with intuitive and non HUD UI.
I put my cooldowns in the form of bracelets on the players arm and lit them brightly. This makes it more easily visible to recognise the lights and don't force you to fully look at that side of the screen.

What would I do differently now with more experience under my belt?

1. The biggest thing is I didn't build my project for expandability enough.
I'd make the project with the weapon being inherited from a baseWeapon with something like a Primary and AltFire, perhaps those even split up.
This would allow me to make different grappling hooks, left click movement guns or right click abilities.

2. Add more square textures / clearer textures.
I've had the luck of talking to an inspiring game developer that talked to me about game feel, which I strived for a ton in this project.
He mentioned the amazing fact that (especially in the hub), speed is often related to zoom and texel visibility.
Zoom and rumble is something I did think about but decided not to put in in this basic version, but texel density and having more movement on the walls does indeed make the swinging feel faster.
A car in a desert can look like its going fast if the desert seems to pass by faster.

3. DO NOT USE STARTER CONTENT... what was I thinking... adding so many MBs to my build and using them aswell instead of making some basic alternatives.

Some Screenshots

Try the game!

Itch build download (yes with starter content sadly)
Git page