Tried out this character mod because I saw some friends talking about it. Not too bad, but would benefit from a better sense of direction design-wise.
Consider how you want the character to play: slow-paced and methodological, or fast-paced and snappy? Picking a playstyle to design around will help make your character's moveset feel more coherent, which other people seem to feel is lacking.

If you want the character to be fast-paced: make the "timed" actions less prominent. The conduit takes a fair bit of time to finish travelling, and by the time it's done you've already landed on the ground. Increasing the speed of the animation would help the sense of flow as the player can quickly double tap to bounce off it without landing. Additionally, the conduit appears to stick around forever, which is in my opinion unintuitive for this playstyle. During my playthrough there were multiple times where I launched a conduit, forgot about it, and was suddenly yanked backwards when I attempted to launch another one. To remedy this, I feel it would be best to have the conduit automatically disappear or burst when the player is far enough away from it. The charged double jump currently reduces the player's horizontal momentum when fully charged, and while this may be intentionally designed as a trade-off between speed and verticality, it can feel unnatural in certain scenarios. The flow and sense of speed would be improved if the charged double jump preserved the player's momentum.

If you want the character to be slow-paced: certain moves such as the rail grind and wallkick give a sense of speed which is incongruent with other moves. To fix this, the wallkick being more vertical would play into the character's theme of verticality and allow for impressive height to be gained when combined with a charged jump. To be frank, I feel that the rail grind should be removed entirely. It's highly situational and there aren't many opportunities to use it effectively throughout the campaign. The conduit burst having a larger radius would help increase the character's offensive ability, as it's severely lacking outside of water. If you want to go with this gameplay style, then having the conduit stick around forever may actually be the better choice, as it would allow the player to dispatch it and then think about a potential path to take, or use it from a vantage point to gain extra airtime.

In conclusion, the effort and consideration put into this character is visible and appreciated, but it currently stands split between two polar playstyles, and choosing a side would help to make it feel more cohesive. Admittedly, I am more of a fast-paced player myself, which may invalidate my thoughts on how to pull off a slow-paced playstyle, but I hope this review points you in the right direction regardless.
Tempest97 (Krimps)
Tempest97 (Krimps)
thanks for the review! i certainly get what you mean, as it stood out to me during the later stages of testing too. the general direction i went with this character was a playstyle that is objectively slower if played linearly, but takes advantage of the terrain and forces each ability to depend on another to give you a speed advantage through stage shortcuts (e.g.: you can throw a conduit downwards, charge an airstep as you bounce on it and touch a wall to essentially jump-thok, skipping most large chasms), with them being slow and only situationally useful by themselves, like how airstep can't be fully charged from a normal jump, and neither can the conduit.

i've seen people say the moveset is either really game breaking or really underpowered so i'll see what i can do to streamline it in the future, specially in regards to how snap basically only exists to despawn the conduit and make sure you can clear the main campaign, lol. this was a nice review to read!
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overall, this character is just....
average.
i hate to say it, there's so much time and effort put into this, but to me, it just doesn't feel fun to play
the fact that his airstep increases his fall speed makes it nearly impossible to fully charge without using the conduit, and even if you get away with it you still lose so much of your speed
the flow just doesn't exist with the moveset, and the snap is completely unnecessary because it rarely helps you, if anything it's best use is a grounded force stop
the bonus content like civilian gaming did make me enjoy it enough to the point where tempest sneaks his way into a 3-star rating, but overall i just don't enjoy the mod that much
hopefully the moveset flow gets better in following updates, but for now i don't see myself using this that much
Tempest97 (Krimps)
Tempest97 (Krimps)
thanks for the review! i see a lot of people view his moves as too situational, and i believe that's partly my fault for not elaborating on them much. i'll be adding some additional gifs to the post soon, showcasing the more practical uses of his moveset, hopefully that can change your mind! (glad you enjoyed the extras though)
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Tempest's a fun and honestly *challenging* character with a moveset which takes a little while to get used to, but honestly once I did there wasn't a whole lot that could stop me. The Conduit ability has a bit of delay (probably to account for the double-tap), but it's fairly easy to get down and using the conduit for what is effectively a TRIPLE jump became second nature by the time I hit Deep Sea. The charge-jump also made me pay attention to the terrain a lot more than other characters - while it's fairly easy to get a charge directly off the conduit, using the charge normally requires a bit of air between you and the ground. Though to be fair, there aren't that many situations which required the charge-jump that the little mini-jump couldn't solve, admittedly. Also, did you slightly reduce his top speed? Normally I'm able to make it through that one running section in Egg Rock no matter what character, but I ended up having to take the alt path with Tempest.

Boss fights were another thing entirely though - turning into more of a puzzle as you figure out how to use your limited combat abilities to actually deal damage to the boss, especially ones with nonstandard attack patterns like Eggscalibur. Also, expect to spend a few lives on Metal Sonic? Hah! You underestimate my power.

Felt nice to be challenged by a character again. (Also, props for the sneaky ThoriumMod reference.)
Tempest97 (Krimps)
Tempest97 (Krimps)
thank you so much! indeed his top speed is reduced by a couple of units, mainly to avoid covering unreasonable distances with conduit jumps, hah. i'm glad you enjoyed the character (and that you got the thorium reference)!
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In terms of sprites & character design, he isn't half bad, honestly. The moveset leaves quite a bit to be desired though, honestly... The fact that you have to charge up his doublejump to make it actually do much of anything, alongside the fact that the conduit is thrown far slower then your top running speed and also seems to have some amount of input lag (?) makes me more likely to just avoid using his abilities. The snap is also pretty useless as an actual move, only really serving to get rid of the conduit if you fuck it up and throw it in the wrong place, which feels kinda awful to have something that could easily just be replaced by a timer be taking up his grounded spin ability. By far the best part is the rail grind, though it's really not all that useful. It's just kinda fun screwing around with rails in a way no other character can.

Overall, i'd say he really needs some major buffs, and some moveset tweaks before i'd really consider him "fun". The sprites are quite good, and he has a charming little design, but I just don't think he's particularly enjoyable to play as.
Tempest97 (Krimps)
Tempest97 (Krimps)
thanks for the review! i'll certainly be doing some balance tweaks in future patches (mostly regarding how snap is almost useless at the moment, lol). oh and, the startup lag on conduit throw is intentional, since it gives you a time window to tap spin again and throw it downward.
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Amazing mod
i loved to help by testing
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*insert axolotl meme*
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YOOOOO WE GOT RAIL GRINDING. As cool as that is, i would like to list a small complaint. The conduit doesn't quite work as an airborne move, as your momentum is not halted in the air as you throw it. other than that, pretty cool, i like it.
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Welcome to releases!
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