# Mission: Game Feel

## Why

Build the instinct to diagnose and fix "this feels bad" in any prototype — to hear a
vague complaint like *"the jump feels floaty"* and know exactly which three numbers to
change. The north star is a 2D action platformer in the Celeste / Hollow Knight
tradition: jumps, dashes, hitstop, impact. There is no ship deadline; the goal is craft
that transfers to whatever gets built later.

## Success looks like

- Playing an unfamiliar prototype and naming, in specific terms, what is wrong with its feel
- Building a 2D character controller in Godot 4 whose jump can be tuned by *designer-facing*
  numbers (height, time to apex) rather than raw gravity constants
- Implementing the forgiveness layer — coyote time, input buffering, corner correction —
  and being able to explain *why each window exists* in terms of human perception
- Layering impact feedback (hitstop, screenshake, squash & stretch, particles, audio) in
  the right order, and knowing when it is too much
- Reading a game's feel by eye: spotting hitstop frames, camera lag, and animation
  anticipation in a video of someone else's game

## Constraints

- **Engine:** Godot 4 (GDScript primary, C# acceptable)
- **Starting point:** Strong programmer, new to game development — no need to teach
  loops, vectors, or software design; do need to teach game-specific craft
- **Cadence:** ~20 minute sessions, frequent. One tangible win per lesson.
- **No project yet** — lessons must be self-contained and runnable as small demos

## Out of scope

- Art pipelines, sprite authoring, animation software
- Level design, world building, narrative
- Shipping, marketing, storefronts, monetisation
- 3D game feel (revisit only if the mission moves)
- Multiplayer, netcode, rollback