Felt presence has a lot of open space in it which was mostly unused. The intention behind it was to give players some space to get used to the new controls, and I also liked that the level encouraged them to push D last. I think this smaller version of the level still accomplishes these things, and it also adds one more narrative benefit. Now, with the player's starting offset, and the length of the middle wall, it's likely they'll push D for the first time in the very top left corner of the level, pushing down the block to their bottom-right. I'm hoping for this anyway, it seems like a decent moment of discovery.
This also makes the ending a little bit more difficult. This ending would actually be impossible with a normal all-straight table, so it does take advantage of the new mechanic slightly. I'm hoping players won't see the ending's difficulty as a dead end and try to undo things.
Felt presence has a lot of open space in it which was mostly unused. The intention behind it was to give players some space to get used to the new controls, and I also liked that the level encouraged them to push D last. I think this smaller version of the level still accomplishes these things, and it also adds one more narrative benefit. Now, with the player's starting offset, and the length of the middle wall, it's likely they'll push D for the first time in the very top left corner of the level, pushing down the block to their bottom-right. I'm hoping for this anyway, it seems like a decent moment of discovery.
This also makes the ending a little bit more difficult. This ending would actually be impossible with a normal all-straight table, so it does take advantage of the new mechanic slightly. I'm hoping players won't see the ending's difficulty as a dead end and try to undo things.