Hook Champ tips

Played way too much Hook Champ last week. It's a racing game disguised as a grappling hook platformer. Made by some friends of mine. So let me tell you how to get decent scores.

The fast way

First off, buy all the equipment upgrades. Then, find all the treasures in the map. A coin is worth two seconds. A jewel is worth ten seconds. If you see a stalactite hanging from the roof, that's a sign that you should go down there. Check out suspicious chimneys with rocket boots.

1. Don't hit the walls - they kill your horizontal speed. Sometimes you can't avoid it though, but those places are mostly long drops and chimneys.
2. Use the shotgun to accelerate - good places for that are at the start of the level and after upwards chimneys. It doesn't help as much in downwards chimneys because you can convert the downward motion to forward motion.
3. Don't hit the floor when swinging, it slows you down.
4. Use the rocket boots instead of trampolines, that way you don't have to go down to touch the trampoline. In multi-rocket jumps, don't wait for your upwards motion to stop before rocketing again.
5. Don't hit the ceiling when swinging, it slows you down.
6. Don't swing too high, it slows you down. In straight corridors, release at around the time the rope points straight down.

When you are breaking through walls, you want to hit between two blocks. If you hit only one block, you'll likely stand up on the block below and that stops your motion.

If you manage to get a coin to follow you, you can use it to see what is fast and what is slow. If the coin catches up to you, you went slow. If you outrun the coin, you're going at a good speed.

Zummm, that is all. Been working on our crazy web app project this week, to the detriment of other projects. Such is life.