> Some feedback on the gameplay.

Nice!

 >
 > 1. After transfer to a robot the view direction is reversed so you are
 > looking at the robot you just came from to make it quicker to absorb.
 > But it doesn't reverse the height vector, so if you build a high tower
 > of boulders, its annoying and time consuming to arrow down to view the
 > previous robot.

Yes, it is annoying. But this is part of the gameplay. Consider this: at 
times, what you want from a high-level position on a stack of boulders 
is a fast view on another high spot (such as, obviously, the sentinel). 
Once transferred, you just have to press the arrows or U (do not 
underestimate the importance of a fast u-turn) to get that. If you were 
looking down, it would be a problem.

In fact, absorbing the previous robot is important, but not always 
possible. At times you are just running away as far and fast as you can, 
and leave behind an old shell (and some boulders, also) that you can 
absorb later, or in the form of new trees.

 >
 > 2. It would be nice to see the robot starting position on the rotating
 > level overview.
 > What I find myself doing on a new level is entering a game just to have
 > a look around to determine the staring position,
 > then <Escape> back to the level overview to plan a strategy,

Yes, this is also what I do. In the original game, once the landscape 
was entered, you had no more overview. And the landscape was shown from 
a single frontal perspective, with only the sentinel and sentries 
displayed (no trees). Not to mention a player camera with a much 
narrower angle of view, making it much more difficult to understand 
where things are.


 >
 > 3. The arrow keys are a long way from the other main action keys  R, A,
 > B when my right hand is on the mouse.
 > its might be nice to have S, E, F C are the navigation keys.  Then my
 > hand won't have to keep jumping around the keyboard.

Ah, ok. I will implement a way to remap the keys, just as I did with my 
"Saucers!" game.

 >
 > 4. Even better would be looking around using a right-click-drag.

Hmm. As for points 1, 2, and 5, this is about the gameplay. The Sentinel 
(the original game) is both a fast and a slow game: things do not go 
fast, but time is always short. It is critical that the player is not 
too agile (I have seen other remakes where this is the case), so that he 
feels some pain in moving around, and has to struggle a bit to make 
sense of his position. The landscape must be somewhat overwhelming.

But still, you are right that using the mouse to see around should be 
possible. It was in the original game, in a very (and typical) clunky 
way: by leaving the cursor on one side of the display, the view would 
slowly and incrementally rotate. I will do something akin.

 >
 > 5. A key to look directly at sentinels would be nice.
 > After transferring to a new robot the first thing I want to do is check
 > my visibility to the sentinel.
 > If the transfer was steeply up/down it can be disorientating and time
 > consuming to find the sentinel.

This is definitely intended. Every action from the player has to be 
expensive to some extent. And no help for automatic orientation should 
be provided.


In short, I have attempted to recreate a game that I know well and that 
I played a lot in my youth. I believe I succeeded in the sense that the 
feeling and atmosphere I get from Guardians is very close to what I got 
from The Sentinel (with a different balance of features and performance 
though). So I would say give it a chance and let it grow on you. It is a 
very peculiar game.

Now overall do you enjoy the game, or are those annoying parts actually, 
well, annoying?


Cheers,

Stef