Better platforming with Coyote-Time and Pre-landing Jump detection.

These two tricks are great examples of where a game can be fair and yet not feel fair. By being more generous with the player’s inputs, you can make your game feel far more responsive.

I recently added both of these behaviours to my game, and it instantly felt more fun to play.

Pre-landing jump detection

If the player presses jump just before they land, the game will normally disregard the input because the player is not grounded. This can lead to situations where the player feels they pressed jump at the right time, but the game ignored the input. Detecting a pre-landing jump attempt allows the character to jump the moment the player lands if they tried to jump just before touching the ground.

Coyote-Time jumping.

Named after the fantastic Wile E. Coyote from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, coyote time occurs when the player runs off the edge of a platform and tries to jump a little too late. Similar to the pre-landing jump technique described above, the player feels that they pressed the jump button at the right time but the game ignored the input. Coyote time provides a small window after leaving the platform during which the player can still jump, even though they have technically already walked off the edge.

Also see

These tips and more are covered in this video from the fantastic Jonas Tyroller. His channel offers a lot of great platform-agnostic advice about making games, while documenting his own development journey for his upcoming game Will You Snail, which you can wishlist on Steam right now. Mostly, he is just a really positive and upbeat person who is clearly passionate about games.