Naturally, platforming manipulation was one of the first abilities I began to work on, especially since I was able to easily tie in that mechanic with the game’s story. The first iteration was making platforms appear if inside the radius but that got old really quickly, seeing as all you had to do was hold down a button to make them appear and release to make them disappear.
The second iteration was carrying a cube that warps into a platform when inside a radius, and you’ll use that cube for a lot of platforming. The issue with this was that the player would have to stop and hold down a button inside a radius to see what the cube will warp into (could be a platform, could be a wall, could be nearly anything). If the player was doing an air combo or being launched into the air by something else and was expected to use the cube, there was no way to effectively communicate to the player in time that this cube will warp into what they needed without trial and error, unless they were still, which ruined the momentum of the platforming.
Third iteration was something like The Dweller’s Mask from A Hat In Time, which wasn’t fun (and my least favorite hat in the game btw)
The fourth had promise for puzzles, but not fun, where the player can grab a platform and place it a certain points in the world, and depending on where it’s placed, it’ll change to a fixed size that may or may not fit the player’s platforming needs. Again, a trial and error mechanic…