Making Speed Runs Possible

Good day, all!

Modern platformers nowadays involve more than simply holding down a button to move forward, then pressing another button to jump. There exists the double jump, the dash, the air dash, the wall run/jump, the ground pound...the list goes on. It is always intriguing to see players pull off different 'combos' to get from point A to point B, be it to test their own skills, or to get to a place as quickly as possible.

I've been working on this game for a while now and realize that the character moves...slow. Real slow. Some of the ways I'm trying to remedy this are:

1) Have a roll/dodge implemented, which can be combo-ed into a roll-jump that propels the character forwards, covering a greater horizontal air distance. The downside to this is that this results in a very linear movement that players have almost no control over. The moment a roll-jump is executed in a certain direction, that's the direction that the character will continue moving until the action ends.

2) As shown in the embedded video, a 'sprint' (which involves the mouse riding a frog!). When the sprint button is held down, the mount is activated, and speed and jump are increased. However, during sprinting, most actions like attacking are not possible, nor is climbing poles, but wall jumps are still possible. As of now, there is no restriction to how long the player is able to sprint, but that might change.

The way the sprint works is, once the button is released, the character immediately returns to 'normal' mode. I think this adds a little bit of fluidity to the movement, and the added speed is definitely something I'm sure players will appreciate. In fact, I'm thinking to remove the roll/dodge altogether and simply use the sprint in place of it. Or...I could just leave them both in to give players access to a bigger moveset.

These are the only 2 moves players can mess around with if the character only has the spork equipped. Equipping the bazooka will enable double jumping, the vacuum enables air-dashing, and the hammer enables ground pounds. Not sure how well all these moves synergize with one another, but I'll leave that up to the testers when t he time comes and listen to feedback.