Thanks for your responses guys!

I'm going to give the thugs more moves and stuff, so the combat is far from finished. I do agree with you todorus that there should be more warning before the thugs punch. So I've gone ahead and implemented what you suggested. I've also made it so that they don't start punching until after you have got up again, so you'll always have time to escape.

I've also made them a little slower Xenelement, and in the future I'll be adding functionality to have them hit while you're jumping/hanging on a pole and are within their reach.

As for your question todorus, they will not be chasing after you if you go jumping off into the distance. They'll stick to their area. Maybe later I'll have enemies that can chase you acrobatically, but I don't want to get bogged down in that kind of AI...

The way I see it, you play Zelda and metroid, and maybe the first time you visit an area you carefully dispatch all of the enemies, but later, if you're just passing through, you'll ignore them. I'd like that to be possible in this game too!

I'm not using waypoints, because that would add to to the work I'll have to do when designing levels. I've just got a bit of clever geometry at work that let's the thugs know which direction to run in...

As always, thanks a lot for your pointers and criticism!