It's very nice.
It's easy to go through most of the levels (I'm in level 9), but not easy to rescue all the robots, so it's well balanced.
The controls are just fine for me.
The colors and sounds are relaxing.
The quick restart of the level is great, it keeps you playing.
Secret passages are always a plus.
Excellent, it's great to hear that I must have done at least something right
Little things I would change :
* Get rid of the mouse cursor while on fullscreen.
Oh, drat. That was something I thought of a while back and then complete forgot to actual implement, thanks very much for the reminder
* Add some minimalistic animations here and there (especially for the robot)
ex :
Yes, I rather fear I hit the limitations of my rather primitive pixel art abilities last time I attempted doing some animation on Jed, was very unhappy with the results I achieved. I'm liking what you've done here a lot though, so I guess it has to be worth giving it another go.
* About jumps : I would check if up is unpressed between two jumps, this made me jump (and die) unwantedly.
I always considered this a matter of taste thing, but it's becoming clear that taste is generally against rather than for jump repeat, so it should at very least not repeat by default. Thanks for confirming it.
* In the icy level 6 : if I fall in the water (with a rescued robot) I am sent back to the platform I was before but the inertia due to ice is not set back to 0 and I keep falling again and again in the water till I die. I would reset the speed to 0.
Ooh, that sounds like a bug. I'd better fix that one then.
An idea with the circle saws : why not add a switch here and there to invert their path, thus giving you the possibility to go somewhere else (find robots in distress).
By the way I thought that level 4 was way more difficult than level 5 (with the "boss").
Hmm, yeah, that could be pretty cool.
Also I would say thank you very much for a linux version of it.
Good job !
Yes, I'm definitely thinking one of those should be on the cards before I consider it finished.
Cool! I really like the foreground/background thing you've got going on there, it's a simple and geniuos mechanic that I can't recall seeing in any other platformer.
Cheers, although I'm not convinced it's quite as original as that (heck, even super mario has had world flipping stuff) I have tried to make it more of a strong mechanic than a little quirky add on. Hopefully it's worked.
I think the robots in the bubbles should be a bit smaller, sometimes they get in the way and also I think it would be somehow more convinsing for them to float in a bubble if they were not so big
As said, some animation here and there would not hurt. I would also add some sprite effects(jetpack). I think the jump felt kind of horrible, it was like he was accelerating up in the air... Propably as far as you can get from a natural path of trajectory. If you feel a sudden interest for mine and others opinions on this you can check out this thread:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=3730.0 But maybe you wanted an extreme retro feel to the physics, and then it's all good
Liked it!
The jump is kind of half and half thing, I kind of wanted a strongly retro feel to the physics (to match everything else), but it's also a result of the very low native resolution (the result of which is 'natural' acceleration can look a bit rubbish). I definitely see where you (and others that have mentioned it) are coming from, and I might even have a bit more of a play and see if I can get anything better out, but in all honesty I doubt it will change. I will definitely note that the style of phyics I've coded here is definitely not what I'd consider to be optimal platformer physics, but they do feel right for this particular game to me.
Just checked this out - it's looking really good, graphics and music are excellent and I love the lofi touches (like the slow scanline by scanline change between the two worlds). You've obviously taken a lot of care to get the details right
I definitely try to be a bit obsessive about details. It doesn't come very naturally to me, but in my experience all the *really* cool games have massive attention to detail, so it's something worth striving for (though I'd definitely far from there yet). It's always fantastic when people notice that sort of thing. I also love it when people say nice things about my art/music/etc. because I tend to consider them my weaker areas, so you've made me very happy
Fraid I have to agree with CraigStern (and I hope this doesn't come across as too negative), but the jumping just doesn't seem right to me. There's a constant force pushing you up when you hold jump rather than an acceleration, which really feels at odds with how it should be. Also, I think there's way too much analogue precision with your jump height. You have to hold up for way longer than you should have to to reach your maximum jump, the your minimum jump is far too low to be useful - the result (for me) is that platforming felt cumbersome and akward. Maybe it is just a matter of taste, as you say, but I really think there's a lot of room for improvement there... Maybe it's worth having another look at?
Not at all, negatives are good
. As above, I might well have another look at this stuff, especially since it's coming round again and again, but I do think the likelyhood is it'll remain mostly unchanged.
Ooh, yes, very good call. Probably wouldn't hurt any to have them both enabled (or I should just add proper control setting into the menu system)
Sparky's discussion on
the feeling of good platform mechanics was pretty interesting reading, I think, though I don't know if you're at a point where that's something that's still up for discussion for you...
It's a significant point. There does seem to be some excellent advice there, but I think I've reached a point at which making changes to the physics would have a major impact on the amount of time I'd have to spend on the game (even minor tweaks would require checking and rechecking all the levels I've got, more major tweaks would require remaking most significantly). This will be no magnum opus whatever I do, so I'm not sure the time outlay would be worth it (especially given I'm not even sure I want to change the feel anyway).
Again, just want to say that this is looking really good
I really liked the level design and the gameplay twist was really interesting too! Looking forward to the final version!
Thanks very much :D
... and thanks to all of you that have commented so far, I've starting to get a decent list of things to fix/think about/work on to make the game better, which is exactly what I'm after. This is invaluable stuff, cheers!
Developer
