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[JoeGP]

Based on the comic and animated series, "Guinea Something Good," you take control of Joe the guinea pig as you parkour your way through courses filled with obstacles to overcome.  Featuring hand drawn, high quality 2D animation and painted backgrounds.

This project is in the beginning stages, with a basic engine built and some of the first few character animations completed.  

Here are the first few character animations for Joe the guinea pig.

Joe Running


Joe Jumping/Landing


Joe Performing a "Vault," the first of many parkour moves


This is the animation that will play if you fail to perform the vault correctly.


Finally, here is a very simple demonstration of the engine completed thus far, with temporary backgrounds to show parallax movement.


Support the development of this game on Patreon and get access to pre-alpha testing.

Follow the development on Steam, IndieDB, Twitter, and Facebook.

[Atavismus]

It looks cut and fun ahahah!
Run Joe, run!
You gained a watcher on indiedb
[FIXED](Mind, it seems there is something wrong with the link of your post)

[JoeGP]

It looks cut and fun ahahah!
Run Joe, run!
(Mind, it seems there is something wrong with the link of your post)

Hey, thanks a lot!

And thanks for the follow! :D

[Julien]

The animations are very convincing

[Jad]

Wow, these animations have great friction. It's amazing. Good snap in those movements.

[Fenrir]

Yep it's really smooth! The idea is to do an infinite runner, or something with more control?

[JoeGP]

Thanks guys!

The idea is to do an infinite runner, or something with more control?

My initial idea is to make an infinite runner type game (one or two buttons), but level-based.  I'll probably make an infinite mode as an extra though, if I can figure it out.  After I complete and release the simple version, I'd love to continue development into a full-scale Metroidvania type game.  But that would be down the road.

[ephoete]

The animations are great but 2d platformers aren't cartoons for all that.
Be careful that the finesse of the animations aren't at the expense of the playability. For instance it takes way too long for the Guinea Pig to stand up again once it collided with the box.

[JoeGP]

New animation completed!  Joe performs a wall run/climb.

[FK in the Coffee]

Loving the sense of flow these movement animations have.  That sort of preservation of momentum is incredibly important in a game about parkour, and you're definitely nailing it so far.  Looking forward to seeing more!

[Jad]

For instance it takes way too long for the Guinea Pig to stand up again once it collided with the box.

This is completely true - it'd be better for gameplay if the collision went directly into the 'crouch' before the hamster shooting himself up.

I find that pauses in agency aren't necessary a big problem as long as the player experiences the character as moving - like in sonic when you rush through pipes in Chemical Plant zone even though you don't control sonic you feel like you're travelling and thus have agency

it's the same here I think, if the collision makes the hamster rebound, build up energy and then go back into the run in the same motion the player will still be immersed in the feeling of 'transition' whereas if you have the player pause too long on the ground it will definitely disturb the flow.

Of course disturbing the flow can be a good motivator to get the player to play well and keep up tempo, but I think for that purpose a simple 'rebound' kind of motion is enough - if the game feel punishes the player too much for mistakes the player will lose motivation

those are some thoughts of mine that spontaneously happened as I started typing. I still think the game looks good and in many ways do a fantastic job of marrying cartoon-style animation with platformy gameplay

[JoeGP]

For instance it takes way too long for the Guinea Pig to stand up again once it collided with the box.

This is completely true - it'd be better for gameplay if the collision went directly into the 'crouch' before the hamster shooting himself up.

I find that pauses in agency aren't necessary a big problem as long as the player experiences the character as moving - like in sonic when you rush through pipes in Chemical Plant zone even though you don't control sonic you feel like you're travelling and thus have agency

it's the same here I think, if the collision makes the hamster rebound, build up energy and then go back into the run in the same motion the player will still be immersed in the feeling of 'transition' whereas if you have the player pause too long on the ground it will definitely disturb the flow.

Of course disturbing the flow can be a good motivator to get the player to play well and keep up tempo, but I think for that purpose a simple 'rebound' kind of motion is enough - if the game feel punishes the player too much for mistakes the player will lose motivation

those are some thoughts of mine that spontaneously happened as I started typing. I still think the game looks good and in many ways do a fantastic job of marrying cartoon-style animation with platformy gameplay

No, yeah, those are good points.  It's definitely something I'll be testing when I actually put these animations into the engine.  Getting it to feel fun and responsive is obviously the most important thing.  I always hated playing those old SNES games where the animations were wonderful but they didn't put any time into the engine.  Huge waste.

[lobstersteve]

  this animations

[Dr. LudoS]

Outstanding animations!

I look forward to see more about this project, it sounds very cool!

[Zerker Commander]

Be careful that the finesse of the animations aren't at the expense of the playability. For instance it takes way too long for the Guinea Pig to stand up again once it collided with the box.

These animations are awesome!

But as previously mentioned, don't let animations get in the way of solid gameplay. Having run into a similar situation awhile back with a project, don't let animations dictate gameplay. It pretty much killed the project because we couldn't marry 'that look' with fun and smooth gameplay. Especially one that's about speed. My experience we ended up speeding up a number of the animations to prevent them from feeling really jarring when they performed, but at the cost of the animation looking good, which leads to more work fixing them.

[JoeGP]

Outstanding animations!

I look forward to see more about this project, it sounds very cool!

Awesome!  Thanks a lot! 

[pikkukatti]

Loving those animations; not only are they really cute they're also really smooth and have a nice feel of weight.

Can't speak much for the gameplay and I have to agree that some of the animations can easily break the flow of the game, but I can't say for sure yet so I'll just have to wait for some gameplay footage

[Ninja Dodo]

Cool animation. Always nice to see fully animated non-pixel 2D stuff in games.

[JoeGP]

Loving those animations; not only are they really cute they're also really smooth and have a nice feel of weight.

Can't speak much for the gameplay and I have to agree that some of the animations can easily break the flow of the game, but I can't say for sure yet so I'll just have to wait for some gameplay footage

Thanks a lot!  Yeah, more gameplay footage will be coming soon.

[Jad]

Be careful that the finesse of the animations aren't at the expense of the playability. For instance it takes way too long for the Guinea Pig to stand up again once it collided with the box.

These animations are awesome!

But as previously mentioned, don't let animations get in the way of solid gameplay. Having run into a similar situation awhile back with a project, don't let animations dictate gameplay. It pretty much killed the project because we couldn't marry 'that look' with fun and smooth gameplay. Especially one that's about speed. My experience we ended up speeding up a number of the animations to prevent them from feeling really jarring when they performed, but at the cost of the animation looking good, which leads to more work fixing them.

I'm inclined to disagree with your wording - in my holistical view of games, animation IS gameplay. Neither dictates the other, or maybe each dictates the other.

What I'm trying to get at is that animation and controls are created in the synthesis between each other. There are some gameplay enhancing movements that you would never get with a colored-box prototype environment.

There's a mile-wide difference between pressing a button and then waiting 1 second for your character-box to interact with an enemy box

and

pressing a button and watching your character sprite start swinging a very heavy axe for 1 second before hitting the enemy sprite

even though those two are the exact same in code they will convey something entirely different to the player

in this way the animator working on a game can't just sit down and draw cool looking movements and then give them to a coder for implementation, and by the same account a coder can't just write behavior for a player hitbox and then simply apply animation to it

and neither the animator nor the coder can then blame the other for the end result not working. game animation needs to be a collaborative process where you work towards a vision of movement together and carefully iterate what should be hand-animated frames and what should be procedural movement.

As I'm writing this I realize this is probably what you meant to begin with, but the way you phrased it is slightly coder-centric and could be interpreted as being dismissive of wanting to achieve "that look" and concluding that "gameplay comes first", which I ultimately agree with - I just wanted to add that as an animator "that look" and "gameplay first" is part of the same ideal. I think that every type of motion has the potential for good gameplay, and I think every type of gameplay has the potential for good motion.

Basically I'm here to sow confusion and dissolve matters. I'm sorry. Thank you for sparking this tirade, it felt good to write out. In the end I am convinced we agree on this and the final text I wrote is more directed out in the air than towards you.

I have no idea why this thread has become the place I come to vent animator ideas, and if JoeGP would like me to take this discussion elsewhere I gladly will.