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[Zillix]

Hey everyone!

I've been working on the ludum dare October challenge:  make a game in 1 month, and make at least $1 off of it.  I'm developing a sequel to my last mini-LD game, with the working title "Endeavor".  It's a game focusing on exploring and collecting powerups, with an emphasis on the exploration and ambiance of the world.  





The game is not finished yet; I plan for some heavy development in the next few days.  Among other things, I still have some graphics to put in, and the endings aren't *quite* done in their implementation.  Regardless, the game should be fully playable.

Controls:

Left/right arrow keys to move
X to jump
Up/Down arrow keys to climb up/down
P to pause the game and open the collection menu
C to advance dialogue

Any kind of feedback would be great. I'm especially interested in hearing about the story, the controls, level design, and just how interesting or fun the game was. Be as critical as possible, since I need to know where it needs improvement! I'd also love to hear any suggestions you have.

If you encounter any bugs, let me know and I'll fix them as soon as possible.  
 
EDIT:
endeavor is out!
Find it on newgrounds:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/555072


Thanks a ton to everyone who checked it out!

-Zillix

[flavio]

A regularly updated build of the game can be found here

First feedback: this link doesn't work.

[flavio]

About the game, I found it very fun. It catched me. It's difficult to say what to improve. One thing is a typo during the intro, there is the word 'is' repeated two times. Another thing is that the writings are too fast for a non-english reader. About the gameplay, really, it's fun. Maybe you could add more challenges with some enemies, but also without them, it's enjoyable. Sorry, this isn't a critical comment, wait for a comment from a person who disliked it.

[Zillix]

I'm glad you liked it!  Thanks for the heads up about the link, by the way, it's fixed now.

I have slowed down the text speed a bit, so hopefully it should be easier to read (you can still advance the dialogue if it's too slow).

Thanks for checking it out!

[Igor Hardy]

Very good music - brings memories of Myst and Zelda.

Nice atmosphere and feel of a fantasy world with great potential for exploration.

The controls are a bit clunky and not always 100% responsive, but the game is nevertheless playable.

So far the exploration is fun - each new region I find is intriguing. I'll tell you more ,if I manage to do some more substantial progress within the game.

EDIT: Currently found parachute - plays very much like knytt so far but with its own atmosphere. The endurance meter is slightly frustrating, but still makes the game more interesting.

[Maunomau]

If you somehow run out of stamina on the light way up you can't reach the land(or grab the ladder) even if you go all the way up to the small island blocking the path.
People actually changing their lines sometimes might be nice.
You can't scale the wall in the left if you don't get jump powerups at the start?
Also during the "neutral" ending you can use teleport, maybe you could change the location it goes to.

[Zillix]

Great feedback! I probably would have missed those endgame bugs (the teleport and light/stamina cases).

The game has been updated to hopefully be more accessible and understandable.  Enjoy!

[kavs]

I haven't had much time with it yet, but I'll +1 to the dialog changes based off what the player has accomplished. One guy early on says 'I wont help you up, runt' or something, so once you manage to get up to him it would be nice to change to even ah 'Oh... well aren't you special?' or something else derogatory, as it feels like everyone dislikes the character. Something along those lines so it isn't always the same.

I noticed that the camera jerks around quite a bit, but I'm not sure if its just the way the camera works of if that is a performance issue. It's the only thing I've noticed that feels rough.

The 'Tutorial' tiles... I didn't quite understand it. I didn't see the 'X' as a helper tile at first, but rather just some out-of-place background art. Maybe make it more of an icon that appears floating in midair or above the player, and is removed as soon as the player accomplishes the goal of jumping, or pressing down?

It took a while for me to understand that I had an endurance bar; it's not a typical way of portraying that. I'm not sure if I mind it or not, but I'm just telling you that it wasn't until I fell off of a ladder that I realized the game had an endurance system, and the flashing bar above my head was showing me how much I had left. :3

Nice work though! I'll try and play through it later and give you more solid feedback.

EDIT: Are there supposed to be enemies? I saw a red slug thing and some flying creature and expected them to hurt me, but they dont.

EDIT: This is really picky, but on the pause menu, it says 'X Collected: x1!'. You don't need the x before the total item collected. Also, maybe don't display the 'highlight over a powerup!' text if the user doesn't actually have any powerups? I got confused and tried to highlight over the mushroom, which didn't do anything.

[Fyren]

I gave it almost two playthroughs.  First time, I got the bad ending, I guess.  Used the light to get up.  I also could have used the lightning to get up, but didn't talk to the guy about it till I had all the gems.  I don't know if you're supposed to climb up on the top left side for another ending, since I can't seem to get up there.  The area with the ropes/ladders would seem to be connected?  I got up there by jumping from high on the screen to the right and repeatedly parachuting.  This is kind of weird if it's the intended path.  If there are eight powerups, I'm missing two on my second playthrough.

But anyway, I found it enjoyable.  It could use either more music or at least more music that stands out.  I really only remember the music in the lava area as being very different.

The only area I didn't like was the cave maze.  It seemed all you could do was guess, so it was irritating.  Especially since there were coins you could get, but only if you spent a lot of time repeatedly running through.

I found the little bit of view slide when you start/stop moving distracting.  It would be better if the screen always stayed centered on the player when you're not near an area edge.  I think this is what kavs meant about the camera jerkiness?

I also had some strange slowdown/lag in the lava area.  Touching the lava slowed the player down momentarily.  If it's intentional, it was really odd.  If not, kind of a strange bug.

On my second playthrough, the pearl wasn't there underwater.  Then later on, the guy who wants the pearl wouldn't talk to me at all.  I could see the nut in the little gap, though.

When you get enough endurance, you can't see your coins anymore, and it'll even go off the sides of the viewable Flash area.

[Kren]

if you improve the graphics this game is such a win  I really loved the atmosphere and the idea of the limited jump :D, so awesome!

[Zillix]

The cliff on the left was incorrectly built, it should have been pretty easy to get to the second screen part of it =P .  Multiple playthroughs without rebooting was also bugged; should work better in the next update.

More music is coming!  But that's not under my control, my friend is making a track for almost every level.

Can anyone think of a better way to make the tutorial easier to understand and more interesting?


@Kren- what graphics would you like to see improved?

I'll patch the game tonight, once I'm done with some further changes.

[Zillix]

New changes are up!  The coins have been replaced with flowers, and are no longer required for anything.  I feel that they fit better into the world of the game, and allow the player to have some more freedom in exploring.  I also think they're prettier 

I've adjusted the camera delay; let me know if it's any better/worse.

Your feedback is always awesome! Thanks!

[Maunomau]

Flowers are neat. It might be more satisfying if they grew instead of shrunk and then you could reverse the effect if you murder someone or something for extra coolness. But on the other hand if the explanation was just changed to something like "flowers are afraid of you"/"flowers don't react well to your kind" or something it could also be neat and question nicely the goodness of main character/heaven. Of course they are quite fine as is.

Second guy you meet could react to you from farther away.(now you need to jump towards him) Also you could reduce the distance it takes for him(and the third guy too I suppose) to say the second line(if it isn't too hard to change such things)

Person who wants pearl seems to be missing "if" from "I'll help in your quest you return it"
Wall NPCs seem to be in wrong order(first guy talks of gloves second about wall)
Guy at the top of volcano says I'm hungry for mushrooms after his normal lines.

Regrabbing ropes without grabbing/landing somewhere else seems impossible.
The new wall is much better. Not being able to get back is a little weird but understandable.(but why the jump powerup is gone?)

You could try increasing the volume of music. Except maybe volcano's since it's the only one I notice after adjusting volume so I can properly hear jump sounds.

Also does it matter if you kill animals or people who talk?(are there even enough animals?) People having dying lines could be nice.

[Pir0_Chi3f]

Your Game is fucking "AWESOME" and the music really sets the tone of it to.

Keep up the good work

[kavs]

The camera feels a bit better; nice.

If you can, I'd try and find a way to trigger the 2nd person's "You'l never get up here" speech as soon as the player rounds that edge, just incase he runs past. If the player doesn't trigger the first conversation peice, the 'Well, aren't you special?' doesn't have any context. This seems to happen with the 3rd NPC, as well. ("Fine, do your own thing.")

Also, if the player stands right by an NPC, it keeps flashing the text as it fades out... seems kind of odd. Maybe have it fade out once, and only redraw if the player leaves and re-approaches the NPC?

This place confuses me too; it feels like I should be able to climb up the snow, but I can't? It isn't very clear to me as to what I can do with this... if it isn't necessary, I'd say remove it.


More feedback later!

[Draknek]

This is really rather lovely. Awesome work!

Nitpicking:

In the cave of respite, I got the gem and walked over to the purple-haired guy next to it. The mysterious off-screen voice and the guy in the cave both started talking together and you couldn't really read them both.

If I can teleport to places from the central area it would be nice to be able to teleport back.

The girl who wants her pearl back shouldn't immediately drop the detector before talking to you.

The detector doesn't seem to do anything.

Pause menu should appear if you press escape.

Most annoying of all: I quit by pressing q and it's partially lost my progress. My collected gems are still in the central area but I've lost all my endurance. The pause screen showed my stuff but said I had collected no gems and no nuts. Then I reloaded the swf and now the pause screen is completely blank again.

[Zillix]

I'm terribly sorry about losing the save files! I've been trying to get the preloader working, and somehow it affected saves. 

I had been thinking about how to let the player teleport back.  Q should be doing that (by quitting and then reloading), except the saves were broken =(

The detector only works if a gem is in the same screen as you.  I could extend its range to multiple screens, but it wouldn't be perfectly accurate since space isn't conserved between levels.

[Igor Hardy]

Finished the game by collecting all the gems and I found it really good. The controls are much tighter now.

Any hints how I can get the other endings? And, most importantly, do I need to start the game from the beginning to reach them?

[Nugsy]

How do you climb the ladder at the beginning? I've been trying for about 10 minutes!

Edit: Nevermind, you need stamina to be able to climb ladders. 

[Zillix]

You will have to start the game from the beginning to get the other endings.  However, as a commenter on another forum noted:

"Just found the happy ending, I was very surprised just how easy it actually was compared to the other ones…couldnt have taken more than 10 minutes."

Since you should already know where most of the powerups are, it should be much quicker the second or third time around, exploring the areas you missed the first time!