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[UltimateWalrus]

I'm making a new action/platformer game and was just wondering, what do you think of it?






Demo
Devlog

I'm looking for feedback but I'm also trying to get people interested, see I don't have much motivation and the more people are interested, the more likely I am to finish it  

The final game will feature 25 screens with 25 music tracks, and about a dozen bosses. It's currently over halfway complete, and will be released as freeware when it is finished.

Pushing 'N' on the title screen activates Novice Mode, for those who have trouble completing the demo in one life.

In the final version of the game, the plan is to have the player spawn in a random spot in the game world... the game path will loop around so that you can still beat all the bosses no matter where you spawn.

[JMickle]

The final game will feature 25 screens with 25 music tracks

don't do this please, it would be agony. 6 tracks would probably be sufficient. 12 would be like, THE LIMIT.

Game looks fun though, but I'll wait til the full thing, because I'm like that.

[UltimateWalrus]

The final game will feature 25 screens with 25 music tracks

don't do this please, it would be agony. 6 tracks would probably be sufficient. 12 would be like, THE LIMIT.

Game looks fun though, but I'll wait til the full thing, because I'm like that.

Why don't you try out the demo and see how I did the music?  Most of the tracks are very short.  I don't think any of the feedback I've gotten so far has involved the word "agony"...

[increpare]

I like the 1-track-per screen idea, and I think it's sounding okay already, especially if each screen is going to have some good substance to it : )

I found the heart a big pain to kill.  Having to restart back at the beginning after dying on the next screen annoyed me.  

I like the style.

The girder pieces in the middle of the second screen aren't...obviously collideable - it took me a while to realize why I wasn't slipping under the heart when walking off the platform to the upper-right.

Mm..

Anyway, I hope you do manage to pull through with this : )

[UltimateWalrus]

I forgot to mention, pushing N on the title screen gives you seven lives...  would probably be helpful for those who have trouble

[ortoslon]

i want this game finished, i agree with increpare in everything, also the heart changes from harmless to deadly too suddenly, it should blink once before "waking up" or something

EDIT: it isn't visually obvious which screen edges lead to new screen and which are just deadends. boss with four paws becomes invisible when he goes over the wall (black on black)

[Akonyl]

Although "rtfm" is certainly something we probably most all say, you should include some sort of help/options button that is displayed on the title screen for people. Although it was in the README, I thought that the game was entirely too hard until I found out there was a novice mode, which seemed more like a hidden feature than something I was supposed to know about. Generally I don't associate README files with info I actually need to know, so I only read it once I realized the game wasn't telling me a single thing about how the game worked.

I would also suggest adding checkpoints at some areas, so when you die you aren't set all the way back (in novice mode or not). You could then disable these in a harder difficulty, but before I enabled novice mode it was sort of annoying dying to the shots right after the heart and having to do that fight over (which is more tedious than it is hard). Difficulty is good and fun, but having such harsh penalties (restarting the whole game on death) is sorta overboard imo. Even IWBTG saved a lot, and it was supposed to be ridiculously cheap.

I eventually died in the red room after the 4-legged shooter boss, but I didn't even know how to get out of that since I couldn't jump on the shooter things.

I like the music switching, though. As for the bosses blending into the black background, I was fine with that, because the whole shadows thing was sorta a theme of the game (with the player doing it as well).

[pepprsam]

I haven't finished beating it yet, but I'm liking it so far.  
At first I thought the smiley faces on bosses was way too generic, but I can see that it's a motif, so I'm fine with that.  Actually, I'm liking the style of the game very much.

One thing the other posters mentioned and I agree with is that things should be more obvious.  People want to know things right away.  This would involve making platforms that could be stood upon stand out from the background, as well as making sure the player knows what kills him.  I died at the first boss maybe 3 times before I figured out that when he's green, he kills me.  Maybe giving him a force field or something when he's awake so the player instantly knows to stay away?

Overall, nice demo and I hope you finish it!

Oh, and having one song per room seems to actually work well in your case.

[deathtotheweird]

Well it's pretty clear you are to stay away from you when he's green because you die when you get hit. But it's not clear that you are to attack him when he's black.

Game is really hard though, couldn't even finish it in novice mode without getting really angry.

[AndroidScholar1]

I agree with the checkpoints option.

Another idea to make this game more accessible is by having infinite lives, but having the number of times you die being kept track of and giving different endings based on how many times you die.

Oh, and novice mode shouldn't just give you more lives, but also make the bosses a tad easier, perhaps by slowing their movement or reducing certain things - the heart could have the time it's spent in "deadly mode" be reduced, and the second boss could have the amount of shots it shoots be reduced too.

And for a game like this, I think the physics being realistic for the character's movement isn't really a good option - that room with the spikes on the floor that you have to avoid was hard for me to judge where the character would stop in mid air, and the falling speed meant I couldn't change it's course from hitting the spikes more often than not because I didn't have enough time. Having a constant movement speed left and right is probably the way to go.

[UltimateWalrus]

Thank you all very much for your comments!  A lot of people seem to have issues with Heart Shan (that's his name ), so I'm making him flash before he turns green, as per ortoslon's suggestion.

As far as visual concerns go... I'm sort of sticking to a "bad" game design convention here, in that I care more about how it looks than how accessible it actually is.  I'm a terrible game designer I know. 

There will be no checkpoints, as in the final version, you'll start at a random spawn point in the game world every time you play.  The game world will loop around in a full circuit, so you can still kill all the bosses no matter where you spawn initially.  In this way, the player will gradually gain skill in all of the game's screens, rather than just getting good at the early ones and dying on the later ones.  The point of the game is to "conquer" it, i.e. beating it all in one run, and I kinda feel strongly against "save point" type stuff at this point (unless it was, I dunno, deleted after you die).  The game is meant to be beaten after many tries.

I'm OK with giving a ton of lives to Novice mode.  Maybe it needs like 20 or something.  Novice mode players won't be able to face the final boss anyway 

As for the in-game help... I'd like the title screen to be clear the first time you see it.  But maybe after the first time you die, it'll have a "Press N for novice mode" or maybe even a "Press H for help" option.

Did anyone else have trouble with the player physics?  I wasn't really going for "realistic," and I'm pretty happy with it as it is, but I can tweak the air movement ever so slightly if more people are having problems.

[AndroidScholar1]

I just lost a lot of respect for you for saying this:

I'm sort of sticking to a "bad" game design convention here, in that I care more about how it looks than how accessible it actually is.

When I said "more accessible", I didn't mean to change any of the graphics (besides some of the foreground platforms than sometimes mix with the background and confuse the player). The graphics are fine.

Also, I have a serious problem with the physics. Mainly, if I jump and I've gone too far, I tap the right button and suddenly instead of moving left slower I'm going right - it's harder to control than the normal controls I'm used to in platformers, and players enjoy things they're used to. Don't expect people to just have to get used to bad design choices. Again, a constant horizontal movement rather than a more realistic x axis velocity would sort that problem - take the Megaman games as an example.

I didn't have any trouble with the bosses in particular (except the third boss, who I can't imagine being beaten by someone who's not on Novice Mode), but the platforming sections in between - the physics are a major problem at these points, do both in part to the claustrophobic level design. Object spacing, for example with spikes, could be changed, so that the physics don't have to be. Also, in that small corridor like area right after Heart Shan is annoying with the timing because of this - it seems I have to lose a life in there at the point where you pass the first cannon. I'd time it right, get past the first one, and then before I have a chance to jump I'm hit by the other.

These areas seem to have been made with a slower type of gameplay in mind, so the character's movement is somewhat deceptive at these parts. Slowing the blast's of these cannons down slightly could rectify the problem.

[UltimateWalrus]

@AndroidScholar, I was mostly referring to people who wanted me to change the graphics, like making the girder platforms more apparent, etc.  I don't know if people noticed, but I also make the bullets the same color as part of the background most of the time, which could make them harder to see.  This is what I meant by accessibility.

As far as your concerns with the player movement go, I'll toy around with his air movement a bit and see if I can come up with something a little better.  I'll take a second look at the difficulty as well.

EDIT: I just wanna note that I've beat the demo multiple times without dying... it's certainly not impossible.  Then again I like hard games.  

EDIT: I've doubled the character's air deceleration, and the controls seem a bit tighter now.  Thanks AndroidScholar!

[AndroidScholar1]

Good man, I'll give it another go when you up- it then.

[CPW]

It's a lot easier to perfectly beat something you've created and tested hundreds of times than it is for a first-time player, it doesn't seem like you're keeping that in mind. We don't know the inner workings like you do, and forcing people to learn those intricacies right off the bat will turn people away.

Also, requiring the player to restart everything because of one slip-up is not the only way to get someone to improve at the game. Probably the thing that annoys me most in game design is having to repeat an easy part because I died on a hard part. It's a punishment that's just annoying, not useful in any way. Restarting someone before the hard part they died at doesn't make it insanely easy, it's just less pointless filler and thus more likely to keep the player's attention, especially in a game they didn't pay for and don't feel a huge obligation to finish.

[Jolli]

its prety good.. tho i cant beat it  
and is ther windowed mode

[Sam]

I think adding in the "start on a random screen" feature will help a great deal with frustration experienced from the difficulty.  Death meaning a chance to see something new rather than having to fight the same boss you just beat should go a long way to keep people playing whilst they master the controls and learn how to beat the screens.

That damned first boss.  It's very unintuitive that he moves faster when you're further from him.  I guess the player noticing that is the key to them learning to beat the fight though.  It certainly felt too hard for the second screen of the game (but with random spawning it'll not be.) As has been said, the girder platforms in his room are just plain confusing: There's girders stretched over the length of the room, but only sections of them are solid.  They're placed so that you just touch them when jumping from a platform so your movement is messed up but it isn't clear why.  I didn't seem to need to use the girder platforms to beat the boss, so could they just be made no-collision like the rest of the girder graphic?

I enjoyed the exploration between the bosses.  The screen with the harp and matching music track was particularly nice.

The second boss was much easier to understand, and it felt like I had more control over what I was doing thanks to the larger room.  I got to one hit away from beating him, but didn't try again for fear of fighting the first boss.

[UltimateWalrus]

Hmmmm... I wish I could show you guys what I mean with the random spawning thing.  It'll work, I swear!  The game just has to be 90% finished before I can implement it...

You're right though... the game is way easier for me because I made it.  I'll have to do some intense QA before I release the final version... :\

[CPW]

What I wonder about the random spawning thing is if it might be even more frustrating to not be able to get back to where you failed, and kinda having to memorize a bunch of different start points.

Maybe it could be a choice, you could choose your start area and keep going to the other bosses. That way you could mix it up whatever way you want or keep repeating.

Or maybe just a shuffle mode on the menu screen.