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[stampede]

Kruunu

http://jukio.comoj.com/kruunu/

Tower climbing game with a pinch of puzzle. Smooth wall jumping, screen wrapping from the sides, enemies to watch out for and levers to open stone doors. All shown with nice pixel graphics and accompanied with rocking chiptune music.

Also there's a hint in the trailer, that it's not all about relaxing tower level.

Out on January 18th 2011, freeware, on Windows.

...Which means you can download it right now from the minisite!
Direct download link

[Tanner]

Woah, I really like how the graphics "pop".

[stampede]

Thanks Tanner!

Game is now released! You can download it from the minisite! 

[JLJac]

Cool! I like the art direction, but am not too fond of the controls. I feel that a jump should be vertical rather than horizontal. The intro screen with the tower of shattered remains suspended in mid-air is really nice, I like the idea a lot.

[jwaap]

I love it. Super smooth gameplay, nice graphics and then the twist. Still need to beat the ***TOP SECRET INFORMATION HERE***

[stampede]

Thanks you guys 

JLJac, what do you mean by horizontal/vertical jumping? Where the character jumps from walls?

[Tadeon]

I played the first part of the Kruunu. Nice and addictive game. I really liked the level design and the graphics are also pretty good. Hyvää työtä!!

[JLJac]

You have a bit too slow gravitational pull compared to the characters running speed according to me, resulting in a flat jumping arc:

I like it the most when during a jump the character will move about as much vertically as horizontally. Too late now though, since you have based your level design on this jump arc. Also, adjustable jump height and some small, unanimated ledge climbing would work wonders for this game if you ask me!

I hope this doesn't look like I'm bashing the game, as I said, I really liked it!

[Pocketninja]

Fantastic level design, and I personally really enjoy the graphics!  You got something great here man!

And oh yea: great muzics 

[Konidias]

Fun, yet frustrating game. Found myself playing it for quite a while, until I got frustrated and feel like I never want to play it again. 

I agree with the above comments about the jump needing to be the same distance horizontally and vertically... Also the wall jump/slide mechanic seems to not be perfect... meaning sometimes I jump against the wall to slide and he just falls, other times I'll jump off the wall and he just falls too (I hear the jump noise but he just drops like a rock)

Somehow I managed to get rather far.. (I think) I got to this certain point I was having trouble with, but after a dozen or so tries, I noticed I literally could not beat that part because the laser thing that comes up from the bottom would get up to me before I could reach the passage...

Like I'm not even saying I wasn't good enough, I'm saying the only time the passage was clear was when the lasers were already going into it... so I think I found a bug.

Overall, fun game though.... Sometimes I found myself confusing the backgrounds as foregrounds and vice versa... maybe a bit more contrast between the two somehow (depth of field blur or lowering contrast more on the BG stuff?)

[Fyren]

I played through this in one sitting.  It ended up taking me about two hours and fifteen minutes total.  I don't agree with any of the criticism here about the jump physics or clarity of graphics, nor did I experience bugs with jumping/walljumping.  What I would say is that I found the difficulty really uneven.  I spent at least an hour and a half on just three sections (though one was the final section).

[JLJac]

!SPOILERS!
So, I haven't finished it yet but am a pretty decent way up the hell tower. Nice twist!
Here's some more, hopefully constructive, critisism. Maybe you don't want to make any changes to this game but in that case those things can maybe be of worth to you in your next project.



There are a few examples of what I would consider fake difficulty. For example you can get killed by left-facing spikes while moving to the left, and the same goes for right, down and up. This is easy to solve, for example:

Code:

on hitLeftFacingSpikes {
if (playerHorizontalVelocity >= 0) {
die
}}

And would make at least me a lot less frustrated! I know we are all used to spikes in games as being instant kill on touch, but let's not make that bad habit live on!

Also, the energy beam seems oddly inconsistent. One time it was very close to me when I reached a checkpoint, and then the game saved it's position so that it always started at that height. This made finishing to the next checkpoint impossible, since I needed to go downwards a little to complete a puzzle. BUT! After several tries the energy beam suddenly didn't start att that altitude, and I was able to finish!? What's up with that, do you save the position of the energy beam or do you not? You should decide something, preferably not saving the position of the energy beam but instead resetting it at each checkpoint... it sucks to get stuck.

I too found the bug mentioned above, where when trying to perform a walljump it makes the jumping sound but the character doesn't jump. I experienced this bug soooooo many times. Actually, when trying to pull off a pixel-perfect walljump the bug literally occured more often than not. What makes it extraordinarily frustarting is that as you hear the sound you know that the game got your input, but didn't act on it. Put the jumping mechanic at the same place in the code as where you play the sound! I don't get why you would separate those in the first place!

A design choice that bothered me was that the character clinged to walls even though I didn't push against the wall. At some places I was in a hurry and needed to move downwards quickly, but the character kept clinging to the walls when I just wanted him to fall freely. It would be nice if he only clinged to walls if I gave the input to do so!

I exeprienced framrate problems in the hell tower, but not in the first tower. Don't know why, might just be my computer.

Graphical thing, I can see a white square flash at the player's position every time I die.




I also liked a lot of things!

The level design is splendid, nice balance between action platforming and small, fast puzzles. I liked the places where you could take a few alternate routes.

I liked the art direction and the overall idea a lot! I once made a somewhat similar game, and find this high-high tower thing fascinating. The main character's design is simple but full of character, and I like the way it's low res with a layer of higher resolution in front of it.

Nice difficulty curve in the first tower, though a bit... spiky, if I may, in the second one. But that's cool, last time I felt so overwhelmed by difficulty was in Jumper 2 and I still kept on trying all the way to the end...

The plot twist is really evil! I like that.

It's good platformer, keep it up! I'm waiting for your next one.

On a side note, you're not one of those two finnish brothers who made a whole bunch of little experimental platformers a few years back, are you?

[mwe]

Great game anyways,but i discovered a small room for improvement.
<spoiler>
When sliding on the wall,
there is a tiny moment you cant wall jump .
comined in hell where you have to wall jump across the spike
it makes the game utlra hard.
http://holland.pk/4Go
as seen here
</spoiler>

[Virtanen]

Awesome game!

The graphics are supersweet. I really like the cutout-look and the main character looks just charming.

Game mechanics are superdupersweet. Eventhough the wrapping around edges is an old idea, it's very well executed and makes it feel new and innovative.

I haven't still beaten but I'm on my way to the top.

[azeo]

I didn't understand why everyone was saying it was so hard. Then I went back and beat it again, only to realize I had only played half 

It's good, I really liked it. Especially the alternating jump sounds

[Breadcultist]

Here's where I got stuck. Can't do so many alternate wall jumps so quickly, my fingers and controller (Sega Saturn-like one) wouldn't let me. Could probably do it with the keyboard... but the keys weren't working.

Just like Super Meat Boy in having extreme platforming difficulty, softened by frequent saves and unlimited lives. Look at the whole picture, guys! These games aren't hard! Luck sometimes wins the day. And the save system supports this. And the level design sometimes seems to... require it? Intentionally?

I think this basic structure is fundamentally flawed. For 'hard' games, anyway. It makes level designers too cruel.

The wraparound thing was put to some nice uses (a maze/puzzle factor).

I switched the game to windowed mode and there were a bunch of horizontal line artefacts. Some off-grid fat pixels. I liked the colours in world 1, and the whole floating-broken-tower aesthetic. World 2 looks a lot less nice. Probably kinda intentional given the theme. But you could compensate with added interesting details.

Controls are fine for the task at hand. Well, except for the part I started this post with, but that may be a hardware shortcoming on my part. The controls are precise enough once learnt. With a touch of momentum. Not perfectly smooth or natural seeming though. The level width limit here restricts the potential here. Perhaps one could go with some interesting high-jumping weirdness... to capture some pure kinetic joy.

Am I a tailless cat?

[umezono]

Downloaded Kruunu by chance in Softpedia, almost didn't nab it because of the description.

"Climb a huge tower and see what's on top in this arcade game" - sounded pretty uninteresting, I'm the sort of dude who needs gripping tales to captivate me. 

But anyway, I checked out the screenshots and gave it a google and I was like "What the hell, I'll dl it."

Turns out my computer is so shitty, it only runs it at like snail-pace speeds. I dunno. These sort of games usually run faster for me.