next »

[Ehren]

Langman is a combination of hangman and platforming done in a monochrome style. It's only my second game, so feedback is welcome.



Play it here: http://www.kongregate.com/games/vonLeheCreative/langman
Trailer:



Thanks!

[sinoth]

Very cool :D  I enjoyed it.  The difficulty could stand a little more ramping up early on, as the 'neat' levels don't really start until 7 or so.  The controls felt a tad too touchy... I found myself accidentally jumping further than I wanted.  I was a bit disappointed the bomb only destroys 1 block.  I sorta expected an explosion T_T

Still, the concept is surprisingly fun!  Especially in later levels where you have to be careful which letters to try first, and making sure you can still reach certain parts of the stage.

[Falmil]

I liked it overall and thought some of the puzzles were great, especially the challenges in the last level. At the same time, I thought the platforming and hangman mechanics weren't cohesive enough for most of the game. The last level represents the game the best, but it is also a bit too long and tedious.
Also, I think you get too many guesses in the beginning if you're smart enough to guess the most common letters for every word first. I was almost able to go through the alphabet A-Z in order to complete a level.

[ithamore]

I like the look and sound of it. The platforming controls seemed ok when lag wasn't causing the game to skip frames. It made me fall off platforms (sometimes to my death) many times.

[Ehren]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

@sinoth: Balancing difficulty ramp-up for both novice and experienced players is certainly a challenge. I chose to err on the side of the novice, but I can understand how the ramp-up might feel too slow to some players.

@Falmil: You're echoing someone who played the game early on who said they felt like they were playing two different games, or using two different parts of their brain. The last two level were an attempt to unify the word-guessing and physics puzzles, but they are also quite difficult. Maybe I should have broken up the last level into a few smaller pieces...I'll have to think about that.

@ithamore: Arg...a few other people have complained about lag/frame skipping, but I haven't been able to get any info on their hardware/OS/Browser configurations. Any chance you could share that info with me? Also, do you notice similar issues on other Unity games, or just mine?

[tesselode]

This game is kind of fun, but I feel like I'm playing Hangman more than platforming.

[reindeerFlotilla]

Only played the first few levels, so I might be missing a few things here.
 
I think the idea of having your hangman options restricted by what you can reach in a 2d world is interesting. Just in general, I think hangman vs platformer is a neat idea. But, personally for me, platformers are all about discovering things. I think if you worked more of that into the game, it would add alot to it. To be specific, I think if those blocks with the hangman letters were scattered throughout a world that wasn't so flat in the early stages, it'd add alot to the strength of the concept. I think if you maybe added some more things to discover or places to go within each level, it might make it more cohesive. You could perhaps leave the hangman strategy as a sort of secondary mechanic for players who want to do speed runs throughout the game. I think if you added some discovery to the thing it'd alleviate that sense that people are using two parts of their brain while playing it.

[Ehren]

Thanks for the feedback, @tesselode and @reindeerFlotilla. The early levels are really simple, but the later ones get more platformy.

I've uploaded a new version that should have much better performance. (I was able to run it on a laptop from 2003 without any freezing or jitter.) I also added a settings menu that allows you to adjust the quality/framerate.

[Ehren]

Very cool :D  I enjoyed it.  The difficulty could stand a little more ramping up early on, as the 'neat' levels don't really start until 7 or so.  The controls felt a tad too touchy... I found myself accidentally jumping further than I wanted.

I've updated the game to include a difficulty setting (higher difficulty means shorter words; I'm hoping this could make the earlier levels slightly more interesting for advanced players). Regarding the touchy controls, you can now hold down Shift to move more slowly.

I've also made some improvements to the level editor.

Finally, I also put the game back on my site, where you can play it on a virtual Apple II.
http://vonlehecreative.com/langman.html

Let me know what you think of these changes.

[ohgr]

i really enjoyed this game. I don't really have any complaints at all...maybe a little tiny pixelated mini-map to show you a general layout; some of the harder levels require a few resets just to figure out the layout.

but really, not a complaint. great work!

[Aardvajk]

Hey, that's a really cool mashup of ideas. Nice work.

[Jasper Flick]

It's the most entertaining version of hangman I've ever played!

Adding SHIFT-walk was a good idea! It was tough not to overshoot in some cases.

I have trouble distinguishing between blocks and empty space on occasion. It would be a lot easier to see if the background and blocks had a slightly different fill color. Don't know if that could fit into the style though.

There is a visual glitch, where the top edge of cubes appear and disappear depending on where you stand. Sometimes you see then, sometimes you don't. It changes based on your vertical position, so I guess it has to do with those lines being less than a pixel high. Perhaps a slight change in camera distance is all that is needed to get rid of it.

[Ehren]

@ohgr, @Aardvajk, and @Jasper: Glad you liked it!

@Jasper: yes, that visual glitch is related to the angle of the camera. I tried fiddling with the angle to get rid of it early on, but wasn't able to come up with anything that didn't involve a more top-down view.

[SplinterOfChaos]

@Falmil: You're echoing someone who played the game early on who said they felt like they were playing two different games, or using two different parts of their brain. The last two level were an attempt to unify the word-guessing and physics puzzles, but they are also quite difficult. Maybe I should have broken up the last level into a few smaller pieces...I'll have to think about that.

Language and spelling is done by the left hemisphere of the brain. Spacial recognition is done by the right hemisphere. I read a book, A Scanner Darkly, which in parts suggests that the right and left sides of the brain hold two separate, individual consciousnesses that communicate through the center of the brain. (I forget the name of the place.) So, it's plausible to say that your game requires two players, really.

Nothing to say about the game, but it's interesting.

PS: I was ecstatic to see a keyword from my operating systems class in there: "dining philosophers problem".

[Ehren]

Updates:

• Three new levels.
• Progress saving.
• "Reset" and "Game Over" no longer cause you to lose guesses.