Watching this game makings me nauseous (in a good way).

I only ask that you do the sound effects yourself. 

If your So Long Oregon ox effects are any indicator, this game will be one to listen for.

Neat game with a surprising amount of discovery from each part of the brain to the next; there's just enough context to keep it interesting, and the new gameplay mechanics from area to area make me want to keep searching.  I had fun playing it, and got as far as firing through SOUL and getting the dots to PSI a few times which just scrambled the memory part of the brain, making navigation even harder.  After that I needed to stop, as the visual effects were starting to strain my eyes.

I didn't really know what to expect going to PAX, but having been here a day so far I must say there's a little something for everybody.  The MAGFest concert was fun.  It's almost embarrassing how many DQIX maps I acquired.  All the boss grottos completely annihilate my team.

This is kind of exactly what I needed after playing with the gimped ninja rope in that new Worms game.

It would be a lie if I said this game wasn't directly influenced by the Worms 2 ninja rope.  I'm glad somebody picked up on this!

Feels great when you're swinging and releasing, but sometimes it feels like a crapshoot whether the rope aims up or to an angle. Ditto for which hook the rope attaches to.

I'm going to interpret 'crapshoot' as 'random', in which case I agree entirely.  The up and angle up shots happen when you're holding either up or left/right respectively, which isn't really smart since throughout most of the game you're holding those buttons down all the time.  But I didn't want to take out the ability to do it, so I left in.  I'm open to suggestion on making this more elegant.

As for the hooks, this is certainly the case on easy and medium modes, which have significantly less ice blocks; these modes aren't challenging, but I thought they were a lot of fun to play around on.  Towards the hard mode though the game becomes less about flinging yourself up and more about strategic platforming, which I found sort of interesting.  If you want to see an extreme case of what I mean, go to the difficulty setting and keep pressing right, pass the Hard difficulty and then play a 1P game.

I like the retro graphics filter, though the rope segments really get discontinuous at long lengths.

Thanks!  I have an idea for the rope to make it more fluid which I probably won't do.  This game is done as far as I'm concerned.

I've updated the first post with a link to my source, for those who are into that sort of thing.

An important note about the source; due to the limited space on the XP-Dev the repository contains only the source code and other light weight data.  If you want to build this, you will need the necessary art and libraries.  The first is easy, since you get the art folder whenever you download my game (which you've played by now... RIGHT?); just copy the art folder and paste it into the directory the solution is in.  The libraries are a little more tedious.

For this game I used SDL, SDL_Mixer, snes_ntsc and Box2D.  All the links can be found in the ReadMe and you'll probably need all of them to build the game.  I'm not sure how your Visual Studio will mutilate solution files, and tweaking it to work on arbitrary computers is a black art I dare not try so I leave it as an exercise to the user... or maybe I'm just trying a last ditch attempt to keep people from looking at my code.  Either way, you're on your own!  /me runs into the sunset with arms flailing in the air.

Oh, and if anybody gets builds on other platforms working, let me know so I can give you my highest of fives and then post it on the original post.

I'm not sure if these are bugs or not, but all my Genoms and weeks are reset whenever I go to the field.  Also, at some point (maybe due to either mutating or breeding) waiting for weeks does nothing to my pods.

That music is sooo annoying after a while.

We apologise for the fault in the music. Those responsible have been sacked.

Mouse control would have been nice, but probably wouldn't sit right with the retro/console feel.

You got it; I wanted to stick to the control limitations of the Famicom, not to mention mouse control would have made 2 player mode very uneven.

It did take me a while to realise that the noise at the beginning was supposed to be someone blowing into the cartridge, it sounded more like chalk on a chalkboard.

We apologise again for the fault in the music.  Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked.

Thanks for the all the kind words, everyone.

My solution almost never looked anything like the finished image.

Yeah, I'd like to capture an "ah-ha" moment somewhere before a level ends but I'm not too sure how to.  I started trying out a mode where you had to have all the rocks somewhere near the final position to finish the level, but that became very obnoxious very fast.

Tiny bug: On the second and third 'pastimes' themed levels (the ones you get to by pressing 2) the board is split into two but I can move the nodes freely between the sides.

Oh oops.  I'll have to look into that.  Thanks!

The last level is kind of brutal, though.

Haha yeah the last level is more of a stress test than an actual level.  If you think it's hard now you should try it on my computer with like <10 FPS.

I have never played pachinko, so I wouldn't know where to start. How would I change the controls?

The controls for the game are fine and are actually like some pachinko cabinets.  The thing about pachinko is that it gives a false sense of control when in reality the game is mostly random and entirely hectic.  What keep people playing for are the huge payoffs from rare events that are near impossible to get (like the alien), as well as the usual loud noises and flashing lights. 

If it's easy to tweak and you want to try it, try jacking up the number of points you get for hitting event bumpers, keeping the slot bumpers on the screen but have them reset on a successful combo, and add more event bumpers like the revolver that require multiple hits but upon completion pay out a large amount of points.  I was going to say increase the speed of everything to make the game feel hectic, but playing it again now it actually feels pretty good.

I probably should have mentioned in my reply that I think this game is a hoot the way it is right now, but if you want it to feel like pachinko these changes and the usual formula of particle clusterfuck and sounds (which sounds great now but there needs to be more; especially as an indicator to how many points you're accumulating) are what you need.

A relaxed free-roaming exploration platformer that is also completely merciless and unforgiving?  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this qualifies as "a first of it's kind" as well as a magnificent game, even if the snow and rain particles kill my FPS.

I'm a huge sucker for these multi-character puzzle games.  I like the exotic music and general palette selection.  Too bad I get stuck in the wall and horse way too much for me to enjoy the game.  >:

Art direction is awesome, but my Canadian heritage grants me an affinity towards the beaver.  The explosion particles are particularly satisfying.  Also, the music feels very authentic, though the explosion sound feels weak and gets overused.

This game is an accurate depiction of weekends in the Podunks of Manitoba.

I'm blown away by the game's pixel art.  Everything, from the sprites to the background, looks spectacular.  You clearly put a lot of effort into the detail work.

...like a pachinko machine. Still trying to walk the balance between skill and sheer luck (player won't be able to just shoot rapidly and score dumb points anymore).

You were able to capture Pachinko's randomness, but I feel like the pacing is off.  I'd like to see what the game looked like with the speed and spawn designed towards sheer luck, making it feel more like Pachinko.  Gaining points probably wouldn't have meant much at the end of the day, but it probably would have been a lot of fun to play in the same way Pachinko and (shudder shudder) Peggle are fun.

There wasn't much challenge to playing this game, but I will say the game got my head bobbing to the music towards the end.

The character reminds me of Germi from Metal Slug, especially in how she tips her hat after running or prolonged shooting.

The game suffers from some major design bugs (haha) as previously mentioned, but considering you spent a week to make this game instead of the alloted 5, it doesn't come as too big of a surprise.  I would have liked the shoot button to be anything but shift, as that sometimes triggers keyboard accessibility shortcuts on some operating systems (eg StickyKeys on Windows).

I also get a crash.  To reproduce, just go into Basic Flower Breeding and wait a bit.  Here's what I could print screen with my ninja keyboard skills:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python26\lib\site-packages\cx_Freeze\initscripts\Console.py", line 27, in <module>
  File "bitofgarden.py", line 844, in <module>
  File "bitofgarden.py", line 537, in main
  File "C:\Python26\lib\random.py", line 261, in choice
IndexError: list index out of range

How the heck did you manage to make untangling things so fun? 

Years of tacklebox organizing and Christmas decorating.  Thanks for the positive feedback!

Played it, mighty enjoyable. Takes a while to get used to the momentum, but overall it feels very nice, and looks mighty authentic.

Hey, thanks dude.  I'm glad it's so mighty.

Music is a bit repetitive though.

Yeah, I'm thinking I should maybe start at least trying to make music for my future games; seems like the next logical step in the development process.

[TLDR: http://faqr.org/ryan/games/TangleFlash/latest.htm]

Hello!

TLDR: http://faqr.org/ryan/games/TangleFlash/latest.htm

For the month before the AGbIC compo started (a compo I took place in; you can check out my game if you like) I was making a little Flash title that I thought had potential.  After working on my AGbIC entry and then coming back to it I'm starting to realize the game I was trying to make is more focused on a story I had wrapped around it rather than the game itself.  As such, I wanted to put the game by you guys without too much of the context and get your opinion on it.

The idea behind the game is pretty simple; untangle the nodes each level to finish the level and reveal a picture.  The game isn't meant to be difficult or anything, but it is meant to make you feel like you're (I'm not sure how to describe this another way) 'organizing your thoughts'.

You want to get from this...	...to this.

You can skip between some different levels by pressing 1, 2 and 3.  Pressing 0 brings you to a debug level with a rudimentary level editor; you can play around with this if you want, but it's just for me to test stuff out.

The sort feedback I'm NOT looking for are regarding the difficulty of the game, the lack of sound or art since this is all still very preliminary (though you're free to mention any opinion you may have if you want).  Instead I'd like some answers to the big questions; is the game fun?  Is the game too derivative?  Does the game keep you playing, and if not how can I fix that?  Your feedback will help decide whether I should finish this game off or move on to a different game.

The Game: http://faqr.org/ryan/games/TangleFlash/latest.htm

Thanks!