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[nayon]

Well, the idea for this one comes from an old Knytt Stories story I made called Alone, which was quite well-received. The idea behind it was being punishingly difficult. Now I am trying to make a standalone game using a similar mentality.

I am using Matt Thorson's Grandma platformer engine, and all the graphics are entirely placeholder, the sole reason for me to post this is feedback, and how difficult do people think it is.

There's only two rooms in this build, but it should give an idea as to what I'm talking about. There's no unfair random stuff jumping at you from nowhere, and save points are used pretty regularly.

Controls:

Arrows: move
S: jump/double jump
Down while standing on a save point (those blue crystals): Save

The objective in this build is to be able to touch the 'END' writing in the second room. What do you guys think?

And by the way, it's entirely doable. At some places you just have to ignore the platformer veteran in you and show restraint.



http://www.mediafire.com/file/mugmtymyinz/loneliness_0_0_3.rar

[deathtotheweird]

I liked Jumper 3 and MoneySeize, Meat Boy, and all other difficult platformers. But this is too hard to be fun. But this is just a test level right?

I tried to beat the first room but after dying so many times I just lost the willpower to care to get past it.

[nayon]

Well the target audience for this is more on the lines of people who like syobon action(cat mario), I wanna be the guy, super boink a doink and stuff like that.

Is there a particular 'puzzle' you were specifically annoyed by?

I do want to keep a high level of difficulty, but I believe the frustration factor is ameliorated a lot by the fact that you can respawn instanly and try again.

Maybe I can add an easy mode option where after every single 'puzzle' theres a save point? Would that help?

EDIT:

updated build with a few more rooms, displaying some of the elements I incorporated in the original KS level transcribed to this new engine: http://www.mediafire.com/file/3myoqm3wtmo/loneliness_0_0_2.rar

[deathtotheweird]

Yeah, when I hear the words frustration platformer I tend to mistakenly refer to things such as MoneySeize and the Jumper series. Those are much easier than the ones you mentioned.

I think by not having variable jumping makes it incredibly hard for me as well. That easy mode option seems good for people like me who suck at these games but try to play them anyways 

[nayon]

I dislike variable jumping tbh. When the character always jumps the same height, it is easier to design levels and it is easier for the player to come up with a methodology since you do not need to worry about how high you'll jump.

I'll work on easy mode tomorrow or thursday.

By the way, if you're stuck near the top left corner of the first screen where the single jump isn't enough but the double jump is too much, realize that you don't need to use your second jump at the peak of your first jump. That's all.

[mokesmoe]

Beat it. Difficulty curve seems a bit off, the first room is the hardest. Still pretty good though.
Personally I didn't find it frustrating at all, but I beat IWBTG and didn't find that frustrating at all either, so whatever.

[nayon]

Wel the rooms other than he first were more like showing off general ideas of the game. It will get worse, rest assured.

[nayon]

New build with easy mode. Reorganized the levels. And some actual pixels instead of monocolored blocks. If the textures hurt your eyes, press B to go into vision mode, where you see only relevant stuff.

For debug purposes, in case you just want to skip ahead of one 'puzzle' you can just click anywhere on the screen to teleport there. This is for testing though.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/mugmtymyinz/loneliness_0_0_3.rar

[mokesmoe]

Beat it. Only used 1 easy checkpoint. (the END room form the previous version, bottom left) The last room could have more easy checkpoints, but it's already pretty easy compared to the previous room.
The levels are a bit cramped. You try to fit as much as you can into one screen, which you don't need to do. IWBTG for example only has one savepoint per room on the easiest setting. You have smaller tiles and objects, so you can fit more than that, but you need to spread things out a bit.

[nayon]

That's a nice observation. I'll definitely try to uncramp the rooms. By the way, did you use vision mode or were the textures fine for you? They give me a headache, but then again I am sick right now so everything gives me a headache :D

One other thing to note is, using easy mode disables some spikes near easy save points to prevent insta-dying. This occurs only in two places now, but I might also use it to ease some of the more brutal jumps.

Is there a particular kind of 'puzzle' you found to be interesting? Anything that can be further explored?

Right now I'm gonna work on some powerups to add more variety to the gameplay, and I'll also try to find new ways to torture the players :D

EDIT: Oh, now that you mention it, for some reason, the easy points in the last room have disappeared for some reason. I'll look into that.

I think it was due to some weird versioning issue I had earlier. I fixed it, and on the next update I'll have them back in.

[mokesmoe]

I used the textures. Everything was pretty clear on what it was. I didn't know easy mode removed some spikes, in fact I didn't even know there was an easy mode. I accidentally saved at the first easy point, and I thought all the easy points showed up by default.

For interesting puzzles, the horizontal balls on the top of the second room were neat. Some sort of complicated pattern of moving balls that you have to dodge would be neat. Moving platforms would be cool, too. I'm not sure how easy they are to make, but they were in the jumper games, so they are possible.

[nayon]

I hate game maker and how inconsistent and incapable it is.