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[Impmaster]

Hey all. It's good to say that I have finally finished my very first game.   It took a year of VERY on and off work, and I learned a lot during the process, mostly how much I hate debugging. Anyways, here are some screenies:






It's a puzzle platformer where you have to use various combinations of crystals to get out of the factory you fell into. Please no overtly harsh criticism, as I know it's not perfect. I would enjoy feedback on how hard the levels are, and the overall design feel.

Anyways, it's made in Java, so you can get it on mac, linux, and windows here.
Mac:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/168626814/That%20Game%20About%20Colors/Mac.zip

Linux:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/168626814/That%20Game%20About%20Colors/Linux.zip

Windows:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/168626814/That%20Game%20About%20Colors/Windows.zip

Please tell me what you think!

[dlan]

quite nice! yeah, the graphics aren't really good, and I didn't like the music either (well, the harmonica ) but the game design make up for it. The idea is simple, but well executed. I like how the solution isn't only about using up the crystals but also about avoiding them. it's quite good for a first finished game.

[Impmaster]

Yay! Yeah, the graphics were made by my bro, cause I'm even worse at those, and the music was made in a rush in garage band. IT GETS SO ANNOYINg.  But thanks!

[char68]

Hey Impmaster! I really like your game! The mechanic is cool, I feel like you explored it well in this game. As was noted you have different ways of re-using it such as purposely wasting some of the ink blobs.

You may not want to hear this, but if you have the will to keep making the game I think you should. The graphics aren't the best, the music isn't all that great, but that's what polish is for. You might want to consider minimalism for the graphics (this is a great article on it: http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~nealen/research/tmgd.pdf). Minimalism is great for those of us that aren't good at art

As for the music there are schools with students that may be willing to do work simply for recognition for exposure/the LOLs.

Overall, it's a really cool idea and I think you should keep pushing it further when you feel you've got the energy to work on it again.

-char68

[Impmaster]

Thanks! Yeah, I was thinking about expanding the game, and polishing it, but I can't think of any more levels currently. I may do so later, if enough people like it.

[Impmaster]

Can anyone else provide feedback?

[Maud'Dib Atreides]

Impmaster, perhaps a YouTube video for the more busy members of this website?:{

[s_l_m]

I can't get it to run, it doesn't give me an error message it just pops up the "run as administrator" thing and I allow it but it never starts. I have also tried compatibility mode but also nothing. If I can get it running I will edit this and leave feedback

[char68]

Thanks! Yeah, I was thinking about expanding the game, and polishing it, but I can't think of any more levels currently. I may do so later, if enough people like it.

Oh, I didn't mean you needed more levels. I meant I think you should continue exploring the complexity of the game. More levels seems like it would just be a time consuming task, but exploring mechanics might even lead into a new type of gameplay where you could even do something crazy awesome like procedural generation of levels.

[VintageCheese]

I liked it; the color mechanic was interesting. Good for your first game, definitely!

What I thought about the mechanics:
The jumping was a bit floaty. On one level, I had to jump on top of a slime that was moving down a slope of platforms, but I kept missing because I misjudged how fast/slow I would fall down. Personally I'd prefer if the character fell a bit faster. I noted also that there were som tight spaces that the character looked like he could fit into but couldn't, so some minor refinement of the collision detection might be in order.

The idea:
Only being able to touch things of your own color is a pretty neat idea for a puzzle platformer. You could definitely make something more of this. Spend some time refining the puzzle design - a lot of the puzzles in the game were really simple or required you to do precision jumping around color orbs or just ignore them altogether (which isn't bad - games are supposed to start off easy after all). Maybe explore other ways to control the color of the character? Like, change color with a button press, or levels where you change color automatically every few seconds or where the color orbs are moving or being shot out of a cannon... Or have the colored areas change their color or position. Think moving color elevators? There's a lot of exploring you can do with the mechanic, I think. 

Presentation:
Graphics weren't the most appealing, but then again I didn't get the feeling that this was a big deal to you when making the game. My advice regarding the graphics is that the character looks a little out of place in the environment. It might help if the rest of the game looked a bit stick-figurey, or like something that someone doodled in a notebook, just like the character. I don't really have a lot to say about music, but I thought it was ok.

Overall, I liked it. If you want to do something more with it, yeah, go for it. Then again, you probably have other game ideas you want to try out, and in that case it might be better not to spend too much time refining this one game when you can learn so much more by trying a lot of new stuff. 

[Impmaster]

@VintageCheese: I feel somehow honored to have someone post their only post for me.

So anyways, haha. I know now that if I ever have a craving to build an ultra successful indie platformer, I have a start over here. But for now, I'll be moving to other projects.