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[Canned Turkey]

What's a planet toad?

Planet toad is a planet hopping game. That's it. The main idea is that you hop from planet too planet while they rotate, and use them as lilypads to get to your goal. All the puzzles and challenge will be based off of this easy to understand and hard to master concept. Planet toad is planned to feature 42(maybe less) levels of toad hopp'n goodness, really snazzy visuals, and swag'n music. Hope you like what's here so far, the game is in it's early stages right now, so don't worry if it looks a bit empty.

Who's do'n what?

Yours truly: Design, art, and programming.

Robert J! Lake: Kick'n music and sage advise.  -->  spellmynamewithabang.com

The amazing people at freesound.org: SFX that are free for me to use!

That's it. Kinda a small project requires kinda a small team.

This looks like a mobile game.
Sort of. The concept translates well to mobile, but it will play nicely on a computer.
CURRENT RELEASE SYSTEMS:
Windows
Android (If I have the money to get it working)
Mac (If I have the money to get it working)
IOS (If I have the money to get it working)

So where's the game man?
Here it is!

GIFs are WIP shots, the game looks better and has more as time goes on, so some GIFs might be weird








THIS GAME IS 100% GETTING FINISHED
IF I DON'T FINISH THIS GAME FEEL FREE TO BAN ME OR SOMETHING

[rj]

have a MUSIC PREVIEW: click!

[tok]

LOOKS GOOD ID PLAY IT

[Canned Turkey]

Working on planets.
They now have slightly interesting art, random colorization, and actually rotate in sync with the toad.
Also I made the level select screen.

[Green Gospod]

What happens when you miss the Start Game/Level Select in the menu and in the stage?

Also dude wut why does your profile pic change every page. It confuses me.

[Canned Turkey]

In the levels you fly off into space, and after a bit it resets you.
In the menu, when you go out of the view it resets you.

signavatar.com

[Canned Turkey]

Bump'n, but whatever.

Alright, I have all the codebase and things running smoothly, but I really can't get a finger on how I want the "puzzles" to work. I know I want "puzzles" in the same style as, say, lego games. Where it's a clear goal with a series of steps to get there, and all you have to do is figure out the steps. Quotations because I don't want it to require a whole lot of thinking, I want it to be more of an action thing. The wall I keep hitting is that I can't figure out a way for the "puzzles" to work per se. Should there be enemies? Should there be timers? Should you be able to die? I don't know. Do you guys have any ideas? I'm not asking you to design my game, but I would like some help getting the creative ball rolling. Being the programmer and the designer is hard, once you switch to one mindset to get some work done, you have a hard time going back to the other.

[Canned Turkey]

Working on:
Stars (Which looks awesome if I do say so myself)
Shadows
Finished level select screen, which goes all the way to 25

What's next:
Level design
Challenge design
More art/colors for the planets to choose from

I'm surprised at how easy this game is to work on.
Actually having fun programming.  

Also in the GIF it looks weird because I select level 3, but there is no level 3 so it just takes me back to the main menu.

[Green Gospod]

Yeah of course it's easy to work on, you just had to implement jumping and planet spinning and you're basically done. Now it's all about level design. I have played at least four such games in the past on newgrounds/konkregate/ludum dare/armor games, where the mechanic is spinning planets and you jumping from them. Like you said, how to do puzzles and where to take this next? There are thousands of different ways you can take it. Add enemies, powerups, different surfaces, or don't and add time limit, score modifiers based on where you land or what you pickup, etc. One of such games I played was a vertical climber, where you had to move vertically up through many such planets as fast as possible, while trying to hit score pickups on the way, and not dieing by hitting an obstacle or flying off. I wonder where are you gonna take this and how are you gonna make it interesting. Good luck! 

[Canned Turkey]

Thank you for your kind words, i'll definitely take that to heart.
You said you've played games like this before?
Can you remember what they were?

[Canned Turkey]

Added wormholes to make level transitions a tad nicer.

[oldblood]

My initial reaction to the menu system was negative as I felt it would irritate players (potential to mess up doing something as simple as selecting a menu option) but it's growing on me and is certainly unique/reinforcing the mechanic.

[Canned Turkey]

Yeah I made the menu play like the game so a beginning player could quickly catch on to how the jumping worked before there was any repercussions.

[oldblood]

Just curious, what happens if you're in the menu and jump towards something wrong? e.g. if I jump at the Logo or the Copyright notice? Hard to tell in the GIF but it appears to just reset you back to the planet. That correct?

[jesseb]

small note, but I read the title graphic as PLANET TORD

[Canned Turkey]

Just curious, what happens if you're in the menu and jump towards something wrong? e.g. if I jump at the Logo or the Copyright notice? Hard to tell in the GIF but it appears to just reset you back to the planet. That correct?

Yes.

small note, but I read the title graphic as PLANET TORD

Changing that now.

[Glyph]

What if you jump straight into a vortex?

These are the things that keep me awake at night.

[Canned Turkey]

It'll be the same as jumping into a star, you'll burn up and the level will restart, I just haven't programmed that yet.

That or you transport into a tesseract and can effect gravity through time.

[Canned Turkey]

Finished level transitions.
At the level select screen the toad just kinda blows up, that's what happens when you press R to restart.
The "explosion" looks a bit weird because I wanted to make something that looks like a ship blowing up, but I didn't want it to be too jarring every time you spawn.

[Canned Turkey]