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[codejoy]

I would like to get some feed back on the game I have been working on (by myself aside from the art) for about a year now.

The game is a retro platformer game probably most closely akin to Mega Man but I hesitate to use that comparison cause megaman series to me is perfection, this is no where near.  It is middle to late alpha stage and character art and some tile and environment art and animation is final.  Some is clearly not.  Most my time was spent tweaking the feeling of the moving shooting and jet packing and then of course in true fashion tearing old systems down and rebuilding them better ha.

Some nerd tech stuff:  Built in Unity, using the Corgi Engine.  Was using the standard physics 2d engine but was too floaty so I went with corgi.  The game feels better but to me lost some of the personal charm.  I am building this game cause I have always wanted to make a platformer and was inspired by a tutorial on Lynda.com.  The roots are obvious if you ever did that tutorial (some of the art is still in it).  Really the main reason to start this game too is to finally FINISH a game, and really wanted to see this sucker on PS Vita (till the PSN Mobile unity support was killed) and was working to get it up and running on Ouya as well (android included).



I am looking for general feed back.  I know there are bugs, menus don't work.  The are not consistent in some cases and the text will not work right in the web build (it is cut off in some instances).  Some of the level design is meh and needs updating and I am working on all that.  I have some serious questions on:

• There are currently in this demo two different kinds of weapons, picking them up is what swaps your weapons out.  I am debating to give the player all the weapons at the start and make them swappable.  The idea is to be a bit  puzzle oriented platformer but also action oriented too.
• Is the jetpacking too technical?  These levels are not final and meant to demonstrate so the flow and build up is not indicative of final design.
• Any other ideas?  I am not a strong level designer but have been reading a ton of books.  There are many more mechanics planned but I have yet to code them up and put them in too.  Mostly with pushing (or better pushing) puzzles and various other puzzles.
• Does the game feel good?  Does it leave you sort of wanting to do more, explore more planets?
• I have been playing a heck of a lot of retro games, and I notice one thing my game just lacks is decent power ups.  Aside from weapons (which might goto swappable) and the jetpacks, there are point pickups but that is it, just points even in mario coins have a secondary thing of providing a life.  Since there are no lives in this game, only other pickup I can think of is health maybe?!

The design of a game gets interesting when you are funding your own art assets (as I have zero art skills). Makes you choosey about which things you build.  Also when you have limited dev time (work two other jobs) you get choosey even about which things to prototype.



I have planned and mostly working 3 types of weapons 4 if you include the normal shot:
Ice (Freeze enemies, probably able to push them at some point)
Fire (Burn past obstacles and clear new paths fires like Heat man in Mega man 2
Electricity - Will light new areas, and energize platforms etc.  

I have three jetpacks planned:
Normal one, as in current demo
A dash one:  You can jump/fall and then dash to the right or just run really fast to get past speed requiring obstacles or to bash through certain walls.
Under water jetpack:  This one works on underwater levels (ever game needs them yes?)  but will also allow to be charged out of water and let you aim and release like angry birds bouncing around and killing things in your wake.   Also probably used for puzzles...this jetpack as a whole I am still designing.

The planned level count is 24 about.  Six planets with different themes and tile sets and about 4 levels each with mini themes in the level.  Though again self funding, this might be reduced drastically.  As most the mechanics are in the design is now up to level design and enemy design I don't feel are my strong suites, but studying hard to make something interesting.

So screen shots.  Links to web and dropbox download after screenies.







Controls D shoots, space jumps.  Gamepad, A shoots, Rbumper shoots (fixing that too)


Weblink:(Game levels do not save!)
(needs firefox its the old unity plugin, chrome might work, roll a dice)

http://www.viciousbytes.com/SuperJet/SuperJetWeb.html

Dropbox:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jreczqqlahxcqw5/SuperJetPack9_14_2015.zip?dl=0

[KaiTheSpy]

The controls and the mechanics are pretty tight but I feel like the art lacks coherency.

[codejoy]

yah not all is final.  The second screen shot is closer to what is representative. The tiles on the cave will be changed, the UI stuff changed..the game effects totally will be changed (more pixel) all filler for now.  Stuff that is final:


Space ship tiles
Main Player
Jetpacks (there are two not shown)
Weapon pickups, weapon equipped and the shots from it.
The coin pickup thingies...
The checkpoint station.

All by the same artist


The saws lasers, dust effect, expldoe effects, etc are all just fillers UI too.

Thanks for giving it a whirl, mechanics tight is a good thing.   Was it fun at all to play?

[Shigatosis]

From the first couple of levels that I played, the game is pretty fun overall! That being said, I do have a few minor complaints:

• The buzz saws you have to fly through in the first level was a huge difficulty spike for me.
• Some text (notably the level selection screen and the dialogue with Toad) is cut off by the edge of the screen or other objects. Might have something to do with the resolution at which I was running the game?
• I feel like the gun would benefit from a firing animation, such as a muzzle flash, small amount of recoil, etc.
• The little thingies (atoms?) that you pick up disappear very quickly

Looking forward to seeing how this game progresses over time!

[codejoy]

Thanks for the response.

The difficulty curve isn't set yet, that flying area should come after much more practice of getting through less lethal obstacles.  Just wanted a good smattering of what the game is about.  The map isn't final, it has to be polished and cleaned up.   Gun firing is a great idea!  I will work on the art for that, in general I want to add an incredible amount of theatrics to the game.
As for the pickups, good call, easy tweak that is where playtesting comes in handy.  Thanks for the feedback!  I am still wrestling with the fact the pickups do nothing but score, they need to have a secondary function and I am thinking of adding a small economy from them to the game for upgrading abilities like fly time, shot power, damage resistance etc...  this way you can (since the map lets you) go back and tackle the previous levels maybe discover new areas with collectibles.  Though adding an Economy seems like a daunting task I might see how it goes, like after every level letting you spend your atoms.

[KaiTheSpy]

Thanks for giving it a whirl, mechanics tight is a good thing.   Was it fun at all to play?

I had fun playing it Sorry I couldn't reply earlier. I've been pretty busy with school...

[hendrikk1]

I like platformer game and this game is cool and fun but my feedback is.

• Is it true that pause menu doesn't work ? even I click or press enter it doesn't work except I press esc again (It means resume but I can quit the game or go to option)
• I saw a big blue robot, is that a boss ? if yes why is it too easy to kill ?
• A top down animated saw in the end of level, that's too hard for the first level
• Press D to shoot and press Z to use jet, I think it's easier for a noob player to guess the input if you change it to left shift, left ctrl, or another familiar input.

That's it, I'm very sorry if I miss something.