The tutorial didn't work for me, so I was a little confused as to what I had to do (obviously). Overall you have a really solid base for the platforming, and some cool ideas for making it fresh, I think you should focus on how to communicate these ideas clearly to the user. Would love to see this iterated on though, keep it up!
Thanks for playing and for sharing the vid. It helps me to see a few things I need to change. I shouldn't have gated the tutorial behind a long dialogue sequence. The tutorial explains most of the mechanics you're confused about, including the "game not working" -- I used the unintuitive idea to press "T" to advance dialogue, and didn't mention it anywhere in-game, only on my game's page. That's why it seemed the game got stuck or stopped working. That will be the first thing I fix. Glad you enjoy the controls! You seem to have a pretty good hang of them. I'm thinking of adding coyote time for an extra few frames
You should add a "press T to talk" prompt or something at the start of the intro . Had to go the your game main page to look up to controls to figure it out. Which is fine for a work in progress, but you have a tutorial explaining the rest of it already, so I think that would be all that is missing.
Decided to actually wait 10 min like the Doc said I should. A popup came up that later I learned is indeed to talking. But when I hit T is crashed the game. Error message is below.
Consequently it be nice if there was a way to skip through text faster, it scrolled a bit slow the first time through, but the second time after the crash I just wanted to rush through it. Normally with typewriter text hitting the next line button when its till writing will fill out the whole text box first and then hitting it again will move on to the next line.
Its an autistic problem but maybe add a "reset zoom" button? One it be faster to zoom back in once I zoomed out, but I could also make sure my camera stays at a consistent zoom level when actually playing that way
In the tutorial I asked for the flashing effect to be off. But when I got to the hubworld it was back on. Turned it off again in the options and it was fine afterwards.
Game mechanics wise im not really a puzzle platformer guy, so I cant really give much feedback on that. The repeating the levels but altered from your actions thing is cool though. Knowing the increased difficulty the second time around is my own fault is an interesting feel lol.
Thanks for the feedback. Clever man to wait 10 mins! There is indeed a dialogue easter egg for actually waiting ten minutes, but it seems I F'd up the coding. Cheers for the two bug reports, I'll get those fixed ASAP.
I still have a lot of cleaning up to do in the game mechanics. I threw together the dialogue system the day before the jam started, and it's kind of a mess. I'll be making all the changes you suggested. As for the "reset view" button -- resetting the room via the computer does just that (IIRC). Is this sufficient, or do you think a specific button to reset view would be best?
Ah okay. Didnt realize the computer resets the view. Its wasn't really an issue, just felt like it be nice to have. I think resetting it with the computer is good enough. But maybe when you get around to doing custom keybindings (I didnt check but I assume its not a thing yet) maybe just throw in an optional keybind for zoom reset.
I know you're probably married to the whole generational Evoland thing, having put it in the title and all, but that Vector-y style can absolutely carry a game with a little polish and variety, it's pretty endearing in ways that pixelart isn't.
Pretty fun and responsive. My brain that's full of rickets fell a lot regardless but it was a fun ride.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed. My initial concept was to have the Vector stuff JUST be the tutorial, thinking people would get sick of it quickly, but I put so much work into it that I decided to make it an entire world. You’ve given me a lot to think about. Like you said, I am kind of married to the idea of the Evoland thing, especially as it plays into the story, but I will try to think of how to include more Vectrex-style stuff, or maybe make a spin-off or something.
Played until I beat level 6, and then couldn't figure out how to open levels 7+. The entire time the screen was bigger than my 1080p monitor and I couldn't change it (on windows 7).
Dialog box rapid fire:
Remove the entire pre-title intro text. If you really want that character interaction, spread it out over the game Speed up the title fade in Show [T] somewhere so people know how to foward dialog. Might as well make spacebar, enter, right arrow, down arrow, and F also work as advance dialog since they don't do anything else while looking at dialog Make pressing dailog-advance while the text is slowly appearing skip the text-slowly-appears animation Make the key to open "!" boxes F or X or whatever the use key is, in addition to T
Make the backgrounds visible for the first areas. You almost lost me since the game looked so visually boring
Don't turn on walljumping, hovering, etc half way through a level. When I went to the teleporter, I was relying on the game introducing some way to save me so it was possible to run the level again
When the character dies, reset touched-blocks. If while falling into the void you touch any extra blocks, the optimal strategy is to always reset on the computer, since this isnt done automatically
Make reseting the level on the computer take less button presses.
On the 2nd run through a level, faintly show the removed blocks. This is so if you made the level impossible on your first run, you will know how to fix it.
It seems like there is no acceleration for moving. Just instant velocity for pressing a key. This makes it very difficult to hit 1 wide platforms
Blue-monster introduction seemed skipped. Maybe have their intro be a simpler level
There are some levels with small puzzle elements, but it seems like 90% is just basic platform-to-platform stuff.
Love the feedback, thanks! You have some excellent suggestions and I'm going to be implementing most of them without question.
Not sure why levels 7+ weren't opening. The code is the same for all of the doors and I've never run into or heard of this issue before.
The problem with using "Jump" or "Use" to advance the dialogue is that some dialogue can occur while the player can move, so I'll have to think of a way to make this jive with the rest of the game. Probably the best way is to simply make this type of dialogue run automatically when activated. The dialogue system was thrown together in a couple of days and is a heaping, barely functional mess to be honest, so I hope to be adding some refinements to it.
For resetting the touched blocks on death, later levels while have blocks disappear soon after touching them, so I'd like to keep that aspect of the game consistent at least. Although it does make sense to have the level reset blocks if you haven't reached a checkpoint or finished the first clear yet, now that I think about it. Thanks -- I'll make that fix, too.
Awesome feedback, love to hear these suggestions. You have a good eye for good game design. Looking forward to giving your game a play later today too. 👍
This was a simple, yet fun puzzle platformer! I played through 9 levels (plus tutorial of course), and got the extra collectable on all but 1, 7, and 9. I feel like the wallslide is a bit too fast and the jumping can be slightly imprecise, so I found myself relying on the hover to correct myself a lot. I know someone else had mentioned a problem with their window, and I also wanted to report that I had an issue as well, where it filled up my main monitor, and covered up about half of my other monitor. I'd recommend adding screen resolution options if possible. I also wasn't sure what the Progress option was in the menu - it showed a clock with some different things on it, but I couldn't make heads or tails of what it was for. That all said, it was a fun time! The characters were fun, the premise is interesting, and the level design was really solid for the most part! You introduced new mechanics seamlessly, so every addition felt natural to experience the first time around; it was easily the game's strongest aspect. I hope to see more next Demo Day!
Thanks so much for your feedback and for playing to the end! I think you might be on to something with the wallalide being too fast. I may slow it down a touch. As for the jumping being imprecise, could you explain a bit about what you mean? Walljumps or regular jumps? Apart from walljumps, there isn't much momentum in the game so you should pretty much stop jumping whenever you let go of the move keys.
I'll definitely be adding resolution options soon. It seems like my "perfect camera" option really only works for my monitor 😅
Progress menu will allow you to jump between generations, worlds, and levels when it's fully implemented.
Sorry for being vague mate! I was referring to regular jumps, though the walljumps may be imprecise due to how fast the player is during a walljump. Horizontal movement during jumps, and moving in general, should have at least a few frames of momentum until you reach max speed. Maybe I just had bad coordination today, but making small jumps from one block to the next could lead to me overshooting or undershooting just a tiny bit. I think if you slow the jump and wallslide down a little, and add a little bit of momentum to horizontal movement, your game will feel perfectly fine. I noticed it was made in GMS2, so I would recommend using an Approach script for horizontal speed as a super quick fix.
Thanks again for clearing it up! I was afraid to add too much momentum/too little friction to the game and instead focus on near-immediate starts/stops so that the movements feel more "precise". It seems like a few people mentioned this however as making the game feel just the opposite though -- imprecise. So I'll play around with the different settings and see if I can make something that feels a bit better. Thanks for the script suggestion!
the music is really dope i like the dialog a lot and its very heartwarming but i think the scientist's text bleeps are a lil too harsh
few bugs i ran into it seems like playing the intro and then getting into the tutorial room changes the screen resolution but resetting the room fixes the resolution and also it didnt allow me to go fully full screen since my taskbar was showing
i got filtered by this yellow square i think its too obtuse for a level one until i got the pity rocket boots i do think i had more fun when the platforms didnt have a underside to go over again
also Add a graphic for "T" to advance dialog or when you have the "!" red chat box
overall i like it its like a meatboy/celeste meets qbert
also the rocketboots made it feel like jetpac from dk64/zx spectrum a
Thanks so much for the feedback! I ought to make it more clear -- you're not expected to "clear" every single block in every level. You just need to complete the level twice. I'll have to indicate that better, somehow.
Agreed that scientists beepspeak is too harsh. I'll soften it a bit. And I plan to fix the aspect ratio and resolution problems. I'll def follow your advice and show a "T" graphic for dialogue even though key bindings are temporary -- I'll make that change and re-upload the game when I get home today.
Thanks again for the very specific and helpful feedback!
I got to level 8! I love the concept that your first run through effects the second run through with disappearing blocks. I also love puzzles with multiple solutions, so great job on that. For changes consider allowing every/any button to get you through dialogue and in the level select stage having the 1st level the only accessible level and then after you clear 1st level add blocks that allow you to jump to 2nd level and so on. Jumping is smooth, the hover feels good and the wall jumping is great. Great submission :)
Thanks for the feedback and for playing so much of the game! The key bindings suck for now for aure, but I'll be fixing them for future demos. Glad you enjoyed the movement feel. And gating the levels in the hub world like that is a cool idea, hadn't thought of it. Cheers!
Thanks for playing! I'll be adding key bindings in the future. I'm new to game jams so I thought when I uploaded, the key bindings would be shown here from my game's page, but nope.
The window becoming small when the actual game starts is absolutely unintended. I'll fix it, but I'm a bit of a brainlet when it comes to GameMaker resolution settings, aspect ratios, viewports, GUI sizes, room sizes, and cameras. All of those combine to determine the window size and it's a bit complicated.
I'll look into why the purple thing isn't working. As long as you make it to the door/teleporter after grabbing it without dying, it should register as "got". Cheers!
Hey Aura, thanks for attempting it. To advance text, press "T". It's not the most intuitive system, but I threw it together 2 days before the jam. Key bindings will be in the next update!
Comments
Thanks for playing and for sharing the vid. It helps me to see a few things I need to change. I shouldn't have gated the tutorial behind a long dialogue sequence. The tutorial explains most of the mechanics you're confused about, including the "game not working" -- I used the unintuitive idea to press "T" to advance dialogue, and didn't mention it anywhere in-game, only on my game's page. That's why it seemed the game got stuck or stopped working. That will be the first thing I fix. Glad you enjoy the controls! You seem to have a pretty good hang of them. I'm thinking of adding coyote time for an extra few frames
You should add a "press T to talk" prompt or something at the start of the intro . Had to go the your game main page to look up to controls to figure it out. Which is fine for a work in progress, but you have a tutorial explaining the rest of it already, so I think that would be all that is missing.
Decided to actually wait 10 min like the Doc said I should. A popup came up that later I learned is indeed to talking. But when I hit T is crashed the game. Error message is below.
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object DialogueController:
Variable DialogueController.tutwait(100505, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Object_DialogueController_Step_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_DialogueController_Step_0 (line -1)
Consequently it be nice if there was a way to skip through text faster, it scrolled a bit slow the first time through, but the second time after the crash I just wanted to rush through it. Normally with typewriter text hitting the next line button when its till writing will fill out the whole text box first and then hitting it again will move on to the next line.
Its an autistic problem but maybe add a "reset zoom" button? One it be faster to zoom back in once I zoomed out, but I could also make sure my camera stays at a consistent zoom level when actually playing that way
In the tutorial I asked for the flashing effect to be off. But when I got to the hubworld it was back on. Turned it off again in the options and it was fine afterwards.
Game mechanics wise im not really a puzzle platformer guy, so I cant really give much feedback on that. The repeating the levels but altered from your actions thing is cool though. Knowing the increased difficulty the second time around is my own fault is an interesting feel lol.
Cool game. Good luck with your future progress!
Thanks for the feedback. Clever man to wait 10 mins! There is indeed a dialogue easter egg for actually waiting ten minutes, but it seems I F'd up the coding. Cheers for the two bug reports, I'll get those fixed ASAP.
I still have a lot of cleaning up to do in the game mechanics. I threw together the dialogue system the day before the jam started, and it's kind of a mess. I'll be making all the changes you suggested. As for the "reset view" button -- resetting the room via the computer does just that (IIRC). Is this sufficient, or do you think a specific button to reset view would be best?
Ah okay. Didnt realize the computer resets the view. Its wasn't really an issue, just felt like it be nice to have. I think resetting it with the computer is good enough. But maybe when you get around to doing custom keybindings (I didnt check but I assume its not a thing yet) maybe just throw in an optional keybind for zoom reset.
Great idea, I'll add that to the to-do list.
I know you're probably married to the whole generational Evoland thing, having put it in the title and all, but that Vector-y style can absolutely carry a game with a little polish and variety, it's pretty endearing in ways that pixelart isn't.
Pretty fun and responsive. My brain that's full of rickets fell a lot regardless but it was a fun ride.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed. My initial concept was to have the Vector stuff JUST be the tutorial, thinking people would get sick of it quickly, but I put so much work into it that I decided to make it an entire world. You’ve given me a lot to think about. Like you said, I am kind of married to the idea of the Evoland thing, especially as it plays into the story, but I will try to think of how to include more Vectrex-style stuff, or maybe make a spin-off or something.
Played until I beat level 6, and then couldn't figure out how to open levels 7+. The entire time the screen was bigger than my 1080p monitor and I couldn't change it (on windows 7).
Dialog box rapid fire:
Remove the entire pre-title intro text. If you really want that character interaction, spread it out over the game
Speed up the title fade in
Show [T] somewhere so people know how to foward dialog. Might as well make spacebar, enter, right arrow, down arrow, and F also work as advance dialog since they don't do anything else while looking at dialog
Make pressing dailog-advance while the text is slowly appearing skip the text-slowly-appears animation
Make the key to open "!" boxes F or X or whatever the use key is, in addition to T
Make the backgrounds visible for the first areas. You almost lost me since the game looked so visually boring
Don't turn on walljumping, hovering, etc half way through a level. When I went to the teleporter, I was relying on the game introducing some way to save me so it was possible to run the level again
When the character dies, reset touched-blocks. If while falling into the void you touch any extra blocks, the optimal strategy is to always reset on the computer, since this isnt done automatically
Make reseting the level on the computer take less button presses.
On the 2nd run through a level, faintly show the removed blocks. This is so if you made the level impossible on your first run, you will know how to fix it.
It seems like there is no acceleration for moving. Just instant velocity for pressing a key. This makes it very difficult to hit 1 wide platforms
Blue-monster introduction seemed skipped. Maybe have their intro be a simpler level
There are some levels with small puzzle elements, but it seems like 90% is just basic platform-to-platform stuff.
Love the feedback, thanks! You have some excellent suggestions and I'm going to be implementing most of them without question.
Not sure why levels 7+ weren't opening. The code is the same for all of the doors and I've never run into or heard of this issue before.
The problem with using "Jump" or "Use" to advance the dialogue is that some dialogue can occur while the player can move, so I'll have to think of a way to make this jive with the rest of the game. Probably the best way is to simply make this type of dialogue run automatically when activated. The dialogue system was thrown together in a couple of days and is a heaping, barely functional mess to be honest, so I hope to be adding some refinements to it.
For resetting the touched blocks on death, later levels while have blocks disappear soon after touching them, so I'd like to keep that aspect of the game consistent at least. Although it does make sense to have the level reset blocks if you haven't reached a checkpoint or finished the first clear yet, now that I think about it. Thanks -- I'll make that fix, too.
Awesome feedback, love to hear these suggestions. You have a good eye for good game design. Looking forward to giving your game a play later today too. 👍
This was a simple, yet fun puzzle platformer! I played through 9 levels (plus tutorial of course), and got the extra collectable on all but 1, 7, and 9. I feel like the wallslide is a bit too fast and the jumping can be slightly imprecise, so I found myself relying on the hover to correct myself a lot. I know someone else had mentioned a problem with their window, and I also wanted to report that I had an issue as well, where it filled up my main monitor, and covered up about half of my other monitor. I'd recommend adding screen resolution options if possible. I also wasn't sure what the Progress option was in the menu - it showed a clock with some different things on it, but I couldn't make heads or tails of what it was for. That all said, it was a fun time! The characters were fun, the premise is interesting, and the level design was really solid for the most part! You introduced new mechanics seamlessly, so every addition felt natural to experience the first time around; it was easily the game's strongest aspect. I hope to see more next Demo Day!
Thanks so much for your feedback and for playing to the end! I think you might be on to something with the wallalide being too fast. I may slow it down a touch. As for the jumping being imprecise, could you explain a bit about what you mean? Walljumps or regular jumps? Apart from walljumps, there isn't much momentum in the game so you should pretty much stop jumping whenever you let go of the move keys.
I'll definitely be adding resolution options soon. It seems like my "perfect camera" option really only works for my monitor 😅
Progress menu will allow you to jump between generations, worlds, and levels when it's fully implemented.
Really appreciated your feedback 👍
Sorry for being vague mate! I was referring to regular jumps, though the walljumps may be imprecise due to how fast the player is during a walljump. Horizontal movement during jumps, and moving in general, should have at least a few frames of momentum until you reach max speed. Maybe I just had bad coordination today, but making small jumps from one block to the next could lead to me overshooting or undershooting just a tiny bit.
I think if you slow the jump and wallslide down a little, and add a little bit of momentum to horizontal movement, your game will feel perfectly fine. I noticed it was made in GMS2, so I would recommend using an Approach script for horizontal speed as a super quick fix.
Thanks again for clearing it up! I was afraid to add too much momentum/too little friction to the game and instead focus on near-immediate starts/stops so that the movements feel more "precise". It seems like a few people mentioned this however as making the game feel just the opposite though -- imprecise. So I'll play around with the different settings and see if I can make something that feels a bit better. Thanks for the script suggestion!
the music is really dope i like the dialog a lot and its very heartwarming but i think the scientist's text bleeps are a lil too harsh
few bugs i ran into it seems like playing the intro and then getting into the tutorial room changes the screen resolution but resetting the room fixes the resolution and also it didnt allow me to go fully full screen since my taskbar was showing
i got filtered by this yellow square i think its too obtuse for a level one until i got the pity rocket boots i do think i had more fun when the platforms didnt have a underside to go over again
also Add a graphic for "T" to advance dialog or when you have the "!" red chat box
overall i like it its like a meatboy/celeste meets qbert
also the rocketboots made it feel like jetpac from dk64/zx spectrum
a
Thanks so much for the feedback! I ought to make it more clear -- you're not expected to "clear" every single block in every level. You just need to complete the level twice. I'll have to indicate that better, somehow.
Agreed that scientists beepspeak is too harsh. I'll soften it a bit. And I plan to fix the aspect ratio and resolution problems. I'll def follow your advice and show a "T" graphic for dialogue even though key bindings are temporary -- I'll make that change and re-upload the game when I get home today.
Thanks again for the very specific and helpful feedback!
I got to level 8! I love the concept that your first run through effects the second run through with disappearing blocks. I also love puzzles with multiple solutions, so great job on that. For changes consider allowing every/any button to get you through dialogue and in the level select stage having the 1st level the only accessible level and then after you clear 1st level add blocks that allow you to jump to 2nd level and so on. Jumping is smooth, the hover feels good and the wall jumping is great. Great submission :)
Thanks for the feedback and for playing so much of the game! The key bindings suck for now for aure, but I'll be fixing them for future demos. Glad you enjoyed the movement feel. And gating the levels in the hub world like that is a cool idea, hadn't thought of it. Cheers!
Appreciate the feedback nonetheless. I'll have to explain/signpost this better.
Thanks for playing! I'll be adding key bindings in the future. I'm new to game jams so I thought when I uploaded, the key bindings would be shown here from my game's page, but nope.
The window becoming small when the actual game starts is absolutely unintended. I'll fix it, but I'm a bit of a brainlet when it comes to GameMaker resolution settings, aspect ratios, viewports, GUI sizes, room sizes, and cameras. All of those combine to determine the window size and it's a bit complicated.
I'll look into why the purple thing isn't working. As long as you make it to the door/teleporter after grabbing it without dying, it should register as "got". Cheers!
I got stuck in the tutorial.
No matter which button I press or where I click with the mouse, the text doesn't continue.
Hey Aura, thanks for attempting it. To advance text, press "T". It's not the most intuitive system, but I threw it together 2 days before the jam. Key bindings will be in the next update!