You can jump again while hooked to a wall and the hook is dragging you, the moment you reach the wall you can't anymore and will fall though so you'll want to get some distance and be quick about that second jump. It seems a lot of people are trying to jump off of the hook too late. I hope adding some leeway to it and adding a little tutorial telling you what situations you can jump in will fix that.
The concept seems like a lot of fun but the execution is mostly frustrating. It would be nice if jumping off of a hook actually worked half the time. That might be my own imprecise press timing but it sure didn't feel like it.
The thing Is I genuinely can't detect any dropped jump inputs while hooked. It seems to work perfectly fine. It might be that you are jumping late when you've already hit the wall, which will be fixed by adding in some "coyote time" and actually making a collision check for the wall. Right now it's checking for the hook, so you actually lose the ability to jump a frame early. But in general I think I need to communicate it to the player that the best way to jump off of the hook is by getting distance from whatever you're gonna hook onto. Everyone I've seen playing just tries it from close up.
I liked it very much, gave up at the last level but I'll try more later. It feels just like a GB game, and by that I mean that its a bit clunky. Most of the time it's not the platforming that is hard but being able to jump from the grappling hook. Sometimes I have to press more than once so that I could jump. It would be nice if you added a button buffer so even if you press the jump button before you're able to jump again you have a little leeway. Besides that it was a very nice experience. I'd recommend toning down a bit on the inertia, as I think it does not match with the style you're going for. If you're open to suggestions, you should add some puzzle mechanics with the grapple too, I think it would be interesting.
Very cool game, nice palette and it really feels like an old GBA game. I wish there was a button that would allow you to look further away when you're not moving since sometimes spikes and stuff are hidden and you have no way of knowing without just jumping. Made it to level 3 before giving up, might try again later.
Too hard 4 me. Was filtered by level 2. Really love the movement system, alternating between jump and grapple verbs opens up a lot of possibilities without overcomplicating things. Pixel art looks cute and everything is really clear despite the limited color palette. Really love the level design, and how punishments are determined based on your relative position to previous challenges. Game feels a puzzle a lot of the time, you have to figure out the correct sequence of movements before attempting to execute them. A lot of games like this don't have this so it felt refreshing to play.
Movement feels a little floaty and imprecise for what the game demands of you. It also might be interesting to see how grappling resetting your jump vs allowing your jump would work out, but that might trivialize the game so idk.
I never even considered the puzzle aspect of it but that might be an interesting thing to lean into. Needs to be communicated well though as people right now seem to expect a quick action platformer and then get punished for it. There are a lot of bullshit leaps of faith for example, but a few of them can be seen beforehand if you're just careful and plan your actions, it's just not an obvious thing to do at all and I'm not sure how to make it.
* It's really fun. It feels very rewarding to progress through the levels.
* Lots of bullshit leaps of faith were you have to die to know what you're jumping into.
* I don't see why you would add so much inertia to the player. I mean, I'm used to it, I don't mind, but it does feel unnecesary to take away control from the player in that manner.
* Jump didn't come out when I hit jump and a direction. Might have been my keyboard, though.
Thanks for playing! It was very enjoyable to watch you struggle with my nonsense.
I hope to remedy most of those bullshit jumps by compressing the levels somewhat and adding some lookahead to the camera. They're mostly a result of me rushing the levels for DD and not keeping the low resolution in mind. Only having 10x9 tiles of screen space really limits what you can do it turns out.
The inertia stems from the code being adapted from an earlier Cave Story like game I've been working on so I just kept it around, partially because I like how it adds to the difficulty. I'll try tweaking the movement some though, the inertia is definitely quite a bit heavy at times.
I got filtered at level 4, the spike on the three-tile platform was insurmountable for me.
The game feel is pretty nice, and I think the gameplay really offers itself well for platforming puzzles. Art is cute too, I think, you caught that gameboy vibe well.
Comments
Hey. I played your game as part of a Demo Day stream. If you didn't catch the stream live, here's a link to the video:
You can see my other demo day 46 streams as well on my channel.
I couldn't climb up past the first few ledges. I couldn't figure out how the climbing stuff was supposed to work. I like the look of it though.
You can jump again while hooked to a wall and the hook is dragging you, the moment you reach the wall you can't anymore and will fall though so you'll want to get some distance and be quick about that second jump. It seems a lot of people are trying to jump off of the hook too late. I hope adding some leeway to it and adding a little tutorial telling you what situations you can jump in will fix that.
The concept seems like a lot of fun but the execution is mostly frustrating. It would be nice if jumping off of a hook actually worked half the time. That might be my own imprecise press timing but it sure didn't feel like it.
The thing Is I genuinely can't detect any dropped jump inputs while hooked. It seems to work perfectly fine. It might be that you are jumping late when you've already hit the wall, which will be fixed by adding in some "coyote time" and actually making a collision check for the wall. Right now it's checking for the hook, so you actually lose the ability to jump a frame early. But in general I think I need to communicate it to the player that the best way to jump off of the hook is by getting distance from whatever you're gonna hook onto. Everyone I've seen playing just tries it from close up.
I liked it very much, gave up at the last level but I'll try more later.
It feels just like a GB game, and by that I mean that its a bit clunky. Most of the time it's not the platforming that is hard but being able to jump from the grappling hook. Sometimes I have to press more than once so that I could jump. It would be nice if you added a button buffer so even if you press the jump button before you're able to jump again you have a little leeway. Besides that it was a very nice experience.
I'd recommend toning down a bit on the inertia, as I think it does not match with the style you're going for. If you're open to suggestions, you should add some puzzle mechanics with the grapple too, I think it would be interesting.
Very cool game, nice palette and it really feels like an old GBA game. I wish there was a button that would allow you to look further away when you're not moving since sometimes spikes and stuff are hidden and you have no way of knowing without just jumping. Made it to level 3 before giving up, might try again later.
You can check my playtest:
Too hard 4 me. Was filtered by level 2. Really love the movement system, alternating between jump and grapple verbs opens up a lot of possibilities without overcomplicating things. Pixel art looks cute and everything is really clear despite the limited color palette. Really love the level design, and how punishments are determined based on your relative position to previous challenges. Game feels a puzzle a lot of the time, you have to figure out the correct sequence of movements before attempting to execute them. A lot of games like this don't have this so it felt refreshing to play.
Movement feels a little floaty and imprecise for what the game demands of you. It also might be interesting to see how grappling resetting your jump vs allowing your jump would work out, but that might trivialize the game so idk.
Really cool demo, definitely gonna revist later.
I never even considered the puzzle aspect of it but that might be an interesting thing to lean into. Needs to be communicated well though as people right now seem to expect a quick action platformer and then get punished for it. There are a lot of bullshit leaps of faith for example, but a few of them can be seen beforehand if you're just careful and plan your actions, it's just not an obvious thing to do at all and I'm not sure how to make it.
Godlike game I loved itttt. I still have to play the fifth level. Here's a VOD of me playing through the first 4 levels:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1580711938
In summary:
* It's really fun. It feels very rewarding to progress through the levels.
* Lots of bullshit leaps of faith were you have to die to know what you're jumping into.
* I don't see why you would add so much inertia to the player. I mean, I'm used to it, I don't mind, but it does feel unnecesary to take away control from the player in that manner.
* Jump didn't come out when I hit jump and a direction. Might have been my keyboard, though.
Thanks for playing! It was very enjoyable to watch you struggle with my nonsense.
I hope to remedy most of those bullshit jumps by compressing the levels somewhat and adding some lookahead to the camera. They're mostly a result of me rushing the levels for DD and not keeping the low resolution in mind. Only having 10x9 tiles of screen space really limits what you can do it turns out.
The inertia stems from the code being adapted from an earlier Cave Story like game I've been working on so I just kept it around, partially because I like how it adds to the difficulty. I'll try tweaking the movement some though, the inertia is definitely quite a bit heavy at times.
I got filtered at level 4, the spike on the three-tile platform was insurmountable for me.
The game feel is pretty nice, and I think the gameplay really offers itself well for platforming puzzles. Art is cute too, I think, you caught that gameboy vibe well.
I like the movement, timing jumps with the grappling hook hitting a wall feels nice.
Got filtered by all those leap of faiths in level 3 though.