Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
A jam submission

Star Leap (demo)View game page

A 2D platformer with a minimalistic aesthetic and gameplay that puts speed and flow first.
Submitted by Anter (@UnTercerWeonMas) — 2 days, 1 hour before the deadline
Add to collection

Play game

Star Leap (demo)'s itch.io page

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Comments

Submitted

Your game is beautiful, snappy and just the right amount of punishing! Your alien bunny is adorable, too. This reminds me of Super Meat Boy in that the levels are short, sweet and difficult enough that you'll rarely complete one on the first try. 

I was able to collect all except for one star in the last level and I like the idea of the level gauntlet as well! The music accurately conveys the urgency and the graphics are gorgeous. Simple color palettes with options to swap the whole palette are always nice to see. 

The gun feels excellent to use, being able to quickly turn around while you're running and shoot to boost yourself even faster feels amazing. I very strongly like the game and I think the level gimmicks you have so far, like the water and star gates work incredibly well. I'm very excited to see more!

Submitted (2 edits) (+1)

I always liked it when a game had a gun that made you move backwards when you shot it. I'd always shoot in the opposite direction to go fast. So I'm overjoyed there's a game based entirely around this concept.

The sense of speed in this game in incredible. It's like Sonic the Hedgehog but I feel fully in control. I love how much weight the player has. The Super Meat Boy wall jump is always welcome. I like that the levels are less about completing them but instead completing them quickly.  The levels all have a defined beginning, middle, and end. The game introduces new obstacles and gimmicks at just the right rate to keep things fresh. And they were all lots of fun.

The graphics, while simple, do a great job in giving the player the feedback necessary to make movement feel satisfying. It made me smile how just how many filters there are. I love how the letters in the title screen move and the graphic design for the menus and end level screens.

A gripe of mine is that I wish you could reset the level in a single button press. Having to pause the game and select reset level takes too long. I also think the game could have benefitted by having some collectables scattered across the levels. Another gripe with this game is that there isn't more of it.

I also encountered a weird glitch where when I played gauntlet mode the pause menu was in French for some reason.

I loved this game and plan to buy the full release. Hats off to the developer!

(+1)

Very gentle amount of punishment, just the way I like it. Controls are very tight, so are the levels - obstacles are placed not too sparingly, not too dickishly (is that even a word?) - once again, just right. Margin of player error seems to be very gentle - not too forgiving and not too punishment.

So what I mean to say - I really enjoyed the game, even though I don't play time attack/hardcore platformers on my own. Also some levels seem to have almost rythm-game like flow to them which I appreciate a lot.

Colour scheme switch is great, though it seems like not colour schemes are created equal. But hey, more options for the player is good, right?

Good stuff, I liked it quite a lot.

Submitted

+ Adjustable colour scheme

- Please localise X/Z controls, it’s unplayable on non-US layout

Developer

Hey, thanks for playing! You can remap keyboard input on the options menu.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

OK very nice, played through the available levels https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2346654172

Overall I thought it was quite enjoyable, the art style is nice and simple and the movement indeed very flowy. The water seems especially cool and original. The orbs "shot" by the cannons are very cutely designed. There is nice attention to detail like the timer not starting until you press your first input. Now for the critical thoughts:

  • The mechanic of "shoot in opposite dir of where you want to go" turns the game from a movement based game to more of a brain fumble game for me. Especially as you have air control, so usually pressing Right in the air would steer you to the right, but then you gotta press Right+Shoot to go left. (This would be a different thing if shooting was mouse-based and moving on WASD.) I think the game kinda tacitly admits that this fumble-prone mechanic is not so fun, by relying way more  on the "barriers" in later levels, which pull you towards them when you shoot at them. Which makes the movement suddenly feel very natural.
  • It’s odd that there is even jumping in the game when shooting the floor is exactly the same boost.
  • It’s odd there is no diagonal aiming.
  • I am not a fan of the wall-gliding mechanic in general, suddenly attaching to the wall kinda confuses my calculations of how fast I am going down. In this game I think there are 0 spots where wall gliding is required to solve any passage, so personally I wouldn’t have it in.
  • The levels seem to be a bit focused on offering only 1 line to finish. You can’t really go slow, the average level becomes way harder or unbeatable if you go slow. There is the occasional spot allowing you to stand still and wait. But you can’t generally go slow. I used to be an avid Teeworlds enjoyer back when, and while that game has incredibly flowy movement, you are absolutely allowed as a noob to just very clumsily swing from platform to platform going 10x slower than an experienced player. I think that makes levels more interesting and motivating, to be able to finish badly at first and then ever a bit faster, rather than having to hit 90% perfect line to even finish, and then all challenge that’s left would be hitting some moves yet insanely faster. I mean, in general I felt that movement was often so fast that I died to obstacles that hadn’t even been on the screen 200 ms ago, and at least my personal reaction time is too slow to adjust on the spot. So levels are more trial-and-error committing to muscle memory one specific sequence of moves, rather than something you could ever realistically finish on first try (if slowly). 
  • It felt that sometimes there was the indicator on a barrier telling me that shooting would pull me towards it, but then it failed to happen when I shot.

Great work, keep on trucking!

(+1)

Not my preferred platformer, but I can see how it's a good game. I beat the available levels, the main thing I had trouble with was understanding how far away until I can or cannot hook into a dotted line. Besides that, just beating the levels with 1 or 2 stars wasn't that hard. I found it odd how I couldn't enter the race at the end though, maybe I needed more stars? But it didn't state an unlock requirement, and I couldn't use any input to press the begin button.

Also, the player sprite doesn't really look like a rabbit, more like a humanoid with antenna. Not that it matters really. And, I just noticed that the reticle shrinks with available energy, nice touch.

Guess that's it. Keep up the good work.

Developer(+1)

Hey thanks for playing! When you said that thing about not being able to enter the gauntlet, I immediately knew why it happens. I recently added a 4th world, but decided not to include it in this demo. So I deleted the world but forgot to delete its stars requirement. Thanks for catching that bug!

About the character, he's not supposed to be a rabbit, he's supposed to be an alien. But everyone thinks he's a bunny so I guess he can be an alien rabbit lol.

Submitted(+1)

i do not play platformers  but this seemed really good to me very clean and professional i liked it a lot, i don't know what would make it better maybe collectables? or if you die you leave some kind of mark. 

Submitted(+1)

This is a really solid game my only nitpick is jump not being default to spacebar.

Submitted(+1)

excellent game, beat everything fully, no notes

notes: good music, good juice, good palettes, "The Race" has very satisfying cycles, the level intro scenes on the gauntlet are good and quick, and the existence of the gauntlet itself makes for a good optional extra challenge

Submitted(+1)

Got this error trying with Wine-GE, can you build a linux version?

Developer

I'm working on it!

Submitted(+1)

damn your game is juicy as FUCK.
shouldn't the dithering on the score numbers follow the numbers? right now it kind of feels like an overlay disengaged from them
aside from minor nitpicks like that, it's VERY GOOD!