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GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/Troy-Story-Games/messenger-mouse
Game description
Take on the role of a courageous mouse tasked with delivering a secret message to the king in Messenger Mouse! This action-packed platformer combines classic gameplay with modern challenges, encouraging players to explore, strategize, and uncover the game's many secrets.
Theme interpretation
Narratively we made the game about delivering a secret message to the king. Loosely inspired by the story of Marathon. We made the game have secret passage ways to find throughout. The secret passages also factor in when considering speed run times as many secret areas allow you to complete the level faster.
Wildcards used (optional)
Limit your colors to 4
Let players break the rules with things like infinite lives or invincibility
Make time the enemy
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Comments
Really fun game, although I was terrible at it. Loved the idea behind this and art style. Loved that I could skip the story and the in-game tutorial. Good work!
Thanks for playing! It was important to us to allow the player to skip story content. Really every game should allow that. It’s important to respect people’s time, but in a game jam especially - it allows people to get to the fun fast when they might not have time for reading (or maybe they just don’t care haha).
This game turned out to be surprisingly challenging, especially the last level, where progressing to the next checkpoint depends a lot on luck and agility to climb over enemies. I failed so many times—it was frustrating, but the relief when I finally finished it was totally worth it!
Thanks for playing! I think I know the section you’re referring to. Right at the end of the last level. Believe it or not that’s easier now compared to how it was when we first made it. We didn’t want any part of any level to rely on luck rather than skill so that one part of that level definitely stands out as something we should change since you’re right, the way the enemies spawn and move, they’re not guaranteed to be in the same place every time you respawn.
There is a secret path that allows you to skip that section after jumping off one of them, but I think we need to change that section to rely less on luck.
The controls are feels nice and responsive, which goes really well with the tempo of the game. Loved how successfully hitting an enemy gave a really satisfying boost, it's a speedrunner's dream! The level designs were also well thought-out with a balance between challenging and speedy segments. Hope to see more levels and possibly more abilities/mechanics! Well done!
Thanks for playing!! I’m glad you noticed the little boost you get for killing an enemy. It’s subtle, but I think it feels good especially when you can get a couple at once.
Really cool! Fun mechanics and well polished :)
Thanks for playing!
Nice fluid gameplay with consistent quality art. I love how the enemies get pushed away in high velocity when you kill them. Movement and level design reminds me of the original Sonic games with how open they are , it gives the player more freedom, it also gives the same vibes as og Sonic. The game is well polished, I don't believe I found any bugs. Well done!
Thanks for playing! The enemy slice was kind of a rogue addition I did on a whim to see if it’d be cool and it ended up working great! I’m glad you like it! The implementation is just two physics objects that spawn each with half of the sprite with an impulse in the slice direction.
Nice video game!
Thanks for playing! Glad you enjoyed it.
This is definitely the most polished game that I have played so far. The moment was spot on and the level design was phenomenal. I can tell that a lot of care was put into the secret short cuts and area.
The art, music, and visual effects were amazing.
My only critique is that the K and J controls were a bit unintuitive - could be a me issue though!
Thanks so much for playing and for the feedback! It’s appreciated! You’re not the only one with keyboard control critiques and I’m 100% with you. I prefer to play with a controller. Another valid layout on keyboard is to use the arrow keys and then use Z and X. Unfortunately the only way to play with a controller is to download the game. I think another round of polish on the controls would have been good. Maybe a way to remap them.
Such a fun game! It had so many mechanics and felt like a completely polished game ready to be published.
Good job on showing the input hints again throughout the levels.
Very well done and probably the best entry so far!
Thank you so much for playing and for the feedback!
Nice fun game experience. I like the variation of mechenics that the player can do. But I feel the K key is a bit not so intuitive(?). Maybe is a problem from my side.
Thanks for playing! The keyboard controls were not my favorite part to figure out. The game REALLY is meant to be played with a controller despite my partner swearing by the keyboard. So J and K…the thinking there was: 1. There is no reason to have your hand on the mouse for this game and 2. J and K are part of the home row. So the thought was if you’re using WASD that J and K would be natural. But you’re not the only one to feel it’s non-intuitive. Definitely not a you problem.
The other control option on keyboard was using the arrow keys and then z and x which maybe would have been better to highlight in the tutorial…but we kindof had to pick one to display in the tutorial and we decided most people in a game jam would likely be looking to use the WASD layout.
If you download the game it works great with any Bluetooth or USB controller and then the tutorial will actually update to teach the controller controls rather than keyboard and the experience with a controller in my opinion is much better. I wish there was some way to have the web version pick-up controllers. I feel like there has to be some browser plugin or extension but I didn’t have time to dig in and figure it out.
Wow! That reminded me of Sonic in the best possible way. High momentum based gameplay, mostly forgiving fails, tons of routes through every level. This feels absolutely like a professional game. I'm usually pretty bad at platformers and moderns ones have gotten some what merciless, but this one seemed to get that perfect balance of fun and punishment. Easy restarts, work arounds, mostly forgiving mechanics but a few really tight jumps to test me. Also the animation, especially the enemy death animations are so perfect. This game is just brimming with charm. Also your super minimal palette is totally cohesive and readable and the simple sounds and music combine to really sell it. Really outstanding. My only complaint is that the tight camera follow can cause a little bit of eye strain with how the level warps behind the character. Might soften the camera or throw a blur on it but my eyes have always been really sensitive to this and you don't have a lot of parallax so it might just be me. But really a nearly perfect game, I'm astounded you pulled this off in a month and got it this polished.
Thanks for the awesome feedback! Ya know, the camera blur/smoothness/whatever to call it, is something I noticed. I kinda thought it was an artifact of the one bit tile set we were using on the black background. Could also have something to do with sub pixel nonsense or resolution scale or something. But you’re 100% right it is kind of annoying and I plan to look into fixing it. Thanks again for playing and for the kind words. We appreciate it!
platformer with loads of secrets, secret passages everywhere, great hidden places etc. good controls, excellent tutorial etc
Thanks for playing! We appreciate it!
100% the best submission I've played so far. The gameplay is buttery smooth and the visuals and audio is just *chef's kiss*. I only have one very very tiny nitpick and that is the climbing speed feels a little bit too slow. I know you can jump to go faster but increasing the climbing speed slightly could make it feel better and maybe help less skilled players a bit. Thought like I said, it's just a small thing and in no way detracts anything from the game. Everything is pretty much perfect, well done !
Thanks for playing and for the awesome feedback! It’s really appreciated. We plan to continue working on some version of this, so I’ve made a note about the climb speed. I think you’re 100% right. It always felt slow to me - and I always would just jump a bunch to speed it up - don’t know why I didn’t think to make that literal one line change to speed it up though…
Bro this game is great! You did a super job on it, it's even meeting the wildcards! It feels super smooth and intuitive, but still challenging enough too, a really nice submission!
One problem I had was when i collected the cheat, then opened the menu for esc, it would open for split second and then close again, i tried to click the cheats part of the menu during that moment and then it broke the pause menu all together. Also the wall sliding you can slide down the wall while facing away from the wall sometimes, but that's really just nitpicking. Those were really the only things I noticed though, other than that I found it pretty solid! Well done boss
*salutes*
Thanks for the awesome feedback! It’s really appreciated! I’m guessing you were playing in browser - we noticed that bug too - but not every single time. It was something we found in testing, then I fixed it (or thought I did) and then at one point we thought it had come back but then couldn’t reproduce it. So thanks for confirming we def. still have this bug. I created an issue internally and I’ll try to track it down. I know the bug doesn’t exist with controller support on desktop - which I honestly feel is the best way to play the game.
Thanks again for playing!
Fun to play and really well polished! Props :D
Thanks so much for playing!
Very cool game! I really enjoyed the art and the gameplay. Great work!
Thanks for playing! Glad you enjoyed it!
Had a lot fun with this game
Thanks so much for playing! Glad you enjoyed it!
Fun game with good controls. I sat on the bird for more than most people probably would XD
Haha yes! The collision shape on the king goose was a last minute addition. I’m glad we’re getting some use out of it! Thanks for playing.
Cool platformer game.
Thanks for playing!
This game was very fun to play and looks great. Whenever I found a secret I got small dopamine rush! The level with the launch to the stratosphere was my fav part.
YES! We’re so pumped you found that! When we realized that the little flying enemy kill “hop” could be stacked for major launching we knew we had to put something in the game for someone to find! Thanks for playing and glad you enjoyed it!
WOW! This game feels so good - I love the movement, it honestly felt so clean and smooth. Jumping was satisfying, sliding was fun, and even attacking was done so well. A+ effort on this one!
Thanks so much for playing and for the kind words! It seems people are really liking the movement. We took inspiration from the Mario 64 dev team - they prioritized movement - it was the first thing they worked on, before level design or anything else, it needed to be fun to just run around. So that’s what we did first too.