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A jam submission

HoneybutterView game page

In this short and sweet platformer bounce to speedy and thrilling new heights!
Submitted by ephemerald β€” 1 hour, 30 minutes before the deadline
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Honeybutter's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Visuals#274.0504.050
Juice#273.8503.850
Audio#293.7003.700
Theme#463.5003.500
Overall#493.4003.400
Fun#713.0003.000

Ranked from 20 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Opening this up, I was really impressed by the visuals and the sound track. If there's a link to a copy of the soundtrack, I'd really love to have it. I think this game is very juicy but it gets disorienting, especially during the bounces. I'm assuming some filter/camera shake is added there and it's hard to keep my eyes focused on the character. As for the gameplay, it was pretty hard for me to understand or pick up on, I think a tutorial level or a help menu may have been good. However, I think this game shows a lot of promise and would love to see any updates. Congrats on finishing the game jam!

Developer(+1)

Thanks! Definitely wish I had been able to get a tutorial together. I 100% plan to keep working on it, I had so many ideas I couldn't do and really enjoy platformer level design. 

On each jump there's quite a few effects - a vignette that focuses on the player, some chromatic aberration, particles, etc. but the two most disorienting are likely the screen shake and the camera rotation. I tried to keep things at a minimum where they didn't feel distracting but I think being able to turn off those two would be a great addition for the future. I also have some ideas on how to tweak the rotation to be a bit less swingy that I'll for sure revisit. 

I linked asset credits on the game page, the specific song is here from this pack though :) 

Submitted(+1)

Wow the game looks really nice and the music is great! Really like the concept of bouncing around including on walls!

However, it felt to me that the game was really too fast, which made it hard to control sometimes. Also, it is not clear how we need to sync our bouncing with (the rythm in the music follows some patterns, if we hit on strong times, nothing really happens; even tapping the beat does not seem to work... the sync seems a little broken =p). Maybe try to add some clear visual indicators during the time window the player is allowed to bounce. I had to spam the spacebar to be able to jump and bounce lol

But the fun concept, and JUICE, and overall atmosphere did compensate a lot for these problems !!

Really good job!

Developer

Thanks so much and I'm glad you enjoyed despite the controls being difficult! :) 

My original concept was to find a way to sync the jumping to the music but exactly how to pull that off is beyond me. As is you just need to press jump right as you impact with a surface - you actually have a quarter second buffer ahead of time and a couple frames after landing where it will work. Lacking a tutorial really hurt in communicating this though!

 I had also planned on an optional feature to show little collapsing circle previews (like in osu!) as you come close to impacting a surface, but scrapped that just cause I knew it'd take quite some time for me to figure out how to implement. I still think that'd be a nice addition to keep in mind as I work on this in the future. 

Submitted(+1)

Couldn't get the controls to work until pressing r to restart a few times then was bouncing like crazy!  Super juicy bouncing and fun to play -very challenging and a cool idea -nice work! :D

Submitted(+1)

That game was fun, especially the music was great. Was bouncing all night :)

Submitted(+1)

I like the game conceptually, but the controls were way too finicky to be able to use. I don't think the bounce worked at all until I reset? I think it was cause I had to be precise when impacting something, but I don't think the overall execution was too great. 

The visuals and audio were well done though, kudos to you on that!

Developer

thanks, I wish I had properly gotten the game to pause right away so it's not such a jarring start, as you do lose the bounce fairly quickly once you stop jumping with good timing. The decision to have you stop bouncing felt like a necessity to truly do something with the "don't stop" theme - if I had had time to put together a tutorial that explains you can restart bouncing by dropping to a lower level, that probably would've helped people since I'm getting the impression that wasn't intuitive to some people.

Once running, though, I think the timing window is fairly generous on the way towards an impact at a quarter second long (15 frames at 60fps), though to make the automatic bouncing feel correct there isn't as much of a window once you've landed (I believe it's at ~2 frames). If your internal sense of timing is to press jump right after you land then it will continually feel wrong, though. Not much I can do about that except I did put in the option to have the game handle all that for you and the option to play at a slower speed if  it was too difficult. Truthfully I have no idea how one could execute it any better, though it probably wouldn't hurt to include a third difficulty/accessibility option to make the input buffer window even wider (or smaller if people wanted more of a challenge).

Submitted(+1)

Amazing game with incredible music, a bit confusing on controls but still great fun to bounce around in

Submitted

Gj for submitting. Have not understood well how to jump and how to control better the character. It bounces a lot ^^

Developer(+1)

it's a bit of a timing game, to try to press jump right as you hit the ground or wall. goal was to make a really bouncy character for sure , if it's too difficult there is the option to make the jumping automatic!

Submitted(+1)

Cool game, but I didn't figure out how to jump. if he stops jumping, can't he jump anymore?

Developer(+1)

Press space (or A or equivalent south button on gamepad) when you're impacting a surface and you'll jump off it. If you don't do this he'll only bounce off, and after a few bounces will stop bouncing - and then you'll need to drop off a ledge to try to press the button in time as you land and you can start to bounce again. 


There's also in the options the ability to make it automatically jump for you, if that makes the game more fun I recommend it! :) wish the menu navigation was better though... 

Submitted

Thanks!

Submitted(+1)

Music was banging and it was nice and juicy!

Solid work.

Submitted(+1)

This game looks awesome, the art style is gorgeous and enhances the whole experience. Juice is on point, keeping up combos just feels so satisfying and the music was very well done. 

The sound effects could be improved on, I suggest adding pitch shifting up when you have a higher combo just to make everything feel even better. The controls were a little too hard for me so I just ended up spamming the spacebar lol. But overall amazing submission, would love to see more :D

Developer(+1)

thanks so much! I definitely think a future version will have rising jump sounds with combo, especially if you like jump off multiple enemies in a row. 

i was definitely more concerned with making a fun game than a hard one, so I'm glad spamming space is an option tbh!

Submitted(+1)

The game was so cool !  Especially the art and music , i really like the music because it reminds me of some pokemon style music :D

Developer(+1)

Thanks! I'm really happy I found the song in a pack I own, wish I could claim it as an original. I think the sound the snails make when you jump on them is pretty pokemon-esque too :)

Submitted(+1)

This was super interesting on the theme, I like it a lot! One thing though is that the controls weren't too easy to wrap around, I got the hang of it eventually and it's super fun to try and keep your jumps happening making you think fast, it's very good!

Developer

thanks! Yeah I keep hearing from people the controls aren't intuitive at first, which seems a very reasonable criticism!

Submitted

Very nice entry, a bit confusing and twitchy for me.

The music and pixel art are great, and most probably the sound effects as well, but it was hard to hear them over the music.

The whole game was a bit too fast paced for me, and I couldn't get the rhytm of the jumping down, so I ended up mashing the spacebar during the whole duration.

The pickup effects were nice and juicy, loved the rising pitch on fruit collection and especially the effects on collecting a gem, with the distortion and the timestop.

I think it would be great to not just stop jumping if you don't get a combo, but to always bounce by default with a tiny jump height, and get more height as you build your combo up. Also, when you're in a combo, and can jump again, It would be nice to have a few freezed frames to have a greater window of time to make a jump input. That might also give jumping a bit more impact and satisfaction.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the detailed feedback! I did have options in the pause menu to bring down the music but definitely agree it's too loud by default. There's also a game speed slider there to make it slower, and an option to make it so you always get a good jump automatically. Of course, communicating that those options are there is something the game utterly fails at  :) and I had major issues getting ui to actually work on this.

There's what i think is fairly generous  input buffering assuming it's actually working properly (my testing suggested it was) with buffer for both early and late presses - 0.25s before landing, and a few frames after landing (any longer on that end made the automatic bouncing feel wrong). Right now your speed and jump height do both increase with higher combo, and you do in fact keep bouncing if you don't combo, but  you only get 5 chances (if it's working properly) to restart the combo. I'm still unsure if it was a good design decision or not, very willing to believe it wasn't :)

Submitted

Wow, you though of a lot of thing!

Maybe it's the web build or something on my end that's not giving me the intended experience :(

Had fun nonetheless, Great entry!

PS. How do you apply gravity to the player? Is it related to your combo, or just a flat increment?

Developer(+1)

Thanks :) honestly I tested the web version again and it seems to run as expected, but I do think the jump timing  might not be generous enough. Gravity doesn't change based on anything, though one idea I thought about was having it delay a little longer before kicking in so you can hang out at the top of your jump longer... if that makes sense. or it could go opposite, make it easier when you're low combo. Definitely something to play with! I think I plan to develop this game more when I get a chance.

Submitted(+1)

Cool!

Having a more generous jump arc would be nice! And now that you mentioned it, the gravity does seems to kick in a bit fast, and a bit strong.

Also, I think having just a tiny amount of hitstop on landing would make comboing bounces easier, and make the jump feel a lot more powerfull! Especially if you tie the amount of stop to the current combo value!

Developer

I started out with freeze frames on jump but it felt like it messed with the timing and flow of the game too much, even just a small amount. but that was early in the process so it's definitely something I should explore again!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Nice soundtrack and the juicyness is definitely good too.

Small suggestion would be adding a little camera smoothing.

Developer(+1)

I think i turned off the smoothing for testing something and never re-adjusted it, might still be some but I'm not sure! thanks for the feedback :)

Submitted(+1)

Good game! Compare to other game this one is on the harder side (not a bad thing). There are some problem I have like not  being able to initiate the jump on my own (not sure if this is intentional) 

and not knowing where to go next. But, the juice and the graphic look really appealing! I also really  like the fast pace gameplay!

Developer

Thanks :) the inability to jump on your own once fully grounded was a core design choice to satisfy the "don't stop" theme, in this case don't stop jumping with the right timing. You can get bouncing again if you fall down to a lower level and time the jump button as you land. A lot of the level design is full of steps so you can have multiple opportunities to try to recover. 

Whether or not that's a good design choice, though, that's another question πŸ˜›


A few things I think the game really needs slipped through the cracks as I ended up losing a lot of time to various problems. Some sort of feedback when reaching a new checkpoint and a small into cutscene I had planned would've both made the goal direction clearer I think. 

Submitted(+1)

Nice, I love the music but controls are pretty hard for me and the quit button is not working but love the visual and audio!

Developer(+1)

thanks for checking it out! i wish the ui actually worked properly. if you navigate to the options menu you can enable automatic jumps  (and/or slow the game down) to make it easier if you want to give it another shot :)

Submitted(+1)

Very fun to get the hang of!

Developer

thank you! :)