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bloato's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #5 | 4.143 | 4.143 |
| Fun | #19 | 3.738 | 3.738 |
| Overall | #19 | 3.694 | 3.694 |
| Originality | #25 | 3.881 | 3.881 |
| Audio | #26 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Graphics | #32 | 3.905 | 3.905 |
| Accessibilty | #35 | 3.238 | 3.238 |
| Controls | #50 | 3.286 | 3.286 |
Ranked from 42 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.3 Beta 3
Wildcards Used
N/A
Game Description
A small platformer about moderation and balance.
How does your game tie into the theme?
The game presents and begins like a simple platformer– You play as Bloato the frog, collecting flies for points. You soon learn that taking too many flies has unintended consequences, altering gameplay and puzzles for better or for worse. A big inspiration for the character came from No-Face from Spirited Away, and it was a ton of fun to try to play with traditional collectibles-equals-points platformer tropes!
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
brittspace
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
1! This is my first!
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Comments
Really cool idea! I love the way the music blends and warps through the levels. However, it was a bit too difficult for me. I couldn't make it past the level with the two birds behind the spiky wall. But either way, great submission!
Really interesting game! I think either I'm just bad, or the game might be a bit difficult. I liked the visuals and the lighting! I thought the music was nice, but I didn't think the frog sounds really matched the other vibes of the game as well. Nice submission, and good luck for future ones!
Thank you for playing! It's definitely a bit difficult! In hindsight, I wish I had dialed the difficulty back a little bit more for a game-jam, especially the rooms 5 and 8.
The music was done by my partner, Sheena. When recording the frog sounds, I couldn't help but think of No-Face from Spirited Away. On my todo, that I didn't have time for, was making them blend in with the other sounds a bit better.
Thanks for the feedback!
Strong concept for a game! Though, the game is a bit unresponsive at times, at least for me, but it's fun!
Thank you for playing and for the feedback! I was excited about the idea once I settled on it.
Could you say which parts felt unresponsive? Really curious to hear your feedback!
Nice take on the theme as getting to many of the collectibles could lead to not being able to finish a level without restarting. Good level design (that got much harder at the first introduction of the birds, I didn't get past the first birds despite multiple attempts).
Thanks for playing! It was fun to mess with that old platformer trope :)
And yeah, 😅. In hindsight, I would have only included one bird in to make the difficulty curve more a bit more forgiving.
Wow, this is my favorite platformer on here. Great mechanic, perfect use of theme. I was struck by the visuals on the first level - neat lighting effects and shadows, and the coloring indicating where to go for the exit is great level design. Difficulty progression is also very good. And this is your first platformer? Great job on it!
Aww, thanks for the kind words! First platformer and first game, really, since I was a kid. (I made a small toy game for my sister's birthday recently as a gift to her.)
I'm glad the visuals landed! The lighting and shadows are great at hiding my beginner pixel art skills. 😅
I was really excited to play with the theme– I'm glad the progression felt good! There was a lot more I wanted to explore, for example growing to a size where you could walk on spikes or not be affected by predators, but I figured folks' time/focus would be limited in a jam.
Thanks again for the thoughtful comment.
Your game is so funny, mainly the sound effects i loved it, hehehe when jumping or eating something and the things change when Bloato gets bigger, it's one of the most creative games that I've seen in the jam
Thank you for playing and for the super kind note, moebtz! I'm glad you enjoyed it! Recording the sound effects was one of my favorite parts. 😌
What a fun game! A very cool idea especially how the elements of the level changes when bloato gets bigger!
Thank you for playing and leaving a note!
Yes! Frog games!
Got stuck on room 8, those jumps were really hard.
I really liked how it reset the frog’s size per room, felt like the rooms and flies the frog was eating were getting bigger as the frog was.
Awesome subsmission!
Thank you! Haha, when I sat down to brainstorm, one of the ideas was a Mario-esque platformer where you got heaver as you bopped on goombas (or whatever the "enemy" was), which made jumps harder to clear, things unobtainable, etc. I was on the phone with my sis and her partner and telling them about it and I was like "[long pause in conversation] I want to do a frog." 😊 And then it all came together.
At one point I had considered having size transfer between rooms, and you had to hop on a lil' treadmill to get smaller, which would have been very cute but not exactly keeping it simple.
And yes, if I could do it again, I would have kept Room 8 a bit easier!
Thanks for playing and for comment!
Fun game! The frog is charming and its a very good interpretation of the theme.
Thank you! The frog is the incredible work of Patchwork Pixels. I was so happy to find something that fit with the image of a No-Face that I had in my head– cute but kind of boundary-less and a bit of a large baby.
Very neat game! I gave up after failing room 5 too many times, but the concept is really cool and a great take on the theme. Great work!
Fantastic game! Clever design using a silhouette as the level, it worked really well. I also like that new obstacles were introduced regularly. Lovely animations, and the music fits. Nice touch with the pitch bend when you die.
Nice take on the theme.. I laughed when I realised I ate one fly to many to fit through the exit. Great to be able to restart levels easily.
I got stuck on level 8 (I believe), since I had trouble timing my jump on the trampoline over the spiky thing. When I succeeded I always got hit by one of the "birds". The purple fly could maybe be a bit closer to make it easier to eat it, since it is required to use the trampolines.
Would play more if you give me the "skip level" cheat ;)
Thank you! I really enjoyed your entry as well.
A lot of that came from necessity. I'm a total beginner at pixel art, so the silhouette fit the mood AND my skill set. 😅 The pitch bend came in the final hour when I didn't have a "death" sound.
I'm so glad the first level where you could eat too many flies landed for you! That was the first idea I had for the game, and I had hoped that some folks would bump up against the wall and go "um ..." 😂.
I was curious if "points" were enough of an incentive for people to even catch all the flies. I keep wondering if there's something, other than the mechanics of needed them, that would be an encouragement to gather them. Perhaps a list of the best possible score one could get at the end of a series of rooms?
Room 8 was a toughie! It was the first real difficulty spike and if I could take up more of the player's time I would have had a slower ramp. In hindsight, I should have probably just left it at one bird. 🐦⬛ Great point about putting the fly closer.
I'm going to touch it up a bit more, add some levels, and look into either having the ability to skip rooms or an assist mode.
Thanks again for playing and the thoughtful comments!
I like this a lot! I found it cool that you have to eat some flies to use stuff like trampolines, but you can't eat too many otherwise you can't get around tight areas. However, I did have some difficulty with the controls. Double-jumping felt inconsistent, and I think for this type of game good movement mechanics are really important.
Thank you for playing and for the feedback! It was really fun, and tricky, to try to balance getting heavier while still keeping the controls feeling good. Could you say more about where you were finding it difficult? When did double-jumping feel inconsistent? I have a few ideas what it might have been, but I'm curious to hear your take!
I like the concept, I personally feel like the movement is too simple for this kind of difficulty. I think the last level had a clever idea, but figuring out what I needed to do the rest boiled down to cutting the corners as precisely as I can to not bump into the, in my opinion, oversized hitboxes of the spikes. It felt like a rage game at parts, which would probably have worked without the checkpoints.
Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
I had toyed with the idea of a dash that gave you a bit snappier movement and allowed you to cancel fly eating. It's great feedback and I'm looking forward to playing with it a bit more.
I actually didn't want to include spikes in the game, and even with them in, I agree that they are a bit large! The idea was to introduce more side effects to eating flies, for example growing big enough to not be bothered by walking on spikes, or too big to be attacked by birds.
I'm curious, which parts felt the most like a rage game, if you don't mind saying?
Mostly in the last three levels where you kept having to do the really precise parts only to get to new territory and die because you didn't know what to do exactly. Compare it to Getting over it where you have to risk falling if you want to gain information on how you climb, but after falling it then takes a lot of precision to get back to where you were.
For example, in the third to last level you finally make it through the frustrating first bit where you keep jumping into the spikes, only to grab one wrong firefly, meaning you have to do the first bit again.
Another way it sometimes feels like a rage game is the way you have to hold full right in a lot of jumps. If you play a Mario game for example there are barely any jumps that you have to fully commit to to only barely make it. In fact, in Mario games almost all jumps are possible to make without running. In your game these jumps feel rather similar to rage games where after having commited to a move you have to watch in pain how you're just short. In some jumps the double jump helps though.
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback! I would have loved to introduce new mechanics more slowly and intentionally, and to spread the levels out into smaller chunks.
And agreed! Mario’s so floaty and much more forgiving.
Thanks again!
Incredible atmosphere between the silhouettes and the sounds. Liked seeing the tongue stretch to get a bug, except of course when it killed me. Room 8 took so many tries. Had to be so careful at every step. It was much harder for me than room 9. Aside from that, the game progressed really well. Satisfying ending level. A bit of calm to close it down. Really enjoyed this solid entry.
Thank you for playing and great job on finishing it!
I'll admit that I spent far too long on getting the tongue to behave properly, when in the end it wasn't the most impactful mechanic of the game. 😌 It had to stay in the correct position based on the animation of the sprite, which of course changed based on the player state. I'm glad you enjoyed!
What was the hardest part about 8 for you? Anything you would have preferred that would have made it more smooth?
I was thinking to myself that the tongue must have eaten up a lot of time. Totally worth it.
For level 8, it was the beginning. Those two bats were hard to get by. I'm a pro at it now, but I must have died 20-30 times before crossing them once. After crossing them, any death forced me to cross them again. And I died in each segment at least a few times. I hit that second heart a bunch of times.. so close to finishing the level.
I think the bats are a solid addition, but that segment was much harder for me than anything else in the game. Starting with one bat might have made it smoother, but still challenging.
I totally agree– Having one, especially to introduce the concept, would have felt way more forgiving! If I could do it again, I would have liked to space out/separate the two ideas in that room.
Thank you for the thoughtful feedback!
I got score 16 until room 8. I couldn't pass the birds ;-;
I loved the SFXs hahahaha
Really fun and nice work with the lightning, congrats!
Thanks for playing and the feedback!
Room 8 is a tough one! If it were a more full game, I would have introduced the bird mechanic more slowly, and maybe I should have! I actually tuned the difficulty down at the last minute, thankfully. 😅 It's been fun to think and learn about difficulty ramp for a game-jam, especially when everyone here is giving up their time to review! Something I naively hadn't considered before.
The sounds are always my favorite part! I have a collection of truly uncomfortable recordings of the "jump" and "hungry" sounds.
I liked it, all of the platforming mechanics work well (jump,bouncing platforms, water...) and the eating flies mechanic works well ! The music and lighting add a lot of beauty in the game and makes it pretty relaxing. Really cool entry, great job !
Thank you for playing and for your thoughts!
Keeping the platforming feeling flowy and fun while also increasing your weight and reducing the jump height was fun to balance. I kept tweaking the weight-penalty to make a particular puzzle work, only to find that when I would go back and replay another room, the movement felt sluggish. I'm glad it worked! The music was done by my partner, Sheena, and I'll pass on the compliments. I'm glad it felt relaxing!
Pretty cool idea, felt like an unique game. It has a good difficulty curve, and it also feels pretty polished. Music is cool as well. And it provides a valuable life lesson: only eat so much that you still fit through the next door.
Unless it's island fruit! Then eat as much as possible. 🥝
Thanks for playing and the thoughts! The difficulty was something I went back and forth on, and eventually toned it down for the game jam, which I'm glad I did. 😅 It's tough when you have so little of people's time. The music was done by my partner, who's incredibly talented, and whipped that up when playing with one of her new instruments. I'll pass on the compliment.
Level design is very nice and the lighting really helps to add depth to the levels. The growth mechanic is used quite creatively. Great work especially for your first!
Thank you for playing and for the kind note!
The jump sound did weird me out a bit at the start haha.
But I love the look of the frog and the lighting. Really clever design too.
Good job!
You should hear the recording of me making a BUNCH of variations of those sounds in a row! 😂
The frog fit the image of an overconsuming No-Face, from Spirited Away, I thought. Thanks for playing and leaving thoughts!
The visuals are extremely refined, while the level design is simply professional.
Even though each level offers a high caliber challenge, we want to try and try again.
For my part, I am very proud to have made it to the end, because it brought me enormous satisfaction!
Well done and thank you!
Aww, thanks so much for the kind words and for playing! I loved your entry.
I'm so glad you made it to the end! How did you feel about the number of levels? I wasn't sure exactly how long to make it for the game-jam. I had many more planned, but didn't want to exhaust people. 😅
As I tried your game during the gamejam and I want to discover as many projects as possible, I found that the number of levels was perfect.
But in a context where I would have settled down to play this game specifically, I would have happily taken more levels!
I'm glad it felt that way. 😌