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POLYSPACE's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #1 | 3.833 | 3.833 |
| How technically impressive is this game? | #1 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| How creative/original is this game? | #2 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| How much fun is this game? | #3 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
You name
Radu-Nicolae Nenu
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Comments
Hi Radu!
Your game looks very nice, it's visually pleasing. I understand you did this all yourself? Great job! I liked how it was easy to distinguish which islands you have visited and which ones you haven't.
The feel of the game was nice once you've gotten the hang of the mechanics. The latter is the largest issue I have with it though. The immediate double jump doesn't feel very intuitive. In most games a double jump is used to get extra height, either at the apex of your jump or once you see that you won't be able to reach it. Having to press space again immediately after having pressed jump feels very weird. Also it's not explained in the game. I don't feel a game should ever rely on external resources to teach you how it works, unless it's a boardgame.
Besides that, the teleportation thing didn't work well in my opinion. Sure it worked well, if you'd get the center orb as last, but if you'd pick it up later you would have too much momentum left from your jump and you would quickly die in the second level. I think this could be circumvented by placing the players on the starting platform again. Even if they are holding down keys if they see the starting area they are already familiar with they know they can stop holding down the button, reorient themselves, and then jump into the thick of it again.
Also, since your game is placed in a void with no underground or anything, sometimes it was very unclear which platforms you could jump to, this was less a problem in the second level, but it was especially frustrating in the second level.
Overall your game was good!
Hey, thanks for the feedback and for playing! Yeah, I made everything myself.
The double jump doesn't feel intuitive because it works completely differently from the normal double jump mechanic you may find in other games. As explained on the game's page, "The faster you follow the first jump with another jump, the bigger of a boost in momentum you get; there is a linear decrease in the momentum boost reward you get over time.". I made it this way because after first implementing the usual double jump mechanic, I found that it didn't fit the gameplay style. In other games, you use that double jump mechanic because your movements are more precise and separate. In POLYSPACE you run continously, so this double jump method is a bit more in line with the entire gameplay.
As for the portal, indeed collecting the last orb spawns the portal on top of you, which makes have to jump to teleport, but the teleport location is right on top of another platform in the next level, making you land a safe fall every time without pressing anything. But the optimal strategy for a good time makes you collect the middle one within the first ones.
People seem to have a pretty easy time remembering the location of each platform, even on the second level. At the end of the day, both levels are not 100% symmetrical.
This is some nice work, though I think we need to establish a policy on citing any imported assets or plug-ins so we can properly gauge your technical capabilities in future!
There's a nice sense of polish to the UI. Good work getting a leaderboard up and running (again, I'm kinda assuming a marketplace plugin?) and I really like the UX asking for my name and then dropping me into the game rather than going to Play/Leaderboards directly.
That aside - and this is not criticism I'd expected to be levelling at students this early in their learning journey - the readability of the layout made this frustrating to me, and I didn't actually finish it.
The key thing with something like this is that you want the player to be challenged in a way that helps them understand where they went wrong when they die, and be able to correct it. Because your floaty islands are impossible to tell apart, and the level keeps spinning, there's nothing for me, as a player, to use as a reference to learn whenever I die. I can't go "oh, I should jump left at that point instead of right" because I can't remember where "that point" is.
On top of this, there's no "readability" to the level. I can't tell the jumps I can make from the jumps I can't, so very often I went for a jump and failed, and it felt more like I died because you tricked me rather than I failed to time/line up my jump.
So those are some really great lessons to knock out early in your learning, and if you keep that in mind over the next couple blocks you'll start level design in Block C already ahead of our expectations!
Keep up the good work!
Hey, thanks a lot for the feedback, I really appreciate it!
No, as cited in the original Itch.io game page, the only plugins I used are: Discord RPC SDK and ParticleText. I made the leaderboard from scratch myself, as well as all the other assets. (except for the music obviously). I made the meshes, particles, shaders, VFX, code and everything.
As for the readability, I feel like because of the double jump mechanic, combined with the sprint mechanic you get a sense of how much you can move in 3d space when combining those 2 mechanics. The effect of that is the "readability". Depending on how much you sprint you'll be able to understand "okay, I can do this jump, but not that jump". That was at least what I was going for and IMO (as well as from feedback) I think I kind of got it. The 2 levels have different layouts which you can memorize, helping you be able to say "ok i wanna go there so I don't fall this time around".
The game IS designed with frustration in mind - no checkpoints, no respawning on platforms, etc. Judging from feedback from other people it seems this has been achieved, but it's always good to hear more opinions!