This is one of entries that really ticks all the boxes. It was a little frustrating how easy it was to waste water once you collected a load but that was probably more a problem with me than the game. Great stuff.
Yeah you should totally make it into a bigger project! I think it's mostly a problem with the player not the game but I'll try explain. For example in the first level on the screen to the left of the start, you can collect water, take it to the top right corner and then if you are facing the wrong way when releasing the water (towards the wall instead of the room) you lose it all and have to go back to collect more.
Nice game. Cute graphics, i like the dithering. I got through the whole game not using the bubbles until the boss, then realised what they were for, kindof like parasol stars.
Parasol Stars is my biggest influence for this game! Glad you noticed. I'm happy you liked it. I'll be turning this into a big project where the bubbles will have much more importance than just killing rats.
We have another great game for the LTRO-1 console here! I liked in all of this aspects (I want that boss music :O ), so I can say the things I didn’t like so much. It’s the collectables of the game. I think we have the coins, keys and hearts. I saw only one heart in the whole game ( I think ), I don’t know what the coins mean (points, maybe?) and also the keys are…weird. You can visit a place, solving a hard platforming challenge and you need to backtrack because you need a key. Also, I didn’t manage to open the treasure box on my first playthrough and only on my second one I found a key, went to the exit, managing I had a wrong key and going back to the treasure, getting the gold key and finally beat the boss. So yes, you should think more on the worst outcomes sometimes since it happened to me to have that :D
Thanks for the input! I should have made the keys more clear. I intend on making the full game into a dungeon crawler/vania game. I was trying to have as little prompting from me as possible. I really wanted to make the entire game without any language in it at all, but crunch time slowed me down.
I don't think the backtracking is necessarily bad, just I should have conveyed that it was a possibility. Maybe a sign in the first room that says find the keys?
Oh shoot, ok so the coins. For the final version of the game you're going to be able to buy upgrades for your staff, and for mounts. For this one I just put in 94 coins, 1994 was THE YEAR for SNES which is my biggest inspiration for most of the work I do. I wanted to incorporate spending the coins, but again, 2 weeks was crazy. I can't believe I got as much done as I did.
Again, thanks for the critique, it's super important to me :)
The art is awesome and game mechanic is also pretty cool and creative. Sometimes my enemies would get stuck, but it didn't really take away from the game. Game feel is really satisfying, I think you did a really great job on that. Story and progression is definite +.
Thanks for the critique! My goal is to have the game run with a gamepad one day (when I make the full version of the game). I didn't even test with mine because of the time restraints. I'll keep working on it. :)
This is amazing. I couldn’t find any issues with the game itself whatsoever. The only thing I noticed was that there was no full screen on the web version (so I switched to the windows build)
Yeah for some reason when I set my game up I couldn't get the full screen button to show up any more. I've never had to output to browser before, and was running out of precious brain fuel.
Awesome work, the art, music and controls were really nice and polished. The bubble shooting concept was really cool. Tiny bug I encountered was that some of the enemies sometimes got stuck mid-air:
Congratulations on making a great game for this jam!
THAT PESKY MOUSE! I thought I fixed that. Thanks for playing my game
If you want some help with pixel perfect in Unity, I developed an asset because of this jam! It works -WAY- better than the "PixelPerfect" script that is in Unity. That's what I used for BMATEN and was able to rotate sprites, but not lose that crispy pixelness (you can see this in the boss fight when his hands rotate) . I released the asset for free, as well as the steps to make your own if you need other dimensions :) https://ldmoonstudio.itch.io/perfectpixels
So glad to finally get to play Boulder Mage!!! I loved the story, and the art and music are amazing! My only complaint is that I wish there was more indication where the room transitions were because I would always forget. Otherwise, super solid and I'm looking forward to more!
I did some testing and it looks like changing the size of the screen can cut off the sides of the walls? If I keep the window small to start, I don't have that problem. When I played this originally, I made the window larger at the title screen, so I couldn't see the side walls at all. Also it looks like if I resize the window the walls can sometimes disappear?
That's definitely a problem I didn't forsee. I also learned that unity projects will go fullscreen with ALT-ENTER. I'll have to include that in the bug fixes post-jam :) Thanks for sending that over. I wonder if I can ratio lock the window somehow....
I honestly just thought it was normal lol but then when I was scrolling Twitter I saw your screen shots. Regardless I think this is pretty solid and I’m glad that you got it up and running! Great work friend!
You and Azula have been there from the beginning, I'm happy you've followed me on this journey so far! I can't wait to get Boulder Mage into a full fledged game, this really lit a fire under my butt
Such a cute & fun little platformer! The wall-jumping conflicting with double-jumping can be a little confusing, but other than that the mechanics are great.
ACK! Thank you. That double-jump/wall-jump mechanic was driving me crazy. I couldn't find the right balance. I talked to my brother and it seems like I should have had a reverse input delay to initialize the wall jump. Future kinks to figure out, I suppose.
Cute and fun to play! Enough of a challenge to keep me interested, but not too much to be frustrating. Controls are easy to use, and like the look and feel of game overall.
This game is filled with charm and heart. The creativity and detail match the level of mastery with both character and level design. This is a game I can see myself coming back to, time and time again. 10/10.
Really nice art ! Some of the room transitions are a bit frustrating (no easy spot to land on when coming from below a level) and I found myself skipping the water mechanic a lot, but a cool idea !
I'm guessing you're talking about from the Bottom Right most room to the one above it. I noticed I would go up from the right side and it was easy to get up, but when I was trying to finish up the code I noticed the left side was stupid. I lookout to avoid that in future versions of this game. I plan on turning this into my big project. (well... it was always my big project, this was like a tech demo for it....) Thanks for playing! :)
the controls are very nice feeling, the boss is fun to battle, the puzzles are just the amount of toughness as to not be to hard, and the art is rad! this is only the first game I've played for the Jam so far, but I can already tell this game has a big chance of coming top 5
Thanks Pit! I'm glad you liked the controls. I spent the first 2 days of the jam making them before I built anything else and then tweaked them along the way. You made my day :)
Comments
Beautiful, stylish, polished.
This is one of entries that really ticks all the boxes. It was a little frustrating how easy it was to waste water once you collected a load but that was probably more a problem with me than the game. Great stuff.
Thank you! Could you elaborate on wasting the water? Was it getting triggered incorrectly?
I ask because I'm turning this into a much bigger project and want to make it perfect :)
Yeah you should totally make it into a bigger project! I think it's mostly a problem with the player not the game but I'll try explain. For example in the first level on the screen to the left of the start, you can collect water, take it to the top right corner and then if you are facing the wrong way when releasing the water (towards the wall instead of the room) you lose it all and have to go back to collect more.
Nice game. Cute graphics, i like the dithering. I got through the whole game not using the bubbles until the boss, then realised what they were for, kindof like parasol stars.
Parasol Stars is my biggest influence for this game! Glad you noticed. I'm happy you liked it. I'll be turning this into a big project where the bubbles will have much more importance than just killing rats.
We have another great game for the LTRO-1 console here! I liked in all of this aspects (I want that boss music :O ), so I can say the things I didn’t like so much. It’s the collectables of the game. I think we have the coins, keys and hearts. I saw only one heart in the whole game ( I think ), I don’t know what the coins mean (points, maybe?) and also the keys are…weird. You can visit a place, solving a hard platforming challenge and you need to backtrack because you need a key. Also, I didn’t manage to open the treasure box on my first playthrough and only on my second one I found a key, went to the exit, managing I had a wrong key and going back to the treasure, getting the gold key and finally beat the boss. So yes, you should think more on the worst outcomes sometimes since it happened to me to have that :D
Thanks for the input! I should have made the keys more clear. I intend on making the full game into a dungeon crawler/vania game. I was trying to have as little prompting from me as possible. I really wanted to make the entire game without any language in it at all, but crunch time slowed me down.
I don't think the backtracking is necessarily bad, just I should have conveyed that it was a possibility. Maybe a sign in the first room that says find the keys?
Oh shoot, ok so the coins. For the final version of the game you're going to be able to buy upgrades for your staff, and for mounts. For this one I just put in 94 coins, 1994 was THE YEAR for SNES which is my biggest inspiration for most of the work I do. I wanted to incorporate spending the coins, but again, 2 weeks was crazy. I can't believe I got as much done as I did.
Again, thanks for the critique, it's super important to me :)
The art is awesome and game mechanic is also pretty cool and creative. Sometimes my enemies would get stuck, but it didn't really take away from the game. Game feel is really satisfying, I think you did a really great job on that. Story and progression is definite +.
Thank you so much. This made my day.
Love the art, controls were a bit of a struggle
Thank you! It was so fun to cram draw this whole thing.
Could you explain the control issue more? I plan on continuing development for this game
Nice little bit of fun, but unfortunately I found the controls quite difficult to master (playing with gamepad; keyboard was a little better).
Thanks for the critique! My goal is to have the game run with a gamepad one day (when I make the full version of the game). I didn't even test with mine because of the time restraints. I'll keep working on it. :)
This is amazing. I couldn’t find any issues with the game itself whatsoever. The only thing I noticed was that there was no full screen on the web version (so I switched to the windows build)
Yeah for some reason when I set my game up I couldn't get the full screen button to show up any more. I've never had to output to browser before, and was running out of precious brain fuel.
Thanks for playing! I'm glad you liked it.
Awesome work, the art, music and controls were really nice and polished. The bubble shooting concept was really cool. Tiny bug I encountered was that some of the enemies sometimes got stuck mid-air:
Congratulations on making a great game for this jam!
THAT PESKY MOUSE! I thought I fixed that. Thanks for playing my game
If you want some help with pixel perfect in Unity, I developed an asset because of this jam! It works -WAY- better than the "PixelPerfect" script that is in Unity. That's what I used for BMATEN and was able to rotate sprites, but not lose that crispy pixelness (you can see this in the boss fight when his hands rotate) . I released the asset for free, as well as the steps to make your own if you need other dimensions :)
https://ldmoonstudio.itch.io/perfectpixels
So glad to finally get to play Boulder Mage!!! I loved the story, and the art and music are amazing! My only complaint is that I wish there was more indication where the room transitions were because I would always forget. Otherwise, super solid and I'm looking forward to more!
Oh gosh, I just realised from the screen shots that due to my screen resolution I didn't see the walls along the side! So that's on me!
Could you send me a screenshot of the issue you were having?
Sure! Here's a video for you!: https://monosnap.com/file/prL3vwwfgUMrlw6eDqgxf6sudswojW
I did some testing and it looks like changing the size of the screen can cut off the sides of the walls? If I keep the window small to start, I don't have that problem. When I played this originally, I made the window larger at the title screen, so I couldn't see the side walls at all. Also it looks like if I resize the window the walls can sometimes disappear?
That's definitely a problem I didn't forsee. I also learned that unity projects will go fullscreen with ALT-ENTER. I'll have to include that in the bug fixes post-jam :) Thanks for sending that over. I wonder if I can ratio lock the window somehow....
I honestly just thought it was normal lol but then when I was scrolling Twitter I saw your screen shots. Regardless I think this is pretty solid and I’m glad that you got it up and running! Great work friend!
You and Azula have been there from the beginning, I'm happy you've followed me on this journey so far! I can't wait to get Boulder Mage into a full fledged game, this really lit a fire under my butt
Such a cute & fun little platformer! The wall-jumping conflicting with double-jumping can be a little confusing, but other than that the mechanics are great.
ACK! Thank you. That double-jump/wall-jump mechanic was driving me crazy. I couldn't find the right balance. I talked to my brother and it seems like I should have had a reverse input delay to initialize the wall jump. Future kinks to figure out, I suppose.
Cute and fun to play! Enough of a challenge to keep me interested, but not too much to be frustrating. Controls are easy to use, and like the look and feel of game overall.
This game is filled with charm and heart. The creativity and detail match the level of mastery with both character and level design. This is a game I can see myself coming back to, time and time again. 10/10.
Very enteretaining game! As someone else said, I also found myself skipping the water mechanic until the last boss, but everything else is super cool!
A very fun and enjoyable game, but really challenging if you try to speedrun.
Really nice art ! Some of the room transitions are a bit frustrating (no easy spot to land on when coming from below a level) and I found myself skipping the water mechanic a lot, but a cool idea !
I'm guessing you're talking about from the Bottom Right most room to the one above it. I noticed I would go up from the right side and it was easy to get up, but when I was trying to finish up the code I noticed the left side was stupid. I lookout to avoid that in future versions of this game. I plan on turning this into my big project. (well... it was always my big project, this was like a tech demo for it....) Thanks for playing! :)
This is so Awesome! Responsive controls and the level of polish is Amazing. Cool mechanics too.
the controls are very nice feeling, the boss is fun to battle, the puzzles are just the amount of toughness as to not be to hard, and the art is rad! this is only the first game I've played for the Jam so far, but I can already tell this game has a big chance of coming top 5
Thanks Pit! I'm glad you liked the controls. I spent the first 2 days of the jam making them before I built anything else and then tweaked them along the way. You made my day :)