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Kickflip, The Horse's itch.io pageCategories Your Team is Eligible for
Best Gameplay, Best Ragdoll Physics, Best Humor.
One team member is a ZAn outside ZA, so we're happy not to receive any prize money, but would love feedback from the judges.
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Comments
This was awesome! Nosegrinds and transporting children were easily my favourite parts. It didn't seem like I could grind a child, but I kept trying.
I found getting the goals a little cryptic and tricky, but I'm not too sure how to improve upon what's here. I've never tried making a goat simulator or Tony Hawk game myself. My instinct would be too try compress the level a bit so that the triggers for the goals are closer together or even overlapping so that completing the tasks happens faster (and more often by accident). And I'd also try make the wipeouts cost less momentum or happen in fewer circumstances, I felt like I was spending a lot of time upside down waiting for my horse to fix itself after colliding with an object that I had no hope of avoiding (as I was travelling so fast).
Also, with some more sound effects (clip clop) I think the humour would be even funnier. The audio while not wearing a hat was kind of eerie, like a half-attended school cafetaria during a pandemic, and it wouldn't take much to make the audio really immerse the player in the Tony Horse fantasy. I think the realistic ambience starts in this direction, juxtapposing the flip-horse against a Tony Hawk audio-pallette, but obviously there's a lot missing audio-wise (unless I've missed something and there was an error on my side).
OMG "Tony Horse" was right there this whole time... Great feedback, thanks! I am personally invested in wipeouts being way less punishing, they need to be funny rather than annoying or costing time. One of my notes was "Face Manuals!"
This is really insightful and helpful, thanks for taking the time to write this.
Person grinds are a great idea!
I agree with you on the goals being cryptic. Initially I thought it would be fun to decrypt them but Danny added better explainers for each of them right at the end of the jam and that's so much better. It's a lesson for me in having more trust in the moment-to-moment play being fun enough and not feeling the need to make stuff cryptic / puzzly (in this type of game).
Overall we were aiming for more of an exploration feel rather than THPS / Goat Sim trick chaining. So my design was heavily inspired by this old gem: https://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement-unlocked
The feedback on compressing the level is really good. I kept it spread out to allow speeding around between stuff, but as you pointed out there's frustration around losing momentum too easily and often. Maybe solving the momentum issue means the level feels better as is? Danny noted pretty early on that he wanted to minimise momentum loss, we just didn't get around to it in jam time.
Great notes on audio too. No errors on your side, just no time to flesh that out during the jam. My experience with sound effects is that sometimes adding just a few effects actually detracts from the immersion because there's an player-feeling that there should be more sounds on everything. Kinda like an uncanney valley for sound scapes? But ye I hadn't thought about it from the perspective of humor before :)
One thing I really wanted to try achieve with this jam was make something that was fun to stream and watch someone else play. I feel that's something you (and the FreeLives team) have been so successful at. Sadly this hasn't got much attention in that regard. I'd love to know if you had any quick thoughts on why that might be? I think the itch page is pretty dismal :) but I felt like the gameplay and visuals are fun enough? Am I just being delusional / optimistic?
Again, thanks for the feedback.
PS How did we miss Tony Horse :'D
Hi Ash. I think your game would have been really fun to stream so I'm also really surprised it hasn't got much attention in this regard : ( I would also like to get my games streamed so I can observe how people play them in order to improve on them. Sadly, while my games do get quite a lot of plays (especially the web versions) they don't seem to get a lot of attention from streamers or youtubers. I would also be keen to hear if the team at Free Lives have any tips in this regard.
P.S. There are a few YouTube channels you can submit your game to for playback and reviews. I've submitted one of my games to Xanderwoodwho has a series 'Lets play indie games' and found the feedback useful. And since he has a good following it's a great way to get more people to play your games : )
Hey Itizso, thanks for your input here.
Strangely the day I posted my previous comment asking Evan about streamer visibility / discovery, this game got it's first YT play vid :P The last 2 days have seen 12, 19 & 44 views respectively. Far from mass appeal but it's looking positive. I think polishing up the game page + gifs would help a lot here.
I gave some thought to your games getting attention. In my mind there are 3 reasons a streamer picks up a game (highest priority first):
1) They're getting paid by the publisher / developers to promote the game.
2) They think the game will be entertaining for their audience and/or help them reach new viewers.
3) They're personally interested in playing something and hope it will be entertaining too.
Based on my thinking, something being fun to play is always secondary to how entertaining it's content is to viewers.
In your specific case with Physics Practice, I think it's got a really cool thumbnail which pulls people to view the page. The page looks amazing, so almost everyone is going to stick around and try out the game. The web version and short play session length means almost no friction to people trying it out (probably a few times) and likely to return to it later and try beat earlier scores. I personally don't think the gameplay lends itself to being very viewer-entertainingness-friendly though, so I assume that's why it hasn't received the attention we're talking about.
I know what I'm saying here isn't particularly ground-breaking and you didn't really ask me for feedback but I figured I'd share my thoughts in case it's helpful in some way?
Oh and thanks for the Xanderwood recommendation, I've sumbitted Kickflip for a let's play :)
Thanks. Since it was just a little practice prototype I wasn't expecting it get much airtime. But I'll definitely keep your list of reasons why streamers pick up a game in mind for future games. Thanks for you insights!
Aw this is amazing! Pure chaos in wiggly horse form, I love it. It felt quite tricky to land on my feet / butt while playing on keyboard, but the overall feel of the game is so fantastic that I can't complain.
Wiggle horse form is best form :)
Nicely done! I love the craziness. Great idea using a horse :)
Thanks :)
This was tons of fun. I like the sandbox design. It makes getting all the achievements all the more satisfying. Awesome game!
Thanks for the kind words.
We also wanted to try a "showboating" mode where you hold a button to do tricks in front of the Hoomans and make them extra happy. Didn't get time for that during the jam :)
This is so funny! I love it!
Yay, glad you had a good time with it :)
This is absolutely perfect! well done.
Thanks.
My absolute favorite part was the hats and their accompanying music, I just wish they didn't fall off so easily. But the easy movement, styled environment, and wide range of objectives makes for a very fun physics filled time.
Thanks for the kind words and feedback.
I did consider allowing the music to play for a while even after a hat falls off, just didn't get to that in jam time :)
Absolute chaos! It was really fun looking for goodies but I struggled with the flip mechanic
Haha, thanks. "Absolute Chaos" is such a great achievement idea :)
With the flip mechanic, I'd love to know more, were you using keyboard or controller? Did you struggle to flip at all or struggle to flip consistently?
I was on the keyboard. I just never got it to flip consistantly, I always ended up jamming keys and hoping for the best. Maybe I didn't read the instructions correctly :(
Ah, thanks, that helps to know.
From ealy on I could feel that getting the flick right on keyboard was going to be a challenge. It's really hard to do diagonal flips on there.
Love it! I had such a laugh as the horse is running around with its hats on.
Selecting one's headwear is a one of life's great joys. Happy to hear you had a good time with it :D
Horsing around has never been so chaotic! Super fun.
<3 thanks
This destressed me after the long jam. Horse go weeeeeee :) great game guys.
Woop! thanks.