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A jam submission

Bobby TablesView game page

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Submitted by anttihaavikko (@anttihaavikko) — 14 hours, 16 minutes before the deadline
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Bobby Tables's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Visuals#64.3554.355
Innovation#153.6773.677
Overall#153.7423.742
Audio#183.2263.226
Fun#193.5813.581
xkcd-ness (how well it matches/interprets the comic)#622.8712.871

Ranked from 31 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Link to xkcd comic / 'what if' article the game is based on
https://xkcd.com/327/

Please list any pre-made art/music/other assets that you used.
none

Team size

1

Team's social media links:
https://twitter.com/Sahaqiel

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Had a lot of fun with this! Found the first three table cliff challenging, but finally beat it by messing with the physics. Mildly frustrating, but in a fun way.

Developer

Thanks for playing! It ended up being a bit more challenging than originally intended but hey, that always happens on jam games because you only play the game yourself and easily become blind to the difficulty and other such balancing things.

Submitted(+1)

That was a good ten minutes of play. The visuals were awesome and the physics were petty good (compared to other jam game platformers anyways). I got confused at the three table point til I read a comment that I could throw them below me. Props to you for not using pre-made assets. The only weak point is the audio, but I can't knock that too hard. I tried making my game with the point of not using pre-made assets too but I caved on the music and used a royalty free track because I ran out of time to make anything good. If I had tried, I probably would not have done any better than a simple atmospheric track with the time I had.

You definitely need to include his sister, "Help, I'm trapped in a driver's licence factory", in future versions. She could be tapped someplace where people get trapped and Bobby has got to save her. (Like in a passport factory or something, IDK.)

Anyways, peeps can check my game about accumulating an excessive amount of moles here (Sorry, but gots to plug it while I can too :-P): https://itch.io/jam/xkcdgamejam/rate/196142

Developer(+1)

Thanks! Yup, I'm always in Ludum Dare compo mode so no using pre-made assets ;)

(1 edit) (+1)

This game is beautiful.  It has basically nothing to do with the xkcd comic it was based on aside from "Bobby Tables" (unless there's something at the end I missed), but the platforming and table-using mechanic is still great.

The "tutorial" is well designed--first you show movement, then jumping, then checkpoints, then throwing tables.  One step at a time.  Nice job. :) And throwing tables is really fun (even if they do go quite far, which doesn't pair well with the camera later).

But the level after the second checkpoint (where you have to hop on the two brown cubes) is a few steps above what you've introduced to us.  You show us our table mechanic right before that level by having us put down a table and hop on it to get to a higher ledge.  That's fine, but right after that, not only do you introduce enemies, you introduce an area where it's pretty much necessary to put down a table just right (and possibly drag it [trying not to die in the process] because the area's a tight spot), and do jumps exactly correctly on tiny cubes!  Next time, please increase the difficulty one step at a time, not three steps at once.

The cat killing is pretty brutal.  And it isn't made clear that the cat is an enemy, since it's just as colorful as everything else and looks fine from a distance--I went right up to it because I thought maybe it would help me, and I got killed.

The camera is way too close.  It's hard to see things at times, and I really wanted to zoom back so I can assess the whole problem in front of me.  Especially for later levels where you get more tables and have to stack them to reach the ledge--since I can't see the top of the ledge at all, it's very hard to tell if I'm doing it right until it's already too late, and I either got lucky and reach the top or I have to do everything all over again.

Speaking of which, reaching the ledge with 3 tables was near impossible!  I tried to complete it for quite a long time before I gave up.  I'm sure there's a clever solution, but nothing you've introduced in the game made that solution clear, and I freestyled tables for a while before I couldn't do it.

The ability to grab and drag tables would greatly help this game.  And I assume (since this is something I relied on quite a few times throughout this game) that you wanted the player to turn tables on the side and hop on them--if that is the case, you need to introduce that in the game itself.

This is a bright game; it's quite astonishing that everything in it was made by you in a weekend.  Bobby Tables leaves much to be desired, but I still had fun with it.

(P.S: Why is it Episode 2?)

Developer

Thanks for playing and your essay of a feedback!

It's kinda funny how on each single jam, people like to point out how my game has nothing to do with the theme. Whatever the theme is and whatever I do. I thought for sure this time would be different but hey, here we are again. You're saying that it's only "Bobby Tables" part that is from the comic but but isn't that pretty much the whole comic? Rather than the end, there is a "hidden" bit in the beginning that ties the story together a bit better, introducing Bobby's mom and the school. Bobby also likes to drop tables...

I think you were doing the double brown square part wrong and making it harder for yourself than needed. You don't need any tables in that part unless you fall down. So I don't quite see it as three steps of difficulty, just like one and a half. A few trickier jumps and the introduction of the cats. Sure, quite a lot of people will not see the cat as the enemy at first but the checkpoint is just half a screen away (and dying is even faster way to get back up again to jump on the brown squares). And in the same vein, pretty much all the cats are positioned so that they will cheaply kill you if you aren't being careful, but the previous checkpoint is always just a second away.

Agreed on the camera. As I've said on the other comments already, there are spots on the level that change the zoom level but not enough. And it seems like you didn't notice you can actually pan the camera up/down, that helps a bit with the camera. And that mechanic serves as a subtle hint that you can actually do directional throws with the tables (or maybe not an actual hint but will make players do it by accident). I guess you didn't figure that out either. Sure, thinking about it now, the directional throws should have been introduced somehow earlier on.

Oh yeah I did have the intention at add grab/drag at first but it was left at the cutting room floor because of lack of time and not seeing it as an necessity.

The episode two bit was me just trying to be silly...

Submitted(+1)

This was my fav thus far. Great visual style and really cool physics-based platforming. The physics is a little wonky and unreliable at times, but that's part of the charm. So relieved that pressing down + spawn table works. One issue I found is that the camera is too zoomed in. 

Developer

Indeed, wonky physics are the best physics! You're right about the camera, I had few spots on the level where it zooms out a bit but it would need more of those and some fine tunings. The camera overall could use some more work but it kinda gets the job done.

Thanks for playing and your feedback!

(+1)

A great well polished unique plat former I feel like you could do so much with this concept so I say you should!Anyway one thing I do want to mention is I'm doing a review of design on the games in this jam so here's a shameless plug to my channel if you want to be notified of the vid when released: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7Vj46GGL9VMUvd4YTMtjXg

Developer

Thanks! Good to see that you got the zip issue figured out ;)

(+1)

My XKCD game jam analysis is out!

Submitted(+1)

i was not able to stack 3 bobbytables high enough. but the game is made so well. love it :)

Developer(+2)

Thanks! Yeah, I had a feeling that that part could be too tricky. Well, it's very short game anyway so might as well have some hard parts.

(+1)

What a surreal and fun game. You really came out of left field for this one, but it pays off. The table mechanic is one neat, and two funny - your interpretation of the comic is - priceless. I love the art, and the death animations are well made from the player to the hostile ... cats. The length of the game was ideal as well for what it was mechanically.

Well done! I like you how just made your, own, thing. Nice. 

Also the water temple sign was funny joke. I smiled, but it was a good smile.

Developer

Thank you so much for the kind words and having the patience to play to whole thing through! So glad that you enjoyed my lame water temple joke, it is my favourite bit in this game. I realised quite fast that the mechanic itself isn't that fun/deep so I really focused on the visual aspect of the game instead of just cramming samey content in it.

Your most welcome, and I agree - in this case I think the polish was the logical choice. Good work.

Submitted(+1)

Fun so far, but I don't think I got very far because it crashed whenever I died instead of restarting at a checkpoint. So I kept having to start over.

Developer

Oh damn. Any error on the crash or does it just freeze? The restarting will take few seconds each time because it reloads the whole scene (which then generates the individual ground block textures again). I didn't have time or motivation to focus on the texture generation or their caching so it is probably the culprit behind the crash.

Developer

Since it doesn't seem to be against the rules, I just uploaded a new version with all the textures pregenerated. It now handles much faster and shouldn't cause any crashes because of memory issues when generating those on the fly.

Submitted(+1)

Usually post-release performance updates and bug fixes are totally acceptable. I'll try it again, when it crashed last time it created a crash dump file but I didn't look at it. I can't seem to find it now.

(+1)

I want to play but the game isn't extracting properly on windows

Developer

Oh damn, sorry! Just rebuilt and reuploaded the windows verstion. Could you try again?

just did but its still showing an empty folder

when extracted

Developer (1 edit)

Oh weird. I'm on mac so can't say for sure what is going on there. But these are the contents of the downloaded zip for me:

(+1)

yeah i get that but when unzipped nothing appears don't worry about it thanks for trying!

Developer

Looks like the issue is on your end since I asked on discord and it downloaded and extracted fine for them. What are you using to unzip and do other zip files work just fine?

Windows 10 default unzipper

It worked on the web version so Thanks!