itch.io

“Wow thank you! You don't know how much I appreciate gaming experience feedback as detailed and complete as the one you write. I appreciate it very much.”
Thanks! I’m happy my comment was so well received! Now, I would not call it “complete”… which I try to proove by adding a crap load of more nitpicks below. Haha.

“There is information about jumping (and double jumping), I think you skipped it, hehe.”
Whoops. Right there over the player sprite. I’d say gracefully overlooked that one… *cough*. Granting the tutorial screen a bit more thought… the amount of text encountered at first sight is surely overwhelming. It would benefit from applying more principles of visual hierarchy. Using button symbols instead of the words (e.g. “arrow keys”) would make it easier on the eye and also allow for a quicker nagivation of the info (i.e. a first glimpse tells you already what paragraph is about controls, and what is about game elements like enemies, etc.). And a very general tip: for paragraphs one should always use left aligned text instead of centered or right aligned text. Looks more orderly right away and is easier on the reader’s eye.

“SHIELD. I admit that I tried some of this things. Like puting a duration bar and recharging it after a period of no using the shield. But I still have many programming limitations, even with GDevelop.”
Ah sure, that combined with a strict time limit (as in 3 hours … total rando example) makes these things especially tricky. I havn’t yet looked into GDevelop, though I spotted the logo in many Jam games already.

“Before that, I've only made Bitsy games (extemely simple motor of 1-bit games).”
Ah, that one I even tried out! I think I heard about it on a YT channel, normally about D’n’D table top stuff… if I remember correctly he used it specifically to quickly test dungeon designs before he exposes his TTRPG parties to them. Btw, I’d recommend to look into GB Studio … it’s really quick to set up, received a lot of great upgrades with the latest releases, and the coolest thing is that the compiled game can run on original Game Boy hardware (or other handhelds of which some are contemporarly produced… like the Analogue Pocket). And the rather strict limitations (like 4 gray/green shades at max.* – oh boy, it’s 2-bit! – for the original Game Boy) are actually great for beginners to handle.

*… though you can later kick things up big notch by developing for Game Boy color (easily activated by ticking a single checkbox), which allows the handling of several 4-color palettes where multiple can be used within the same screen and even sprite.

“SCREEN. Oh! That error you mention has not appeared on any screen I tried. Have you tried playing it on the Gd.games website? Which resolution are using? Maybe I need to check the propeties of the project to adapt the resolution...”
Yes, I tried it also in the GD.games page with the same result! 1920 × 1200 is my main monitors resolution. I’d assume there’s a section in the preferences of a GDevelop project to tell it how to prioritize the view port’s dimensions to fit monitors with a different resolution. Right now, apparently, it makes sure to match the height, which then potentially leads to horizontal clipping.

Whoops, I just saw that I typed away for a straight hour. Cheers & till later!