itch.io

Cheers! Yeah, now that its post jam I can redesign the game so that time is not so important. Basically the timer will count up and there will be no fail state in the post jam version so the more casual players wont get as frustrated. But for those that do want the pressure of time, there is still the stars to collect so it will cater to all sorts of player styles. I wanted a high time pressure to be a more central mechanic in the jam version (even though some may feel its too hard at times... sorry!) only because time was the theme, so I wanted to lean into that time pressure harder than I normally would when designing a game.

My player characters hitbox is 8x8 pixels, the animation of the player character varies between 8 and 10 pixels high frame to frame. I chose to make the player character that small because it means the player takes up minimal screen size and therefore, the player can see what is coming easier in the sidescroller levels, but can also get more level geography out of a single screen. The low res of the GB screen makes platformers very cramped if the player character is too big. Wario Land is is a good example of a large player sprite that works but that is slow paced (both warios speed and the various enemies) so it the low resolution isnt a problem so much.

I have actually changed the parameters of the platformer engine post jam to make the game more responsive (just the acceleration and deceleration and also how the movement in the air handles with some changes to the platformer.c file) but I can still share the parameters I have with you if you want.