Post by skallywags in Worlds Collapse jam comments

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Definitely one of the better games I've played in this jam and on this theme in general. The idea is not revolutionary (I'm sure there are others like this) but the combination of well though out level design and the cute art and dialogue leads to a very satisfactory playthrough. I beat it in 23 resets, no idea if that's great or terrible. I liked that the final level was easy, after the penultimate level being so challenging.

I really have no complaints. I have seen other games where you control two characters with two sets of inputs, but putting them together on a single input leads to so much more interesting design and is easier to wrestle with for your hands.

If you plan on expanding the game which you should, then I would like to see a bigger variety of interactable mechanics like you have the flowers and pressure plates. Objects that move you around (think a cannon, portal, or bouncy object), enemies that shoot bullets that travel each time you move, a switch that switches your positions in the levels, etc.

Actually I do have on small criticism - I would have preferred if the mechanics were not explained to me in dialogue and I had to experiment with and figure out the mechanics myself, but that may be up to personal taste.

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Woomek2 years ago(+1)

Hey ! Thanks for this amazing feedback.

Especially that the game design is good. This because I am currently (beside my fulltime job) learning to become a gamedesigner. Through game jams I test my learned knowledge and I also learn programming.

You really think i'll have to expand the game? making puzzles is quite difficult, you have to think about it a lot haha!

Where would you want to see the instruction then? Because there should always be a way for the player to know how to play the game. Maybe i should keep the instructions more compact. like "hey a stone, you should check out what it does" vibe.

Again, thanks for this amazing feedback!

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skallywags2 years ago

Hey, thats great! I also recently quit my full time job to go full time on game dev. I am working with 3 college friends on an indie game full time. I think you did a phenomenal job, but especially for someone who is trying to get into game dev!

I totally agree with you that making puzzles is hard, that was a bit of an oversight in my feedback :). But I still think you could expand it, not by making harder and more complicated levels along the same approach, but by making the difficulty progression a bit smoother (say 20 or 30 levels rather than 10) and by introducing new mechanics, obstacles, ideas, and enemies in all those levels. In other words, stretch out the game and add more mechanics in between to keep it fresh.

Do you need to expand on it? Definitely not necessary, but it would be awesome to see this game for a few bucks on steam rather than a smallish, simple game for free here on itch.io. It could be a test commercial project for your dream of becoming a full time game dev.

I saw that you played my game, thanks for that! Usually when I work on a game jam game, I aim to make some simple main mechanic(s) and then add new level interactions, obstacles, enemies and ideas as I go through the levels to keep twisting the mechanic and keeping things varied. That is just my way of viewing games and design, and I get that you may have a different view, which is totally cool.

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skallywags2 years ago (1 edit)

Also, for the instructions, I would prefer if you used more visual cues, like highlighting objects, button prompts on screen, etc. For the flower, I think you could simply show an animation of the player getting hurt when touching the flower, and also make the flower look very dangerous in its visual design and that would be self-explanatory. For the walls, same thing, people would figure it out. For the pressure plates, you could draw an outline around the very first pressure plate or show a small arrow pointing to it, to draw attention to it. Then show a visual connection that the pressure plate causes the wall on the other side to drop. The approach you used still works fine, but personally I feel that players don't want to read very much, and they want to experiment and figure things out themselves to some extent. Of course, you have to give them the controls and draw attention to the new objects in the game, but beyond that may be considered "hand-holding" for some players. Of course, this is subjective, and I see some merit in both approaches too.

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