Post by pancelor in Expired! Your name in the credits

Viewing post in Expired! Your name in the credits

hi, I beat the game! 23:52 to beat the game, and 24:52 to get 100%. I’m blown away by how huge it is; I can hardly imagine how much time and effort went into this…

if there’s room in the credits, I’d like a #ff6c24 to #00b543 gradient; something vaguely like this: (all lowercase)

I had a great time with the game! the pacing was slow and meditative – it took me an hour or so to get into that vibe, but after that I really enjoyed it. I think that first long section where you run through a long long field with no enemies was probably the turning point where I started to really get it.

I liked the level design a lot – there were generally secrets where I expected secrets (even just small coins), and the visible coins in the early game guided me into a lot of moments where I thought “wait, can I get there right now? I don’t think I can… aha! I can!”

the level design felt… playful? teasing? mischevious? like, before the first bat boss there’s a long tunnel with no obstacles that you run down. if you jump as you go you can see there’s an upper tunnel too. and if you missed that, there are bats up there that you’ll notice when they shoot. so, now I know there’s an upper tunnel but I’m already committed to the bottom tunnel b/c it’s long; I eventually get to the end and find this teaser:

so the level design is telling me “ha! just kidding, the upper tunnel was nothing, just 40 coins, not really worth it :)” but I am Suspicious so I go up there and aha, there’s more! well, just some boring tunnels that don’t go anywhere. hmm, drat. but I finish going all the way to the 40 coins and… there’s even more! a little maze at the end, to get a valuable trinket

that whole sequence felt like a game of cat-and-mouse with the creator. the very long tunnel to go back and forth added a lot of time to each trip, which gave time to think and predict the level design. it was pretty essential that the tunnel was completely empty to not distract me with game mechanics (jumping, enemies), and the game moved out of the computer and into my head, which was very neat. I think there’s stuff like this throughout, but this is the most concentrated example I can remember right now.

there was an almost-similar moment here: this room seems hidden, and I passed by it (I was on the left). then later I came to it from the right, and saw that it must exist. then I went all the way back to the left and went in, and that revealed that there was another hidden passage, accessible from the right! so I went all the way back around to the right side, crawled in… and there was nothing there. I was expecting a circuit key or something

I didn’t realize doors (where you can press up to travel to a back layer of some sort) were a thing until after getting my first cube. I consistently had trouble seeing them throughout my playthrough – I didn’t find the save before the first shark boss, and many of the last collectibles I found (e.g. one in the green sunken ghost ship area) were hard because I just didn’t see the door, which was a bit annoying

I think I would have figured this out a lot sooner if the house near the shark boss had a door – the upper house had a door, but I didn’t try it because I had already tried entering the door-looking spot on the lower house (next to the well), and nothing happened.

I got stuck at the water jump after the first cube; that was the one time I had to ask for help. I ended up going back into the dog zone to get circuit keys to unlock the door to the map, because I didn’t know it was a map yet and thought it might be required. I wondered for a while if there was some way to use the new portal – it was the only “activated” portal on the map, so I thought maybe I could use it somehow. maybe I was tired and would have figured it out eventually, but I got stuck there.

I also got stuck before the first bat boss; I didn’t know that mushrooms were interactable yet. I spent a while wandering around, expecting to find a claw upgrade that would let me break the bricks in the boss room.

I tend to get lost in metroidvanias, and neither experience was too bad since I got to go exploring and collecting, but I thought you might be interested to know where I got stuck.

I was disappointed by the sunset gates – I beat the boss and then came back to the game the next day, expecting extra-hard post-game challenges, but it was just easy circuit keys. but, I did have a great time getting the last claw upgrade, which was required for the last 3 keys (in the snow area). (the last claw upgrade looking easy to get to but then being a whole gauntlet was a very good joke!)

the final boss was hard and cool and the postboss ascent was really amazing – you really got my heart pounding! I did NOT want to fight the final boss again, and there’s that one really hard jump where you have to get up onto a center platform by bouncing on the friends. I ended up timing out right at the last hard platforming part, on the last jump to the right on the 1x1 blocks. I wish I’d cleared it first try and never realized the stakes weren’t as high as I thought… but then I ended up needing to fight the final boss again anyway!! because I reset manually when my second climb started too slow! haha whoops. it was a fantastic final boss

I loved the reward for getting 99 circuit keys; I can’t imagine anything else that would have been as satisfying. it reminds me of that long run through the grassy field I mentioned earlier.

(edit: I just read sylvie’s comment: I didn’t realize it did something! I just sat there for a while and then closed the game, satisfied)

Bobo The Cat2 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Hi thank you for your kind words. Every single player that enjoyed my game means a lot to me. Especially if they do all the optional stuff.

Haha you didn't make a screenshot of the credits your name will not be mentioned. Just a joke, this is even better, I updated the conditions now because of the walkthrough. I will add your name later today.

The savepoint before the shark is optional the next one was not far away aswell you had to swim through 2 rooms to get to the sunken city again. If I rembember correctly the door of the lower house was closed the upper one wasn't but I will look into it later. I guess the design of the doors is a two edged sword. I wanted almost every door in the game to be unique to prevent boredom and so players had to explore and try to interact with the world but for the next game I might add doors to the map or make all of them glow even so some doors are already glowing and I had the feeling it wasn't enough. Luckily most doors are optional.

In one of the last updates I added spirit balls to show the way out of the water before the rainforest. I hope that will be enough because I don't know what else I could do. I already more or less softlocked the players before obstacles like this or the bat and hoped the solution would be intuitive enough.

I want to say that I didn't see any of your points as criticism but I wanted to talk about it or perhaps even find a solution for them.

And to be honest I always get lost or stuck in games with adventure-elements or maybe almost all games. That's why I am so happy that Catlover_mimi made this awesome walkthtough because I often need walkthroughs myself. Every person has a different way of thinking and playing so the only way to prevent players from getting lost would be to add no challenge and no exploration at all.

Thank you again for your detailed comment.

Bobo The Cat2 years ago

I will upload this version of the game in a few minutes.

pancelor2 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

I thought of a idea for the doors – I can see why you wouldn’t want them to glow all the time, but maybe they could glow while the player is using the blue secret-finding ability? I think I would have liked that. (and adding a working door to the bottom house near the shark would have also helped me to know that doors existed in the first place)

re: the rainforest waterjump: one option might be to trap the player in the water with an equally tall wall on the right, to tell them that there’s a way to get out if they can just figure it out. or maybe make the water deeper, so that they’re sure to accidentally highjump after they dive down for the spirit orbs…? or change the physics to make the waterjump height difference more exaggerated. I’m not sure how well those changes would work, and I’m not even sure that a change here would be a good thing, but they’re options that come to my mind if you decided you wanted players to not get stuck there.

Every person has a different way of thinking and playing so the only way to prevent players from getting lost would be to add no challenge and no exploration at all.

yeah! I completely agree. that’s why I’m hesitant to suggest any big changes… the times I got stuck were part of the whole experience, and I really enjoyed the whole experience! thanks for the game :)

Bobo The Cat2 years ago (4 edits)

I will most liekely use your doors idea for the next game.

Chaninging physics so late in development is almost impossible it would change too many situations.The idea with the equally hight wall is very good. I thought that I softlocked the players enough at that point but it seems they have to be softlocked a bit more. The only problem is that you need to run over the water for the secret so the gap would be a problem. The easiest solution would be to make the water deeper but that would still be much work. Resizing the room changing the map etc. and I am not sure if it would work because one player got stuck at a similar point where the water was much deeper. But I will try that solution later. A few days ago I would have instantly tried all of this solutions but at the moment I am a bit overburdening myself. I am already thinking of more or less closing the bugreport thread and to prioritize my next project.

But I am impressed, I can see that you are very talented at problem solving. Most people only tell me what they don't like but don't really tell me realistic options to make things better. Maybe if I some day need help with Bobo 2 I will ask you.

itch.io

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