Post by Imre Barta in Hey, My Package! comments

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The game is good for the jam! The music is a bit repetitive, the art looks good, but the gameplay is a bit of a mixed bag.

The jump arch and the general movement of the player is a bit restrictive while being a bit too floaty. The cooldown on the big box package doesn't really make sense, since it only makes you wait more which isn't ideal. The levels are a bit non-nonsensical, there are a lot of bits of the level which just doesn't serve a purpose in the level itself.

The restart is unnecessary in my opinion. Like, if I NEED to restart because the level design is basically a one way road with no ways to back track, I'll just not retry the level, because going back to the beginning for no reason other than the fact that I don't know the map is frustrating.

The interaction key is a bit unnecessary as well, the player only really goes to the truck if they want to finish the level. E is not used anywhere else, so having it automated and just finishing the level when you touch the truck would be better.

But yknow, for a game jam game with a very limited time to work on it, its fine. My only real issue with the game is the level design where I HAVE to restart if I go beyond a certain point.

JKGameDev1 year ago (2 edits) (+1)

Thank you so much for this feedback!

Okay, let´s go part by part:

MOVEMENT:

I´m still getting the hang of player movement, i started recently to actually play around with gravity, acceleration, friction(deacceleration), etc. So it´s still really new to me, if you have any tips on how to make the movement more precise but not restrictive, i would love that! Especially when it comes to jumping, cause i just can´t get it right!

PACKAGE COOLDOWN:

I was actually thinking about doing a limited box count, so the player wouldn´t only use the package for everything, because then the letters would be useless. But to be honest, i don´t remember why i choose the timer over the package limit, i just know i did it because i didn´t want to make the letters useless.

INTERACTION KEY:

Again, i don´t know why i did it, i just did, this was kind of in auto pilot, i needed to finish the level in the truck, so i did it, and the way that came to my mind, was using user input. I can´t even defend myself on this one

LEVEL DESIGN:

Yeah, i was never the best at level design, and in this game it got even worse because i started making all the levels today. So my poor skills at level design, mixed with my poor time management, resulted in these levels. i did notice that the one way sections where frustrating, but as i said, since i didn´t have much time left, i decided to export the game the way it was. So yeah, i´m not proud of these levels, but in the end, they did teach me something. I am practicing this, because i know how important it is for a pleasant experience.

But for real, i really appreciate you took the time to write this review, it really helped! Again, thank you.

Imre Barta1 year ago

Of course, no worries!

For the movement, I'm not a big platformer player (let alone developer), so I don't exactly know why the movement feels restricting, if I had to guess it would probably be that the air friction is too high thus making the player feel like a brick "flying" through the air when jumping. For a more in-depth ... thing, i'd recommend Game Maker's Toolkit's platformer toolkit thing.

The package could've been like a crowd control tool. Sure, that way its getting into a more 2D Metroidvania or bullet-helly territory which you may or may not wanna get into depending on your ideas for the game, but like having the package a "shotgun" or a bomb or something that explodes into many letters, thus satisfying the letter cravings of a mob of people. Or just a simple "get out of jail" card where if you're corned by a bunch of them you can just throw the package to calm them all.

Tbh the level design itself, while funky, I wouldn't really have an issue with in a game jam if restart wasn't mandatory for the levels.

One more thing is that, the tutorial is basically the whole game. Like, once you complete the tutorial (and / or level 1), you basically saw what the game has to offer. You saw all the enemies, all the scenarios that could happen, and the rest of the levels just exist for no reasons. Mario franchise does this really well, where every second level brings in a new mechanic, and the level after that expands on that idea a lot. Then another new idea, another expansion, so on and so fourth. But yknow. There is only so much a person can do within the game jams' time window, these are more like ideas to play with for future games.

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