Way cool! I love that switching worlds on the main menu shows the credits. In general, I think your initial presentation of the game is excellent. I also really like the mechanics and level design in general! My only two critiques would be: I don't look at a dead plant and think "I can probably bounce on that," and I'm really not so sure about that water sound effect you used.
But I like the look and feel of it a lot. Nice music you made, too! Super impressive overall!
Thanks for taking the time to play my game and to leave a comment.
The dead plant was originally going to be an oasis-specific object (waters geysers). However, as the oasis side had tree-platforms, I felt that I needed a helper object/obstacle on the desert side to keep the balance between the two. The dead plant was supposed to be bramble or a thorny plant that causes an upward movement due to being pricked by the thorns like in old cartoons (think Looney Tunes when a character is poked). Admittedly, my art work and the lack of player sprite change doesn't convey this aspect well. It's also why the final level guides you to a deadend where there's nothing to try out except the plant.
The water sound effect was taken from an asset pack. I had initially only wanted an effect for the initial entering of the water, but the tilemap collider that was used for the water was constantly triggering the effect as the player moved through it. Because of that, I ended up selecting the "moved through water" effect instead of "entering water" effect. In hindsight, I should have programmed in the option to set what "type" of water the player is entering and select the appropriate sound effect based on that setting.
Thanks for the comment about the music. It was fun learning how to use boombox.co, and making the function to switch over the tracks at the same timestamp when the player switches dimensions.
Oh, I totally understood the flavor was "cartoon pricked by thorns jump" once I actually stepped into it. Thing is, I just avoided the dead plant for a little longer than I care to admit, feeling uncertain of what to do. To introduce its mechanic, I'd consider having an immediate "dead end" at the start of the level, where it's just like a little cliff in front of you with that plant, so it's obvious.
But take that with a grain of salt. I'm not very good at platformers.
I know you didn't make the water sound effect; it just sounds a bit like some sort of sci-fi warp zoom to me, though I do think it could help to have it trigger less.
The music track changing as you switch dimensions is very cool! I'll confess I didn't really notice, but I just went back to check to see what you mean. I think something you could consider there would be changing the "vibe" and instrumentation of the track between worlds (and maybe soften or adjust the world-changing sound?) but again, take it all with a grain of salt.
Still very nice work!
