I think it was a neat idea and giving everyone a unique experience by having them choose their own music was a nice take on "only one", but I think procedural generation like this usually shines when it's used to give players multiple, varied playthroughs. For a single playthrough, and especially under the constraints of a 48hr game jam, authored content will generally be better.
It was a novel idea though, and with more work on the platform generation algorithm/enemy design could really stand out.
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Hey,
thank you for you comment :)
Yeah, the idea was quite neat in theory, yet this being my first game jam plus my first "completed" / released game in unity it was quite a brutal time crunch. Procedural generation is indeed something to be used with care and not leave everything totally random. I guess games like faster than light and binding of Isaac do a way better job at this. I still hope it was something a bit memorable :)
Oh and i updated the game to fix a few things and tweak the game play if you want another go at it :)
I know the feeling - I accidentally ended up doing 2D sprites, animation and rigid bodies for the first time in mine, so didn't find time to make something playable (or to add a menu, or to add sounds, or ...).
I had a quick go at the updated version and already it looks like you've made some massive improvements. The jump feels a lot better, and everything feels a lot smoother with the longer platforms. I also think the decision to have the player spawn near where they died is much better than going back to the start.
If you're interested in further feedback, I think you need to either slightly increase or decrease the default vertical distance between blocks - as it is, it's possible to get kind of wedged between them. I also found myself falling straight through some blocks; I don't know if that's due to a gap not being drawn properly, or out of a need for interpolation in the collision detection.
I think one of the big dirty secrets behind FTL and Binding of Isaac is how much isn't random. If I remember correctly, all the enemy ships in FTL are hard-coded, or hard-coded with some minor tweaks. Binding of Isaac has a number of room templates that it makes minor changes to. Maybe some sneaky behind-the-scenes authored content with a random layer on top could work well in yours too. Hurray for backseat game development!