itch.io

Democracy Manifest

Amazing. With all this new stuff since I last made a game in PP, I could make something totally different in it!

In general, you can start with the tail, go up the spine, and reach the skull!

Cephalopod

Flood

Fair Use

Anatomy

;D

"Suggestion"

Flower power

sandwich

tY for playing, and for sharing your thoughts about it!

Thanks! That's a sensible measure to take.

I was thinking of taking a book I enjoyed and adapting that into a "fake" game. I don't own the rights to this book.

If "no", what if I did have the rights? Could I adapt characters or stories of my own creation (not initially made with game adaptations in mind) into a fake game, even if they were are ones that I'd designed long before this Jam started? (Someone else's question in the Discord confirmed that using your own pre-existing character is okay, just not if they're already from a game.)

Theme: Easter

Great to see this feature finally arrive! Even though minimalism is one of PP's strengths, this feature will really open the floodgates for the variety of graphics in games -- if developers want that. (I know I do!)

Theme: Spicy

Bonus: Nature (A pretty broad topic, but it can inform the setting & environments, character designs, even narratives and quest goals. I've always liked games set in the outdoors or  in places dominated by the wilderness rather than inside metropolises, castles, space stations etc.)

It's a matter of trial and error to find a route up, but fortunately there aren't many options to try. To begin with, you can only climb on the triceratops, the first skeleton you see when you enter. Hint: Climb up the tail and then make your way to the skull!

Beverage

Indeed

Thanks! Sounds like you got enough of the exclamation marks to have a good time, which is really how I hoped the game would be played. \o/

Thank you! I was constantly adding flavour text whenever some new idea came to mind, even during final bug fixes. There's always room for a new joke or two...

Here's a hint: All the collectibles EXCEPT ONE can be seen from regular, non-secret areas in the levels. The hidden one is in the second part of the two sewer levels, as a reward for discovering something else in a hidden area...

Couldn't've done it without you (obviously)!

Thank you so much! I've put the tracks on Soundcloud so you don't have to play the game just to listen to them: https://soundcloud.com/andrew-kepple/sets/leslie

Dashing is built into Pocket Platformer, but I decided to keep things simple for my first release made in that engine. Perhaps I'll put it in a later Pocket Platformer game!

Many styles of play are valid, and if you don't like one of them, you're under absolutely no obligation to adhere to it. Exploring and completing the areas on your own terms is encouraged!

Much of this resonated with me. Most of my early QBASIC games are lost, not because I actively deleted them, but because of simple neglect and indifference. When I made those games, I backed them up on 3.5" floppy disks because that was the best I could do at the time, but when I had access to CD/DVD-writing technology I didn't bother archiving such old works of art that no longer seemed important in my artistic journey. I only got back into making games thanks to the growth of indie dev communities online. But in the interum, all those floppy disks had degraded away, as floppy disks do. Like tears in rain. :V

I still have two games from that time - including the second game I ever made, from 1995 - only because I'd posted their code on a web forum before the death of whichever hard drive I had my old .BAS files on. I'm more careful about backing things up now - even the cringy stuff that seems irrelevant - and even my most recent hard drive failure earlier this year did NOT spell doom for my current collection of unfinished game projects!

I've since made a 10-level game with Pocket Platformer - just before you added the NPC update actually - and I've been poking around in the HTML to see if I can mod anything outside of the editor. I'm not well-versed in Javascript but I've figured out how to customise the graphic for the cannonball and make different music play for each level... which means I now have to make a bunch of different music tracks before I can release my game! xD (If there's a way I can privately message you I could show you an early version of the game, but otherwise you may have to wait until it's ready for a public release.)

Designing the levels was simple and fun. The editor you made is really nice to use. I'm happy to see you've added NPCs to bring some more "flavour text" into games, too. I would've liked to have a greater number of tiles and decos available to customise, and even copies of the same enemies so they could look different in different levels, but I think I've made the best of what's there for now. 

Some "nice to have" features I'd like to see someday:

• Multiple exits on a level, and each exit can be customised to link to a different level. That way you can insert "secret levels" for expert players to find.
• Being able to change the player attributes (jump height, wall jump, dash, max  speed etc) and environment values (BG colour, music etc) for each level.
• "Pick up"-able objects that disappear when you touch them, including keys to "unlock" doors when you collect a certain number of them.
• A pickup-able object that changes the player's attributes to new specified values (essentially acting as a powerup) until the end of the current level, or until the main character dies an uncheckpointed death.
• PNG images for the start and end screens, preferably linked to the game in the same way you've currently incorporated the audio.

Thanks again for making Pocket Platformer. I've always wanted to make my own platformer but too often the programs I've tried are too advanced for a casual like me.

The game I started making a couple of weeks ago and which is almost finished isn't a Bitsy one, but it's my first game made in "Pocket Platformer", which quite a few people describe as "the Bitsy of platforming". When my game is finished I'll have some suggestions for Pocket Platformer's dev (as PoPlat is still a work in progress), and for that purpose I'm taking several cues from Bitsy, particularly in regards things that serve story-based games well.

I've always tried to push the limits with Bitsy, using other people's Bitsy Hacks and making whatever edits I need to the HTML, and I'm doing the same thing with PoPlat. It's a totally different type of gameplay, though, so I'm sure I'll continue to make Bitsy games without it needing a platformer mode ;)

Already a powerful and intuitive tool, this still has a lot of potential as well. Nice to see you've included a way of playing music, even at this "early in development" stage. I can't wait to see what else you add to this! No, really, I CAN'T wait - I'm just going to make a game in it using what's already there! :D

Thank you! And be on the look out for a possible update to the game later this year.

Reflection

Heist

Thanks! Glad to hear you enjoyed playing through the whole story!

Closing time

Very strange... Can I please see a screenshot of that, if it happens again?

Thanks! That sounds cool. Email me at andrew_kepple@yahoo.co.nz

Takes me back to being amazed, amused, confused, fascinated, disturbed, and perhaps even... educated with my first glimpse into the world of Beano and the like. If they're still just as good (or better) then you should be working for them! Your comics have come a long way since the days of CaptchArt and wall-eyed horses, and despite how much you've clearly been seriously working on your craft, the results still refuse to take themselves seriously. 
A+ Would bake again

I love the atmosphere of this! Although I did spend a lot of time looking at the map when I was down to the last few BEP15 cannisters. But overall it felt as authentically Cambrian as I'll ever likely experience.

Bug Report: 

I didn't encounter any game-breakers, but there are some typos:

Hallucigenia's riddle: "In the morning I walk on three legs", when the answer says that in the morning it walks on four legs.

The other typos aren't part of the gameplay itself, just the end credits:

"Expect that one boop noise" - *Except

"Paleonotology Coproliteposting" - *Paleontology

I'd have expected to see the controls displayed from somewhere in the Esc-menu (to check them in-game since I didn't remember them all from earlier) but the controls are pretty standard, so not hard to guess them if you're familiar with FPSs.

I can't think of anything more to add. So many cool critters and sponges! And the hidden game was a nice touch. I wonder if there's more stuff I should look for...