Definitely some room for improvements and polish, but I am loving the atmosphere of the game and especially the weird double jump. I like how it's kind of harder to handle, but really contributes to the speed running feel of it all. There's definitely something here : - )
Sorry I am not available to message in another form. Clown Meat doesn't have a current in stone public release date yet so unfortunately I can't say much yet. Thank you for being so interested though : - )
So sorry for the late response, I have been mad busy working on Clown Meat! I'd recommend starting with Unity and this Brackey's series of tutorials. They're a bit old, but they should still work with the newer versions.
Some important notes: 1. Work on incredibly small games for a good while until you get a solid grip on the skillsets (think pong or even smaller).
2. Learn from the tutorials and don't simply copy them. Whenever following along with some of these step by step guide it's important that you try to understand exactly what everything you're doing is accomplishing. If you copy a line of code you should understand what that specific line is doing.
3. Go easy on yourself. Game development is a complicated process and you won't be able to understand it in a day. Making a little bit of progress at a time will get you where you want to go. Game development is intimidating, but it's very achievable, so don't psych yourself out.
If you have anymore specific questions feel free to ask, though I won't be able to teach you directly or anything : - )
I use Unity and I find it to be a fairly robust engine for game development. I am too busy to teach you directly, but if you would like I can link you to helpful resources that are either general or specific for a specific type of game : - )
Totally get it. Programming can be pretty difficult especially if you are just starting out. I tried to go back to scratch a few years ago to make a game there as a joke, but it was honestly way harder. Regular programming I can just write out what I want, but Scratch makes you look for specific boxes and it's so much of a headache.
Aww that is so sweet of you, but please just message when the game comes out and I'll get you a code. I've really appreciated your support. I think you may be the only person I know who is a fan of my work generally rather than just a specific project. It means a lot : - )
Aww that's so sweet of you swordman! I'm doing well myself and I hope it has been likewise for you. So sorry for the late response, I have been deeply caught up in the Clown Meat development. Always enjoy seeing a comment from you. You've been really supportive over a fairly large span of time and I just want you to know I appreciate it a lot : - )
I completed the demo and I have to say I think with some further polishing of the gameplay that there is something here. I really like how the game makes you pay careful attention to the the structure of the levels and in turn allows for organic discovery of new routes. Funny enough I'm working on a similar genre platformer right now called Clown Meat (not out, but has a steam page) and it was interesting to see some of the overlap in ideas in the design department. A big focus for me when creating levels was to add many different paths that were naturally hidden in the terrain. I found that it similarly created a great deal of replayability, opportunity to improve, and rewarded exploration even for players not super experienced with platformers.
A few critiques I have off the top of my very tired head: - There is way too much opportunity to soft lock in this game. I understand that there is a button to solve this, but every time I realized that I was stuck it felt like an irritating walk of shame to have to initiate the games fail state for it. I believe most instances of this can be solved with intentional level design. One hole comes to mind that I got stuck in that could have reasonably be replaced with spikes of a bottomless pit.
- Some of the bottomless pits were really deep. I don't really have much to add to this one I just don't understand why some of them took like 5 seconds to fall down. Created similar frustrations to the soft locks.
- I personally felt that a lot of the vertical movement felt unengaging. The wall jumps give you very little height and the jump pads are just railroading the player in direction they're aimed at. Not the biggest deal if the game is strictly focused on horizontal movement (for the most part), but even in the speedruns that I saw those moments where you have to move vertically seemed to kill the pace a little bit.
Additional things that I liked: - Sliding and maintaining momentum by hopping felt really clean.
- How you can dash through jump pads without activating them. Made them feel like secret obstacles that were engaging to precisely execute around and helped to distract from ledges that they were nearby (made me feel like I was discovering sneaky routes).
Overall, very cool game and best of luck on your development journey. I know you've given me at least a little bit to reflect about on mine : - ). At the minimum I wish I had given further consideration to mechanics that allow you to build up very large amounts of momentum.
Aww, thank you so much! It's really nice to hear from you! I've been hard at work on my next major project with ItsTheTalia called ClownMeat. It should be getting a steam release sometime next year. How have you been yourself? Hope you have a nice day too : - )
That's so sweet of you : - ) In my projects going forward I'll be sure to add a dedicated button, but for Thrombolo if you hold the delete key for a few seconds on the main menu it should reset your progress. Thank you for reaching out!
I'm glad you had a good time! The game definitely has more than a few issues the further you get in. Next game jam I do I'm going to remember to leave more time for playtesting ; - )
Thank you for bringing these too my attention! I definitely didn't stress test the game as much as I should've. I've encountered the traffic lights getting stuck at red, but was unable to reproduce it. However it's interesting that you saw people evading cars too fast. I didn't know that was possible ',: - .
Thank you very much! It's been especially great to hear that people enjoyed the cutscenes because I had some of the most fun making those at the end. Next time I make an incremental game I'm definitely going to double check the balancing cause honestly I kind of winged it at the end : - ]
Thank you! I'm really glad you enjoyed it despite some of the issues! I definitely underestimated how much time I would need to test an idle game. : - )
