Were you on the green when the ball clipped through? There is a spot there where I know I need to push a fix to the model as soon as uploads are unlocked
I can tell you are just trying to learn how to make games, but you definitely just stole another Itch.io game that got big on youtube: https://shawcat.itch.io/living-for-plants
It's okay to make games inspired by other ones, hell I just made a simple blackjack clone, but don't just take someone's ideas without crediting them.
This game is wonderful and should be the hands down winner of this jam. Where so many other games feel like half baked games instead of fully fleshed out minigames, your submission by far feels like the most polished, enjoyable game here. 10/10
This is definitely one of the most promising games of this entire event, wonderful work!
That being said, I feel like there are a few minor tweaks that would make the gameplay a lot more enjoyable. I've taken the liberty of making a QA style list for you:
The intro cutscene is way too slow. I love that you made it, but it feels like it drags on a while. Maybe just speed it up for those who want to see it, and give the option to skip for those who don't
I would love a more in depth tutorial around movement and abilities. I see that you have notes pinned around the world for the player to read, but I definitely skipped over a bunch of them at first just jumping away from enemies. You could probably just do a little popup message at the bottom of the screen instead that disappears after a bit instead of the pinned messages
I stick to walls when I jump against them? Since there was no tutorial around movement really, I'm not sure if this is intended, but since I can't jump off of the wall after it feels like it's not. Maybe make the player slide down over time with some gravity?
The jumps feel really floaty, and the movement feels very fast. I feel like just zooming out the camera a bit and increasing gravity would fix this. Fine tuning the character controller can be difficult, so I definitely recommend looking at GMTK's Platformer Toolkit for reference.
The mixture of keyboard and mouse here feels a bit odd tbh. I don't like that I have to go back and forth between them so often. Maybe rethink some mappings or add controller support
Again, an overall great game so far, and I think that some polish would go a long way.
I love the concept! I feel like you might want to take a little more inspiration from Brick Breaker than Pong here with the paddle physics. Right now, when the ball hits the paddle, it just bounces off the paddle like one would expect given the angle. However, that doesn't give the player any control over where the ball goes. In Brick Breaker, to make this less frustrating given the goal of breaking the bricks, the ball bounces back at different angles depending on where on the paddle the ball hits. If the ball hits in the center, it bounces according to the angle it approaches the paddle. The further from the center the ball hits though, the more the angle will be adjusted in that direction, almost as if the paddle where a semi circle instead of a rectangle. Honestly, this one tweak would give a ton more replay value to the game.
I like the concept of this, but the puzzles did end up feeling kind of repetitive. The falling every 4 steps feels very akin to playing an old Game and Watch game, but it does mean that I'm just proceeding with the same back and forth maneuver throughout the whole game. The fish added some helpful variety, and I think if you were to expand this concept, adding more creatures like that which interact with the world would be very interesting
Thank you! I do plan on continuing to improve it throughout the month. Your feedback is super helpful and exactly the reason why I posted the project so early like this <3
I really like the idea of this jam, and I wanted to put in a submission. I was also thinking about doing a group project and submitting that as well. Is it okay to have multiple submissions?
I'm actually having an issue with this. I'm using a wired nintendo switch controller on Arch Linux. This controller works for other game platforms, such as retro arch, but doesn't work for this game. The game itself is beautiful and worth it to play even without the controller
