itch.io

15 minutes of gameplay

This game has some great ideas in it, and some nice responsive controls. I like the dash mechanic and how you can increase your jump height by dashing straight down as you hit the ground (kind of like the Ducktales Pogo stick), and while difficult (once I'd figured out the mechanics) not completly unfair.

However.

The game has done a really poor job of teaching the player any of the mechanics, and the difficulty curve is a vertical wall.

I'm not even saying the game was too hard, there is absolutely a place in the game for the challenges presented, but new players should be eased into them.  (Plus, it's an easy way to make your game longer)

For example, you could extend the first room into 3 puzzles. One where you have to dash-bounce (without spikes) to get higher, one where you have to dash-bounce across spikes (but not vertically), and then, finally, the puzzle as presented.

Then there's the dream switching mechanic which wasn't mentioned at all in game. I had to go to the game page to find out Q and E did things (I downloaded the game from this page which has no description). Once you tag that purple star it should prompt you to press E to change dream level.

Navigation is also quite difficult as the playfield is very maze-like, with no direction indicators or hints towards your goal. Which wouldn't be so bad if, having completed a particularly hard section, you realise you've gone entirely the wrong way.

There's a lot of promise here, and I hope it gets continued love post-jam.

You've got a really good concept here. The graphics are great, the music is great. The level design builds on itself well and has a good curve to it. The puzzle elements work well, though I didn't manage to finish it.

Here's a link to the footage I took. This is from my second playthough, so I blitz through the first few screens.

I'll link to some timestamps below too.

I played this for about 4 hours, 3 of which were solidly stuck on Screen 3 (I think it's screen three. It's the one where the sign talks to you)

And it wasn't because I couldn't figure out where to go - the levels are fairly well laid out up to this point and I was never confused for long. Instead it felt like I was fighting the controls more than the game, and it just made this stage frustrating, rather than fun.

It's important that a precision platform has precision controls, and throughout my time with it, this game just doesn't have it yet. And it's really really simple to begin fixing it should you decide to keep working on the game post-jam.

The most important one to address, for me, would be the grappling button. 9/10 my failures weren't because I was too late on a grapple, but too early. I'd see the yellow target come up for a couple of frames but because there's no buffering, there was no way to make it without continual trial and error, hoping that the next time I'd get it.
Adding a short buffer to the grapple button would sort this out and allow players to pre-empt their grapples, and make those tight hooks. It also encourages people to go faster, knowing that they can more consistently get the grapples they want

Secondly seemed to be her oddly inconsistent jump height 1 2, and the unreasonable number of times she refused to jump on a jump input. And I don't even mean in the heat of the moment. There were times that just standing still and spamming the spacebar would have her jump once every second.
There also seems to be a bug where, either her jump is too low, or she jumps too high (one or the other), making some platforming sections really inconsistent, like this bit. There are other parts of the footage you can see me doing this right away, but at this point I think I spend 5 minutes trying to make this simple jump and failing (from this I guess that the bug is that she occasionally jumps too high rather than not always reaching her full height, and you're not supposed to be able to make this jump at all).

I get the impression you're using Unity's platformer template (or, at least the capsule collider) just by the feel of how she slides off of, and gets stuck on, the corners of geometry. I can't say what you can do to fix it, outside of redoing the platform engine entirely (in all my time doing Unity dev, one of the first things I realised was that I got much better results rolling my own player controller and not using rigidbody physics if I could help it)

Lastly, this 1 2 feels like I should be able to make the ledge quite easily, but it's frustrating when you can't.

I get this might change the gameplay a bit, but letting the player reel themselves in - even slightly - would prevent situations like this from happening all the time. (or, make her hitbox a bit smaller when swinging, or let us use the jump key to do a short hop off the grapple. There's plenty of Quality-of-life changes that could work around this)You've got a really cool game here and I do hope you continue working on it post-jam. And tightening the controls would be a good place to start.
Everything else about it is great - I wouldn't have spent an afternoon playing it, or spent so much time writing this up if it wasn't.

I can't wait to see this speedrun blindfolded

Yeah go for it

Hey, don't worry about it. Some of the best games have boss themes that go hard long after any boss fight would have been beaten by even the most casual player :D

Aaand now I just want to listen to Sonic Generations 3DS Big Arms music. 3 minutes 30 long, that boss fight lasts for about 80 seconds max.
It's got a drop at 3 minutes in

Hey, could I get a Boss theme for a side-scrolling beat-em-up game. Streets-of-rage/TMNT style.

I'd echo the sentiments of the other reviews here about the slippery controls.

There were plenty of times I felt like I should have been in the right position to hit the target - but wasn't - or required a tiny micro adjustment and ended up overshooting it.

If I were looking to improve this I'd maybe think about locking the player to a number of discrete 'lanes' and letting a single tap side-step you between them.

Other than that the graphics and audio were fine. I also agree you could look into using something other than the default font just for polish.

There are plenty of indie font makers out there that have both paid-for and free versions of their fonts. I really like SomePx or ChevyRay's pixel font packs.

Fun game.

+1 Got to shoot Pyrion.

-1 Had to shoot Boba.

Lovely game. Would have been nice to have a bit more indication that monsters will follow you through doors, but otherwise a great and simple game.

Same as some of the others, couldn't get Red to jump, and C wasn't letting red jump either.

Screen capture: https://pasteboard.co/AtRJ6Nmq73Fl.gif

Short and sweet. And the mirrored controls mechanic seems oddly familiar 😊

Nice game. Only thing I'd suggest is that your large size have a more forgiving jump detection, especially since some of the jumps require precise timing and if you're just over the half-way point of being on or off a platform you can't jump at all.

Might want to look into coyote jumping for your next game if you want to implement more responsive jump controls

It's made in Pico-8, a retro 'fantasy console'. I've used it for a few games in the past, mostly for jam games. It's all done in a lua subset and the audio and graphics are done in the console app. https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

Post-jam will have rebindable controls, but for now I've added Z/X and N/M as alternatives

you know itch has an edit comment button right?

Played a bunch of games today.

- Beatwise Trigger. Great concept, not quite Crypt of the Necrodancer, and you don't get any kind of punishment for missing the beat (so you can just spam the keys), but otherwise really good. Standout game for me.

- Frozen Helm  was also a standout. Kind of janky platforming mechanics (could do with some coyote time on those jumps) but otherwise excellent.

- Isaia 1314, short but fast paced SHMUP.

- Spire Gamble. Took a bit to figure out the mechanics, even reading the instructions on the page, but once I got into it it was fun.

- Abandoned Bog. Simple adventure game. I saved the dog and ignored the ghost. I ain't doing busy work for no ghost.

- Stabby Hellion. Fun concept once you get used to it. But if you press X at any point it takes you out of the game and puts you in the introduction cutscene and you have to start again

There were a few other games that either weren't finished (just had a placeholder in there) or were really basic, or *really* frustrating to play.

Hah, thanks for that.

I've not played any yet, I'm waiting for the jam to end before I do that. I'll probably stream it too

You're insane! Congratulations!

Fuck Brexit indeed

Made in a week during AGDQ for the Games Made Quick game jam.

https://geeitsomelaldy.itch.io/eva-ness-japanese-school-foreign-exchange-adventu...

New School, New Town, New Language.

Eva's gone to Japan as a Foreign Exchange student, but doesn't know the language! Help her explore her new school and learn Japanese in the process!

I MADE A GAME OKAY. Y'ALL CANT STOP ME!

gotta go faster

It should only take about 30 minutes.

I asked myself the same question when I made it

What browser were you using? Have you got any browser scaling on?

You'll be happy to know that there is only that boss and then then end of the game :) Thanks for playing!

It's very much not impossible. But maybe not intentionally so :)

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/666209211

It already has been.

It's showing up for me on https://itch.io/search?q=Afterlife (3rd row atm)

Me: *Jumps*

Game: TO THE MOON WITH YOU

Smashing!

SMELL MY SOCKS