itch.io

Can you win? Is the plane destined to crash? I got lost in the corn.

Really interesting game and lovely character art. Are tigers meant to kill? Thought provoking!

10/10

What?

I have been to GDC, a few years ago, when I had only just started on Yucatan and I hadn't met my fiancée, and I didn't have a whole lot of experience. It seemed like the thing to to, and it was a lot of fun, but hideously expensive. It was great to meet other developers and publishers, and get a whole load of buzz going on. But these days I'd rather spend that money on developing my game, I realised you can meet all the publishers and developers you need online, or locally, you have to pay a bit more in sweat but you save a lot in $$$.

Now I help run games events in the UK (my home country) and I'm starting up my own games festival in my new home town, Glasgow. It's hard work but amazingly rewarding. I want to help people get together, make games, get drunk and all that, without feeling they have to make a yearly pilgrimage to the cable-car capital.

I think Itch.io is amazing because it shares that independent spirit. You don't need to be curated by Apple, or squeezed for 30% by Steam, you don't need Sony in your rolodex. You can just do what you do and get it out there.

Now Yucatan is nearing the end, I've launched a kickstarter to get it over the last hurdle, and I'm feeling good about it. Maybe I'll go back to GDC in the future, but in many ways I don't think I need to.

Joe Bain

I agree about the map size, I think that's one of the main problems with it currently. I'm interested in what you mean about not feeling anything. Do you think the game could have made that moment more meaningful? Also, out of interest, did you have the volume on while you were playing? Did the sound effects and music enhance it much or at all?

Thanks for playing and thanks for your comment.

Sounds cool. I like the idea of dancing demons.

Yeah I understand the constraints of the jam mean things often don't get finished the way you want :) I thought it was a cool concept though!

Ooh I'll check that out!

Looks amazing and the music is great. It was pretty fun, although quite hard too. I found the mouse sensitivity really low.

This game really blows! Lol. No I love the style of it, it's very madcap and unusual. The mechanic of floating away your enemies is cool too. It would be interesting to see where a full game with this mechanic could go.

I can't figure it out, if I click on the pictures nothing seems to happen?

I like it. Is the joke that jazz can't hurt demons? They just kept coming.

I love the style, the little skull in the corner is a dude. Music is cool and the general grimy feel is ace. I found it way hard but maybe I suck. How come eating guns doesn't restore your health though?!

I like the visual style, very minimal but cool. The controls were a bit unclear, and obviously a bit floaty but I think that's the design. It would be cool with more details on the tracks, maybe obstacles to avoid or speed boosts or something. Good stuff!

I really love the opening cinematic and the style of this in general. It would be cool to see more levels or a more well defined wave system in the future. Nice work!

Great style and the music is awesome too. It would be nice to have more to explore but it's a jam so you can't have everything.

I like the challenge, I hope we see plenty of non-violent FPS's! The medic in a war zone idea is particularly great.

I'm making a one-kill game, I want to try to give some weight to the act of killing, and the consequences. It's supposed to be like The Old Man and The Sea but with a deer in the Scottish highlands.

I just posted a windows 32 bit build. Try that out.

I don't think you need to worry about the A key, that doesn't do anything. For barrel rolls use C+Left and Right when you're in the air.

I will have configurable controls in the future, sorry I wasn't able to put them in the demo.

Ah I keep forgetting Itch doesn't have PMs :) Can you email me at hi@joeba.in ?

Ah it is a 64 bit build I think. I didn't think there were 32 bit computers anymore :) I'll see if I can get a 32 bit build together for you though. Thanks for the offer about the mac, I'll PM you.

Oh, glad you got it working! It should support a wide range of controllers, I've tested Xbox 360, PS4 and a random Razer bluetooth one. I didn't think to try with more than one controller plugged in though, it's only single player. But I don't think it will be too hard to add in support down the road.

Thanks for the feedback on the second level. The first one is really supposed to be beginner friendly, but I've had similar feedback that people get a bit turned off by that and by the planet bit at the start.

It's totally kid friendly too! No swearing or anything like that.

Hi Rafi

I have tested it with a wired Xbox 360 controller, I'm surprised it's not working with the wireless one. I will see if I can get my hands on a wireless controller to test though.

Joe

Niiice.

Cool, thanks!

Yeah, the drifting needs some work, and also a bit of a tutorial I think. Thanks for giving it a go!

I'm currently testing a linux build and looking for a tester for a mac build too. So check back soon.

Hi, thanks for the feedback! The game is still a long way from being finished, and there's loads of improvements to make before it's done. The game structure (the level loading) will be pretty different, and there should be much longer sections between loading screens in the future. I'm always tweaking the handling too, so maybe you won't be so frustrated with the final version.

I've been working on this game for about 2 and a half years now and I'm finally releasing a demo! It's a single player, 3D arcade racer. Kind of a challenge based driving game, like Trackmania, Trials HD or Distance. The style is like a neon Day of the Dead thing, props to Ethan Redd (https://kiddraddical.itch.io/) for that side of things.

Download the demo at https://joebain.itch.io/yucatan

I'd love to get feedback on the demo. The full game will hopefully be out early next year, but it's taken a while to get this far so you never know. Oh, also I'm looking for testers for the mac and linux builds, so hit me up if you want to help me there!

Cheers

Joe

Hi all,

Thanks for playing the Yucatan demo. If you have any feedback, bugs, or other thoughts, you can post them here. Any feedback is welcome!

Cheers,

Joe

Hey, just finished playing. I didn't make it to Grub Heap, I landed in Moth Burrow and the game ended. I really liked the slow progression, and it wasn't boring because there was lots to think about, mainly the map, but also the balloon controls and the sort of "what's all this then" meta story.

I found it really easy to overshoot the 100 metre altitude brackets, I like the idea of some overshoot, but maybe a little less than what it is now. I found the compass / map tool quite fun to play with and liked deciphering the clues to work out which island was which on the map. I wasn't sure how exactly the directions related to the wind streams though, for instance with three points on the compass (left, right, and centre) does the wind stream pass through all of these or just the left and right points? If it passes through the centre then there are some weird v-shaped wind streams, alternately if it doesn't then there was some redundancy with multiple clues featuring the same start and end island.

I really liked the idea as a whole and could see myself really enjoying exploring the islands if they were a bit more developed. The sense of anticipation when you finally land on a new one is great. Picking up on what Zenuel said, perhaps some hook, or rope to pull you in to a designated landing spot when you get close to an island, there was a bit of walking to do when you land. Although more featured landscapes (hills, grass, trees) might help that too.

Thanks a lot :) I'd almost forgotten about this game, I made it such a long time ago now.