I can't say I have a lot of experience with game dev specifically (I am an experienced software developer but I'm new to developing games). But I think that at this stage, what's most important is that you keep growing and learning, and in order to do that, you should work on whatever motivates you the most.
If you prefer challenging games (like me), then keep making challenging games. A lot of players like a good challenge, just look at how popular 'Dark Souls' is. You will have to get experience in order to make gameplay that is both challenging and fun, and there's no better way to do that than making more challenging games :)
I think something that could balance out the difficulty would be to aim with the mouse or the left controller stick instead of 'A' and 'D'. You could still limit the steering speed of the main character if you're worried about that. As it is, it can be pretty difficult to juggle both the player position and the color choice.
Heya, thank you for this lovely review! :) Yeah, now that you mention it, the bounce off mechanic is pretty similar to Hollow Knight's, didn't think of that, haha.
Regarding your question, I can't think of something specific that inspired that mechanic. I'm very interested in eventually creating action platformer games with interesting and fast movement, so I'm trying to experiment with that in game jams.
The theme is 'earth', and unlike water, earth commonly floats in platformers, so I thought it would be fun to combine the attributes of earth platforms and water in order to let the character "swim" through the level and get higher up that way.
As for the launching mechanic, the original idea was to allow the player to jump higher up with it, encouraging them to dig instead of just jumping, but after some thought I realized it would be boring on its own, as I'm just forcing the player to dig in order to make higher jumps, which is why I've added the flowers, I think it makes it much more interesting.
If you're interested in another challenge with interesting movement, you can check out my previous game. It won the previous mini jam and I'm really proud of it :)
Thank you so much! Completing the game was also hard for me actually, the gameplay could use some rebalancing but I just couldn't get to it within the time limitation and all. Glad you enjoyed it still :)
The art is absolute gorgeous! The game is fun too, Well done!
I think something that could make the jumps more satisfying and intuitive is to draw a "path" to where the frog would end up, and also a "buildup" sound that would give you an intuition for how long you've held the button.
Besides experience, I would also recommend learning your tools well. Game engines, IDEs and drawing programs provide many shortcuts and tools that would help you create things faster. A good habit to develop is to be mindful of things that take you a long time to do, and search google (or chatGPT) if there's a shortcut for them.
For example, most IDEs would let you jump to a file by typing it's name instead of having to search for it in the files tree and click on it with a mouse. This is a HUGE time saver.
Fun and cool game! Really liked the wolf gameplay, dashing through enemies felt really good.
The game appears to have some visual jitter, if you're using godot 4.3 you can easily fix this by going to project settings ->general->Physics->Common and turning on Physics Interpolation. According to the documentation you should then set Physics jitter fix to 0 (in the same menu).
I think it could be interesting to widen the gaps a bit but give the shooting mechanic some cooldown, this way it would be more about precision which I think was the intention here.
Interesting idea. I'd recommend trying to add some sounds. You could usually do that pretty quickly and it adds a lot to the overall enjoyment of the game.
Pretty good especially since you're just starting out, kudos! :)
One piece of advice I could provide, is that the automatic dodge could feel a bit unfair especially since it is based on keyboard input which limits the player choice of where to move (as well as WHEN to move, which was intended).
I know the limitation is minimal control, but this design choice takes away too much control from the player in my opinion. As an example, an alternative design that you could try is not allowing the player to move at all, but do allow them to choose where to dodge using a mouse click. This way, you still have 'minimal control' (only dodging and attacking, but not walking), but the player has complete control of where he ends up, allowing for a more fair experience.
Pretty fun, I adore the art style :D There is some visual jitter when the characters move, I'm using godot too. You might be able to solve this if you set the camera2D process callback to 'Physics' or 'Idle' (change it to the setting that you're not currently using).
Godot 4.3 apparently has some additional improvements to movement smoothing.
A very cute game with amazing art, relaxing music and an impressive amount of features for such a short jam. The introduction made me laugh out loud :).
If there's one point for feedback, walking around could be a little rough at times, especially when trying to move between areas. You could try placing the collider that makes you teleport between areas a little before the edge of the level.
