Great concept but it's a bit more chaotic than a challenge. Players being stuck together is already big limitation so the spinning arrow on top makes it hard to control.
A bit punitive to make you back at the start but still enoyable. I feel it's a game where you want to retry over & over again to get the movement sequence right. A button for resseting the current level would have been nice.
The game feels great to play most of the time but I would've like it to be easier to use the dasher. Something like a bigger pickup range or being able to pick it up & then use it would have been great.
Druid survivors is that you? Good game, needs a bit more balancing & the relation to colors isn't obvious at the start but it's promising. Some UI would add a lot.
Nice platformer, It would have been cool to show the theme a bit more by seeing the split personality put the traps along the way. A bit like the villain of will you snail. Good job!
Thanks a lot for the feedback! I agree the level design is pretty poor right now, I had to rush it as it was the last thing I did. I'll see if I can get some more time in to tweak / add levels
Nice update, the 2 new levels each have a nice conept!
I feel that level 2 didn't need the jump off & pause mid-fall to reach the folder though. Figuring out that you can walk over the gap was enough for me. For controls, it would have been really nice to see the camera move while the game was paused rather than it snap to the player on unpause. And for the bug, was the intended way to get it to respawn on the duck?
As for the level 4, the code gives a nice hint on the spin but if you spin the wrong way, the duck doesn't get bigger (I guess there's a clamp), so it feels like the wrong solution. Maybe having it start at medium size would solve that? For the rest, I had a hard time getting the duck as a small size up the ramp & getting it as a medium size as a bridge for the bug. I feel that the duck-shape isn't pratical. It's funny for sure but I would have prefered a block or a cylinder for that level.
Side-note, It considered I already gotten the bugs at first since I completed all the original levels. I had to go in the Windows registry to delete the unity's player pref so I could properly unlock them.
I should've been more clear about that but most of my feedback was in the idea that you would be able to do more work on the game. Like you're saying it was only one week & for that amount of time it's awesome!
I completely understand your worry about players not being satisfied with easy challenges where they might understand the solution too quickly. I'm curious though, did you make mostly hard levels because of the 1 day constraint or is it a stance you took on pushing the player in a mostly unknown environment & let him figure things out as opposed to taking him through a usual learning curve (Easy "dumb" levels to hard levels) ?
Also now that you frame it like that, the dexterity aspect does make sense. The argument that it keeps the flow rolling is really good. It makes me think of most platform puzzle games where you can always easily move with your character & try things out while coming up with the solution, you're not stuck somewhere with having to think about what to do.
However, I still think that regular physics will introduce a lot of issues if the gameplay is kept tight as it is right now (E.g: you have to restart the level if you weren't touching the duck for more than 1 second). I didn't thought about it initially but games like Portal 2 or Viscera cleanup detail make the physics aspect work quite well. I guess it comes down to how punishing messing something up is & how precise you have to be with the physics (E.g: You can easily fit 3 cubes on the button plaform in Portal 2 I think). In any case, there should be ways to make it work out if you want physics to be an important part of the game!
The idea of having all of the level info in the data-viewer was just me spitballing & I think you're right that it might make the player a bit paranoid. I'm glad you have plans to extend that side of the game though! I look forward to see what you come with ^^
Yeah that's it. So more like a mechanic than a tool. I agree that's more or less what the snippets of code try to do. However, you can't interact witht them & they're not always presented in the same way. It's true that a tutorial might help but yeah like you're saying having something through the entire game would bring a good cohesion.
To try & phrase it in a better way, I was thinking of a gameplay mechanic that is yuour main if not only way to interact with the game. Of course, you can still move your chatacter freely & observe the level but if you want to get information needed to solve the puzzle or interact with objects then you would use that mechanic.
I think there's tons of way that could be done & fit in what the game already uses. Like if the snippets of code were in the editor, you might be able to re-write only some parts. To give a really simple example for level 6:
The editor could have a DATA tab. In it you would see the different objects in the scene. So something like: - PLAYER [Read-only] - PLATFORM [Read & Write] - BUG [Write-only] - EXIT [Read-only]
Each of those would be folders which contain some files. So in the PLATFORM folder there would be the "Settings.txt" file with "moving = false" in it. You could only edit the "false" to "true" to solve the puzzle.
Now for the other folders, those marked with [Read-only], you woule only be able to look inside of them & not edit anything. So maybe there's some "Info.txt" in the PLAYER folder & some funny stuff like "lastTimeSinceSawTheSun = tooLongAgo". As for the [Write-only], you would only be able to put files in them. That way you could copy / paste the "Setting.txt" from the PLATFORM folder & put it inside the BUG folder to get it.
It might be tricky depending on your screen but search for more text. There's a third part other than the code & the comment talking about the revert in editor.
In short, I had a blast sparkled by frustrations. The concept is very promising & the aesthetic of the game ties well with it. You're a programmer & you interact with the game through that lens. You have an IDE, there's "meta" comic relief about the development of the in-universe game (Reminds me of There is no game a bit) and you have to think in terms of how the game was built. It seems to me like something that could easily be expanded upon aswell. We might meet other people working on the game: artists, managers, etc... We might see different stages of development. There's so much that can be done with this & it's awesome!
However, I feel the game suffers a lot from two things:
1. It has an identity crisis. Is it a physics game where dexterity is the main skill to have? I mean I know I spent a lot of time pushing a duck, doding ducks, following one, etc... Or is it more of a puzzle game? The premise of the game seems to push it more towards being a puzzle game where reflection is key (I think there's reason why Baba is you was one of the referenced game). If that's what the game should be, then the gameplay needs to be fully reliable. Actions should have clear outcomes, dying should put back the level at its starting state, etc... The player should be able to focus on coming up with the solution & not struggle with executing it.
2. The gameplay isn't systemic at all. It's only a series of unrelated gotchas, which don't misunderstand me, I love. They convey a "Ah-ah" moment which puts back into perspective the comments of the player-character & the context for the level. However, there is no one or two mechanics that guide you towards these. It could be the pause menu which would act as an actual way to view & interact with the entities in the scene (E.g-Level 7: You might be able to look at the duck properties & see that it's tied to the audio system). It could also be tinkering with the game files as it worked greatly once you figure it out in level 6. The player could learn an ultra boiled down scripting language to interact with the scene. Essentially, I consider that most levels are hard to solve because you have no tool you already know to use with which to start the solving process.
I really look forward to further work on this if some is planned.
