itch.io

Thanks so much for taking the time to comment!  Haven't been able to get anything out lately, but I'd love to hear what you think about the mechanics of this game.  What do you like about them?  How many gems have you gotten?

Yeah, I'm not arguing with you about the cheat codes, I'm just trying to get clarification about what happened that triggered them.

The issue you saw with the HUD is probably due to my resolution, you are right! I am using 1440 : 900...

Yup!  Changed it to that and it messed it right up!  Have to look into that.

I didn't even notice that there is 2 types of platforms, It will be nice if you add some texts about it to explain it too.

Thanks!  Yeah, I'm really gonna work on making the random tips at the beginning/end of the levels more noticeable.

 Those cheats keys might affect your game in a negative way! I mean think about it, one slip from the player on his keyboard and the game changes ;) or get over!

Okay but, just to be clear, is that what you think happened?  You pressed some odd keys and the game ended?  I just want to know in case something else is triggering the cheats for some reason.

If you made enough changes and updates make sure to contact me (there is email adress, instagram...etc) I noticed that doing fellow up videos showing updates or making a gameplay series gives more traffic to you developers! I had some acknowledge that. ALL THE BEST!

Will do!  And again, thank you for giving my traffic a boost!  Since you posted your video I've gotten over 100 views and 40 plays and they are definitely almost all from this thread!  Cheers!

Thanks so much for playing it!  A few notes/questions:

- There are 2 types of platforms - the loose dirt ones can be dropped down/jumped through, but the rocky ones can't.  I'm currently working on making them look more different from each other.  

- When you tried Classic mode and the game suddenly ended, is seems like you accidentally pressed "U" and then "G".  Those are cheats keys that trigger "Unlimited Hearts" and "Game Over", which seems to be what happened by looking at the screen.  The game doesn't normally end like that!  

- right now the gems are just used as an overall score, but I hope to add a system where you can buy things with them, or you need a certain number to get past certain points.

Thanks again for making the video!

Thanks so much for playing it!  Because of COVID, I rarely get to actually see someone play it for the first time and give commentary, so it was really useful.  A few notes/questions:

- The HUD at the top of the screen isn't supposed to look like that....  Can I ask what resolution you're desktop was on or if you use any screen scaling?

- There are 2 types of platforms - the loose dirt ones can be dropped down/jumped through, but the rocky ones can't.  I'm currently working on making them look more different from each other.  Seeing the things you missed will really help me focus on what to make clearer!

- When you tried Classic mode and the game suddenly ended, is it possible you pressed "U" and then "G" for some reason?  Those are cheats keys that trigger "Unlimited Hearts" and "Game Over", which seems to be what happened by looking at the screen.  The game doesn't normally end like that!  BTW, It says "P2 Press (A) to join" so that a second (or third or fourth) player can join with gamepads.

- the message after level 5 wasn't meant to signify the end of the game.  There are 11 levels in total.  I think I will make it so that message is displayed on game over instead.

- right now the gems are just used as an overall score, but I hope to add a system where you can buy things with them, or you need a certain number to get past certain points.

I'll be replying to the post you made on my game page as well, but it won't contain any information that isn't here. (Edit: and thank you for posting there too, I feel like it might encourage more engagement)

Thanks again for making the video!  I got a really big bump in traffic from it.  I'll try to send some your way in return.

Thanks for the offer!  Your reviews seem really useful.  I really don't get a lot of feedback on my game, so I'd appreciate it if you reviewed it.
https://unclealias.itch.io/bird-panic

Thanks for trying to help me out with this, DD.

If you had a bump on the last week, compared to the past few weeks, then it means it works as intended. I’m not sure about all the lists where the game is bumped, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

Like I said, it was unlisted for months previous to that, so I have nothing to compare to.

And I mean, no, I'm going to worry about this.  Like, if I can only get on the "Last X Days" on the first release, then I'll wait until a later stage of development to post my next game so I can take full advantage of that. I don't think that's "gaming the system", it's just trying to make a smart choice.  

Idk, I feel like I'm asking reasonable, straightforward, yes/no questions that somebody should know the answer to.  Maybe I'm wrong,  but I don't think the information I'm asking for can be used to game the system.  So I feel kinda like this is less a matter of users gaming the system and more about the system gaming the users.  Which is fine, I guess.  It's their system.

Based on what I’ve seen from analytics, I suspect it’s not strictly only from the front page. I’ve gotten views from more specific pages, like tag searches, but possibly http://itch.io might be an umbrella url.

That's would be too bad.  I used to get referral urls that had the search criteria embedded in them.  It was nice to know.

Although this can take some time, I think it should be done within a week. Did you get some extra views this past week?

Yes, I've had a bump here and there, but I also had mine unlisted for a long time.  Anyway, it can't be from "last 1/7 days" searches because it's just not there.  If I add some search criteria it narrows it down to about 18 games (https://itch.io/games/free/input-x360/last-7-days/platform-windows), so I can see it's not there.  I mostly just want to know if that's how it is supposed to work.

Note: I've read the docs and still have a question.

I have a few questions about analytics and how Major Updates are handled.  

1) If my analytics say I'm getting referred from just "http://itch.io", is that definitely the front page?  Or do other sources on the site show up like that?

2) I posted  a "Major Update" over a week ago for https://unclealias.itch.io/bird-panic and it hasn't shown up in searches for "last 7 days".  Do Major Updates bump your position in those searches?

3) If you only do small updates, can you still declare one of them a major update?

The project in question is one that I'm probably going to abandon because people don't seem to find it appealing at all, but I'd be interested to know these things for future projects.  Thanks

Really great graphics and characters but the gameplay seems very simple.  I wish I had more information, like which of my characters had ranged attacks and how much damage is being done.

Cool!

Nice start!  Handles well and looks pretty nice.  My main advice is the same advice I have for most simple shoot-em-ups I see: have bullets going in more different directions,  Having enemies that only shoot down when you have a weapon that only shoots up is really not great.  But having bullets going in even one other direction creates much more interesting patterns.  I'll try to look out for updates, though.

Oh, sorry to hear about losing the project!  That must be frustrating.

Seems like a fun game, but I'm a little lost.  More instructions would be nice.  What do the different hexes represent?  I though for sure the black hex must be a hole or something, but the frogs seem fine with landing on it.  I'll try to keep an eye out for updates to this.

Nice puzzle game with mechanics I haven't seen before.  Took me a second to figure out how it works, but it wasn't too hard.  The spacebar isn't really a "rewind" button since it goes both ways, but I don't know what I would call it... "Spacebar to switch with your other self"?  Also, things happen kind of quickly each turn and when I died I wasn't always sure what killed me.

Okay, I finally have this in a state where it's ready to be listed again.  I've added a whole new single-player mode called "Adventure Mode" with multiple levels with different kinds of goals.  Some are timed, others are based on points.  Some reward careful, strategic play, others grabbing things as fast as possible.  I've tried to make it clear to the player which kind of level they're on, but if you find it confusing, let me know in the comments.

After each level in Adventure mode, the player is rewarded with 0-3 gems depending on their performance in the level.  The goals are set so that 1 gem should be fairly easy, though I don't really have any beginners to test it on, so its tough to gauge that.  The 3 gem goals are set to be very difficult, to give an impression of the range of difficulty in the game, since it is so short right now.  I think this game would be easy to dismiss as simple and just based on luck, so I've set these goals high to communicate to the player the kinds of scores that are possible to encourage the player to engage with the game's mechanics.  So far, the difference that playing strategically will have on your score is not as consistently large as I'd like them to be, but I have some ideas to solve that and I'll talk more about it in a future devlog.

At any rate, if you really find the goals are set too high, you can lower them by changing the difficulty in the Adventure Mode menu.  It won't have any other effect.  I think different people will want to gauge their progress in different ways.  "Full Panic" is the default difficulty setting.  "Impossible" is just Full Panic +25% and getting 3 gems is, in some cases, actually impossible.

One the surface, the game probably doesn't look very different because a lot of what I've been working on has been "under the hood".  I've been learning a lot of new coding techniques like using events more to reduce spaghetti code, making my code and objects more modular and less dependent on each other.  I think this has made for a better foundation that will scale well and support further development without becoming unwieldy over time.  Adding new content has, so far, gone really well, and I'm finding adding new features and fixing bugs doesn't cause as many things to break.   So, although there's nothing radically new, I think the work that I've done will allow for much faster content creation going forward.  I'm already finding

The old game is included, with minor changes, in the form of "Classic Mode" for anyone who enjoyed it or wants to play multiplayer.  I won't be making any changes to it, but I do have ideas for future multiplayer modes that I'd like to implement, so if that's a thing you'd be interested in, let me know in the comments.  

I'll be posting a part 2 to this devlog soon, but from now on I'll try to write them more regularly rather than in a huge info-dump.

https://unclealias.itch.io/bird-panic

New single-player Adventure Mode!  Dodge and collect your way through multiple levels!

A retro-style avoid-em-up.  Collect food and avoid the robots that are trying to spy on you and show you targeted advertisements.  Rack up big combos.  Flap around and have fun, okay?

https://unclealias.itch.io/bird-panic

Great work!  Nice to finally get my hands on what you've been showing on your YouTube channel.  

Not much to complain about.  Like some others, I think the buildings could be a little smaller so the town is less sprawling overall.  Fireballs are kinda hard to see.  More indication of the shortcut keys would be nice, even just in the description.  I did not catch on to z and x at all during my first playthrough, (although I did go into the inventory screen, so maybe that's on me).

The music was probably the weak point of the experience for me (the songs themselves, I mean.  The lack of transitions is fine), but even that was nice enough.

I would also welcome gamepad input.  Hold-down-the-button power attacks would be nice too.

But those are all pretty insignificant.  On the whole it was fun!

I think Construct can make platformers with no code out of the box.  You might still need to learn to code to do everything you want, but you'll probably pick up some of the basic concepts of coding even just doing doing it visually.  In the meantime, you could get a feel for just the fundamentals of 2D platformers themselves, which is probably a good idea before launching into your larger vision.  But yeah, when you're just not feeling it, it can be hard.  

Fun idea and nice flow

What kind of games do you want to make?

Fun little game with a cute art style.  One thing, and maybe it's just me, but I didn't realize at first that the boost arrows were part of a platform.  I just thought they were vague areas that you passed through and wasn't sure why they weren't working.  Maybe it would be clearer if they were a different color.  It was fun, though!

Weirdly, I often feel much the same way as No Time To Play.   When my mood is good I think "There's nothing I'd rather be doing", but when it's not I think "Well, I guess there's nothing else I want to do".  I'm at my best when I'm not really thinking about it much, just being in the zone.

What pushes your passion Bolbochan?

Also curious.  I assumed the bundle was for games more developed than mine, but now I'm not sure?  Would definitely be willing to submit mine if it would help the cause at all.

I just did my first major update on my game, Bird Panic (https://unclealias.itch.io/bird-panic), a few days ago and I think I may have messed something up.  My understanding is that if you make a devlog post marked "Major Update", the game you're updating gets "bumped" chronologically in the listings.  I did that, but I don't think mine was.  For instance, it's not showing up when I filter for "When: Last seven days".  Is that only for new games?  

Edit: I accidentally had it set to "Unlisted in search & browse" when I first posted the devlog, then I tried deleting it and re-posting it, so maybe that has something to do about it?

I'm not getting any new views for this update, so any help would be appreciated.

Edit: I have read the docs and still have a question,
Edit: Here's am example of a search that Bird Panic doesn't show up on, but it does if you clear  "When: Last seven days" from the search criteria: https://itch.io/games/duration-minutes/free/genre-platformer/input-gamepad/last-7-days/local-multiplayer/platform-windows

Thanks!

Do you think prior work really matters that much?  I've been making games for more than a decade, but I haven't shared anything online in a while and this project is my first on itch.io.  I've thought about posting my old games on here, but it just seemed like my time would be better spent making my current game look better.

One that I've been coming back to for years now is Solitairica (iOS, Android, Steam).  Have you ever wished for a game and somebody just made it exactly like you wanted?  I had been playing "golf-style" solitaire games like Fairy Solitaire for years.  It's a really satisfying solitaire variant that's been re-skinned a bunch of times, but without a lot of innovation.  Each version would offer a few "power-ups" to spice up gameplay, but I always wished someone would take it a step further, which this game does brilliantly.  It adds a full-on RPG character progression over a series of solitaire "battles".   It's a free-to-play game on mobile but you can unlock everything for a very reasonable price.  If any of this sounds interesting to you I absolutely recommend it.

Thanks, this is really helpful.  It must have been a lot of work!

Glad you liked it, thanks for the review!

This should be canon

Nice looking with good crontrols, although maybe a little too slippery.  I quit after level 15 because it wasn't getting more challenging.  Fly combos are fun!

Oh thanks, I'll give it another try!

"Don't tell the zombie we know.  We don't want to scare him" XD  That's the best.

Nice, reminds me of old Ultima games!  I had some trouble figuring out the inventory system, maybe partly because things need to be placed very precisely, so it's not always clear if something failed because you're doing a thing that can't be done or because you didn't place it just right.  I'm still not sure how some things work, like torches and wands.  The video helped a lot,, though I didn't realize that the video had useful information at first.  But I still enjoyed playing it!

Oh, never mind, arrow keys and m are much better.  But some instructions in the description would be helpful :)

I just played it in Windows for the first time and I trouble figuring out the controls, since they are one key away from WASD, and using my little finger for firing was difficult.  Are there other keys I can use that I'm missing?

Your work sounds really good!  I'm not really at the stage where I would consider licensing music, but I'll keep you in mind.

Fun game and very topical.  By the time I got through the quest mode I felt like I understood almost all of the mechanics, though I almost didn't survive the fires and I'm still not sure what decides reproduction. But figuring out the mechanics was fun and not too frustrating.

Very clever!  I like games that do a lot with a little.  I just wish it had an undo button for when I realise I've made the wrong swap ;)