Analyzing Viewer's Games!

Every M, T, Th, F at 7:30 pm EST I stream game development and game study at DOOMFISHdev - Twitch. If you'd like me to playtest and analyze your game, please come by! I will give anything a try and love talking to devs at any level.

Monday, 9/30/24

Today we played a LOT of games! A game developer named IncrediBro popped into my stream from a raid and I ended up playing his award-winning game jam games for almost 4 hours.

My favorite game by far was Be Positive, a juicy award-winning 2D puzzle game about connecting your character, Mr. Positive, a positive charge to his lover, Miss Negative (a negative charge). The levels are one-screen and are loosely based off of box moving games, where instead of a character getting behind a box and pushing it, you place another positive charge onto a wall next to Mr. Positive and it repels him in the opposite direction. The unique twist is that you can - and sometimes have to - delete charges on the fly, allowing you to pre-plan routes for Mr. Positive to follow as he makes his way to Miss Negative. 

You may need a charge in a certain place to start a route, but Mr. Positive may pass through that square from another direction, requiring you to remove it quickly after he passes. This is especially important in the timed version of the game, which forces you to find the optimal route and execute placing charges as fast as possible - time starts on the first click. This combines pre-planning routes with mouse efficiency, planning charges you will need later in the route and placing them in groups to minimize the time spent moving your mouse around the screen. It quickly becomes a memorization game where you must remember where to place charges, the optimal order and grouping, and which ones to add/remove on the fly.

I'd also like to note how polished the game is. The art style is simple and synergizes with the gameplay. The game music is energetic and synthy (and composed by IncrediBro as well). The JUICE is punchy, and it's extremely satisfying to watch Mr. Positive zip around the level and finally collide with his long lost lover. Give it a try- it's short and sweet and the timed version is a healthy challenge.

Some honorable mentions that I also enjoyed playing: Wacky Wonderland, a TROLL 3d platformer (see if you can figure out how to even start the game) which unfortunately had a bug that removed a couple key platforms for finishing the level. IncrediBro himself claimed it was impossible to finish the level, but I noticed some obstacles like giant hammers and spike wheels booted you off the map pretty far. I refused to give up and after 30 minutes and 250+ deaths managed to cheese my way onto the next platforms using precise jump timing and painstakingly colliding with these obstacles at exactly the right angle. Having always been a fan of abusing glitches in games, this was an extreme personal vindication I feel no shame about gloating over. Get trolled, troll game.

Golf Breaker is a golf variant of Pong where you must bounce the ball off the bar within a square level and try and get it to land in a hole. Every hole you get adds a new obstacle for things to bounce off of, such as trees, houses, and... a dinosaur that eats the ball? An arcade classic reimagined with TONS of juice, an insane amount of pulsating retro arcade-style tracks, and it can be played either with the keyboard or by using a UI arcade machine. This guy really knows how to flesh out an idea to its full potential.

Thanks again to IncrediBro for sharing his lovely games and for allowing me to post this analysis. 

Thursday, 10/3/24

Today, I had a lovely viewer come in chat named GreenCastleBlock, a streamer and long-time developer currently working on a mobile tile-based RPG engine/framework meant to easily create games in that style. He showed me a couple games he worked on as a part of a team led by Delvan. Let's break em down!

The first I played was called Croak / Anole, a physics-based puzzle game where you play as a frog trying to make their way across a pond, battling evil frogs, including one that took your "fly hamburger" (appetizing!) Made for Godot Wildjam #71, this game features a really polished pond overworld with multiple branching paths of lilypads to take across the pond. Choosing a path enters  a battle on a lilypad, where you battle enemy discs on the lilypad by aiming and launching your own 8 discs at controllable angles and velocities to try and knock enemy discs off while getting yours as close as possible to the center. The epicenter is a golf-style hole which you can fire straight into at any velocity. The closer enemy discs are to the center at the end of the battle, the more health they take away from your character as he makes his way across the pond. Your discs gain flies as currency if they remain on the pad at the end of the round. There are three kinds of lilypads: battles, rest pads where you can choose between resting to restore hp and spending flies for max hp, and shops where you can purchase disc variants with flies you collect from battles.

These disc variants are interesting because the game's physics are very punchy and satisfying, allowing for creative bounces that knock enemy discs off the pad and landing yours in the center in one fell swoop. Variants include the heavy disc, which is heavy (such analysis, very wow) and can plow through enemy discs, the ghost disc, which ignores ally discs, obstacles, and the center until the first enemy disc collision, and the heal disc, which heals increasingly on each collision and on entering the center hole. These discs allow for a couple creative playstyles, especially when coupled with the Seasons mechanic, which changes how your discs collide depending on the season (winter is very slick, summer is rough, and so on). The enemy discs also have random input directions that are executed at the end of your turn, constantly changing the playing field and enabling new strategies turn by turn. There are also interesting configurations of enemy discs on different lilypads, and miniboss fights with more discs. Overall, a really fun and satisfying experience with great pixel art and music.

The second I played was Forest Foxlore, a narrative 2D platformer based on a circular spinning world that loops back to the start at the end. In this world, you play as a fox of myth and legend, emerging from a hole in the ground to interact with different forest creatures and humans. You pass through the world, interacting with these entities and making choices before looping back to the hole you came from. During your rest, these entities tell stories about you, and this changes your characters abilities, the playable world, and how NPCs react to you when you re-emerge from the hole generations later. For example, if you allow a goose to help you instead of eating it, the next generation you will have goose wings as a product of the folklore spun about you. If you choose to return an axe to a human instead of stealing it, the next generation will have many trees in the background cut down. Even the title screens in between generations change as a result of your choices. 

There are 2-3 options for each interaction with entities, 2 interactions per generation, and 3 generations per run. This leads to a rough ballpark of 12-18 total possible outcomes, not even accounting for the different abilities the fox gains depending on different options. For a basic proof of concept, this is incredibly promising and would be fascinating as a fully featured game. The circular world and level design really supports the concept of the game, and the cycles of life that we all go through. Overall, a really cohesive experience. I encourage you to give it a try, as there are many funny interactions and it's interesting to see the world change. I myself played around 5 times and got completely different experiences each time.