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A jam submission

Knock it off Socks!View game page

Cat Platformer
Submitted by LDMONTY007 — 4 hours, 56 minutes before the deadline
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Knock it off Socks!'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall#13.5963.596
Best Sound#13.9233.923
Best Art#24.0004.000
Most Fun#33.2313.231
Best Mechanic#33.2313.231

Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

(+1)

Was fun to work on and great learning experience!

I'm so glad I got to be a part of this team. I look forward to working with everyone again in the future! FRIED SHRIMP!!!

Submitted(+1)

ADORABLE!!!! I am a big fan of the plates you can ram into and break. I also enjoyed the fried shrimp at the end :)

Developer

Thanks, our team name was "Fried shrimp" and one of our artists Kristen drew that logo for us!

(+1)

Mist made some great comments that I agree with. I'd also like to add just on thing that I would enjoy  doing more of in the game. You did it when you had to get onto the chandelier, but chaining jumps together would make the game more fun I think. It would be cool if you had to do two jumps consecutively to actually cover the whole distance. Anyways, regarding mechanics, I liked being able to go as fast as you could, but that might not be feasible for the scale of the game. Ensuring that your controls don't "roll" is critical, and I think the top speed should probably be lower unless you zoom the camera out more and have bigger jumps. Overall, it was fun and I love the theme!

Developer

Thanks, Mist definitely showed that the controls needed a bit of tuning but noting that the max speed was too great is definitely something I didn't notice when playtesting. I enjoyed being able to chain jumps between the sofa chair, sofa, and the table to get to the counter in the kitchen but you definitely would only have tried that if you had played the game before or if the camera showed you the scope of the level. That's something I definitely liked and if we continued development I would have liked to make a longer level after the first one and tweak the spacing of objects so it was easily communicated that you could quickly jump between everything. I was not the main level designer on this and I am going to see if I can get him to look at these messages.

(+1)

I really like this! The art style is really nice and it's obvious you put a bunch of work into this!


I do have a couple pieces of feedback from what I've learned about platformer design over the years. I hope some of it can be helpful to you:

1. The cat controls like it's on wheels, rather than a living being. People don't have such long acceleration and deceleration curves. Make the cat reach max speed faster when I push the button, and make it decelerate faster when I stop pushing the button. You'll find this makes the controls feel much tighter, creating a better experience for the player.

2. This is an excellent skeleton of a platformer, but next time you should put more consideration into what your core mechanic is. There are a million run and jump games out there, so to stand out you need to do something different. For instance: Celeste has the dash mechanic that makes it stand out from other platformers. You seem to have a wall crawling thing going on, but you only used it a couple times. You should center your level design more around the mechanic you want to show the player. Here's a video that goes over the platforming level design philosophy for mario 3d world. You don't need to copy it exactly, but it should give you a clearer idea on what I mean by focusing the level design around mechanics more 


To reiterate: this game is awesome. You guys are all awesome for having made it. I can't wait to see what you make next!

Developer

I love that you pointed out the controls feeling too loose and slick because that was something that I actually wanted in the game because I have a cat and it always looks like that when he runs around on the hardwood. I definitely needed to focus more on game feel though than trying to relate it to the way cats look when they move. I am used to making games in 3D so creating a 2D platformer this was a first. I used techniques typically used in 3D for creating realistic physics movement (such as rigid bodies) and I definitely should have focused more on playability than realistic-looking gameplay. I'm just so used to aiming for that in my 3D games because I have a large project in 3D that I have been working on which relies on that. This code is extremely similar to the 3D movement code and your criticism has helped me so much that I edited one line of the code so acceleration was faster in the 3D game and it just feels more responsive. Honestly, we couldn't figure out what the "core mechanic" was because as you saw in the last level we ran out of time for more content. The first level is supposed to be like the first level of Mario, basic but with all the things to help you learn its mechanics. The idea was to implement a points system for breaking objects with points from the treats on top of that. We would have made a more complex second level and then entered the last level with the planet-like yarn balls. I definitely spent too much time creating fun mechanics because the idea was to have more levels like the last one with the rounded planets to get you to use gravity as part of the platforming and more grounded levels with a higher variety of obstacles, especially the climbing. I'm glad you noticed the climbing was supposed to be a core mechanic but the main idea was that it was cat themed, which is way too broad to be a single mechanic, like the water in the sink makes you bounce because cats like to do that little jump straight up after touching the water. I will definitely use this criticism for my next platformer as the big project I mentioned earlier has a lot to do with platforming, I decided to do this game jam so I could learn what it was like to work with a time limit and actually properly, finish a game. 

Synopsis of what I learned:

Don't make movement cartoony/cat like if it takes control away from the player

I definitely need to do more research on level design as I have never really made it far enough into a game to do something much more complex than this. 

I recognize that if I have something I want to show the players I need to include it in the level more and make sure the players understand this is what makes our game stand out from other platformers.

I need to design 2D games using code for 2D, if I am using an actual physics-based body for gameplay I still need to be lenient with my player's inputs and be pliable to their gameplay style.

(from personal experience during development) based upon the things critiqued, specifically, the level design we (the programmers) over anticipated how much work this would be for our artists so I did not manage my team's time properly and need to be more considerate of their schedules in the future, especially regarding college courses and exams.

Thanks for your critique, it was super helpful for me to be able to see where I can improve and where I can learn more regarding the design of my code, not how to code it but how I design it to be more intuitive and responsive. I will be sure to let my team know you liked it so much!