- Out of all of the playable characters, she's the only one that can run. While I don't agree that she should always autorun, for accessibility reasons, I think it's probably a good thing to add autorun. I'll add it to the list.
- Yeah I still have to tweak that.
- Her hitbox is actually pretty generous already. I tried to post a pic of it, but itch isn't letting me.
- I just tried to replicate the bug, but couldn't. I can see in code where it could be possible though, given auto-stalking.
I liked the dialogue a lot too. The chemistry between Ao and Peperi, and of course the true protagonist Mr. Sol, really has some interesting places to go.
My feelings are pretty much the same as the other comments. It's a really fun demo with a neat base idea that lends itself to puzzles. I also liked how you threw in the liquid physics and the ball pit. Those were actually some of my favorite and most memorable parts, so despite their "danger" mentioned below, I'd probably argue in their favor.
There's just one thing I wanted to bring up since I haven't seen it mentioned before: From what I see, ranks are distributed based on completion time right now. However, when I stop to let the dialogue play out, the time also appears to keep running. Just moving on didn't feel right either, since I'd have to worry that the next event might override the current dialogue.
Bug-wise, I didn't really find anything. When doing a coin collecting run and collecting the final coin with Peperi, I can still make sounds when pressing the jump button, that's all I really managed to find.
So yeah, all in all, very good demo. A lot of love put into details, like the underwater bgm effect and the parallax when doing the big jump with Ao. Good stuff, I had a lot of fun!
- That's how I feel about it too. Thinking about making a running gag with the ball pits in fairy-only areas.
- That's correct. Rank has a direct effect on money earned as well. But you wouldn't do green medals to earn money. Yellows give 150% money, and Blue/Reds give 200% money on average. So I wouldn't worry about it in the end, as if you're going for money, you'd not do a green. As for overriding the current dialogue, it actually queues up instead. I have thought about overrides but that's probably not going to work very well.
- Yeah, I don't have actual pausing implemented yet, so that's a thing. I'm aware of it and it'll be fixed pretty soon!
Thanks for playing my game! I'm glad you liked it!
I definitely appreciate how much content is in this demo. This is certainly shaping up to be a proper game. I have a couple of pieces of advice/feedback that I hope are constructive:
1. For the movement mechanics I think you should tweak the acceleration and deceleration values a bit. It feels too slow to start moving and too slow to stop moving and the result is that it's hard to place the characters where you want to whether in air or on the ground. Higher acceleration and deceleration constants would probably be sufficient for tweaking this (while keeping the same max speed), but if you want to get fancy, it might be worth it to add a different, stronger value for "turning deceleration" (i.e. momentum is going right, but you're pressing left) and potentially a two-phase acceleration where up until, say, 70% of max speed you use a very high acceleration, but then you slow down the acceleration so it takes a bit more to get to max speed (this is something that's pretty common in old-school platformers).
2. Personally, I would very much advise against the use of physics-engine gimmicks in a traditional mechanics-based platformer. With this I am referring primarily to the ball pit, but also the blood pool in the boss fight is somewhat this (although, impressively, you managed the mechanics well enough with the boss that the water physics weren't really an obstacle). With physics engines come chaos (i.e. a small change in input/starting parameters = a large change in outcome. Butterfly effect) and with chaos destroys design and intentionality. These parts feel more like "because I can" moments than "because I should" moments.
Anyway, great to see a game really shaping up. The characters are cute. Dialogue's a bit cliche, but it fits.
1. After I introduce the new character, the cat's walking values will be increased to match her, as the new character can only walk, so her speed should be increased. This should help a lot with the discrepancy between walk and running.
2. I would agree with you if this was going to be a straight platformer, but it's going to shift away from traditional platforming as the new character unlocks in the next world, becoming more of a puzzle platformer. I think it's fine in that particular context, but I can see that not being apparant given the content of the demo. Still, I didn't want to add that character until world 2, as to not bog the first world down with endless tutorials. The ball pit and the blood from the boss are both intended to be chaotic as well, especially for the boss, so all is well, I think!
Thanks a lot for playing my game! I hope to see you at the next demo!
Mechanic with switching characters is good idea. I liked that it was used extensively.
I got stuck for a bit in the pitball, it was hard to move one ball out of the tunnel entrance. It was worth the joke though.
I liked that there was a combination of skill tests and puzzles.
You should be able to enter the level with action button. IT's a bit unintuitive that there is action button but you use jump to enter the level. I think both should work.
Boss fight was pretty cool, I liked narrative idea with biting off the tongue that upped the challenge instead of just doing it without reason.
Overall good game, looking forward to future versions.
- I've got a lot of reports about getting stuck in the ball pit. I'll have to try something else with it. Personally I can get through it consistently with only minor hiccups, but that doesn't seem to be the case for most people.
- You actually don't enter the level with the jump button. There's a separate button for Menu Accept. There's a bug in the default mapper for now that makes that not work as one would think, but you'll be able to determine what buttons do what. I just couldn't get to the pause menu in time for DD.
-Glad you liked the boss. It was the first time I was programming a passive boss like that, so I didn't really know how well I did. I got a lot of good gameplay feedback from some other people on here. I really wanted to show how crazy the game was supposed to get later, and the whole "pit of blood and tongue dismemberment" thing is what happened. It's all downhill from there!
Thanks for playing my game, hopefully I'll see you again at the next demo!
Cute and cool stage-based puzzle game, I like it, the dialogue is easy to miss and I think the art needs a little refinement because it's not consistent
Art-wise, I'm the artist, but I'm a programmer. I'm trying really hard on it, and improving a lot, but I'll definitely have to go back and redo everything at some point after I get better. Thank you for playing my game!
I'm on the same boat except I'm neither a programmer or an artist lol, but it's true that once you get better you can tell the inconsistencies between the old art and the new one so there will have to be changes in some way, good luck
Is cute, but i feel I'm not the target audience, i will try my best with my feedback:
BUG: If the cat and the fairy is separate the health bar do not divide
- The music underwater should be with less brightness rather than vibrato in my opinion - Background should have some movement like moving cloud or moving leafs - The dialogue should pop up based on the cat position. character should react if i go straight without listening. - I was wondering if there could be faster way to obtain the super jump, is too slow for me.
-I've gotten a report on that bug. Will check it out soon.
-Honestly, I have no idea what you're talking about underwater. I kinda just tested stuff till I got something I liked. I used a low pass filter and a chorus filter.
-To be honest, I hadn't even considered that. This is pretty tough for me so far though. Maybe a late game pass when I'm better at art?
-I'm not sure what you mean about the dialogue position. I put it in a place where it's readable but (usually) doesn't mask what you're doing.
-I was getting the feeling that it was slightly slow too. I'll be reducing its charge time by like 10~20%.
Sorry about the dialogue feedback, i was thinking that when I'm rushing usually character keep talking and i was thinking that you had 2 option, one is to stop the player or make some response about the player rushing without reading dialogues, for example with the sun you can stop and listen or just keep going and make the character says something like "where are you going? that sun was talk..." "eh not interesting"
I've thought about that, but I figured in most cases, it'd be a lot of extra work that'd further harm the pace of the dialogues at that point. I probably won't do that other than special instances (like the sun, nice call!)
Cute game. Definitely feels like there's a lot of design space for future levels.
I liked the movement quirks of both characters and they both felt pretty good to control. I didn't really mind the low friction or acceleration , although I can see it becoming frustrating if future levels contain jumps with stricter windows.
I do wish transitioning between the two characters was slightly quicker, especially when they are far apart.
Was a fun demo. Looking forwards to more complex puzzles.
I don't plan on ever increasing platforming difficulty past this, as it shifts over to puzzles pretty hard in worlds 2 and beyond. I had to do SOMETHING with the platforming form, so I wound up doing that.
As for transitioning, I was thinking about doing a fade to black if they were past a certain distance away, the same fade you see when you change characters when one is in a subworld. I'll play with that as I go forward and levels get bigger.
Will probably be at least DD35 when you'll get to play next, I have a lot to do, but I hope to see you there!
- I had thought about charging while running, but I found it more catlike to slow you down to walking, as they do.
- You can hold the action button to tighten her controls up. I'm probably going to increase her interaction range as well as show it somehow pretty soon.
- The cat's dog? You mean her jump? Her fall speed is slightly strong for a game like this, but that's to be a bit more cat-like.
- It's understandable. This is actually my first time designing a boss you fight passively so I'm not all there yet.
- Will do. I'm introducing a new form next work so it'll open up more stuff!
I mean in the end its up to you, but imo you are not making a cat simulator so getting that platformer jump right will be key. But it depends on taste i guess and if it works for you go with it.
I like the dialogue, and I actually found myself enjoying the boss fight.
tomo ge is on the nose with his comments, the levels could be condensed and it'd help if the boss' actions had visual cues.
I did find a jump bug (I don't think it's intentional?) which I recorded that I'll DM to you on twitter since I don't know how to link videos here. Never mind I can't DM you. If you jump in the same spot under a ledge, although it seems like you need to do a big jump you can make it some times.
Overall, the game is a little easy but if your target audience is casuals then \_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah, the game shouldn't be too hard on an execution level. The game should be going into big think mode in world 2, but I'll probably be looking at rebalancing things in world 1 at some point.
- Control wise I think it's a little weird having so little acceleration in a platformer (more so with the cat, with the fairy she's flying so that makes a little more sense), in mario you almost instantly get to your maximum speed. Likewise it takes a noticeable time to stop. It makes things feel a little sluggish in my opinion.
- The pacing is a bit off having such short levels, the whole demo could be 3-4 levels with checkpoints and it would feel better
- Add a button to skip the current text box to the next one
- I had some odd behaviors with the fluids where the character would sometimes dive into it after a jump
- The boss wasn't particularily interesting as there was no way to tell which movement pattern it would do, having a different frame or move before each individual pattern would help against that
- Levels were simple so I can't quite comment on the platforming itself, but I don't see why it would be bad when more complex
- 3d doors were hella cute
- I thought the cat was a boy wtf dude
So yeah hard to say much, the presentation is nice, but the game doesn't really go deep enough
Thanks for the feedback, Tomo. To address your points...
- The game is a puzzle platformer, so I felt like there was some leeway on control, and I attempted to make something that felt "cat-like", as cats tend to have two speeds, meandering and "bat out of hell". I would agree with you if it's straight platforming, but the next world and the rest of the game goes into puzzles, so it shouldn't be too bad.
- Interesting take on the pacing.
- I had considered the button for skipping text. I'm not really sure where I'd put that atm, but I thought about it.
- Yeah the metaballs are kinda whack. At some point I'm going to look at vertlets to get the same intended result and without bugs. I hope.
- Hmm, the different frames is probably nice, yeah. I'll look into it.
- I didn't want the platforming to get too ridiculous, especially later on when there's more of a puzzle or combat focus.
- Thanks about the doors, I thought so too.
- Ao's a girl, yeah. It'll be more apparent when you see her alt forms.
Yeah, world 1 skirts around since the only form you have unlocked is Cat. In World 2, you'll get Girl form and you'll be able to interact with items and do puzzles better. The game is supposed to slowly open up over time, but I do have to wonder if it's going too slow.
Comments
cute game with good visuals and music, only nitpicks are
- dont see much poitn on holding a button to run, if anything u should hold the button to move slower since i was running 99% of the time
- boss was pretty boring, i just stood in a corner doing nothing until it killed itself
- fairy hitbox too big pls buff
-if ur hugging a wall you cant charge your jump
- Out of all of the playable characters, she's the only one that can run. While I don't agree that she should always autorun, for accessibility reasons, I think it's probably a good thing to add autorun. I'll add it to the list.
- Yeah I still have to tweak that.
- Her hitbox is actually pretty generous already. I tried to post a pic of it, but itch isn't letting me.
- I just tried to replicate the bug, but couldn't. I can see in code where it could be possible though, given auto-stalking.
Thank you for playing my demo!
I liked the dialogue a lot too. The chemistry between Ao and Peperi, and of course the true protagonist Mr. Sol, really has some interesting places to go.
My feelings are pretty much the same as the other comments. It's a really fun demo with a neat base idea that lends itself to puzzles. I also liked how you threw in the liquid physics and the ball pit. Those were actually some of my favorite and most memorable parts, so despite their "danger" mentioned below, I'd probably argue in their favor.
There's just one thing I wanted to bring up since I haven't seen it mentioned before: From what I see, ranks are distributed based on completion time right now. However, when I stop to let the dialogue play out, the time also appears to keep running. Just moving on didn't feel right either, since I'd have to worry that the next event might override the current dialogue.
Bug-wise, I didn't really find anything. When doing a coin collecting run and collecting the final coin with Peperi, I can still make sounds when pressing the jump button, that's all I really managed to find.
So yeah, all in all, very good demo. A lot of love put into details, like the underwater bgm effect and the parallax when doing the big jump with Ao. Good stuff, I had a lot of fun!
- Oh ho, so you discovered the true protag!
- That's how I feel about it too. Thinking about making a running gag with the ball pits in fairy-only areas.
- That's correct. Rank has a direct effect on money earned as well. But you wouldn't do green medals to earn money. Yellows give 150% money, and Blue/Reds give 200% money on average. So I wouldn't worry about it in the end, as if you're going for money, you'd not do a green. As for overriding the current dialogue, it actually queues up instead. I have thought about overrides but that's probably not going to work very well.
- Yeah, I don't have actual pausing implemented yet, so that's a thing. I'm aware of it and it'll be fixed pretty soon!
Thanks for playing my game! I'm glad you liked it!
I definitely appreciate how much content is in this demo. This is certainly shaping up to be a proper game. I have a couple of pieces of advice/feedback that I hope are constructive:
1. For the movement mechanics I think you should tweak the acceleration and deceleration values a bit. It feels too slow to start moving and too slow to stop moving and the result is that it's hard to place the characters where you want to whether in air or on the ground. Higher acceleration and deceleration constants would probably be sufficient for tweaking this (while keeping the same max speed), but if you want to get fancy, it might be worth it to add a different, stronger value for "turning deceleration" (i.e. momentum is going right, but you're pressing left) and potentially a two-phase acceleration where up until, say, 70% of max speed you use a very high acceleration, but then you slow down the acceleration so it takes a bit more to get to max speed (this is something that's pretty common in old-school platformers).
2. Personally, I would very much advise against the use of physics-engine gimmicks in a traditional mechanics-based platformer. With this I am referring primarily to the ball pit, but also the blood pool in the boss fight is somewhat this (although, impressively, you managed the mechanics well enough with the boss that the water physics weren't really an obstacle). With physics engines come chaos (i.e. a small change in input/starting parameters = a large change in outcome. Butterfly effect) and with chaos destroys design and intentionality. These parts feel more like "because I can" moments than "because I should" moments.
Anyway, great to see a game really shaping up. The characters are cute. Dialogue's a bit cliche, but it fits.
1. After I introduce the new character, the cat's walking values will be increased to match her, as the new character can only walk, so her speed should be increased. This should help a lot with the discrepancy between walk and running.
2. I would agree with you if this was going to be a straight platformer, but it's going to shift away from traditional platforming as the new character unlocks in the next world, becoming more of a puzzle platformer. I think it's fine in that particular context, but I can see that not being apparant given the content of the demo. Still, I didn't want to add that character until world 2, as to not bog the first world down with endless tutorials. The ball pit and the blood from the boss are both intended to be chaotic as well, especially for the boss, so all is well, I think!
Thanks a lot for playing my game! I hope to see you at the next demo!
Pretty fun game. Feedback:
Chatter between characters is pretty interesting.
Mechanic with switching characters is good idea. I liked that it was used extensively.
I got stuck for a bit in the pitball, it was hard to move one ball out of the tunnel entrance. It was worth the joke though.
I liked that there was a combination of skill tests and puzzles.
You should be able to enter the level with action button. IT's a bit unintuitive that there is action button but you use jump to enter the level. I think both should work.
Boss fight was pretty cool, I liked narrative idea with biting off the tongue that upped the challenge instead of just doing it without reason.
Overall good game, looking forward to future versions.
- I've got a lot of reports about getting stuck in the ball pit. I'll have to try something else with it. Personally I can get through it consistently with only minor hiccups, but that doesn't seem to be the case for most people.
- You actually don't enter the level with the jump button. There's a separate button for Menu Accept. There's a bug in the default mapper for now that makes that not work as one would think, but you'll be able to determine what buttons do what. I just couldn't get to the pause menu in time for DD.
-Glad you liked the boss. It was the first time I was programming a passive boss like that, so I didn't really know how well I did. I got a lot of good gameplay feedback from some other people on here. I really wanted to show how crazy the game was supposed to get later, and the whole "pit of blood and tongue dismemberment" thing is what happened. It's all downhill from there!
Thanks for playing my game, hopefully I'll see you again at the next demo!
Cute and cool stage-based puzzle game, I like it, the dialogue is easy to miss and I think the art needs a little refinement because it's not consistent
Art-wise, I'm the artist, but I'm a programmer. I'm trying really hard on it, and improving a lot, but I'll definitely have to go back and redo everything at some point after I get better. Thank you for playing my game!
I'm on the same boat except I'm neither a programmer or an artist lol, but it's true that once you get better you can tell the inconsistencies between the old art and the new one so there will have to be changes in some way, good luck
Thanks a lot!
Is cute, but i feel I'm not the target audience, i will try my best with my feedback:
BUG:
If the cat and the fairy is separate the health bar do not divide
- The music underwater should be with less brightness rather than vibrato in my opinion
- Background should have some movement like moving cloud or moving leafs
- The dialogue should pop up based on the cat position. character should react if i go straight without listening.
- I was wondering if there could be faster way to obtain the super jump, is too slow for me.
-I've gotten a report on that bug. Will check it out soon.
-Honestly, I have no idea what you're talking about underwater. I kinda just tested stuff till I got something I liked. I used a low pass filter and a chorus filter.
-To be honest, I hadn't even considered that. This is pretty tough for me so far though. Maybe a late game pass when I'm better at art?
-I'm not sure what you mean about the dialogue position. I put it in a place where it's readable but (usually) doesn't mask what you're doing.
-I was getting the feeling that it was slightly slow too. I'll be reducing its charge time by like 10~20%.
Thank you for playing my game!
Sorry about the dialogue feedback, i was thinking that when I'm rushing usually character keep talking and i was thinking that you had 2 option, one is to stop the player or make some response about the player rushing without reading dialogues, for example with the sun you can stop and listen or just keep going and make the character says something like "where are you going? that sun was talk..." "eh not interesting"
I've thought about that, but I figured in most cases, it'd be a lot of extra work that'd further harm the pace of the dialogues at that point. I probably won't do that other than special instances (like the sun, nice call!)
Cute game. Definitely feels like there's a lot of design space for future levels.
I liked the movement quirks of both characters and they both felt pretty good to control. I didn't really mind the low friction or acceleration , although I can see it becoming frustrating if future levels contain jumps with stricter windows.
I do wish transitioning between the two characters was slightly quicker, especially when they are far apart.
Was a fun demo. Looking forwards to more complex puzzles.
Thank you for playing!
I don't plan on ever increasing platforming difficulty past this, as it shifts over to puzzles pretty hard in worlds 2 and beyond. I had to do SOMETHING with the platforming form, so I wound up doing that.
As for transitioning, I was thinking about doing a fade to black if they were past a certain distance away, the same fade you see when you change characters when one is in a subworld. I'll play with that as I go forward and levels get bigger.
Will probably be at least DD35 when you'll get to play next, I have a lot to do, but I hope to see you there!
Cute stuff and great job!
thoughts:
Good job overallt, do more levels which requires both of them to do stuff :)
- I had thought about charging while running, but I found it more catlike to slow you down to walking, as they do.
- You can hold the action button to tighten her controls up. I'm probably going to increase her interaction range as well as show it somehow pretty soon.
- The cat's dog? You mean her jump? Her fall speed is slightly strong for a game like this, but that's to be a bit more cat-like.
- It's understandable. This is actually my first time designing a boss you fight passively so I'm not all there yet.
- Will do. I'm introducing a new form next work so it'll open up more stuff!
I mean in the end its up to you, but imo you are not making a cat simulator so getting that platformer jump right will be key. But it depends on taste i guess and if it works for you go with it.
I like the dialogue, and I actually found myself enjoying the boss fight.
tomo ge is on the nose with his comments, the levels could be condensed and it'd help if the boss' actions had visual cues.
I did find a jump bug (I don't think it's intentional?)
which I recorded that I'll DM to you on twitter since I don't know how to link videos here. Never mind I can't DM you. If you jump in the same spot under a ledge, although it seems like you need to do a big jump you can make it some times.Overall, the game is a little easy but if your target audience is casuals then \_(ツ)_/¯
You can send it to me on the AGDG discord.
Yeah, the game shouldn't be too hard on an execution level. The game should be going into big think mode in world 2, but I'll probably be looking at rebalancing things in world 1 at some point.
hi it me
- Control wise I think it's a little weird having so little acceleration in a platformer (more so with the cat, with the fairy she's flying so that makes a little more sense), in mario you almost instantly get to your maximum speed. Likewise it takes a noticeable time to stop. It makes things feel a little sluggish in my opinion.
- The pacing is a bit off having such short levels, the whole demo could be 3-4 levels with checkpoints and it would feel better
- Add a button to skip the current text box to the next one
- I had some odd behaviors with the fluids where the character would sometimes dive into it after a jump
- The boss wasn't particularily interesting as there was no way to tell which movement pattern it would do, having a different frame or move before each individual pattern would help against that
- Levels were simple so I can't quite comment on the platforming itself, but I don't see why it would be bad when more complex
- 3d doors were hella cute
- I thought the cat was a boy wtf dude
So yeah hard to say much, the presentation is nice, but the game doesn't really go deep enough
Thanks for the feedback, Tomo. To address your points...
- The game is a puzzle platformer, so I felt like there was some leeway on control, and I attempted to make something that felt "cat-like", as cats tend to have two speeds, meandering and "bat out of hell". I would agree with you if it's straight platforming, but the next world and the rest of the game goes into puzzles, so it shouldn't be too bad.
- Interesting take on the pacing.
- I had considered the button for skipping text. I'm not really sure where I'd put that atm, but I thought about it.
- Yeah the metaballs are kinda whack. At some point I'm going to look at vertlets to get the same intended result and without bugs. I hope.
- Hmm, the different frames is probably nice, yeah. I'll look into it.
- I didn't want the platforming to get too ridiculous, especially later on when there's more of a puzzle or combat focus.
- Thanks about the doors, I thought so too.
- Ao's a girl, yeah. It'll be more apparent when you see her alt forms.
Yeah, world 1 skirts around since the only form you have unlocked is Cat. In World 2, you'll get Girl form and you'll be able to interact with items and do puzzles better. The game is supposed to slowly open up over time, but I do have to wonder if it's going too slow.