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A jam submission

Jumping JiveView game page

Jumping Jive, is a 2D side scrolling Platformer, I will be making multiple iterations as I polish this game.
Submitted by Baldr Games - Smoothgiant — 3 days, 23 hours before the deadline
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Jumping Jive's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Art / Graphics#433.5003.500
Controls / UI#502.8752.875
Overall Fun#512.8752.875
Sound/Music#582.3752.375

Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Developer

Thank you all for the comments, I have been travelling for work over the last 2 weeks, but I am back now, and plan on working on updating the game. Major changes expected around the controls as that is the area I think will be best suited for an upgrade after the feedback. I plan on rereleasing the game going forward a few times.

I am going through all submissions to make all developers aware of an important Google form I've made.

I'm joining the IQ folks to help organize smaller events in between the main FQ event in order to help prevent us from getting too many games in main events. Right now, I have a planned structure for these events but I would like to hear from everyone who was in this event in order to tune things better. The survey is a bit long, but it covers as much as I could think of. If you can take the time to do the survey by June 1st, I would immensely appreciate it!

You can find the form here: https://forms.gle/P9LPYwERhJtpZzteA

Submitted

Hello, hello! I think this game has potential, but I do have a few small gripes:

Overall Fun: So... the level design and platform layout was done really well. I just feel there needs to be a bit... more. Maybe more pits you have to jump across/navigate, some hidden areas, more challenging collectibles (think the giant coins in Mario - 3 per stage), and more enemy variety.

Art/Graphics: The artwork was cute. I love the main guy with the different-shaped eyes, plus the enemies were well done. The little green guys with their big noses (maybe pigs?) were cute, and I hated stomping on them haha

Controls/UI: Jumping felt... wobbly and unpredictable. Almost like I was jumping on the surface of Mars. Maybe have jumping the same height, but you get heavier on the way down. I just felt it needed a bit more weight to it. Other than that... the springs were fun, and I had no issues going from platform to platform.

Sound/Music: The music was cute and fitting for the theme of the game. I think you need to balance some of the audio, though. The music was softer, so I had that turned to a volume I was comfortable with, and then collecting fruit and the player's death audio was deafening. Especially the player's death. Turn that down a bit so you don't give some players tinnitus LOL

Hello from tonight's stream!

This works as a great engine demo. I can see potential in it.

My biggest gripes were that the horizontal movement was the opposite of vertical movement, a lack of damage one could take, and the overall height of jumping.

Moving left and right was fast and quick, while jumping and falling was exhaustingly slow. Not only does this not feel good in general, but it causes an issue regarding the game's mechanics. Since you can't control your jump at all, it means you have to rely on movement left and right to be accurate to beat enemies or avoid obstacles. However, the slow descent can result in players second guessing themselves and moving or the fast horizontal speed can make you miss your mark. I would recommend these things are at the same speed. Either slow horizontal down or make jumping and falling faster. That said, I would aim for the latter since it makes the game have less float. Putting these in balance would also be a simple way to correct the next problem: lack of health.

Everything is a one-hit kill. This idea is fine when players have good, balanced controls. However, as noted above that is not the case. That said, you can always make the watermelons count towards extra hits.

Finally, for jumping I would suggest having a higher cap depending on what speed you change from #1, or to never place collectables at the very peak of the jump. I know there's a double jump, but unless you put it out of range of a single jump then this doesn't apply. Collectables should require either one jump or a a double jump rather than need one but easier with two.

Submitted

Solid fondation, but I think the game is just a bit too generic, stylistically and in gameplay. Sprite work for things like the blocks you jump on are just a bit too "hey that looks like Mario Bros" for my liking, and I wish there was something that made this stand out more. Flex those creative muscles, I think you can still make this work!

Submitted

Pretty generic, but very fun lmao.

I love the willhem scream, and the art style is very charming.

The only change I would make is increase the gravity and make the player jump a little higher.

Will check it out when its finished or has more updates

Submitted

I have a couple of issues with the game, mainly with the controls: right now they are too floaty for a precision platformer like the first SMB, I think that a new player controller based on ray casts rather than unity physics will improve it a lot.  Can't comment on the art style as they are a free asset here on itch.io.

Overall there's potential, but need - IMHO - a rehaul of the player controller.

Developer

Thank you for the feedback! that was one of my thoughts when posting the game. I also do hope to replace the art by end of year. I will look into ray cast movement, I have never heard of using Ray Cast in that functionality before!

Submitted(+1)

If you use Unity, there’s this awesome series of tutorials by Sebastian Lague (https://youtu.be/MbWK8bCAU2w) that explain the theory behind it! It’s a bit old so some coding may be obsolete, but the principles are solid!

Submitted

I enjoyed my run, I finished the three stages. I think you have a good theme, I liked the main character and the little watermelons.

Personally, I think your game could benefit from more consistency. If your game is mainly a colorful pixelated retro game, instead of a realistic scream when you die, you could put a really short jingle. When you jump on a monster, you could have sharp pixelated particles instead of blurry diffused one.

I had fun playing, thanks for submitting your game!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for the feedback, I definitely don't expect the Wilhelm scream to make it to a final product, that was more of a joke I made with friends. I honestly have very little experience in VFX, if you have any tutorials that you can point me to that would be great!

Submitted(+1)

Assuming you use Unity, you could start simple by changing the sprite used in your particle system, use a square one. If you want to push it further, a quick search found this nice tutorial:

Submitted

A good platformer, wasn't a big fan of the scream sound effect and the jumps were a bit too floaty for me. But looks great. 

Developer(+1)

Thank you for the feedback, I definitely don't expect the Wilhelm scream to make it to a final product, that was more of a joke I made with friends. I will absolutely be looking into a better control functionality to make the floatiness better.