This is my first game using the Godot game engine so it's not the best in the world.
Hey, do not belittle yourself! ;)
(Just on a small personal technical note, I think this is my first time playing a Godot-made game (I was interested in finding out more about this engine, precisely!), and I discover that contrary to Unity, Unreal Engine, and even MonoGame, you could offer/package your game as only two mere files instead of a huge series of DLLs and so on, which I think is great. I could not help but notice.)
The music is nice, well done! :) (Maybe the volume is just a bit too loud, even if the player can fix this.)
And the visuals are simple but efficient, including using an outline for the player; I’m fine with such a choice for a prototype, better have simple yet clear graphics than complicated but illegible ones. The style is cute enough for me. :)
Some remarks:
- Once again (because I have encountered numerous games on the site that have this shortcoming, and I expect many more to come XD): the controls are QWERTY-based only, which makes it hard for my poor AZERTY to get by. Quick fix: enabling the arrow keys. Robust fix: using the physical location of the keys instead of their symbolic values when programming.
This is important for games with critical dexterity requirements, and… yours does. ;) - Just a detail: I think it would be good to find a visual/auditive way of signalling to the player that the level is regenerated; at my first failure, I had forgotten that everything was supposed to get randomized. (Which is my fault, you made it clear in the game page and title screen, granted. ;p)
- Theme: you went with the randomness interpretation of the dice concept, which is fine, but maybe you used it in a somewhat coarse manner? I may be a bit demanding there, but I am very mindful of originality and how people tackle creative constraints. Still, I think that varying both the level and the special ability is a good idea, especially as you designed the levels accordingly (you can apparently finish all with any given power). :) So I may be a bit harsh, as you put yourself a not easy-to-deal-with level design imperative.
- Sometimes hard to see the dangers beneath you, because of how the camera is centered; it would probably have been a good choice to either lower the camera a bit or allow some key to vary the view. The game was way too hard, until I realized you can see more of the screen in fullscreen mode instead of windowed! X) Phew. But I still lacked some view of below.
- The coloured ground at the beginning (and elsewhere) of each level to show which level we are arriving in is a nice idea. :)
- A small note: the game window is titled "GMTKJam (DEBUG)", so I guess that you left the debugging mode for building; there is surely a publish mode that enables you to produce more lightweight files for the user.
- Getting what some ‘superpowers’ are was not always easy, but I think I got it (especially the high jump / glide for the ‘red’ level). (Edit (20/07/2022): I thought then that the powers were linked to levels and did not correct this sentence before publishing. X))
- Apart from the double jump, I found the special abilities hard to use in context, but that may have to do with my AZERTY controls once again (you did make my life difficult, there XD). The deadly collisions seem rather unforgiving, and this makes the speed power difficult to master.
From easier to most difficult, I would say double jump, high jump (because you have to use two buttons), dash (because you have to use two buttons and jump at just the right time with good reaction speed). - I may be missing something: where does the title Bloll come from? ball + something else?
- Aaaah, I finally got to the end of one of the levels (the cyan one)! :D That was my last try, so, how fortunate this worked this time. X)
Spoiler: got to a green totem. Is the end of all other levels also such a totem (possibly with a different colour each time)? Does something special happen when you beat all levels?
Illustrated observations:
- Is this a face? :)
- Bug: I managed to (involuntarily) get stuck hanging to a platform corner. And actually, I got stuck likewise quite a few times (including into a straight vertical boundary), which forced me to restart the game… :/ The woes of collision engines!
- Bug: there were some places where I could walk/roll on fire unharmed.
In conclusion: I think it is interesting how you managed to cope with how level design was affected by the randomness in ability, this is my main takeaway from this; it must have been a tricky part to conceive.
Solving some rather technical issues (with the camera, controls, powers tuning…) should make the game less difficult to play and more pleasant, in my opinion (and since this is mainly due to technicality, I will not penalize the game for it ;)).
An interesting prototype, even if it was your first Godot game. :)
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