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A jam submission

Portal BugView game page

A ladybug fighting his way through interdimensional portals!
Submitted by David Snopek (@snopekgames), Tom Jensen (@composer_tom), 2011saba2011@gmail.com — 1 hour, 38 minutes before the deadline
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Portal Bug's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Audio#83.7923.792
Fun#93.6673.667
Controls#123.4583.458
Overall#143.5493.549
Theme#193.7923.792
Graphics#243.3753.375
Originality#353.2083.208

Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Godot Version
3.2.2

Source
https://gitlab.com/snopek-games/portal-bug

Game Description
A ladybug fighting his way through interdimensional portals!

Discord Username
dsnopek, SabaKeepsLearning, HexenMapper

Participation Level (GWJ)
2nd time

Jam Time!
Not first game jam!

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Comments

Submitted

I really liked the controls here. I could tell you spent a lot of time getting them to feel right, especially the state transitions between the extra jump with the flying then the glide and dive bombing.  I'll probably take a look at your source at some point if I ever do another platformer.  Minor complaint on the attack feeling like it had pretty short reach, but it added to the challenge.

The music and audio were well done and fit the game and the levels felt pretty well laid out. Pretty solid entry!

Submitted

Good job! Great level design, love the audio (though, for a longer game, the jump audio would've needed some variation). Controls are pretty slippery, and I wish I didn't have to hold the spacebar for so long to get the highest jump. Keep up the good work! :3

Submitted

Finally got some time to play this game. Very solid platformer and really like how it takes momentum before doing the full jump. Just one problem, I can’t bypass this spike 😂 challenging spike

Submitted

It's a solid platformer.  I liked it.  The sounds also really added especially the jump sound.  It took a little time to get use the the dive but nothing was glitchy, everything works great.  Good job!

Submitted

It's a good game, and a very solid platformer! I don't really like this type of genre, but I've got to admit, this was fun! The actions were nice and was very fun to learn!

I guess the only thing that bothered me was the background. Maybe y'all could have added some sort of parallax background? But I understand that it may be because of time.

In conclusion; nice game, good job!

Submitted

Good game, I like the art and animations a lot. The controls feel good, but I wish the second jump would trigger when you're at the peak instead of manually having to time it. Though I guess I should just 'git gud' hahah. It'd be nice to see some additional tiles for background design as well, but it's not critical.

Submitted

I really liked the art, animation and the sound effects, the concept was great, really liked the idea of gliding but I just couldn't get used to the controls.

Submitted

I liked how the gameplay, art, music all came together to give the game a charming and fun atmosphere. I felt quite absorbed :)

Submitted

Wow the ladybug design and animations where surprisingly good,  well done. Controls took some time to get use to, but after that the overall experience is good.

Submitted

Really enjoyed the gliding mechanic. I tried gliding waaayyy off level of a few times hoping there was an easter egg ;-) Good job!

Submitted

Pretty solid platformer! I agree with others the dive attack took some getting used to but otherwise it was solid. Enjoyed the glide mechanic the most. Was quite amused by the sound as well :)

Submitted

I liked the way that controls are unique and involve a reasonable amount of skill - I felt devoted to mastering some specific trick enough that I kept on playing. I liked the art and the sound effects (plplplplplplp EUGHH whoooooooooooo :) and I enjoyed the level design. The enemies were interesting, but perhaps could have used a bit more variety. The combat was a bit slow to get used to as you have such little range on the bite. Another thing might be to have the player automatically do a diving bite attack whenever they dive, as I found clicking both buttons at once was hard to time correctly and not die. But these are small things - overall, it was a fun and well designed platformer.

Submitted

I loved the sound effects, especially the jumping sound. The controls were interesting, but I'm just too bad at platformers :(

Submitted

I love it. Took some time with the controls. but once I mastered it. It was great.  can keep on playing all day. And the music and sound effects is perfect!  and the sound when the bug falls. Couldn't get any better. Superb! 

Developer

Thanks so much! All the music and sound are the brilliant work of Tom Jensen, the composer (and all around sound guy) on our team :-)

Submitted

Good job. It's a really nice game. I like the way how you implemented the flying mechanics of the bug. One thing I couldn't achieve is the dive attack, but I enjoyed it. 

Developer(+2)

Thanks, glad you liked it! :-)

The dive attack is a little tricky to pull off: it's easiest to press the attack button and the down button at the same time, but if it's a long dive, you might be done attacking by the time you reach the enemy, so for long dives you have time it a little later. I kept wondering if we should just make all dives into dive attacks? But then again, I wanted combat to be clunky to force the player to focus on platforming and not combat. Hopefully we achieved an OK balance for the desired feel for this game.

Submitted

I really love the sprite animation.

Developer (1 edit)

Thanks! The character sprite and its animations are the creation of Saba Shahrukh, the artist on our team :-)

Submitted(+1)

The ladybug dude had a very good charm to him between the use of the sprite and the sound effects. I really wanted him to survive, but alas, I kept dying lol. I did manage to beat it and I don't think the difficulty was too punishing. The two things I would say I didn't like were the use of tab as the attack key (I kept having physical issues using it, idk if that's because it's not often used that way or if it's due to the fact that I have some recurring paralysis in my left hand) and the downward dive was so fast that I often couldn't control it, especially if I was trying to use the dive attack. I loved how the level design made the world feel pretty constricted but slowly opened up until it felt like you were exploring a vast, but tiny, world.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback!

Sorry, about the uncomfortable controls - I should probably just start putting options in my jam games to remap them. I always struggle with picking good defaults, but no matter what, in the end, different players have different preferences and physical abilities/limitations, that allowing them to be remapped is really the only right way to do it. :-(

Submitted

Hey, no worries. You gotta pick what to focus on in a game jam. I did like the game, if that didn't come through.

Submitted(+1)

"All was fun and aerial games...

But then, everything changed when the Spike Nation attacked!"

Solid gameplay, with polished fighter ladybug animations, a series of attack moves and checkpoints!

How did you figure out the checkpoints?

I imagine a state machine was used. Could I ask for a picture of the AnimationTree please? I love to see  them in this complexity :D

Developer (2 edits)

Thanks!

If you're really curious about the implementation details, the source code is all public on GitLab:

https://gitlab.com/snopek-games/portal-bug

Yes, there was a state machine for each of the actors: the player, as well as the plant and spider enemies. We didn't use an AnimationTree, just lots of animations on an AnimationPlayer, that were all triggered by the different states in the state machine.

The checkpoints are actually super simple! There's just a variable that gets set with the last checkpoint you crossed, and its position becomes the respawn point for the player. This works because the enemies in the stage respawn on a timer, so we don't need to save any sophisticated game state with the checkpoints.