You may have been one of the ones afflicted with a known issue where some features do not function in the browser, these include the main traversal features such as the grappling hook which is the only way to return to the ship platform. It was a major struggle to get it to work at all in webGL lol. I HIGHLY recommend downloading and playing to get the full experience. I think i should not have uploaded a web build at all to be honest.
Viewing post in Last Launch Protocol - A World Without Time jam comments
Well I did play in the browser but ended up downloading it which was a better experience but I didn’t grapple once, didn’t figure out I could grapple even then lol. I will try again tomorrow because that sounds like a lot of fun!
I had a web build for mine but ended up scrapping it because i couldn’t get it running as I wanted players to experience and was running out of time. I figured better to have fewer players play the “correct” version than more people play a misrepresentation of what I made.
Alright! I've revisited the game and with the grapple working it is much better. Now I would retract my previous criticism and replace it with having more in-game guides. When trying to figure out that I could only have 1 repair module at once, and then figuring out where to put the repair module I was confused and lost because of that which isn't fun. I would suggest turning off the particle effect on the main control panel below the timer during the repair module part because it makes it seem like the player is supposed to go there.
Finally, after seeing the input mapper, I think the input could be refined. Many of the controls aren't intuitive and there are lots of buttons for dropping, dropping while hanging ,etc. Sometimes I would also try to jump a gap that seemed like I should be able to make it, and then fall 5 stories to the bottom of the map.
Thanks for the healthy criticism :). For my entry I knew that it was going to be complicated and wanted to focus as much time on the actual mechanics of the game, so instead of an in-game tutorial I opted to create a highly detailed front page with all of the necessary instructions to complete a run in the game. I understand that many people prefer not to read and would prefer in game tutorials but in the spirit of the game jam I put the time that I would have taken to make a tutorial and put it into gameplay. I would like to go back in sometime and refine the level traversal to fix issues like you described where certain gaps arent able to be jumped ect. That also came down to time haha, I spent less time on level design than I could have, and I did not have the time to go through and properly tag and space out obstacles as well as more refinement of the character obstacle/gap detection. I ended up having a power outage that corrupted my project and I struggled to make it playable on time after that.
But all in all the jam has been a great experience. This is my first jam, first game, I learned a TON! And I am very impressed with myself for properly being able to set the scale of my project and complete it even after all of the issues that I had lol.. It really felt like being an actual game dev during crunch time and it will be an experience that I will be glad to remember!
Yeah and I don't fault you at all for that. Very few of these games have in game tutorials and this is something I'm saying now without having done one myself for my game (and now I wish I had, it's one of my game's weaknesses LOL) so lesson learned all around.
Once you get how your game works it totally does work and it's a fully fleshed out game with very few bugs so it's honestly awesome, ESPECIALLY for your first jam!