Post by Dex Loves Games in Aztec jam comments

LOWREZJAM 2022 » Entries » Aztec

Viewing post in Aztec jam comments

Let me get this out of the way, cuz I'm sure you already know this: this art is fantastic. absolutely did a great job with the space, and I'm surprised a game with solid black background can have this much visual depth. This was a very pleasant game to look at.

The mirrors are both helpful and frustrating. They serve the role of a checkpoint, but if you don't wait for them to stop being inactive to actually use them again you die and return to the beginning. However I see now that this game was going for this bit of risk and reward with this and I think overall you did a good job. However, it took me a long time to ever encounter the mirror running out of revival time, so mayb that needs to be lessened a bit and make them instantly activate again when you revive as well as whenever you feel like click on one.

The platforming was entertaining as i really like platformers, however the game doesn't allow you to change your trajectory mid-jump. that would be fine, except that the game also requires lots of precision jumps. It feels like you were a bit inspired by jump king with this one. This is up to a developer to choose and for a player to decide if they like of course, and I respect that you did it the way that you wanted to with it. That's cool. Don't stop doing that. I also feel like something might be up with the hitboxes. The character feels substantially wider and their feet seems to clip on things. If the character is an unskilled person, that makes a lot of sense, but if they are agile and skilled (not sure if this is what you were trying to communicate) then their feet wouldn't clip, they'd make the jump. Because of the platforming feeling a bit "clunky" (again not a bad thing if that's what you're going for, and I have no room to act like mine doesn't also feel somewhat clunky) some of the sections I was feeling less like "oh i can't wait to beat this part!" and more like "when will i beat this part?" I hope that distinction makes sense. Again this is very much the kind of feeling some games want to generate. I'm not privy to you r design doc. EDIT: I would like to agree with the other commenters that when I did land the difficult jumps successfully, multiple times in a row, it was very satisfying.

To me, it feels like this game is begging to be turned into a game divided into numbered levels with a door you have to reach (maybe find and reach) but that aren't too long, where the challenge comes from different things depending on the level. Kind of like portal 2 i guess, which sometimes asks you to solve a hard puzzle and other times asks you to use the gun quickly and accurately. If that makes sense.

regardless this game does a fantastic job with it's art and music, the animations are great. and the platforming sections themselves are interesting and pose new challenges, especially with the difficulties provided by the "clunkiness" of the jumping i discussed above. I hope to see you develop this project further as I'd like to see what direction you choose to take with it, whether that be making it a "smoother" platformer with "tighter" controls, or if you lean heavy into the risk-reward gameplay, as both direction still offer lots of freedom to make it your own. Please update me (here or in our discord) if and when you update the game :) Hope some of this feedback was helpful.

(I did beat the game btw. good stuff! Great job on finishing it!)

Like Reply

SlainteES1 year ago

Wow, that was a lenghty one :) Thank for playing the game and taking the time for such a big feedback post. In order:

Thanx for the comments on the art, this part ate a lot of my time for this entry
Mirrors: Agreed after all the comments… they are in the “to be fixed” list, and yes, you can finish the game on a single mirror time slot, so in order to make things challenging that needs to go dow, but with the actual number of mirrors it’s non-relevant.
Collisions: hitbox is 8px wide… probably should be trimmed to 6 to match more the actual “build” of the sprite… gave it some testing at the beginning of the development but some issues detecting collisions on ladders and having you “falling through” put that in the waiting list and honestly I never came back to it
Jump style: I wanted something that was closer to real jump physics and not to Mario the jumping wonder… this alings better with the dangerous exploration requiring you to stop and think how to go through a particular tight spot (or at least that was my hope)
Map/level design: The ideal end-goal is having a considerably bigger map with much more puzzling and backtracking… lever A frees object at X, or activates ladder at Y that you need to go back to pick key for door N the you need to locate and so on… Time and pico8 base constrains did not allow for this. Doors potentially are another good mechanic and can separate/extend the map greatly (going multicart)
The future: I need a big code clean-up and refactor… first solid platformer ever and a lot of rushed decisions due to jam time window limitations ruined a lot of things. With the platforming states solved, the ladders fixed and some of the fine tunning needed in other aspects I want to move to native pico resolution (128x128 and the game art really works great at the resolution but requires a tad bigger map for sure) I want to make it into a big / long game… including intro/outro animated seqquences and all.

Again, thnx for playing and the great feedback

Like Reply

Dex Loves Games1 year ago

Mirrors: "you can finish the game on a single mirror time slot," Now this gave me the idea I shared in the Discord. I think you could make it so that there is a checkpoint at the skull bench and when you arrive, it's a checkpoint and then every time you drop off a skull it's a checkpoint. Then you could drastically reduce the time that the Mirrors will save you at death, and if the tie runs out before the player dies (hopefully it typically runs out on their way back through the challenge a second time to return to the mirror) then they'll die and lose any gems and such that they had acquired since the last skull was placed. You could expand this idea to a full game as well, but I'd have to see how the game is formatted to be able to give additional help for that.

Collisions: "[...] probably should be trimmed [...] some issues detecting collisions on ladders" I think you should do a hidden player mask that is larger for the ladders as there was multiple times that I was unable to go up or go down them when I expected to grab them easily. Though I think it was you who was saying in the jam discord that the trouble with ladders is that everyone expects them to "just work" but everyone expects them to work differently. I am definitely in agreement with that sentiment, even if it wasn't you that said that. Then you could make the player hitbox smaller without issue.

Jump style: "I wanted something that was closer to real jump physics" I figured this was the case, and I respect your decision to do it this way. that's absolutely a core part of the experience and if it was different, the jumps would've been designed differently. I'm partial to games like Hollow knight where i have a lot of control over the jumps, so that's part of what's going on here. It is a bit weird that my game is the opposite. you can move left and right while jumping with exact same speed and control as when you're on the ground BUT your jump height is fixed. isn't that funny?

Map/level design: Loving this part of your response. "pico8 base constrains did not allow for this." It's interesting that in the next section you say you're going to stay within pico 8 after reading this. "going multicart" Do you mean like multiple different Pico 8 game carts?

The future: absolutely ambitious and I love it. Don't be afraid to put it down for later to go and work on other stuff. Coming back to an idea is always an option :)

Like Reply

SlainteES1 year ago(+1)

Interesting ideas about the mirrors… will need to digest thigs a bit but adding those to the design bench, thnx!

Collisions need fine tuning, once they are fixed and I kind of make heas or tails on the ladders we’ll see :P

Curious how everyone makes their own ideas on how jumping should work, all them valid, all them different. I was aiming for this kind of jump and works for my expectations ;)

Multicarting allows you to separate things in up to 16 carts in different ways… transferring control from one to the other, using the secondary carts just as data stores… Actually the game is using 2 carts already as I pushed some compressed data initialization in a companion cart. So yes, for now it will be PICO-8… for now… If this goes too far out of what’s possible I might switch to maybe love2D as that’s a supossedly easy port from pico.

And for the future, I want to really nail this one :) I will move back to complete a few stray bits around XOR (completing the music and the level editor) and probably get back to this.

Like Reply

itch.io

Viewing post in Aztec jam comments