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A jam submission

Chicken HikeView game page

Draw a single, continuous line to solve each puzzle.
Submitted by michim, manum — 20 hours, 36 minutes before the deadline
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Chicken Hike's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Design#164.5124.512
Overall#694.3254.325
Adherence to the Theme#2084.4154.415
Originality#3734.0494.049

Ranked from 41 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

(+2)

nice

Submitted(+1)

Cool twist on the drawing game formula, that impressively demonstrates that less is more. I really love how the "only one line"-limitation can turn an innocent looking level into something very complex, but still allows for more than one solution, thus player creativity. I would say the level order is a bit random, but that's totally understandable. I found it really difficult too to judge the difficulty of my own levels. Certainly would be easier to play with a touch interface than with a mouse though.


My game: https://njamster.itch.io/wonkey (playable in browser, not mobile friendly)

Submitted(+1)

really REALLY cool game with a simple mechanic fitting the theme really well. The level progression is also really excellent with some really smart solution. You did a lot with a very simple mechanic.

5 stars all the way.

Submitted(+1)

*suddenly a key above head*
Arise chicken, arise!

Submitted(+1)

A really nice design, and fits the theme perfectly. The aesthetic was also spot on, from the visuals (the ripped paper especially) to the sound of the pencil on paper. Very good. Like other comments, I found the hit box of the chicken and the slope of the line very difficult to judge. Perhaps the line could change colour when it becomes too sleep to traverse? I thought the puzzle design was excellent, with a mix of reflex and cognitive challenges. It was nice to see subtle differences to puzzles that required drastically different solutions; reminded me of how the puzzles in The Witness are put together. I felt there were definite difficulty spikes and troughs, so perhaps a reorder of some of the levels is required to smooth this out. All in all, a really fantastic entry, well done.

Developer

Thank you very much!

We initially had plans to make the line change color when it's too steep, but since we're working with unity phsyics we don't actually know what slopes the chicken can climb and which it can't. If we had more time, we would have tried though.

After coming up with this idea, we actually thought of the witness, but we went for it anyways. In the end, it was hard to judge the difficulty of the levels and the order is a bit random now, true.

(+1)

Oh, very nice. I played a few levels of this at the beginning of the rating period, thought, "yeah, sure, not bad" and then put it down. But I just came back and played the rest of the levels. There are only a couple tedious ones and some of them are really excellent. I appreciated that you have click to start/stop drawing as well as drag.

Thoughts for improvement (dunno if you're planning to work on it more):

  • It was hard to tell exactly how big the chicken was. The grid lines helped, but it was too many spaces to count on the fly. Some graph paper has slightly darker lines every four or five cells: something like that could help a lot, especially if the larger grid was the exact size of the chicken (and you placed the background carefully for each level, though maybe that would give too much of the solution away in some cases).
  • You have to be careful not to move the mouse while clicking or it's interpreted as a drag instead of a click. It would be a nice touch to pretend that it was a click if you drag less than, say, two line segments before releasing the mouse button. Not something you'd expect to see in a jam game, of course.
  • There were one or two levels that I would have liked to replay: a way to switch levels would have been nice. Even in a jam setting where you don't want to waste time on a level-select screen, sometimes you can let people switch with page-up/down keys or something. Or even just left-click to go on, right-click to replay?
  • I don't know how it would fit into the code or the gameplay, but it would be cool if it limited the slope of the line. I had to restart a lot because I twitched the mouse and made a bump that was too steep for the chicken. Which was fine on the shorter levels, but frustrating near the end of a long one.
  • There was one weird drop in the difficulty curve (after the first hard one, then there's a super easy one where you just draw a line up and over the block in the middle? It starts the segment where you build up to keys in three of the four corners). It was fine. It was actually nice to have an easy level after the previous one, but it was so easy that I kind of thought "why is this here?"

But yeah: awesome game, nicely polished, solid level design (and lots of levels for a jam game). Big thumbs up from me!

--Josh (part of teamwintergreen for the jam)

Developer

Wow, thanks for the comprehensive comment.

The "size hard to tell" complaint we've gotten quite a lot now, so if we were continue the game we would propably try to find a better hitbox (instead of just a single collider).
As for the drag-click issue, i think it's just the timer we used. If you click for more than 0.2 seconds it counts as a drag.

Slope limitation goes into a similar direction as marking the slope red when it can't be climbed, but completely preventing steep lines might feel even better. Then you wouldn't be able to draw vertical lines to make the chicken turn around, so i'm unsure about how well that would play out.

I've answered this in a nother comment as well, the order of the levels is a bit random. It's hard to judge difficulty when your'e the one making it :)

Thanks again for the feedback, it's appreciated!

Submitted(+2)

Excellent graphics, better design! Incredible game. 

I really enjoyed it!

(Check also ours: https://buendiagames.itch.io/the-only-man-and-the-sea)

Submitted(+2)

I loved it, perfect difficulty curve and teaching of mechanics. Fun challenges too! It's great how you have to think on your toes as the chicken is following your path.

Submitted(+2)

I love the look of this game. This game reminded me of Ivy the Kiwi? for the DS. The controls are easy enough to be played on pretty much any system which is a big plus. The music was also good, soothing yet with some beat to it.

Great job! I really enjoyed it. Something like this really inspires me to keep working on my game development. Thanks dude.

Developer(+1)

That's a big compliment, thanks!

Haven't played Ivy the Kiwi before, but looking at it there are definitely some similarities

(+2)

I enjoyed not only the quick restart feature, but the fact that I could "redraw" a line by looping around and drawing it again. This game would be killer on a tablet with touch pad controls. This feels like this could become a fully fledged (bird pun intended) game with the addition of more levels through additional/more complex puzzle elements: Multiple Chickens, Spinning wheels within the level, Chicken Activated events (button presses, switches), Pink Squares that still break your pencil but are very bouncy instead of open space.

Thank you for such a wonderful and sweet submissions. -Cheers

Developer

Thanks for the positive feedback! And also for the good ideas in case we continue this project

(+2)

Great level design, cute graphics, nice music and sfx! This one is really good. Great job!

Submitted(+2)

Some of the later levels really stumped me. Excellent work

Submitted(+2)

The best game in jam so far!!! 5 on everything.

(+2)

This is really good!

I particularly appreciate the extra level design mileage you squeezed out of something as seemingly-minor as having a little in-game drawn border that's separate from the actual window border.

I did find myself wishing (several times) that I could somehow resume drawing my one line after I'd stopped pressing the mouse button, though I suppose that could get tricky. It'd almost at least feel better if the pencil just "snapped" when you stopped using it, to make it utterly clear from the first use that you can't continue your line if you stop holding the mouse button down.

Anyway, great job! And kudos to the art/sound person as well! Art/music/sound is all very endearing. Well done!

Developer(+1)

Thank you!
Good point, we didn't think of making it more clear to the player if the line is finished.

(+2)

Easily the ONLY ONE this jam

Submitted(+4)

Absolutely the best game I've played so far.

Submitted(+2)

Really good game!

(+3)

Interesting levels. It's a simple but smart game. Congrats !

(+3)

Very fun and unique, good job :D