itch.io

Well done! I appreciate I get somewhat... mean towards the end of the game.

Yeah, it was very much a one-weekend development project, so I probably didn't exploit all the mechanics as much as I could have, and certainly didn't balance the progression properly!

Yeah, Danger Course basically came out of me want to try to throw together something quick as I was getting frustrated with how long it was taking me to finish a different project. It didn't end up panning out that way (it ended up taking about four times as long as I was expecting), but I basically did the initial game design working around assets I already had - so the running sprites from this (though the new June sprite aside, Alys is actually 1 pixel shorter in DC, not that you'd notice on the PD), the mines are from Sight Blight, the fire is from... well, something I've not actually released yet, but it was something I already had lying around.

All extremely fair comments - thanks Dom!

Thanks! Appreciate you taking the time to comment.

Sorry about the difficulty towards the end - I actually made the collisions slightly friendlier right before releasing it. You do not want to try the version I playtested most of this on...

Thanks!

Still tweaking things on my end, so will probably be an update of some sort out for it by the time the gamejam scoring period is up at the end of the month.

Thanks for the feedback!

I'll have a think about the sound thing - my one concern with that would be exactly how annoying that could very quickly get. Suppose I could always put in a volume toggle for that though.

Yeah, I literally ran out of time to put in the tutorial on Sunday evening (I did take all the screenshots I needed for it, I should probably patch that in whilst I'm still thinking about it).

Thanks!

Thanks!

Thanks!

The whole save slot thing was a bit of a freebie that came along with me reusing some menu code to be honest, but I feel like for a device like the Playdate where I can't imagine many people (well, outside of people developing stuff who might want to check RevA/RevB performance) having access to multiple devices, then it's worth doing for this kind of level-based game with progress tracking.

Thanks! Really appreciate the kind words.

It works in the simulator.

I think the actual issue is that the pdxinfo file is missing a bundle ID - I edited in one myself and redid the sideload and the game boots and runs on device just fine now.

(Fun game - my best score so far is 150)

Really terrific looking 3D effect, and the game runs so smoothly with it as well! I think it would overload my brain trying to get something like this working in a month, let alone a weekend!

Took me a while to figure out that moving the cursor too fast was making me dizzy - that'll teach me for not reading the instructions first! Though honestly, I kind of appreciate games disincentivizing cranking like a maniac, so I'm all for it.

Really cute game!

Really neat idea, and the use of the Playdate control-wise is really smartly done. Looking forward to spending more time with it once Saving is implemented.

I'm really impressed with how much you managed to squeeze out of Pulp in a weekend with how much variation there is in the minigames.

Not sure how the randomization works, or if I was just unlucky, but I did seem to get the "jump over the block" game way more frequently than anything else though!

Really incredible feeling controls, and I love the little intro with the circle expanding when spin the crank - extremely fun touch.

If I could ask for one thing... maybe a little health gauge for the moon appearing in the corner of the screen if the moon scrolls off the screen - there's a couple of times I got a little too zealous about chasing an asteroid and flew off into the boonies and had to make a decision as to whether or not it was worth trying to save a run or not.

Terrific fun - extremely addictive and fun use of predictable physic. Spent a good deal of time on this even though I'm.... kinda terrible at it.

Great work!

I had fun with this - good movement and the collisions work really well for something with such an oddly shaped environment put together in a weekend.

I did have similar issues to sub-rosa when it came to running the game, though. The crank being docked/undocked at boot didn't seem to make much difference - the odd thing is that the same did seem to be running, but the display was not getting updated. I say this because if I hit the home key to quit out then the game would suddenly refresh the display (so I could fire an explosion, wait a couple of seconds, hit the Home button, and the player character had moved).

Not sure if that is useful information or not. Honestly not sure what would cause it to randomly get into that state or otherwise just run perfectly normally - I'd go off and play a couple of the other Jam games, come back to it, and suddenly it was behaving itself normally.

Thanks!

Thanks!

Thanks for the feedback!

Yeah, kind of figured the jumping controls would be something that wouldn't appeal to a lot of folks. Extremely useful to have that kind of extremely specific behaviour if you are, say, trying to design levels for a platformer you are trying to make in a weekend though!

Appreciate the feedback!

Absolutely agree that the post-level menu probably needs a rethink at this point - I've been using versions of the same menu since Queen of (Mine)Carts, where it made a bit more sense since the game had separate clear and full-clear states that made replaying a stage something you'd actually do. Not really so relevant here though (well, aside from when a poor developer is repeatedly replaying a stage to check for issues...) - I'll have a think about it and adjust before putting out any final version.

The hitting your head thing... was actually entirely deliberate (as in, I had to write in an explicit exception in the code to force that to happen) - it's pretty standard behaviour in the particular genre of ZX Spectrum platformer I'm mimicking here, as entirely an acquired taste as that is. That said, I'm open to revisiting that later assuming I don't end up designing any stages that rely on that specifically being part of the control behaviour - it caused me plenty of headaches as well to be honest, as I had to keep readjusting stage layouts to accommodate needing the extra headroom.

Thanks!

Thanks! (And also sorry lol)

I do kind of wonder how much effort it's worth putting into launch animations these days since I just assume most people probably use List view these days.

Nah, I came to the conclusion on replaying it that at least a couple of those timers ended up being a little too harsh if you don't already have some idea of what the solution is. I'm relaxing a couple of them at least once I get the chance to upload an update.

Thanks for the kind words - appreciate it!

Oh huh, you're right.

I'll fix it when I get a minute (probably at the weekend), looks like a pretty straightforward correction.

I honestly agree with most of these point. I kind of figured the processing order of the maths would end up particularly being a headache for anyone with any degree of programming experience. Those laser grid levels are gone as soon as I can upload an update as well (replaced them with something considerably less annoying!).

I'd noticed it due to some traffic from Libsyn yesterday - it caused me no end of confusion for a while as I couldn't remember seeing that listed when I listened to the most recent podcast episode last week!

Oh, duh, forgot that uploads get locked for Jam submissions until the voting period is over. Guess the update will be out on 1st March then.

Mostly I'm modifying a few of the level layouts (either shortening things which went on a little too far past being interesting, or just some minor visual tweaks to aid readability), and I'm replacing what will probably be around 8 levels entirely that were either too similar to other stages or more frustrating than I feel good about subjecting others to with ones featuring mechanics I ran out of time during the Jam to implement.

The build that's up at the moment is still the Jam build. Planning on putting out an updated version as soon as I've got time to properly do a test run of it, probably next weekend at the latest. That version will probably be more or less complete, though.

Thanks for the detailed feedback - really appreciate it!

I think I'd probably be the first to admit that I'm probably a terrible judge of what is fun versus tedious in this kind of game - I'm coming to the realisation that maybe level design is not my strongsuit and that I should probably be more aggressively getting friends to playtest some of this stuff before release.

Just commenting on my own page in regards to asset reuse -

I'm recycling a bunch of existing code (most the menus are modified from Prop of the Class, and I'm reusing the most recent update of my cutscene code that I recycle in everything. The character art in the tutorial is almost entirely from the Prop opening.

There's some graphics in the opening and the ending cutscene that are recycled from either Prop or Dangercourse - slightly under half I think. I reuse three bits of music from Prop and Dangercourse in the cutscenes as well. I reuse the explosion sprite from Escapepion, but I put that in everything because I think it's funny. I also reuse a spike image from Prop, though the rest of the gameplay art is all new.

Think that's about it.

Thanks - appreciate you taking the time to drop some feedback.

There are certainly a couple of levels I'd have probably swapped out for being a little too mean if I'd spent more than a week on it, though at a certain point I guess I spent enough time replaying things that I maybe got a little too good at manipulating the controls - "If I can complete it then it's probably fine" isn't always the best mindset to have when putting together stage designs!

Yeah, it's probably going to be a struggle on the simulator without using an actual PD as the controller.

That said, you can pair a game controller (such as an xBox controller) to the simulator and use the right analogue stick as the carnk. Probably not going to get you past some of the later stages that require pretty precise control without a lot more practice than on a Playdate, but I found it relatively workable when I tried it (turning down the sensitivity in the Config menu helps a little there as well)

Thanks!

Yeah, those last few levels are pretty mean.

For anyone looking back later, this is now fixed, and the oversight was even dumber than I thought it was.