itch.io

I've added a note to the game page, thank you so much for letting me know!!!

I like the concept a lot, very interesting spin on an existing idea. The implementation works really well in my experience too, I didn't run into many bugs.

I did see the issue with the player rapidly teleporting back and forth between portals, one way to fix this might be to make it so that the player cannot reenter the portal they just exited for a short time (2-5 frames) so that they have time to move away from the portal before it re-teleports them, 

Otherwise, I might just try and add a few more elements to the game.

Very faithful feeling recreation, I especially like the sound effects, it makes the game feel really responsive. I'm mainly just going to echo Josh - I think the hitboxes are a  bit too unfair. Generally, you want the hitbox on on dangerous obstacles to be a little smaller than their onscreen representation, and for collectables/pickups (things the player wants to hit) to have slightly larger hitboxes than their onscreen representation. As is, I feel like you hit the diamonds well before you should.

I really really like the core mechanic! I'm always a fan of these sorts of games, with simple levels but a difficult means of movement, very creative. 

Feedback:

The player goes offscreen and then the game kind of softlocks - you can't get them back onscreen, but you also can't reset. Simple solutions would be adding walls around the level, resetting the player when they go offscreen, or adding a reset button. 

I think a good addition would be a way to visualize the force the player is hitting the player with? Like some kind of a arrow as a UI element? An alternative movement method might be having the player click and drag to define the direction/force of their movement, instead of just clicking relative to the character.

Really promising project! 

I really like the level design. I won't spoil it but I found the orb at the beginning of the game.

Places you could work on it more: 

- Play with the movement of the character a little more, I think their movement feels just a little too slow, especially the fall and jump. Generally with platformers I find a good idea is to have a high jump force and a high gravity. It feels very responsive/snappy that way - the player rises fast and falls fast.

- The camera, like you mention in your description. I think the main issue is with the smoothing on the camera. I think you probably want to turn the smoothTime down, by maybe half. That way the camera tracks the player more quickly. Another option is to only use smoothing on the X-axis. Just increasing the camera size is another solution.

Really good though! Could maybe use some kind of enemy flying around, or another type of platform to compliment the bouncy ones, just for variety 

I really liked this game! I think the way that the cannon turns and rotates serves as a very clear visual indication of the ball's trajectory, but still requires the player to try and guess at where exactly it would hit. I found it surprisingly challenging. The levels definitely ramp up in difficulty well, I didn't actually manage to beat the last two. The UI feedback on screen was also really nice.

I did find that in a few levels, it was a bit hard to make out the blocks the player was supposed to shoot from the background of the level. It definitely made it more challenging, but maybe not in a way that felt fair. I might have picked a material that stood out more for those objects.

Overall the game flows really well, I noticed that you organized your levels as different scenes, which is nice because it allowed you to easily reset the level or move the player on to the next level. The start screen with instructions is also a great touch. Definitely above and beyond what we covered in class :)

One more element of the design I will comment on - I like the idea of being able to  change the power of the cannon, but I did find the feature a little unnecessary  - since the player just wants to knock everything off of the platforms, there's not really a good reason to use anything but max power all the time. That feature definitely would have been a little more interesting if there was some trade-off to using max power - maybe there are certain objects in the scene the player will lose if they knock off, so using a high power risks accidentally toppling those, or something like that. 

Great job!