It probably depends what you mean by "light". Do you consider GDevelop not light enough because it's too complicated and difficult to use, or because it's an entire IDE, not just an engine/framework?
If it's the former, you're going to struggle, because that (and similar engines such as Ct.js, Construct 3, Clickteam Fusion 2.5 etc) are about as simple and user-friendly as you can possibly get (certainly without sacrificing a lot of versatility).
Otherwise, you are going to be restricted to extremely simple "engines" like Bitsy, Puzzlescript, Twine, etc - but I'd hesitate to even call those game creation tools, because (as you've probably discovered by now) they're so limiting in terms of the types of games that you can make with them, that it's almost more like re-skinning / modding an existing game than creating your own.
Pico-8 is obviously very popular, but again, it's both less user-friendly (requiring actual coding) and less versatile than engines like GDevelop / Construct - but the IDE is much lighter, if that's what you care about.
MuddyMole
Recent community posts
Yes. Having one side with blue buildings & red units, and the other side with red buildings & blue units, is pure madness! XD
The game really does have potential though - it seems well designed overall, the presentation is generally nice, and the computer opponent provides enough of a challenge. The music is decent too, although there are some very jarring moments when it abruptly changes / restarts.
This has heaps of potential, but quite a few issues as well.
- The pixel art is generally really nice, but it's being ruined by the mixture of different sprite/tile resolutions, which looks absolutely terrible. You need to make sure that every "pixel" is the same size.
- The unit/building colours are incredibly confusing. If your units are wearing red, your buildings should be flying a red flag too.
- Some other units look identical, regardless of which player they belong to. Make sure every unit sprite clearly features that player's colour, and use palette swaps if both players are using the same faction.
- You should make it clear which units have already moved this turn (by stopping their idle animation and/or "greying" them out).
- You should be able to click and drag to pan the map, instead of having to use the keyboard.
- Hovering over a enemy unit (especially enemy units) should highlight the spaces it can move to / attack.
- Try to avoid maps with standard victory conditions, where both sides are able to recruit units - these usually become tedious meatgrinders that drag on forever.
I'm sure there woud be interest in such a game - you just can't really expect people to get too excited until you have a bit more to show them.
Personally, I'm a huge fan of the original two X-Com games, and while I consider them almost perfect, I'd say there are two keys things that stand out for me:
1.) The combination of squad-level tactics with strategic gameplay (the geoscape-based portion of the game). If you want to see what X-Com would have been like without the strategic layer, you only have to look at Laser Squad (the game to which X-Com was originally intended to be a sequel) or any of the Rebelstar games - they're nowhere near as good, despite the tactical combat being relatively similar.
2.) The theme. X-Com had a really unique and interesting theme, with fantastic alien designs and excellent presentation. Fantasy is okay too, but avoid generic fantasy. Similarly, you need a unique and distinctive visual style - that's more important than the actual quality of the artwork / 3D models.
Beautiful pixel art, as always.
The controls are a bit too responsive (especially the swim button), meaning that it doesn't really feel like you're underwater, and it's hard to make precise movements.
On the other hand, there are far too many opportunities to replenish your air, so you can pretty much ignore the hazards, and you'll still be fine (perhaps air and health should be two separate resources?).
Obviously this was made for a game jam, but with more time spent adding content and polishing the gameplay, it could be a really fun little game.
I love the visual style, and I think the concept has a lot of potential. I'd love to see it fleshed out into a complete game - especially the asteroid towing/mining aspect of it (personally, I'd make that the main focus).
The control system is awful, though - you should definitely ditch the mouse aiming, and make it fully keyboard controlled. Also, get rid of the reverse thrust, but make the player's ship more responsive.
Look at the absolutely abysmal state of the movie industry today. Modern Hollywood movies are, almost without exception, complete garbage. There is still the occasional decent indie movie, but far fewer than in the past. Instead, we get an endless stream of MCU and other comic book trash, sequels, remakes, reboots and spin-offs - almost nothing original.
Unfortunately, this obsession with IP has spread to other forms of entertainment too, including television, board games, and of course videogames. There are video- and board-games based on movies, movies and tv shows based on games, and every other combination you can think of. It's not just that gameplay is too safe - the gameplay is barely even a consideration now - all that matters is the IP and the graphics. And I see no reason to believe this is going to change anytime soon.
The good news is that with video game development, the barrier to entry is set much lower (and getting lower all the time, as tools become both more powerful and easier to use). Unlike with movies and tv shows, it's entirely possible for a small team or even just one person, with little or no budget, to create a high quality game. Because of that, there is still a thriving indie scene, where developers are willing to experiment with novel concepts - and again, I see no reason to believe that is going to change.
A very promising start! Despite the graphical limitations, you manage to pack a lot of detail into every sprite and tile, while still keeping them clearly readable. The core game loop seems like it will be fun too, once there's a bit more variety (I'd like to see the various monsters differentiated in some other way than just strength). Have you considered inverting the colors for the above- and below-ground sections? (dark on light, like the background of this page, vs light on dark, like the game itself)
If you want to get a response, you will need to provide more information.
What exactly is the game concept?
What skills do you bring to the table? eg. Programming (which langauge / tools?), art, music, marketing...
...and by extension, what skills are you looking for in others?
Show us some of your previous work - whether that's games you've made, an art portfolio, or a kickstarter you've run.
Sell yourself! Convince us that this opportunity to work with you, is too good to refuse.
Designing a game is the easy part - and for most of us, the fun part (I guess that's partly why game jams are so popular).
If you aren't able to contribute some other valuable skills as well, you are essentially just asking someone else to make your game for you, and noone is going to do that unless they're being paid a fair amount.
Apparently, the same concept was later used to spot life rafts from coastguard search & rescue helicopters.
"In testing on the helicopter, the pigeons spotted targets on the first pass 90% of the time. The human crewmembers were capable of finding the target on the first pass only 38% of the time. In passes where both humans and the pigeons spotted the target, the pigeon spotted it first 84% of the time."
As you might guess from the username, I'm a huge fan of Mole Mania, which is still the definitive sokoban-like, and IMO the best puzzle game ever made, so this should be up my street. It has always amazed me how few other similar games try to build on the basic formula, despite there being thousands of direct sokoban clones, and your game is actually very similar to something I was making years ago, for my first foray into babylon.js.
So, in terms of feedback:
- the actual puzzles are good, and I like the new mechanisms (nothing I haven't seen before, but they're still interesting and well implemented).
- movement speed is way too slow.
- the camera is poor; it needs to be more zoomed out, to show the whole map, or at least to only follow the player character as far as the edges of the map (it's hard to explain, but if you take the bottom screenshot, the camera should be further to the right, to show more of the map and less empty space).
- it feels generally lifeless; there needs to be animation, personality, colour, and interesting theme, etc (cute, colourful, cartoony graphics would make it vastly more appealing IMO). This is a huge thing.
- if you haven't played Mole Mania, then do - it's an amazing game and will definitely give you some ideas!
Neat game, nice presentation, and very fun for such a simple concept. I'm terrible at it though! The speed does ramp up quite quickly (especially when sometimes a level doesn't contain the item you need), and I think there is a layering issue occasionally, where the ball goes behind some other objects, and not being able to see what's happening feels unfair. I'd also like to see the different themed sections be more diverse in terms of their impact on gameplay.
No game is "about topological sorting", because that, in itself, is not fun. Fetch quests in general (or chains of deals), are hated by most players. They're tedious, repetitive and arbitrary, with barely any connection to the central storyline (you'll notice the two games I mentioned earlier were both quite poorly received). If you google "fetch quest", the first thing that comes up is "Fetch quests are often considered the lowest form of RPG sidequest", and that's not wrong.
However, plenty of games make use of topological sorting, and if you already have some other kind of game that is fun, then these procedurally generated fetch quests are a great way to increase replayability or add extra content. It should absolutely not be the main concept though. Procedural generation is a defining characteristic of roguelikes too - but without monsters to fight, there would be no game there.
At the moment, there is no challenge. The only way a player could possibly lose the game, is if they get bored and quit. The easiest and most common way to add a challenge, would be to add combat. If you make it realtime, you have a procedurally generated Zelda-like. If you make it turn-based, you have a non-linear Roguelike (this would be the simplest). I'd play either of those. The other alternative is to add puzzles.
Ideally, though, try to avoid simple fetch quests to begin with, and make it so the items you find are tools that the player can actually use in some way, and not simply exchange for some other random item.
Your game actually reminds me quite a bit of two older games: "Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures" and "Yoda Stories" (built using the same engine). They're both mouse-driven, coffeebreak style, procedurally generated fetch-quests.
First of all, replace the weird mouse-based movement system with conventional keyboard controls. That will feel much nicer, and also allow for some other improvements.
Secondly, right now, gameplay consists of fetching items in order to either exchange them for other items, or to unlock portals. This quickly starts to feel repetitive. There needs to be some element of skill - typically, in top-down games, that means combat, with monsters that actually fight back! (if it were a side-view game, there would be platforming elements to provide additional challenge)
Zelda-likes and Metroidvania games are also full of more interesting types of gates/locks/keys/valves, which you could incorporate.
For example, the classic block-pushing puzzle. The player encounters some large immovable boulders blocking their path. The player needs to find a specific item, which gives them the ability to push heavy objects (including, but not limited to boulders - it's good to make items multi-use). They then need to use this ability to solve a Sokoban-like puzzle by pushing the boulders in a particular way.
The RPG "Golden Sun" has loads of magic skills which can be learned, and which not only help in combat, but can also be used to solve puzzles.
Another example, might be an enemy that is very resistant to the player's attacks. It could be either a single boss monster, or a particular type of monster that becomes very common in an area, but either way, they would effectively be forming a locked gate. If the player attempted to continue, they would be expected to die, so instead, they must first go find a particular weapon, which is more effective. Having said that, an extremely experienced player might be able to bypass that section of the game if they can defeat the monsters using pure skill (speedrunners love this). This is one of the areas where better player controls would be required.
In the game "Zeliard" (probably the best metroidvania there is), there are heaps of great examples. There are ice caverns, where the floor is slippery, making the tougher platforming sections almost impossible. It is expected that the player will seek out the special shoes which allow them to move normally on ice - but actually, a very skilled player can get through that section of the game without the shoes.
The other things I mentioned were valves. These are basically one-way shortcuts, and they make back-tracking much easier for players.
Neat idea. Reminds me in a way, of a 3D Sokoban/Mole Mania clone I was once working on. It might just be me, but with the timing-based puzzles, I find it's too hard to predict exactly what will happen, so I was relying on trial and error more than actual strategy, which is not so fun. And I don't love the presentation - very reminiscent of '90s shareware games. I definitely think there's potential here, though. I'm sure you could easily churn out a hundred levels (and a bunch more new kinds of block) - the 3D aspect feel really underutilized, so it would be nice to see some more puzzles playign with that (with ramps etc).
Oh, and the solution to "stuck in a loop" is very counterintuitive, relying on the purple block behaving in a way that you would never expect.
Really neat little game. The controls are spot on, which is always really important with someting like this - it doesn't feel too slow and floaty, but you can still pull off precise manoeuvres. The level design and difficulty curve could definitely be improved though - level 15 is slightly tricky, level 19 is hard, level 20 is impossible (which puts me off wanting to play more), and all the rest are a piece of cake!
Another new version! Seems like the difficulty is better now. The original version was generally too easy, unless you got unlucky in the first few moves (not such an issue now that it takes less gold to level up, early on).
I'm not actually convinced the second version could be beaten - it was still easy to slay the dragon, but having tried in cheat mode just to confirm it, I'm not sure it was possible to clear the entire map (maybe I was just missing a trick). With the latest version, it definitely is possible, and with a heart scroll to spare.
I'm not sure Romeo and Juliet add much to the game. I guess the idea was to provide an extra source of hearts late in the game, without making them too abundant early on, but because they're such high level monsters (9), you're almost just spending a heart to gain a heart.
There's not enough to it, as it is, but it's definitely a promising start, and could form the basis of a good mobile game IMO. I think it would be more fun if you forced the player to negotiate various obstacles, or a tunnel that winds up and down, rather than simply having the walls slowly closing in. Add some gradually-accelerating forced scrolling, so they still have to keep moving.
Not sure about the walls - I think a proper statistical analysis would be quite complicated.
On average, the Gold:Heart ratio of walls is almost identical to that of normal monsters, so I don't think there's too much wrong with just treating them as such, and destroying them anytime it helps you open up an area of the map that you want to explore. You just have to avoid situations where you're on 3 hearts and relying on a wall to give you the last 3 gold you need so that you can level up.
You could track which specific walls you've already destroyed, and figure out the probabilities for what's left, but that's too much work for me, and not necessary.
I suppose the ideal time to use them would be when you have 1-2 hearts left, and need 3 gold to level up. Spending those hearts on killing monsters doesn't really help you, but there's a chance that a wall will break in 1-2 hits and give you the 3 gold you need, to save you wasting a healing scroll.
I tend to mostly use them when I'm about to heal or level up (and already have enough gold), but have an awkward number of hearts left, that I don't want to waste - particulaly very early in the game (when there might not be many rats about), and very late in the game, as you're mopping up the final few monsters, and burning through those healing scrolls.
It's always possible to completely clear the map, and in fact, there's quite a lot of leeway here - it's possible to have cleared every square apart from the dragon, and still have a healing scroll, plus up to about 10 spare gold.
It's almost always possible to get 303, but very occassionally, you will clear the map and still only get 302, which I believe is due to a glitch in the level generation system.
If you run out of moves late in the game, it's because you played "inefficiently" earlier on. Using a healing scroll while you still have hearts remaining, is the most obvious source of inefficiency, but not the only one.
As you have already realized, the higher your level, the more hearts you gain from using a healing scroll, so using hearts while you're still at a low level is inefficient. In general, you will spend 1 heart to gain 1 gold, but there are ways to improve on that ratio, or even gain free gold:
1.) Walls - there are seven walls, and the ratio of gold received : hearts used to destroy, varies as follows: 1:1, 1:2, 1:3, 3:4, 3:1, 3:2, 3:3 (so the average is actually very slightly worse than the 1:1 ratio of normal monsters). Ideally, you would destroy the two walls with a ratio better than 1:1 as early as possible, and leave the others until later.
2.) Chests - two of the chests contain 5 gold each, and they don't cost health to open, so the sooner you find them, the better.
3.) Mines - there are 9 mines, worth 2 gold each, and they don't cost hearts to destroy, so the sooner you destroy and reveal them, the better. Make sure you already know where the you-know-what is, by the time you have enough hearts to kill them.
4.) Gnome - gives you 10 gold, but only after all empty spaces have been revealed, so ideally you would mark as many spaces containing monsters as possible, without killing the monsters until after you've caught the gnome (also don't destroy walls until after you've caught the gnome).
In general, the main key to winning is to expand the revealed area as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible - it's usually better to kill low-level monsters than high-level monsters (cheap), and better to reveal a space you know contains a low-level monster (even if you're not sure exactly what it is) rather than killing a low-level monster that was already revealed (quick).
Very fun little game. I can beat it pretty consistently now, and my only real criticism is that the difficulty curve is backwards - the early game is by far the most challenging part, as you have less information to go on, most monsters will kill you, and you only have one healing scroll (and 1 level up). Once you get through the first few moves, the game becomes pretty easy, and by the time you have 11 hearts, it's a simple case of mopping up whatever's left, with basically zero risk of dying.
btw: I kept noticing a funny sound effect, played seemingly at random, and couldn't work out what it was, so eventually I just looked through the source code, and now I know! ;) I wonder how many people have figured it out, or even noticed - probably not many...
The thing with Picross is that you gradually uncover the picture, and you can start guessing what it is before you finish - you could even make educated guesses about which squares should be filled, based on what looks right. In your game, the end result - the village scene - is completely removed from the process. At best, it's kind of a reward for finishing a puzzle, but nothing more. I just don't see the point.
You said you've exported a web version, so yes, it most likely should be possible, though it might take a while. You should just need to add a script and some meta tags to the HTML, and add a few other small files (a manifest, a service worker and some icons), and then you must host the file on a secure website (ie. https, not just http - getting that set up is actually the hardest part).
When I was doing it (not starting with a GDevelop app), the most helpful tutorials I found were these:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Installable_PW...
https://medium.com/james-johnson/a-simple-progressive-web-app-tutorial-f9708e5f2...
https://web.dev/offline-cookbook/
Anyway, I'm not saying it's definitely the way to go, but it might be worth looking into.
Have you considered making it a progressive web application (PWA)?
I've found that to be pretty straight forward (I don't know anything about GDevelop though).
It allows a game to run in the browser OR be installed (on both desktop and mobile) so that it runs in its own window, feels like a native application, and functions offline. You can also publish them on the Google Play store, and in fact a lot of well known apps are actually PWAs - Tinder, Instagram, Spotify, Uber...