I'm not very good at platformers but I tried my best to complete this game anyway! After about an hour and a half I was at level 45 and got punted down to 15 and gave up lol. I didn't know right away that it wrapped around either, but it's a very interesting puzzle to figure out how to avoid enemies or gaps that way. The main thing I would consider is having just a bit of i-frames after stuns, because by the time there were 3 or 4 enemies on screen it was common to be stunlocked several times. There were a few bugs, mostly around corners. Some you could jump through and others let you on the upper platform but still stunned you, and a couple of times I'd land on an enemy and phase through the floor while stunned, but overall the jumping feels pretty consistent and appropriate for the platforms. Great job!
This is super fun, and all the humor is fantastic! As I was playing this with my team, we absolutely wanted the later "there's a rumor going around that you can't do x" to have a "prove them wrong!" option that fails horribly, but it still had us rolling regardless. There's one textbox we hit so far that had an overflow, but because it was a humorously overcomplicated description, whether it was an accident or on purpose is a total tossup, but if you left it like that and said it was on purpose regardless, no one would question it lol
I love the creativity of implementing a game from literature! For the most part, this game works quite well. I'm only able to switch fish using arrow keys, but I can still move them with WASD. There was a glitch at some point or another where the highlighting was gone. I wasn't quite sure if the blurred was an intentional effect or a mishap in the scaling, but I peeked at the source and it was absolutely intentional so I must commend you. Great job!
This is amazing, I love the interpretation of the John theme, and this game is super replayable. It would be cool if the mechanics deviated a bit more from MTG or Hearthstone but the cards themselves are pretty fun. Despite how very clear you were in the game page rules it took me a hot minute to realize you could only attack the space opposite to the John lol. It also wasn't immediately clear that drawing took an action, but that just took me by surprise the first couple times. Other than that, just a small tweak I'd suggest is auto ending turns when the action points are exhausted, and slowing down the opponent's actions a hair.
As far as supporting other resolutions, consider using the RenderTarget2D, you basically set that to your ideal resolution, draw on it, and then draw the render target to the actual screen buffer, scaled to the backbuffer dimensions. The next thing you'll run into is maintaining the aspect ratio, but that'll get you halfway there. If you want some more explanation on this let me know!
Don't doubt your humor, my team and I were laughing all the way to the final unlock. We saw the John Cena joke coming a mile away but didn't love it any less for it. This works very well for a first language first framework game. If you were to expand on this, a couple suggestions:
With the John unlocks, this definitely has an idle game vibe, but it lacks the exponential feel of the JPM, that may just be a matter of some small tweaks to the numbers.
There's not much reason to choose different types of food other than a bit of variety, but it would be really fun if hunger satiation or JPM boosts were based on selecting the right kind of food for that John.
If this is an idle game meant to be enjoyed on the side, consider a slower burn on those stats and a slower JPM overall. If it's something you want people to primarily play, you may consider a mechanic that's kind of a time-killer while the Johns sleep or use the John. Watching them or clicking one of three options lacks the long-term engagement if you decide to add more Johns to unlock.
I don't quite see the john theme, but I'm super impressed this was made so so quickly. It would be a bit more replayable with some higher stakes and maybe a rounds system or something.
The graphics are very on brand for a 90's arcade! I'm curious about the sprite scaling though, did you enlarge them in game? If so, consider using SpriteBatch's point-clamping to keep them looking crisp. I can't quite tell if the punching has random windup timing or if there's a tie to input, but it's interesting playing around with the movement to try and dodge and weave. Good work!
I love the humor in this, it's very grounded in reality. Some of the funnier conversations where you can be a bit goofy remind me of some quirky friendships of my own. I think maybe some light music would help this along, and take down the sound of the dial tones. It's also a little tricky to read from the list of numbers and might be easy to accidentally redial or skip a number, so maybe like a bookmark or other kind of cursor? I absolutely love the concept!
Thank you! We definitely had a lot more ideas but had to temper our expectations to have something on time. There's a run key that's still in there, but it's way too fast, skipping collisions with enemies and their sight. We're super excited to keep improving on this!
