I've seen that wip you posted in show-your-stuff on discord. It' looking juicy with bigger enemies and I'm sure it plays better ;) Just watch out not to lose that color saturation. Semi-transparency combined with white wireframes could dim overall color appearance and make enemies harder to differentiate in the midst of action.
Yeah, I think someone on discord mentioned Spirit Island during the jam when I was describing this concept. I didn't play it but there's a digital version too so I watched a couple of gameplay videos. There are certainly some parallels there, although Spirit Island looks like a much bigger and more complex game. I'll check it out when I find time.
There's bit of a learning curve involved. You need to be familiar with the rules to beat it. Check out the rules info on the game page. And be sure to start with easy mode :)
The game looks great and the music is excellent. Too bad there are no other sound effect.
However it's extremely difficult due to unrefined movement on platforms and ladders. With a little bit attention given to that it could really be enjoyable. There is too much inertia when moving on platforms. It feels like sliding on ice. Getting on and off the ladders is wonky. It was my number one reason for dying.
Please fix platforming dynamic. It shouldn't be much work and can make a world of difference in respect to gameplay.
It's actually quite a good twist on the guided robot concept.
Although its gui is somewhat quirky and there are only two simple levels to play I think there's a lot of potential to turn it into a fun game if some additional time is put into it.
Game has an entertaining premise and smooth platforming mechanics. Graphics is nice too.
I encountered some bugs here and there (on top of the titular not so good teleporter :)) but nothing game breaking. Exposition sequences should be skippable, however interesting they may be, as that would greatly increase replayability.
Great core concept that should be explored further.
Execution is solid but in its current state the game leaves a lot to be desired. Could be better balanced and I'd really like to see enemies approaching from the distance instead of just suddenly popping at the pillars, so I could plan my moves in advance.
When I play it, it's triggering my imagination to think about all sorts of additional abilities and upgrades that could be added.
I really liked the premise. Very good implementation of the theme. The game is super hard. It reminds me of retro platformers that you just couldn't stop playing despite the fact they were brutally punishing.
Some improvements could be made in movement (less slide for example) and collision detection. There are situation where player sprite can't move over 1 pixel difference in tile height.
All in all, hard but fun. With a bit more polish and attention to level design it could grow into an excellent game.
Thanks yariplus. I really appreciate this kind of feedback.
Yeah, cards should definitely behave like an actual deck. I had it in mind from the start. Current "blind" rng is just a proxy for that. Too bad there wasn't enough time to implement and test it. I don't have much experience with deck building games so I didn't want to improvise. Any suggestions regarding card mechanics are welcome.
I also thought about some sort of bonuses/modifiers. Most obvious one being an extra card draw per X cities obliterated in a turn. This would give player more power to recover from crowded situations and probably eliminate the current (nasty) point of no return at about 35%. It may make game more engaging as it feels good to turn around nigh impossible situations. I'll actually test this asap.
Deck modifiers you mentioned also sound good. I'll think about it and test some of the possibilities.
I had an idea similar to yours that disasters could cause bonus damage depending on where you place them, but couldn't really think of ways to do it for every type of disaster without introducing more terrain diversity. This was too much for the jam version as it adds a layer of complexity that'd probably be hard to balance without extensive testing. However if draws are coming from a configured deck then there is no need for symmetry of power between various types of disasters. If, for example, flood is the only type that gets a terrain bonus, its power can be balanced out by having fewer of them in a deck. This all sounds good and is surely worth exploring.
I kept the order of disaster placement rigid because it forces you to think and combine in advance. Which is accordant with the jam theme. But also simplifies interaction.
Mid-turn city shrinkage ended up a plausible gameplay element which, again, forces you to account for it in advance. On the other hand, the rules regarding this could be made strict so that city radius doesn't shrink in-between disasters. Could work both ways.
Similar to this, there's one other thing whose importance may not be obvious - oscillating disaster radius. This is the only "real-time" element in the game. Which may be weird but I think it works. Some modifiers could perhaps be introduced here too, e.g. bigger radius amplitude at the cost of faster speed...
There's much more to this little gem than meets the eye. At first I thought it was a rhythm game. It's however a proper defender style shoot-em-up. Me likey! Musical part is there to get mega bonuses if you choose to do so.
After playing a bit through differently choreographed waves, you realize that you're presented with interesting strategic choices at the start of each wave. Spend precious time to methodically hunt for bonuses, risking the timeout, or just aggressively blast clusters of enemies and hope luckily timed hits will pump your multipliers. Go where the masses are for quick elimination or do it orderly from left to right so you don't waste time at the end of level chasing stray enemies across the whole map. Shooting for multipliers on kicks or on hi-hats... or both... or none... :)
There are only two things that would make this 100% for me. Fire rate should be faster, possibly automatic, and 25% bigger balloons for a greater pleasure of popping them.
Execution is flawless. Game runs smooth as butter. And your craft looks like a Flying V. Two thumbs up!
Rage inducing in a good way :) Best I could do is 7 dots.
In all levels after 1 the game should announce success if only 1 dot is left, as it will be hit sooner or later. Including a time slider would be nice, so you can speed up the simulation while waiting for eventual lucky hits after you realize you completely failed at predicting an actual path. There's a glitch that happens sometimes - the arrow slides along the edge for a few moments instead of bouncing right back.
Took some time to grok what's happening. It's a rough prototype but I feel there's a great idea in there.
The main problem is that movement is not intuitive. It's hard to predict where things will end at the next turn because they slide along the squares of different size. On top of that they shift to the other side when pushed out of screen.
I think you should try to make another prototype with the same premise but ditch the tiled/tetris representation and use actual orbits and full 360 degrees view from planets when scanning for constellations (instead of only 4 direction). Something like that could be worth exploring and it's not that hard to implement.
The future of Mouseland is saved! :) I managed to get all 50 pieces of cheese and reach the end of level on the third try. Game is simple but nice.
Some slight improvements could be made in controls and collision detection. Movement should be a bit more agile with less inertia. As of now it's really hard to stop on time before falling or bumping into a cat. Squeezing through one tile passages is hard. It seems there's only a pixel of leeway there.
No, not illegal. But it may be against the jam rules, depending on the jam. And I'd consider it contrary to the overall spirit of jamming. The only actually illegal thing you can do in a jam is to use copyrighted assets or code without attribution and permission of their owners.
That's a good strategy I like to clean them continent by continent too. There should be no difference as they can move instantly over the sea. but somehow I feel stronger using that approach :)
Thanks. I made all sound effect with bfxr. It was suggested in discord chat, cant remember who mentioned it - but thanks. It's a neat tool, perfect for this kind of thing. Saved me a ton of time I'd have otherwise wasted looking for sounds online.
Thanks! Game visuals are almost all vector graphics. Everything is drawn at runtime using turtle style drawing commands. Since flash was also vector based there may be some mystical kind of semblance :) But my main visual inspiration goes into history way way beyond flash. Color palette is a nod to ZX Spectrum, specifically monochrome games like Knight Lore. They were pixelated but I kind of wanted that same retro punch of single saturated basic color against the black background.
