We wanted to make something that our young kids could play, so the game is deliberately tame and safe, even if the theme is that the baddie is a goodie somehow...
WARNING: includes goats
A few features and lots of polish did not make the deadline. We had to turn off spiders because they could float up the vertical shafts and go in the sky, and the guards are rather simple. Oh for an extra day!
Its a 2D platform game WITHOUT TILES. Please take a look at our level editor and try and see how the engine works. Most of the artwork are true 3D meshes, with a bit of parallax scrolling for the backgrounds. All the floors and walls are defined using free-form lines. We built the whole engine from scratch for this LD, and despite the glitches we're super pleased and relieved to have got such a big project mostly working in the time limit!
We are particularly pleased with the level editor - you can play with that too, although we've disabled 'save to server' mode. We developed the game with a built-in git repo on the server, so everyone could add artwork and levels and so on without having to email everything to a central integrator person and wait for contributions to be uploaded.
The background music uses the old-fashioned audio API, but the sound effects - for jumping, collecting coins, getting hurt etc - use the new HTML5 audio API, which your browser may not support.
Team: Mr War (Wombatica) - gorgeous art, level design Will - coding Virgo - generously helped e.g. added the guard patrol logic
background music is "Sneaky Snitch", free by Kevin MacLeod
Works now. Beautiful! Lovely background music! It says HTML5 Audio is not supported on my browser, so no sound effects, but I still get background music.
I really love the way the stained glass contrasts with the rest of the textures. It almost glows right off of the screen. The jumping controls need some work. The platforming physics in general just feel a bit awkward. The level looks nice, but there are some spots where getting hit is a certainty.
Theres a great deal of work done here, good game, the character movement or physics needs work, felt too sticky while moving around. Other than that great job :)
Wow, a lot of work must have gone in to making this. Quite hard to control the guys though. Picking out walls, platforms, etc can be tricky too. But well done - a nice use of HTML5.
It's sometimes a bit hard to see if you can stand or something or not or whether something's gonna hurt you or not (e.g. I first thought the pumpkins were loot)
Agree with the rest on the soundtrack here. It's weird, I have played a *lot* of games with a really nice soundtrack this time, when I'm not used to really hearing much at all from LD entries.
It does sometimes feel unresponsive when I press keys however, and sometimes it feels like it's still processing my last command long after I stop pressing a button.
By the way, I perfectly understand the desire to keep the theme light. I struggled with the theme myself because I had a flood of inspiration but as I played out all the ideas they just felt darker than I wanted to explore.
W
wombatica19 Dec 2012, 20:56
graphics guy here. Seriously, thanks for all the feedback, we will take it all on board. Oh for more time! I won't make excuses here but will do autopsy.
PS. Reclusive Frog; love your game man. Have to vote via Will's account tho per Jam rules.
Ambitious, but as has been said above, the basic mechanics felt wrong. It was hard to figure out what was solid. Multiple places would look the same but interact differently. The editor was neat, but the game is what I rated.
Had fun playing it ! My only complaint is that sometimes the platforms don't stand out enough from the background (color too similar) and it's hard to spot them.
M
Martin Vilcans21 Dec 2012, 22:06
Impressive work, especially with the level editor. The game is annoying in some ways; the physics feel wrong. Too much inertia, and the height of the jumps seem inconsistent. And the problem that it's difficult to see where you can walk and what hurts you. Also the level is too non-linear, so I didn't know where to go. But good graphics and I like the level of ambition!
This was lovely!!! My only gripe is horizontal collision, it feels very wrong to be stopped in mid air, just because you're pressing against a wall. Very very impressive level editor
this game make me feel strange: nice music, good graphics level editor.. but gameplay is not so good for me. Player just jump around, enemies do nothing, only moves around and don't try to catch player :(
The art is very good, collision checks and physics are wonky. Technically impressive level editor even though I couldn't make it work for me (which makes it more impressive that you got a whole game done with it)
Post-compo work is to get the physics and collisions working properly and to use light-dark hints or other visual ways of making it clear which areas are passable and which aren't. Well done.
W
wombatica28 Dec 2012, 17:43
thanks everyone for feedback, really helpful.
Zenmumbler, I forgot to mention it in the graphics autopsy but the light-dark hints is something we realised too late. We didn't put the level together until the last couple of hours and due to sloppy modelling it wasn't easy to add highlights to the Scenery layer. I did add some doorways to the In-Front layer but that's drawn in front of the player so doesn't work everywhere - eg the battlements.
We've learned a lot. If we do another platform game next time it'll be a ton better with loads more graphics because I can front-run the engine next time as I now know roughly what bits I'll need.
My only gripes are that the controls were a little bit wonky and sometimes I wasn't sure where to jump. Other than those things though, the artwork is really cool, and the game was fun to play. I only messed around with the editor for a little, but it is really cool.
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My only real gripe was that sometimes it wasn't clear which walls were passable (e.g. at the top of the towers).
Really impressive for the time taken.
Like the music and graphics.
You could work a little bit on the control though :)
One thing that would have been nice was more contrast between foreground elements (characters, pickups), passable items, and impassable items.
It does sometimes feel unresponsive when I press keys however, and sometimes it feels like it's still processing my last command long after I stop pressing a button.
By the way, I perfectly understand the desire to keep the theme light. I struggled with the theme myself because I had a flood of inspiration but as I played out all the ideas they just felt darker than I wanted to explore.
PS. Reclusive Frog; love your game man. Have to vote via Will's account tho per Jam rules.
My only complaint is that sometimes the platforms don't stand out enough from the background (color too similar) and it's hard to spot them.
Post-compo work is to get the physics and collisions working properly and to use light-dark hints or other visual ways of making it clear which areas are passable and which aren't. Well done.
Zenmumbler, I forgot to mention it in the graphics autopsy but the light-dark hints is something we realised too late. We didn't put the level together until the last couple of hours and due to sloppy modelling it wasn't easy to add highlights to the Scenery layer. I did add some doorways to the In-Front layer but that's drawn in front of the player so doesn't work everywhere - eg the battlements.
We've learned a lot. If we do another platform game next time it'll be a ton better with loads more graphics because I can front-run the engine next time as I now know roughly what bits I'll need.
The style is pretty unique, I liked it. And the music was great too.