Your friend has been kidnapped by monsters and brought to the core of the sun: it's up to you, a solar creature, to rescue him. Fight your way trough the guardians of the sun and their fearsome solar cannons in this old-fashioned 8-bit style platformer inspired by the all-time classic Super Mario and reach your friend at the core of the star at the center of our solar system. Will you get there in time? Or will the harsh heat of the cruel star burn you on your way? Only one way to find out...
How to play
The game has a built-in tutorial level, it's incredibly short anyway, but for the sake of completeness I'll add the instructions here: - You move using the WAD keys, like in all platformers - If you want to explore the levels freely, press I to enable the immortal mode (not recommended, the levels have been tested anyway). Press it again to disable it - Bullets shot from cannons will kill you, but can also kill your enemies: take advantage of this! - Your goal is to get to the key
Disclaimer
SUNCORE is currently in its alpha version and is pretty barebone since it was done quickly for this game jam, but if people get interested in the title I might consider expanding it and rewriting it to make it an actual game. SUNCORE is released to the public domain and the author claims no rights over the source code, assets or any other component of the game, unless otherwise specified, so you may modify it and use it freely. All names and brands mentioned in the game's overview and/or troughout the game itself are property of their respective copyright owners.
It's pretty cool, the music fits the theme and graphics really nice. The controls could use a little tweaking tho, like jumping with space instead of W. Also you can sorta wall climb on the 3 stacked cannons on the last level, I don't know if that's intended.
I wanted to see a challenging platformer for this theme and this is the first one I played.
I think it definitely ticks the box of being challenging. I liked it quite a lot. Solid difficulty and level design, Great atmosphere, good job! ✌
Some remarks: - I don't know if there's a way to make the game run fullscreen. If there is, you should probably highlight it somewhere - Some hitboxes can be quite tricky or deceiving (especially for the cannon rockets)
Cool little platformer! I had quite a bit of fun. A few hitboxes could have been a bit more forgiving, but the difficulty is what made it. Other things, the bullet firing timers not being reset on death made starting from the checkpoints confusing in a couple spots. Overall, nice work!
thanks for making this! the graphics could have been more polished and I think I would have liked something different than choosing the levels to play in the menu, but the level design itself had something going. Does the final level keep track of the time or is the ending just like that?
Since I've seen a lot of you're asking question, I'll answer them all now, I'll add more if more questions arise..
First: Sadly no full screen, I could have added it but I didn't have time, sadly
Second: The hitboxes are just rectangles, pygame is really low level so you can only use text or points for checking collisions.. actually there are polygons but they're quite performance heavy.. at least on my pc, so sadly the hitboxes were quite messed up
Three: The 3 cannons that can be climbed weren't a thing I wanted.. I didn't notice them during playtesting.. hoping it isn't a good way to cheat XD.. probably messed up hitboxes together with my movement script and collision system
Four: The last level actually takes count of the time.. both me and a friend of mine were able to complete it and get the good ending.. if you can't do it fast enough then just turn on immortality mode with I, but don't abuse it :)
Fifth: I know, level selecting isn't the best, but it was the fastest way to do it, and I couldn't add a next_level..
And last but not least, thank you all so much, I wanted to join in this jam 'cause it was the iconic 48th edition.. and, even if I hate rage games and hard platformers, I love seeing other people fail them, so I decided to make one and I wanted to give it a.. really weird theme.. happy it turned out well and that I got so much positive feedback.. I'm actually shaking 'cause I thought this wasn't going to go well
Last thing(I promise), I actually had a lot more ideas for the game but I couldn't implement them, more enemies, the ground enemies(called sprouts actually) should have sprouted in particles that would kill you, an enemy that actually moved.. Since there was a lot of positive feedback I might remake the game adding these features and fixing the things that got criticized.. probably in Godot since coding it python was fun.. but stressful, and now I want to learn Godot so it's a great opportunity
Since I've seen a lot of you're asking question, I'll answer them all now, I'll add more if more questions arise..
First: Sadly no full screen, I could have added it but I didn't have time, sadly
Second: The hotboxes are just rectangles, pygame is really low level so you can only use text or points for checking collisions.. actually there are polygons but they're quite performance heavy.. at least on my pc, so sadly the hotboxes were quite messed up
Three: The 3 cannons that can be climbed weren't a thing I wanted.. I didn't notice them during playtesting.. hoping it isn't a good way to cheat XD.. probably messed up hotboxes together with my movement script and collision system
Four: The last level actually takes count of the time.. both me and a friend of mine were able to complete it and get the good ending.. if you can't do it fast enough then just turn on immortality mode with I, but don't abuse it :)
Fifth: I know, level selecting isn't the best, but it was the fastest way to do it, and I couldn't add a next_level..
And last but not least, thank you all so much, I wanted to join in this jam 'cause it was the iconic 48th edition.. and, even if I hate rage games and hard platformers, I love seeing other people fail them, so I decided to make one and I wanted to give it a.. really weird theme.. happy it turned out well and that I got so much positive feedback.. I'm actually shaking 'cause I thought this wasn't going to go well
Last thing(I promise), I actually had a lot more ideas for the game but I couldn't implement them, more enemies, the ground enemies(called sprouts actually) should have sprouted in particles that would kill you, an enemy that actually moved.. Since there was a lot of positive feedback I might remake the game adding these features and fixing the things that got criticized.. probably in Godot since coding it python was fun.. but stressful, and now I want to learn Godot so it's a great opportunity
fun game with reasonable challenge the idea of only being able to kill enemies with the cannons was interesting being able to skip the intro to the 4th level would be nice
Don't be hard on yourself, it turned out really nice and fun! ✌ I think anyone who publishes a game should be proud. You made a game that a lot of random people enjoyed playing. Not a lot of people can say that.
I'm glad to see you want to give Godot a try, I think you will love it after PyGame. Your life will be much easier when you get used to it. 😄
Such a great 2D platformer, I would've loved to have seen more of a difficulty curve as it increases a little bit too dramatically from level 1 to level 2, but I love the graphics and the 8 bit audio suited the game perfectly, great job!
Nice job, liked the game a lot! My one thing is it seemed like I fell way to fast, add a little more floatyness (That's a word right? :P) to it when you fall and I think that would help out a lot. Good job!
Great job! I think the physics were a little bit finnicky, and the challenge escalated very quickly. The escalation may not be a bad thing, but just something to note.. But I liked the art style and the music.
It was nice that the levels were designed to require understanding the jump system. I had to try the final level a couple times; it would've been nice to be able to skip the intro text there. Still, good work!
I liked the game , cool concept , but for the last level it would have been cool to have a timer . I didn't made it in time , and I had no way of knowing how much time I had . Overall , it is a good game .
couldnt make it in time for the good ending :'( a timer to know how close you are from the good ending would be a nice addition. Great mood to the game with a nice choice of music fitting the game well
Have you heard the good news about the new PyGame feature pygame.display.set_mode((300,200), pygame.SCALED)`
I would have understood the way you do it if you generated anti-aliased text at high resolutions, but you scaled pixel fonts up, so why not scale up the whole screen?
Gameplay-wise, I think your game needs better controls, fine grained jump height, maybe gamepad with A to jump and stick or D-pad to walk. Your font is stylised but kind of hard to read, I wonder why you haven't used an existing TTF pixel font.
Comments24
I think it definitely ticks the box of being challenging. I liked it quite a lot. Solid difficulty and level design, Great atmosphere, good job! ✌
Some remarks:
- I don't know if there's a way to make the game run fullscreen. If there is, you should probably highlight it somewhere
- Some hitboxes can be quite tricky or deceiving (especially for the cannon rockets)
Anyways, I loved it, nice game! ☀
Overall, nice work!
First: Sadly no full screen, I could have added it but I didn't have time, sadly
Second: The hitboxes are just rectangles, pygame is really low level so you can only use text or points for checking collisions.. actually there are polygons but they're quite performance heavy.. at least on my pc, so sadly the hitboxes were quite messed up
Three: The 3 cannons that can be climbed weren't a thing I wanted.. I didn't notice them during playtesting.. hoping it isn't a good way to cheat XD.. probably messed up hitboxes together with my movement script and collision system
Four: The last level actually takes count of the time.. both me and a friend of mine were able to complete it and get the good ending.. if you can't do it fast enough then just turn on immortality mode with I, but don't abuse it :)
Fifth: I know, level selecting isn't the best, but it was the fastest way to do it, and I couldn't add a next_level..
And last but not least, thank you all so much, I wanted to join in this jam 'cause it was the iconic 48th edition.. and, even if I hate rage games and hard platformers, I love seeing other people fail them, so I decided to make one and I wanted to give it a.. really weird theme.. happy it turned out well and that I got so much positive feedback.. I'm actually shaking 'cause I thought this wasn't going to go well
Last thing(I promise), I actually had a lot more ideas for the game but I couldn't implement them, more enemies, the ground enemies(called sprouts actually) should have sprouted in particles that would kill you, an enemy that actually moved..
Since there was a lot of positive feedback I might remake the game adding these features and fixing the things that got criticized.. probably in Godot since coding it python was fun.. but stressful, and now I want to learn Godot so it's a great opportunity
First: Sadly no full screen, I could have added it but I didn't have time, sadly
Second: The hotboxes are just rectangles, pygame is really low level so you can only use text or points for checking collisions.. actually there are polygons but they're quite performance heavy.. at least on my pc, so sadly the hotboxes were quite messed up
Three: The 3 cannons that can be climbed weren't a thing I wanted.. I didn't notice them during playtesting.. hoping it isn't a good way to cheat XD.. probably messed up hotboxes together with my movement script and collision system
Four: The last level actually takes count of the time.. both me and a friend of mine were able to complete it and get the good ending.. if you can't do it fast enough then just turn on immortality mode with I, but don't abuse it :)
Fifth: I know, level selecting isn't the best, but it was the fastest way to do it, and I couldn't add a next_level..
And last but not least, thank you all so much, I wanted to join in this jam 'cause it was the iconic 48th edition.. and, even if I hate rage games and hard platformers, I love seeing other people fail them, so I decided to make one and I wanted to give it a.. really weird theme.. happy it turned out well and that I got so much positive feedback.. I'm actually shaking 'cause I thought this wasn't going to go well
Last thing(I promise), I actually had a lot more ideas for the game but I couldn't implement them, more enemies, the ground enemies(called sprouts actually) should have sprouted in particles that would kill you, an enemy that actually moved..
Since there was a lot of positive feedback I might remake the game adding these features and fixing the things that got criticized.. probably in Godot since coding it python was fun.. but stressful, and now I want to learn Godot so it's a great opportunity
the idea of only being able to kill enemies with the cannons was interesting
being able to skip the intro to the 4th level would be nice
Don't be hard on yourself, it turned out really nice and fun! ✌
I think anyone who publishes a game should be proud. You made a game that a lot of random people enjoyed playing. Not a lot of people can say that.
I'm glad to see you want to give Godot a try, I think you will love it after PyGame. Your life will be much easier when you get used to it. 😄
@humphreysmedia it is, sorry 😓, i didn't really playtest it very much
I would have understood the way you do it if you generated anti-aliased text at high resolutions, but you scaled pixel fonts up, so why not scale up the whole screen?
Also, why re-create the window every frame?