FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD34 → The War of Japants

The War of Japants

By blobo

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness1100
Humor1303.32
Mood3513.15
Audio3542.92
Graphics3913.27
Theme6173.56
Overall6323.06
Fun6392.94
Innovation8732.34

Comments

pvtroswold 2015-12-14 23:00

Nice idea. But I couldn't jump to the first platform always? Looks cool though

r-t-sonneveld 2015-12-14 23:25

A bit too frustrating in my opinion. You couldn't always react to things in front of you, and the sloped roofs were hard to jump off of. The walljumping made the camera go weird. I liked the custom music :)

dustoutgames 2015-12-15 01:25

It is impossible to play this game without a huge, stupid grin. That said, the level generation felt a little trollish. Adding a double jump would go a long ways toward helping the player get through a tough segment. I greatly enjoyed the headband physics.

sourtrance 2015-12-15 01:32

It's think it's neat, though the controls are a bit hard. The graphics and the music are cool. I really wish the music didn't restart every time I start a new game though!

killedbyapixel 2015-12-15 02:53

Nice graphics and concept. Camera got a bit glitch at times like when jumping up through the tunnel, which was really cool otherwise. Jump could be a little farther, some of the jumps seem impossible. Hitting enemies with the ninja star was really hard. Good music.

darkavenger211 2015-12-15 03:06

The stone platform is very hard to jump too, especially since you have a small window of time to figure out what's coming since it's procedural. The curved buildings were frustrating as they sometimes prevented my jumping.
Nice graphics and music though :)

riorius 2015-12-15 03:06

Fun game. Pretty frustrating until I figured out that jumping at the peak of rooftops always got me safely to the next platform (and let me skip the awkward downslopes). Loved the music!

fussycashew 2015-12-15 16:04

Pretty fun, however, very difficult. I feel like if you tweaked some sliders you'd increase your fun value by quite a bit.

diebackstudios 2015-12-15 18:01

Small glitches but fun its fun to play, music is key well designed

kualitygames 2015-12-15 21:30

Unusual controls and frustrating gameplay, interesting setting and music though

ssjmetroid 2015-12-15 21:33

Very hard to control. I am not a huge fan of runner games in general, I am just sick of them to be honest lol.. But yeah I got past a few buildings and at that point I got too frustrated with the controls.

captainred_ 2015-12-15 22:23

cool game but kinda glitchy and repetitive

blobo 2015-12-15 22:42

Thanks for all the feedback!

The game is supposed to be hard.

i honestly dont see how the controls are frustrating or "unusual"

and thanks for all the compliments too! i'll try my best to play all of your guys's games as well. again, thanks for all the feedback!

globemaster 2015-12-15 23:18

Cool game. I think easing up the difficulty would have helped. It was very hard right away. Nice job, though!

danidre14 2015-12-16 16:05

Nice game, cool graphics, though a bit hard.

susanthecat 2015-12-17 01:36

Ancient mode is awesome!

pusty 2015-12-18 20:44

hahahaha :D nice one

anv 2015-12-18 21:15

Very cool endless runner. Part with small stone brick island in between gets me every time though. Ancient mode definitely improves the mood, IMO should be enabled default. Music get repetitive very fast, probably because I keep hearing only first few seconds due to my inability to stay alive for any extended amount of time;)

superdude 2015-12-18 22:03

Incredibly hard, but cool! Nice little touch with the ancient mode.

jakob37 2015-12-19 19:34

You seem to have something nice on its way here! It was a bit unforgiving though, would have been nice with some warm-up enemies, or more health.

little-burrito 2015-12-19 19:42

Love the game and your humour! The music totally works, the graphics are nice and hilarious, and the obstacles are really well designed! Sometimes the enemies are difficult to see and pop up in slightly odd places, and it gets REALLY tricky when you have to jump to a platform that's just slightly higher than your current one - that gives you a lot less time to react, since the ninja pants jump so high.

Overall it's a super nice game! Thanks a lot :)

I recorded when I played it, and I'm uploading the video here: https://youtu.be/ZRJytxC3KD0

rjhelms 2015-12-19 21:02

I like the ancient mode - a nice touch.

I agree with others that this game's really difficult - a ramp-up in difficulty at the start would be a good improvement.

speciesunknown 2015-12-19 21:56

Nice twist on roof runner games, I found it a bit hard to jump on the peaked roofs, my pants jumped automatically and then missed the ledge, so I couldn't jump in time - I also found a sideways area, you should make those more common, as they add variety. I found it satisfying to shoot ninja stars at rival pants.

I gave you the highest score i've given any game so far for mood and humor.

onepixelmonster 2015-12-19 23:47

Nice! Well done!

blake_lead 2015-12-19 23:58

Really nice and funny game! Although the jump control is not always perfectly responsive, I did managed to go relatively far :)

Well done.

felilix 2015-12-20 00:03

Haha hilarious! I like the way you think. Ancient mode is OG.

muel 2015-12-20 15:42

Can't run =(
Something weird on my machine. I open the game, but it doesn't load. Just keep waiting forever...

rsf-krx 2015-12-20 16:40

I really liked the graphics and audio in this one, especially the ancient mode :)
I did find the jumping to be a bit unresponsive if I tried jumping as soon as I landed on a platform. I don't know if that was intentional, but it definitely made timing harder. Overall though a fun game.

ruerob 2015-12-20 16:45

My highscore until now is 2326. It's a really fun game after getting used to the controls! great work on this!

aeveis 2015-12-20 22:47

controls were a bit hard, especially with those curved roofs. I did run into a vertical part was made things more interesting. I also expected a shorter/longer jump based on how fast I tapped the jump button, I think it was consistent regardless of what I did. Nice to see all the variation on level patterns though!

weeping-rupee 2015-12-21 05:00

I really liked the vertical run up that wall, that was a cool surprise.

his was a quirky endless runner but it suffers alot from the controls feeling unresponsive. Also, some of the jumps are just not spaced right-- like theyre one tile shorter than the length of the jump.

We also made a very difficult game though so I get it-- you play your own game you get tunnel vision because you play it yourself so many times you start designing challenges for yourself while test playing and as a result the game gets real hard.

ointment 2015-12-22 18:36

You asked for feedback, and this is a great chance to give some, since I immediately saw some issues that were fundamentally hindering the simple gameplay. So while I am focusing on the negatives because they're easier to write about (and maybe because that's the kind of guy I am), I don't mean to discourage you in any way. I can see the effort is still there, and I appreciate you taking risks to liven up the game, like those 90 degree turns upwards. The neat Japanese aesthetic to tie it all together thematically is worth mentioning as well.

...

Okay, so the biggest nuisance is easy to condense into one example: those small platform jumps.

They demonstrate a lot of what needs fixing in this whole experience. I've seen straight up bugs like the player flying inside a wall. There's the classic missing the jump because I wasn't able to predict what was coming. Sometimes I manage to do it and feel like I didn't earn it.

The point about not being able to see it coming implies that the running speed in this game isn't proper for doing these kinds of precise jumps. There's no variation with how heavily you've pressed the jump button either, which is a detail I really feel you should've focused on, since - well - it's only one of two buttons, after all. Plenty of those "little things" that pile up to make me feel like it wasn't my fault I died. And they come back to haunt you on a lesser scale when fighting enemies, for example.

I think the common factor is that the game feels like it's going in fast-forward. This is something that happens with a lot of entries - during testing, the authors get bored of the slowness and ramp up some variables. After a weekend of having gotten used to the speed or difficulty or whatever other adjustable setting, they release the game, and the poor players who are just seeing it for the first time will feel left out of the ride. Having a third party playtester somewhere along the development is the best kind of reality check about what aspects of the design to focus on.

So because of the above points, you'll be resetting a lot. Regardless of how often you die, I'd say there's never a reason for a jam game to return to the title screen. The music restarting with resets is an additional small thing that becomes a big deal over time.

(In fact, I think title screens in LD games are unnecessary altogether. They don't offer any kind of meaningful representation, because a screenshot is more informative in a huge list of games anyway, and the lack of an options menu is simply an exercise in having reasonable default configurations to begin with.)

The graphics are tasteful for the most part. You've got some shader and particle type things going on that aren't overused or distracting. Be careful of pixel-perfect sprites stretching out, though. The only place where I felt like you were being lazy with the sprites was the sudden screenful of monotonous brick tiles in the tunnels.

One trick people easily overlook is fonts. Picking something beyond system fonts is an implementation-wise quick way to bring the visual style to the next level - for a game like this, many of the more readable bitmap fonts on Dafont would be appropriate. Consider the layout as well; place the relevant text to where the player can see it, and try to keep the possible text spawns to a minimum. (Text popping up in the middle of the screen is a bit of a dirty solution, and in this case makes some of it blend with the backgrounds. Better to dedicate some spot on the screen for announcements only.)

...

Hopefully you'll find at least some of my ramblings helpful. Grats for finishing and good luck on future LDs.

scorched 2015-12-22 20:24

Liked the music and the ancient mode! :-)

gokottastudio 2015-12-23 12:28

Fun game!It's a great game!

strike 2015-12-23 15:55

Endless runner with very unresponsive jump. That's sad.

zpeedtube 2015-12-31 12:50

Overall really nice. I like the grahics and humoristic part that it's ninjapants. ^^
Music is not bad but a little repetetive. :)

powerspark 2016-01-03 19:00

Good idea, but the roof slopes give you only a few spots to jump from. Difficult.

arcturusdeluxe 2016-01-03 19:36

Fun game. Nice graphics. An interesting take on a Canabalt style game.