Finding your loved one

amras0000 2017-04-24 03:58

The graphics are gorgeous, if a little inconsistent at times, and I do love the design of growing and shrinking and the various ideas you've associated with it. My complaints are purely mechanical; either easy mistakes to make or bugs you might not have noticed.

I do love the theming. Two childhood mascots tied together into an artstyle and mechanics set fitting for them both. The sound didn't play for me so I can't comment on how that tied in.

Unfortunately, the most noticable aspect of the game is the controls. As a rule, you should never control a platformer's character with physics. I know it makes intuitive sense to try that, but there are many issues in practice. Just check the "make kinematic" checkbox if you're working in unity, or disable physics interactions on the character in whatever engine you're using, and use custom code for the movement.

In the last level, you have a leap of faith. It's good that you postmarked it, but at the size I attempted to jump (pretty large) I wasn't able to make it. It's not a minor oversight, but it meant I had to guess at what size the invisible ceiling would allow me to pass.

It seemed like I could only jump on the yellow enemies but couldn't damage the blue ones. At first it wasn't too clear if that was a bug or intentional, and it took me a couple levels to work it out. The wording of the tutorial made it seem like I should be able to jump on all the enemies, though I may have missed some text because of the control scheme.

I realize that larger Alice could jump higher and that makes sense to me, but it seemed like the increase in jump height was much larger than the increase in Alice height. Nothing wrong with this mechanically, but it felt a bit off.

I did enjoy the game overall, despite the wonky control scheme. The levels are well designed and short enough not to be irritating if I failed. I may have liked the hitboxes to be more obvious. Some of the platforms that weren't rectangular could have done with a flatter top.

Nice work.

laaph 2017-04-24 05:26

I should have indicated the bugs. I've now added them to the description.

Anyway, thank you amras0000 for your feedback and I'm glad you enjoyed the game!

2017-04-28 14:49

Very good start! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation [video series](https://youtu.be/TFsh4EsXErU), if you’d like to take a look :)

laaph 2017-04-30 01:48

Thank you for playing our game Jupiter! Too bad you didn't get past the first level! (there are three)

burgee 2017-05-01 04:42

Had a good time playing this! I'm so happy you didn't put in a 'game over, you have to restart' feature, because I really wanted to finish it.

The graphics are great for the amount of time you had, and the gameplay is solid. If you have more time I'd love to see this fleshed out into more puzzles, some backtracking, and more of this great art!

I liked the music while it was there as well! Really nice work.

jerm 2017-05-10 04:46

Cool little platformer with nice graphics. But it was a bit glitchy.

jezzamon 2017-05-11 00:55

Cute graphics

As you said, the physics is very janky and the monster hit boxes are off. It also seems pretty short -- it could do with some more levels, even if there were no new mechanics added. I imagine that was due to time constraints :P The game seems unfinished at the moment but I think if those were changed it'd make a big difference.

Also, game mechanic wise, I'm confused as to why being hit makes you lose cookies... it seems like either that would make you get stuck in some places, or it wouldn't matter at all because you just get more when you defeat the enemy. Maybe having health would make more sense for that.

Overall, not a bad little game prototype. Good luck for next LD!

icecheetah 2017-05-11 22:25

A cute and interesting idea! I am just going to note a couple of things that I didn't see mentioned:

I think it would be a good idea to move the tutorial point about getting bigger meaning you can jump higher to the point where you are told about the cookies in the first place. I had to work out that I could eat the big cookie again in order to be able to jump to the next platform and not just get stuck on a rock. and at one point I ate two small cookies and wound up attached to the bottom of a platform, upside down until I ate a big cookie.

If you use this to make something better or just use what you learned here to make new things, good luck! You could make some very interesting things!

skruffye 2017-05-12 22:46

Reminded me heavily of Alice in Wonderland. I really liked the watercolour art style, although some of the assets were a little too small for the game, so you can see the external edge of them if you jump high enough etc.

Also, I was a little confused at the decision to include a single 3D object in an otherwise stylised 2D game.

The protagonist could have done with some animation and the game's physics were a little janky (I got stuck on walls and enemies a lot), but other than that, it was a pleasant game. :)

Keep practising and best of luck with your future game projects!

-Skruffye

kate-kligman 2017-05-14 22:22

- I liked the art! It's handrawn! Obviously! And it works! - The music is so soothing. I've been playing LD entries all day getting beeped, bopped, and screetched at, and this makes up for it. - Playing on OS X / Safari on a late 2013 Macbook Pro, the background is a bit stuttery during jumps which makes it hard to read the floating text. My suggestion would be to position it a bit lower and 100% visible from ground level so the player doesn't have to jump to see it.

Overall lovely game, hope to see a post-comp version of this!

impbox 2017-05-14 23:00

The idea is good, nice take on the theme. Implementation needs a lot of work as you're aware. Definitely need to improve the controls and handling.

g12345 2017-05-14 23:04

I've finished the game.

Well, you and the first comment tells you a lot of the problems already, but there are also a lot of good stuff:

* The graphics are beautifully drawn * I like the music * The size mechanic is really cool, and I can't even think of how to make it (I dont use Unity, yet.)

If you want to improve the game I'd also check the movements of the monsters, sometimes they just stay on one place constantly turning around. And I sometimes get stuck in a place but I don't know why.

But the art part is really great, and I wouldnt be able to make such a game in Unity in a weekend. Nicely Done!

laaph 2017-05-16 20:56

@kate-kligman, I wrote that on a bottom end 2014 Macbook pro (tested on firefox though)! I'm surprised the difference in stuttering!

@g12345 I was thinking the controls on your entry were so solid and so smooth that I could never pull that off, and here you are saying you can't think of how to make things I did! (Unity does make it easy, I just scaled it, and I don't think I did anything else, leading to the oddities of jumps get bigger and movement feels faster when small.)

laaph 2017-05-16 23:33

In another thought for performance, you might want to download the executable. I know that web based stuff can sometimes bog my computer.

gama-croma 2017-05-17 08:50

Nice little game with a great main mechanic and some nice ideas around it. Jumping on monsters is buggy but thankfully you stop losing cookies from a monster after the first hit. About the art, maybe you could have used tiling or some seamless texture for the background so you don't lose resolution in the background image.

sintinium 2017-05-17 12:18

Really great art and music is good. The size mechanic is really cool as well! I think if certain things were drawn instead of 3d models it would look more consistant but other than that I love it!

tommyflower 2017-05-17 18:25

The idea is good and the graphics beautiful,I loved the integrated tutoria,.. but this is quite buggy. I know the time was really short. I'd like to see a new version of this game, with a wider background, some cute rigged animations, to stay consistent with the lovely watercolour art. @amras0000 gave you great advices on how to improve the gameplay. Take your time and make it wonderful! ;)

megabrutal 2017-05-17 21:32

Very nice graphics! I like the concept, but I had to give up, as the controls are unbearable. Then '=' and '-' are not very great for game controls – think of those who use other keyboard layouts than English, '=' and '-' are not near each other, and '=' may need a key combination to input (e.g. on a Hungarian keyboard layout, '=' would be Shift+7, that didn't work with this game, so I had to change the keyboard layout to English). Also I run out of cookies very quickly if I failed a jump and fell down. But it definitely has potential! :)

ciderwrath 2017-05-18 03:24

I really enjoyed the setting of the game with the combination of the watercolors and music, really felt like a fairy tale book. I Loved the idea of the second stage where you run through obstacles then just get huge and smash it all down, although felt embarrassing to immediately fall off a few seconds later (a good thing!). There were some issues which others have stated already, but other than that, was still pretty enjoyable. Good work!

laaph 2017-05-18 06:04

@megabrutal sorry about the keyboard difficulties. I sometimes type on a Turkish keyboard; I should know better. I actually jumped around the possible inputs for larger and smaller; they are mapped to standard Unity fire1 and fire2 (alt and control), and those buttons should still work if you want to use them, but I found them painful to use. If you use the downloadable executable you should also be able remap them via the standard Unity launch screen.