Puchi Pooches

aviland 2017-04-28 19:58

Delightful! :dog: :knife: :spider:

nuclearfriend 2017-05-02 02:29

I actually really liked this, gameplay was really good and challenging! Fairly unique from everything else I've played so far too!

goodbyesquare 2017-05-02 04:14

It was a lot of fun though quite short :) That being said it's cool you made the game loop back after the 'good job' final stage so you can keep playing easily if you want to. I had some glitches with the game pad with the right analogue stick but it was still playable, the aiming+timing of the bomb power can be quite challenging at times also haha. Great job man, it was nice, simple and fun.

hekst 2017-05-02 04:39

A dog collecting... chocolate...? That's cool! :D This was not as easy game as I though and it was fun playing it. It was challenging at first, but I'm glad you didn't have any guiding line for the bombs. The absence of it made it more stressful at times and fun as a result!

I'm pretty sure I heard some barking in the background music. Nice touch. The sprites are cute too. Looking at your previous entry, looks like you have a knack for drawing small animals. Keep up the good work.

balthazaar 2017-05-02 05:00

Bombs away! Enjoyable small game!

fingamer 2017-05-02 06:24

Nice little game! I enjoyed playing it a lot! It is pretty challenging at some points. Especially when it comes to the timing and aim for the bombs! But hey. I like challenges! I also encountered a strange thing. I don't know if it's intentional but when you have placed a bomb and you die the bomb will exlode in your next try. Anyways great job!

shru 2017-05-02 07:47

@fingamer, I'm aware of that bug where a bomb placed before death will explode after you respawn. It's fixed in a ~private~ build, but I didn't put it into the Ludum Dare release because deadlines etc.

thomsonteguh 2017-05-02 08:31

Great game! Kinda reminds me of bomberman with different sort of gameplay XD. The graphics were nice, sounds were appropriate and helped enhance the mood of the game.

One thing though, I felt that on most situations where I am using the jet pack, I also constantly look at the top left part of the screen to ensure that I have sufficient fuel. One suggestion that might work is to place another meter right next to the character (just a tiny vertical fuel meter), that turns on whenever the character jet packs, but hides when the character is not using the jet pack.

The top left meter will still be there to check for fuel during times when the jet pack is not on, but at the very least, implementing this will cut the amount of time players need to look to the top left of the screen while the jet pack action is going on. This, I believe, may help to enhance the experience the game provides.

Other than that, great game and I really liked the concept :D

lennart-jansson 2017-05-02 08:34

Really delightful game! A few things I particularly liked:

- The sprites are crisp, clear, and appealing. Great animations -- I particularly like the enemy walk animation and the explosions. - Sound FX were simple but did the trick - Nice touch to list the controls on the first screen, and the directions when in the game levels were also very clear. From the first moments opening up the game, I never felt lost. - Good job with the level design — the first level functioned well as a tutorial, and the remaining levels had a fair difficulty ramp until the end

The gameplay was generally very fun. The trick I discovered for effectively killing enemies was to walk near them, drop a bomb, then walk or jetback off into space away to avoid the splash damage. This reduced the possibility of messing up my aim and dying in silly ways.

However, I ended up clearing all of the later levels with more enemies with more or less the same pattern:

1. Kill all the enemies, ignoring the chocolate 2. Then go back and collect the chocolate, without pressure

So the stress contour of a level for me was always high stress at the very beginning of a level, decaying rapidly as I killed the first few enemies, then reaching a sustained low as I transitioned into the chocolate-collecting phase. Of course, it’s completely up to you what kind of contour and narrative you want to provide for players with each level, but the game will provide greater interest if there’s more variety here (especially if you eventually have more levels).

Another way of thinking out it: your game features two objectives, but the player can always just ignore one and never needs to focus on both at the same time. As an extension to the gameplay that you might explore later, I think might be neat to consider ways of forcing players to be considering both objectives at once, as a way to reward more complex decision making and prioritization.

Perhaps:

- An portal that continually spawns enemies, once every few seconds? - If this leads to enemies that always get trapped on the contiguous piece of land surrounding a portal, then… spawn an enemy somewhere arbitrary every few seconds? - Unkillable enemies? Force the player to use the bombs as a zoning/world-manipulation tool rather than just as a weapon for killing. Or, simply reward clever movement around walls that gets enemies stuck on the other side. - At higher difficultly levels… enemies that can fly across gaps? Enemies that can hop over walls?

Just some possibly fun ideas to turn over if you work on the game some more :)

A few more thoughts about areas that might want fine tuning:

- I played with keyboard and mouse. I felt like the direction bombs travel when aiming with the mouse is often unexpected — possibly this is due to the y-axis being squished due to the isometric perspective not being corrected in the mouse vector? Aiming was not impossible, it just was slightly more annoying and difficult that probably you intended. - I had a lot of trouble with bombs bouncing off walls when trying to land them on ledges, I think mostly for the above reason. Once I corrected my aim, it was usually not to difficult to hone in on the button hold time to produce the correct velocity. - The music didn’t seem to fit the rest of the bright aesthetic of the game’s visuals. - The jetpack animation is subtle and hard to notice, which makes it sometimes difficult to tell whether you’re flying or not. (Granted, this is very minor)

But overall, very well done! The gameplay is fun and the art is super delightful.

flipsy 2017-05-04 01:24

Very cool game! I am a big fan of isometric games and games with jet-packs so I was sold from the get go. I found the controls a bit tricky. I don't have a gamepad and I'm pretty old-school (I'm not used to keyboard + mouse games - never got into 3D shooters) but personally I think simpler controls would benefit the game and suit the genre. It felt a little odd to me that the aiming wasn't restricted to the lines of the isometric grid. I'd be interested to see how it plays with dropping the mouse and just having the bombs head in the direction your facing. Just one opinion. Great work, very nice entry.

killerkun 2017-05-04 03:03

This is a beautiful looking game, the whole theme and animations are wonderfully done, I enjoyed them thoroughly.

As for the gameplay I have to agree with @lennart-jansson in pretty much all the points made, the sense of urgency disappears quickly as you soon find that you can "cheat" into the game, maybe making the collectibles disappear on a timer shorter than you have time to defeat the enemies would change the rhythm a bit.

All in all a great game, I really liked it and seeing some more development of it would be fantastic! Awesome job, well done :)

occultone 2017-05-20 07:19

Great graphics, I think I would add a few more animation frames though. The amount of time I had made the game feel very easy. Great job with Isometric style (I'm a big fan). I had to restart a few times due to the controls not working, was the game made to support the PS4 controller or XBox?