TypeSkater

seconddimension 2018-04-23 18:26

This is a cool concept, I just found it way too hard. It's possible that's because I'm super bad at games, but maybe you suffered from that classic case of playing the game so much over the weekend you forgot how hard it would be for new players?

What would have helped me was maybe not having to push yourself along as well as typing. Another thing would be for the text you need to type to be above the people or obstacles, although I can see why you didn't go in that direction - it would be cool to learn the various tricks and master them. When playing for longer I can see that being really fun to master, but for the rating phase of a jam it feels a little too hardcore.

The pixel art, animation and music are great though, the few tricks I managed felt great to pull off.

behenate 2018-04-24 08:16

@SecondDimension Today I realized how hard the game really is. Some of the mechanics aren't really polished and how some of the levels are way too hard and inconsistent.

gdort 2018-04-24 20:52

Tutorial finished and then I couldn't play any longer (screen wouldn't accept any more input) bg.png

The tutorial was hard though, I also hated that wrong inputs take so long to be erased. Also, I'd rather typing "kickflip" than "kcfp". Game design should've adapted accordingly.

behenate 2018-04-24 21:05

@gdort You have to type cd or "180" in order to change direction so you can push. You can only push while facing forwards. Also you need to press "Enter" if you want to erase input.

tem 2018-04-24 21:29

Fun, but difficult

justinm 2018-04-24 21:37

Really enjoyed playing! Fun twist on type racing and skateboarding :). More difficult than it looks but I didn't mind it. A fun QOL thing to add after the comp is maybe have it prevent you from typing the wrong word after a single incorrect letter and deduct points

diptoman 2018-04-26 02:23

This is pretty great, even if understandably terrible from a balance viewpoint (you're excused, it was a jam) - but I really liked the idea!

behenate 2018-04-26 17:35

@diptoman Yeah. I always fall into trap of making my games too hard, because I play them so much while making. It isn't impossible to beat though, my friend has beaten this game in around 40 minutes, but understandably you want to spend less than 10 minutes for each LD game and it's generally enough to give a rating.

daneestar 2018-04-27 21:46

The idea is good and I managed to do some levels. The one level (2 or so) where I have to enter a 180 was too hard. I did not manage to finish it... It is a bit annoying that the input does not get reset after a failed attempt. Good job after all.

gonutz 2018-05-01 09:47

I was very excited for this game when I first saw your screen shots and that you were creating a skateboarding game.

I found the tutorial text was too small, a little bigger would have been nice. Then, why do you excuse yourself in your tutorial text. That never looks good, just say that you can only do these two tricks switch, like in real life, what's the problem? Writing negatively about your creation only makes it look weaker.

As other commentors I found the difficulty too high and only played up to the 3rd or 4th level where you have to do high kick flips. Why can I not typ 'kick' or 'flip' or 'flick' or even 'kickflip'. I cannot remember 'kcfp', that was the biggest flaw in your game in my opinion. Having to look at the keyboard and concentrate to remember what the key combination was is not fun. The rest are fine to remember, 'oli', 'sit' although it makes no sense at first until you realize that it is short for **S**hove**IT**, '180' are perfectly fine to type quickly but 'kcfp' - no way!

There are some technical bugs, you can type after you fall down, when a level restarts the text is still there, minor things that can be overlooked.

The graphics are very cool and the music fits well. You created some really cool animations and I love the pixel art.

Overall a very good idea, some flaws in the implementation but overall a very cool game! This is a real achievement, such a large and complicated game for a game jam, you have my deep respect for that! Keep up the great work! Maybe you could fix the 'kcfp' and difficulty and create a post-jam version of this game? I would love to play it. If you do, @gonutz me in a comment and I will come back to try it :-)

jin9310 2018-05-11 21:11

Very interesting and definitely 2 incompatible genres. The gameplay is hard to master and perhaps I would consider not to restart the level everytime you fail (I understand if this was your design decision, but after all if you fall down on skateboard you can stand back up, right? :)) Overall very solid entry. Good job.

2018-05-11 21:24

Let me start by saying: I like this game. It's a cool idea and the basis of it is fun, but it has so many weird game design choices that I find it too frustrating to be enjoyable. I love hard games, but fair ones. I'm keeping this anon because I just wanna give constructive feedback.

you should be able to play again by pressing space instead of having to use the mouse every time you die, which is often.

When the game "pauses" to show you a tooltip, it should retain your velocity so when the tooltip disappears you're still moving

When you die it should erase your letter palette, otherwise you spawn and basically instantly die a second time.

It's hard to tell what is supposed to be foreground and background. e.g. at first I thought cars were jumpable, then I noticed they were behind trees, which are background, but the rails are foreground. If you use a colour palette that shows the background is background (e.g. a blue opacity layer so everything in the background is tinted slightly blue, or even just a constrast layer that makes that stuff slightly darker) it would be much easier to see what's what.

The typing was fine but it would be nice if you accepted the full words, especially on the word "kickflip". I'm a fast typist so it takes me way longer to remember the abbreviation "kcfp" than it does to just type kickflip, and even then it probably takes me the same amount of time to type, because kickflip is just naturally on the tip of my fingers but "kcfp" is a really weird construct you would never type so my brain doesn't have a subconscious pattern for it.

Backspace should work.

The ramp up in velocity is a bit frustrating too. The first two kicks are low "extremely boringly slow, takes forever to get to anything", the 3rd is suddenly Hyperspeed 5 and you the chance of you timing it to land at the beginning of the obstacle, then landing the next step, then another one in a row, are basically zero unless the physics goes weird and makes you spring up, which from what I can tell is mostly unintentional and you can't really choose to do it.

And you barely decelerate, so if you kick too fast at the beginning then you have to do the entire level on the fastest speed.

Even if you're on 2 pushes, the obstacles come faster than it takes for your letters to reset so you can't see what you're typing if you want to actually be able to jump over stuff. When you start typing again it should reset the letters.

Like, the guy with the shove it in between two cones? He doesn't even register that you've done the trick if you do oli sit oli on speed 2. So I have to go.. super.. extremely.. slow.. speed.. 1... and ride for like 10 seconds up to the first obstacle.

Like, the problem with this game is, evne if it was just "press A to jump" it would still feel unfairly unbalanced, so then to add typing to it and make it so you have to swap between mouse and keyboard to continue when you game over is extremely frustrating.

Also the hitboxes on things are off so you sometimes get killed by stuff outside of the visible cue.

If you die in 180 then you're still registered as standing forward but your sprite is permanently the wrong way.

You should freeze the z rotation in the rigidbody, because these things for all intents and purposes are square things you're bouncing off, they shouldn't just kill you in a way that is basically uncontrollable to the player, you shouldn't flip off at weird angles and die when there's no way for you to predict that or prevent it from happening.

behenate 2018-05-11 21:42

Thanks for your feedback! I'm aware of those issues, but while making the game i just either ignored them or didn't notice them. I could propably fix all of that in less than an hour during the compo. I know that I screwed up the level design so badly, that I couldnt really do much worse :P I always leave level design for the end of the compo and then I don't have enough energy to properly build and test levels.

bryyrt 2018-05-11 22:24

I saw your post so I decided to review because I'm in a similar situation. Fun and difficult! I did find that cars look like obstacles, but it isn't that big of a deal. You can review my game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/typeskater

aerosavior 2018-05-11 22:38

One of my favorite games! lots of levels and good difficulty ramp. I felt like I had to stay at a minimum speed to complete some levels but otherwise great

firesplash-entertainment 2018-05-12 01:14

Hey there :) Nice concept and well done but I found it very hard to enter the tricks at the right time as you got to use tricks quickly after each other...