2021-10-03 06:04
Solid 3D platformer with good controls. A little to easy and randomness leads to issues with levels that may not be beatable.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → Jenry Javelina
By pbg
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 109 | 3.84 | 44 | |
| Fun | 62 | 3.94 | 44 | |
| Innovation | 297 | 3.26 | 44 | |
| Theme | 128 | 3.97 | 44 | |
| Graphics | 249 | 3.48 | 44 | |
| Audio | 108 | 3.64 | 44 | |
| Humor | 134 | 3.23 | 39 | |
| Mood | 257 | 3.24 | 43 |
Solid 3D platformer with good controls. A little to easy and randomness leads to issues with levels that may not be beatable.
@sologk thanks! The game is currently still developing - I agree that it is WAAAY to easy right now. I've already added a feature where the blocks fall after you touch them - it ups the difficulty significantly. I also need to work on level randomization - it definitely results in unbeatable scenarios.
i don't know why but i loved the player character design, it's really cute
I like the graphics (Especially the character) and the controls. I played 7 attempts and couldn't really make it more than a few jumps into the first level. The platforms fell faster than I could climb them and I couldn't jump far enough. This has promise though and I like where its going. Nice work! I think its cool that you are responding to feedback from players too.
Was really hard until I figured you could climb the walls by spamming Z. I enjoyed it, well done!
@fabdynamic thanks for the feedback! It's on the challenging side, for sure. Make sure to climb too - you have the ability to climb short distances. If i take my time, I can usually beat it. I also implemented a "try again" prompt, so people can eventually muscle their way through.
Overall it's a pretty good game. The only thing I'll say is that I think the stamina should last a bit longer.
I quite enjoyed this game even if it was fairly simple. Managed to beat it with only one death!! I was kinda hoping that the different levels would have something different to it, apart from them being longer. Either way, great entry and good use of the theme!
The movement in this felt super clean, loved the 8 directional movemnent. Had me laughing.
@toby1645 I really struggled with the stamina. I wanted climbing to be a last-resort type thing, since if you have too much stamina you can just muscle your way straight to the goal. It's really a level-design problem, though.
@goldenevolution wow! I did manage to squeak out a no-death run once, but i also made it :). Nice job! I had really wanted to mix up the level design more, but i of course ran out of time. I was envisioning a curving mountain range, or even spiraling up a mountain, but of course that didnt happen.
Really fun! Love the use of sound effects!!
Nice movement, cute character, definitely on theme with the falling blocks. Great entry.
One of the coolest and most different ideas I've seen at the jam. Very well executed, very nice gameplay. Sound effects are very satisfying. At the beginning I was finding it very difficult, once you understand how it works, it gets really good. When you understand that you need to manage stamina everything makes sense. Excellent game. Congratulations!
@gabrielgamedev thanks a ton! I was hoping people would catch on to the stamina management. Thanks for playing.
Nice game PBG :) at first I thought the perspective was a bit confusing, but I got used to it quite fast, and playing was actually very fun! The endless mode is a nice addition too!
Really nice background music :D
The game is solid and nicely shows a proof of concept for a game mechanic.
Well done!
@wafflesys thanks for the compliment! That was me shredding my guitar desperately in the final hours of the compo lol.
@delta-key yea, the camera controls are not great. If i get some time for a post-jam version i would like to add mouse controls for true WASD-mouse control, or gamepad controls.
I enjoyed this game. Nice sounds effects and colors.
A few notes:
- Having manual camera control or placing it behind and higher up would help with depth perception / knowing how far away the next block is (can I make the jump?). The top-down view trades off being able to see further into the level ahead for more understanding of distance between blocks. Since being able to look ahead does not seem to play as an important role as being able to judge distances, I think the camera should be angled somewhat downward (above and behind the player).
- Another solution to depth issues is to have better lighting with shadows cast from blocks and the player onto other blocks (not just directly below the player (but keep that too)).
- The depth issue is not as big as in other platformers because in this one you can land on the side of a block and climb it, making it more forgiving.
- Since the view is often filled with a block (when climbing it), any texturing on the blocks would have helped me understand how i'm moving up or down when climbing (height perception). Horizontal stripes (slightly darker shade of the color) would perhaps work, although i'm not sure it's the best (would have to test it to know). The particle effect did help though, since I could tell I was sliding down because of it.
- Sometimes the camera would bug out and wiggle back and forth rapidly for a bit at the starting platform (not a big issue / rare).
- Sometimes I would move through the cactus and it would not register the collision (also not a big issue).
Well done.
Hey, not bad! Apparently I played it for over 20 minutes ('till the end!). Felt a bit like Saints Row IV! (Which I enjoyed back then, that's a compliment :wink:)
My biggest gripe is that the four levels felt like the same. I am not sure there is any difference between them, to be honest. Anyway, no big deal, but if the game has multiple levels I expect some variation, even if just increasing difficulty.
But kudos and thanks for making this game!
@lmb there are small differences, but I agree it's too samey. The levels do get a little longer and steeper, but that's it. It does get dramatically steeper in endless mode, but it's not enough. I had planned to have turns and a little more variety, but I got caught up in the basics.
@caiustsm thanks for the feedback! Camera is a big issue. First thing I want to do in a post jam version is implement some camera controls. I agree that the lighting sucks - the engine I'm using does not have any canned solutions for lighting, and this was the best I could do at this point. Casting shadows from the blocks would really help with depth perception, as would textures. The dust effects, as you noted, were my quick way to indicate contact. Thanks for the tips!
A frantic game where pathing is important! The climbing mechanic is great for erring on the player's side.
This was fun! It's just simple platforming but it's tight and fun. I didn't have any issues with the camera or depth perception, although I did have an issue where i was trying to save myself from falling after getting stuck on a low platform, so I tried to turn around and backtrack but the camera turning around disoriented me and I died.
The current camera works pretty good as long as you're just moving forward but a manual camera would definitely be better.
Really cute and fun! I kind of wish there was more opportunity to climb around things -- Like if there were some walls that extended up into the sky that you had to climb around. Overall a great jam game though!
Simple effective and very fun ! The camera is a bit glitchy, but that's a good prototype!
So simple and yet so fun, played for 1000 seconds straight (15 mins) couldnt beat lvl 4 though.
The game looks good, controls are steady, and the music doesnt get boring or intrusive.
And I absolutely love the little thumping of the hooves on the ground, there is something about it that makes you wanna run around and hear it over and over.
The climbing is awesome an gives you sometimes a chance to escape after making a mistake.
Solid work, reminds me of the good old games.
Controls are really solid, but they did work against me a few times (Jenry wasn't a big fan of jumping again after I just walked off a pillar instead of jumping first, but that's on me) I like Jenry's look as well! Maybe such a voxel look would be nice for the pillars as well.
I really like the feeling of jumping from rock to rock. I would've liked a bit more stamina just to be able to jump around a bit more. Nice game mechanics. Well done!
Cute character with overall great style and understandable, simple and fun gameplay! Felt great to be jumping around - sometimes it was a little difficult to estimate the distance from one pillar to the next so I fell down .. a lot :D
Great entry!
Some sweet guitar playing! Fun little game easy to pick up and jump with. Took me a second to find out I could wall jump. Enjoyed my time playing it great job!
I love this game so much. It seems so simple yet the controls feel good and you just want to reach the end so badly. I finished it and couldn't believe there were only 4 levels ahah but it did the trick as I finished it properly and felt good about it. Maybe just an idea could be an endless mode with a score system? Anyway congrats :).
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@glaikunt thanks for noticing my shredding! It was a desperate move in the final hours to get some music.
Jenry's design is cute, and the game fits the theme well.
I think that the music should be louder. It is a bit too quiet relative to the jump sound.
An on-screen indictator pointing to the objective would be nice.
I feel that the jump needs to be higher and go further. I kept missing jumps because it felt like I would go farther.
The camera tends to take bad angles or positions. Either too low which makes gauging jumps hard or behind a platform blocking the player's view.
Overall, I think this could turn out to be a fun platformer.
Thanks @ldjq ! I chickened out on making the music louder - music tends to be my weakest area in game making, and I downplay it allot. I had actually considered a crazy-taxi-like pointer that would show you where the end was, but I just didn't get around to it.
I agree that the camera is not up to the task. It's not horrendous, but it could be better. I'm gonna play with it a bit.
I'm not crazy about the jump arc - it is simultaneously really short but also floaty. Generally, I don't like making giant super Mario jumps in 3d games - I think they are really hard to get right, and it often ends up being really sloppy unless you know exactly what you are doing (and I don't). Still, I would like something that is snappier.
Thanks for giving it a go!
Had a lot of fun playing this one. The controls feel great, the game is challenging but enjoyable, the music and sound design are great! The main thing that bothered me was that it was often hard to see how far a given platform was gonna be, but I don't know how I would address this issue.
Ok, one, Jenry is an amazing name. Secondly, really fun game! Surprisingly satisfying to play.
The character is cute and the controls are very responsive. Well done. Only the camera confused me a bit at first, but it worked out after some time.
That was a lot of fun to tried it out. I like the guitar soundtrack. Javelina looks cute. My only complaint will be that sometime block were in front of my view, beside that well done!
Very fun game, had a blast playing through! I love that you managed to scope the difficulty just right to still be challenging, yet not too intimidating. The character of Jenry is weirdly original and recognizable, as is the name :D Great work all around!
This was way more fun than I was expecting. After about 30 seconds I thought "Okay I think I get it" but low and behold 15 minutes later I'm still trying to see how far I can get. I almost beat level 3/4 but could not manage.
I do wish there was a way to rotate the camera independent of movement, but once you get into the swing of the game the auomatic camera actually seemed to do a good enough job.
I BEAT IT! That was a fun idea. And great use of procedural generation. Mechanics were polished and I got the hang of it by level 4. Only issue was the dip in frame rate in later levels, but that won't affect my review so don't worry too much.
Woah what a fun game, with a cute character. I absolutely *loved* how the last level challenged every strategy I had adopted in the previous levels: suddenly I had to learn that my depth perception was not enough and I had to run a little on the side to understand the real distance to the next platform. The music seemed very on point with the struggle. I beat the game in 2040 sec and I couldn't stop playing.
Go Jenry!
I had a lot of fun with it, there's something adorable about it. Although sometimes I feel that randomness played against me I didn't mind giving it another try, because it was very inviting and responsive.
@kumber @zuhairghias nice! its pretty tough, im happy to see people beating it!
@kumber I really need to texture the blocks or something - its tough to tell where these textureless blocks are.
@binaryprinciple thanks! its not a great randomization algorithm, it can really screw you over pretty often. thanks again!
That's a pretty fun game and as others already mentioned, the character looks adorable.
The fact that I was laughing out loud before even starting is a great sign! I love the theme, colors, and that you had real music in it. One thing that would be fun to try is to make Jenry (and the camera) follow the mouse cursor, so that it would be more fluid and they keyboard could be just for jump and run. And a powerup to make him fly for a bit, since who doesn't love flying pigs, well javelinas...
Nice game! I really enjoyed the gameplay. The camera movement was bit slow for me, but that's just a preference. Good job!