ucsbdad 2021-10-04 19:46
I really liked the look of it, and the controls took some time to get used to but felt great once I was used to it.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → Unstable platformer thing
By floppadev
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 879 | 3.42 | 22 | |
| Fun | 628 | 3.52 | 22 | |
| Innovation | 1067 | 3.00 | 21 | |
| Theme | 876 | 3.40 | 22 | |
| Graphics | 1094 | 3.19 | 23 | |
| Humor | 601 | 3.17 | 19 | |
| Mood | 614 | 3.52 | 20 |
I really liked the look of it, and the controls took some time to get used to but felt great once I was used to it.
The game was fun and worth the try, the controls are hard and I was confused when I jumped beside a wall and barely go up. Nice thing that we have respawn points, some of the games didn't had that.
I manage to get to level 3, I'll retry later
pretty adictive but a rough difficulty curve, I got frustrated towards the end of one of the levels. controls are pretty tight and easy to get the hang of. I had to squint to tell the difference between the red platforms and red lava. overall it was a fun quick game to play through!
Nice difficult game !
hard but fun! I wish there was a timer so you know how much time you have left until you explode.
Good game. I like the general mechanics. The music are well chosen. I just wish a timer too cause my character pops and i don't see why. But overall is a very good game. Good job
I like how you can choose your path through the levels at some parts. The jump is a bit floaty though, which made it hard to control.
The levels are challenging and generally fun. The timer seems to only start when you jump, which is a little bit confusing than a continuous timer. It seems like the game has coyote jump and buffered jump, although the buffered jump doesn't have the height of a normal jump which is weird. But assuming the jump system design is intentional, if the jump curve / gravity were to improve, the game can be a really good platformer. Good job.
Greetings to fellow platformer developer! :) Nice platformer game! I liked character controls and peanuts mechanic. Surfaces are hard to read - some red stuff you can satnd on, and the next red stuff kills you. Cool soundtrack. Great job overall!
I liked the puzzle twist on the platforming. Felt like you could approach levels in different ways if you wanted to. My one criticism is that I'd like a bit more heads up about how many moves I have left. I know that when I'm red I have one move left but would be nice to know a bit earlier than that. Great work :)
Well... that was certainly something. I finally beat it. This is probably going to be quite a long review, so strap in.
I will first talk about things I liked, and then talk about things I disliked. (By the way, for reference my time was ~28 minutes, so I spent a long time with this game).
Things that I liked: The controls were pretty solid. A little floaty at times, but nothing too bad. The dash felt really good too, and you could do some pretty cool maneuvers with it. I enjoyed how you could do the double jump no matter where you were in the air. It made for much more interesting gameplay than if you could only do it when traveling upwards with your first jump. The levels were very well thought out, and with a bit of polish they could be great, and could fit in a full game.
Now, let me get on to the things I dislike. Don't take this as me saying your game was bad - because it wasn't. These are just things that I would change. I play platformers, and consider myself good at them, so please don't take offense to anything I'm saying, I'm just being critical. The biggest problem by far was the unforgiving nature of the game. It felt like I wasn't the one making mistakes, but I would be killed anyways. The spikes hitboxes were too big, I would walk off of a platform with a spike on the side and immediately die, I would get to the end of the level, almost touch the win condition, and explode, things like that. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand that this is a LD game and you only had a limited amount of time to work on this. But, things like this just ruin a players experience. So, with a fair amount of balancing you could have a game that feels good to play. My other issue was that I didn't know what the game was trying to achieve - it had an "identity crisis". Was the game supposed to be a precision puzzle platformer, where the challenge was figuring out where to go, or was it trying to be a split second decision making action game, where the fun/challenge was making last second decisions and barely surviving? And that's an issue many games suffer from, not just yours (mine suffers from this too, don't worry). The problem was that I wanted to take my time to figure out how to complete a certain section of the level, but I couldn't take that time due to the character being "unstable". This led to many moments where I was stressing out because I knew I didn't have any time left, but I still wanted to be able to progress which resulted in me not being able to make any progress. So, your levels should reflect what your game is trying to be. In your case, I think it would be better as a split-second choices kind of platformer. (But that's just my opinion, take it or leave it). The third biggest issue was just how hard the levels were. They felt like they were supposed to be at the very finale of a game, but I was just at the beginning. That, in theory, is a simple fix. Just make the levels get progressively more difficult. However, in practice it is not so simple. This is where playtesting is essential. Obviously, because this was a game jam, that would not be possible, but, if you plan on expanding this game, you NEED to do playtesting to make sure your game is balanced.
This is by far the longest review I've written on any game so far. And I've written about 45... However, that goes to show that your game has a lot of potential. I wouldn't have taken the time to write this if I didn't think that. So, congratulations of making this game, and really getting me to think about what makes a good platformer! I wish you well on your gamedev in the future.
It's a little bit hard to tell when you actually start becoming unstable, and when you are close. I know the color changes and you are unstable as soon as you jump or dash, but either a sound or a bar/meter would be nice to tell how close I am.
Besides that, well done!
Very tight platformer, it was difficult but easy to get back into at a loss. Reminding me of the random flash games I would play on school computers as a kid.