I'm doing a Game in a Game Jam

Balladeer wrote:

I KNOW THE COOOOOOODE

Aha! You think you do... who's to say the keypad is for the door that that particular code is also for?* (this is more obvious in the game; I want it to be puzzle-y but not unfairly obscure like the olden days)

Balladeer wrote:

Aw bugger, sorry to read that Jim. Hope your head's all better?

It is. Just in time for boring work stuff.



*I hope the dialogue in the final game is better than that bloody sentence

BAMBOOZLED AGAIN

Ain’t that always the way.

I like the aesthetic, Jim! Sorry to hear about your health troubles though.

Only 3.5 weeks later than it should have been

LIGHTS OFF, LOCKS LOCKED

Woo! Well done Mr. Bob. Definitely going to give this a play...

...if I can. The Windows icon next to the executable worries me. I wasn't able to play my colleague's one-level platformer due to owning a Mac.

I'll definitely check this out Jim - thanks for sharing it with us!

Alright folks - let me know how it goes. I think I'll carry on with this - I'm already in that "guy looking at other woman" meme about the other projects I had ideas for.

I might also be able to build an iOS version - I need to check through with Unity, but I really would like to wait until I decide to work on the bigger version before I do that.

Just seen this! (That's what I get for disappearing most of last year)

I'll give this a play next time I'm on a windows pc and let you know how it goes

Well that's great Mr. Rakoon, many thanks. Although I would assume that I've moved onto another project in an attempt to actually finish something that could be called "complete".

I played it through (and kept my job!), it was cool! I like the concept, almost at times a reversal of the standard adventure videogame collecting keys for doors (as you're trying to lock them up and leave rather than unlock and get through them). The ordering of getting everything turned off and cleared was simple but not trivial and satisfying in a tidying up kind of way. I liked the central concept of rooms going pitch black - the puzzle of fumbling in the dark for the light switch tied in very well and was intuitively set up. Keyboard/mouse controls were slightly awkward but it looks like it was intended for an xbox pad so fair play. The text scrolled pretty quickly so I missed a lot of it as I wasn't honed in on it constantly - maybe it was because you could overwrite one line immediately by triggering another? What I did read seemed pretty quippy. I also think the character move a little fast and loose (and I accidentally jumped once!) but it wasn't a huge detriment given the gameplay not being traversal focused. Movement feel is the kind of thing you could spend a whole game jam on alone!

Well I'll certainly take that! The movement is a bit janky (at least before uploading the prototype, I fixed the bug where your man can jump, hit his head on a door frame, fall, and not get up!) and if I was going back to it I'd change the way text works - I'm not a fan of pausing for cutscenes and would rather e.g. Valve's way of adding the dialogue as you go, but I'd make more of an effort to force things to be spread out.

I nearly did some of my actual new project, but didn't

Oh yep, this. Sadly the Windows icon next to the executable was a sign of things to come. My next 'phone is likely to be Android, so I'll have to remember to try it again at that point.

You can have different icons for my next project, but you'll have to be an official playtester.

Jimbob wrote:

I fixed the bug where your man can jump, hit his head on a door frame, fall, and not get up!

This does sound genuinely funny though

OrangeRakoon wrote:

Ialmost at times a reversal of the standard adventure videogame collecting keys for doors (as you're trying to lock them up and leave rather than unlock and get through them).

This morning I LOLd at "Anti-Metroidvania"!

Then I realised you may have come up with the best idea for a game that there has been for a long long time.

Guys. Guys. How about a game where you play as the person who has to put all the weapons, tools and power-ups into a MetroidVania-esque landscape? So you start off with everything, and can easily traverse landscapes as you have the gear to essentially access the shortcuts that the game would give you. Then the challenge ramps up in the later (earlier) levels as you are gradually relieving yourself of the items.

That sounds genuinely great

Do it!

That sounds belting. The map would have to be tight and compact to prevent frustration but it could be absolute quality.

I'd love to see you try it Jim. Only thing is, I don't know how you'd prevent people going everywhere from the start. Or maybe that's the goal? Then you'd need to make sure they can get to every remaining lock with every combination of remaining items...

...rather you than me!

Nah, if it's a small enough game, the trick would be that once you ditch some items, you can't get to the right place for others, so you need to figure out the right order.

Aye that is a brilliant idea!

Ah, so the idea is that you replay it time and again to work out the best order? That could work. I'm guessing it would see you having to go back and pick up the items you dropped off when you realise you've got it wrong.

Yeah, you guys have got it. You wouldn't replay it, it'd just be obvious that you can't get somewhere without an object you've deposited, so you can go and pick it up again. Plus a load of modern Metroidvanias have some plot device which heavily implies which way to go, so if someone wants to "sequence break" and snookers themselves, that's their problem. And actually designing it would be quite straight-forwards, you just create a regular Gear-Gate-y environment and make them do it backwards.
I'm properly considering abandoning my "quick" game idea to start on this...

Hi all - I actually opened up Unity for the first time in 3 months, and I've come back to this to essentially check my own notes! I'll be honest, I'm reading the above, and... I'm not sure how I can make that work. I don't know how to make dropping the power-ups a puzzle, other than making the journey back to the hub world more difficult. Otherwise, I assume you'd just not put anything down until you'd 100%ed all the rest of the stuff. I'm worried how to make it compelling, and also worried that I'd have to spend ages making an entire thing before I discovered it wasn't!

Might go back to another idea...

Uh-oh, triple post, "nobody cares Bill" - right, I'm back making stuff, and the project I'm working on is...

Lights Off Locks Locked again. Mainly because, as mundane and boring as the game is, I hate leaving detritus on websites, and wanted to make a proper dent on itch.io.

The other change, an exciting engine change for all future game projects... to PICO-8. Mainly because

• I'm only drawing shitty graphics and making bleepy-bloop sounds anyway
  
• The size limitations of the "hardware" mean I keep to small manageable/silly projects like I want to do anyway (I can always jump into Unity in case I need to create a commerical "Ultimate edition" of something)
  
• Legit good reason, you don't have to have a copy of the "console" to play it, and I can make it work in browser, and I think also a stand-alone app you can play or Windows, the Apple one, and even whatever Linux is
  

I think a browser engine also just makes it more likely that people will pick-up-and-play your game. Not always (looks guiltily at Unawakening), but sometimes. Also, executable files sometimes don't work on Macs.

Also the prototype for Celeste was a Pico-8 game so it's okay in my book.