kitty platformer
This game looks good, but the gameplay is downright irritating. Your map punishes the player repeatedly for failing at mechanics that are themselves thoroughly unreliable. On top of that, there's sections where it's unclear what the player can even do. In that first spring maze, my first impression was that the game softlocked. Then on the second one the kitty kept getting lodge in one of the walls. That lack of clarity then makes the lack of instructions come across more as the game being incomplete rather than intentional.
I think the sheer amount that the wall jump is required is especially egregious. I played for a full hour, and I never once got the sense that I was able to control when the wall jump did or didn't trigger, nor any understanding of what determines that distance that the wall jump goes.
lol. im super aware that this plays AWFULLY. i showed it to a friend and sat with them for 90 minutes watching them play through the whole thing while slowly losing their will to live. afterward they gave me a review of "i think i'd rather be waterboarded". after that i did try to make an alternate map which was not so frustrating, but i couldn't fit in everything i wanted to while preserving the feel of the original tower, so i decided to just shelf it.
i doubt i'll ever be updating this, i haven't actually touched this cart in any way for over a month and i made it mostly for myself (and had fun doing it). i just came back across it today and figured i'd rather it be stored here where anyone can go back and see it, instead of leaving it to be forgotten somewhere in a folder on my pc. but i do still appreciate any feedback on this since it's likely something i never noticed myself and i might be able to apply it to future projects.
to anyone else who decides to suffer through this game: if you get frustrated at any point, feel free to press enter and choose "toggle noclip" from the menu to skip a section - you're probably not missing out on much :p
I understand the feeling that you've just had enough of a project. I hope you are able to apply the lessons learnt while making this elsewhere.
The procedurally animated background with the clouds, rain, wind, lightning and twinkling animated stars is gorgeous.
Thank you for including the "noclip" option so we can experience the whole thing.
The boss is adorable and I feel guilty about... whatever the "x" key does to it? It separates into a thousand tiny adorable green bosslets wearing pink ribbons that drift across the land firing really annoying tiny green projectiles at people? Let's go with that.
If you ever do revisit the programming of the walljump, something seemed asymmetric in the room below. I was able to get up the left-hand side, but not the right-hand side. I was able to press the button on the right, but only by jumping to the upper left-hand platform and then across the roof.
These blocks didn't seem to do anything. Possibly I had skipped something I needed to press by earlier use of noclip.
I really liked the final step of going down again carrying the key, but this column had appeared.
But please don't feel obliged to open this up again if you just want to move on. I had some fun exploring it, and thank you for uploading it.
thanks for playing through! i'm glad someone encountered the boss.
for anyone wondering about the boxes (i admit, it might be a little too difficult to figure out by yourself, and i probably should have given in and left some sort of instruction):
i did encounter the bug of that platform not disappearing when it was supposed to, was something to do with the order the buttons are pressed. i changed the layout of the level by getting rid of the offending button so that it wouldn't happen but i guess it's still possible somehow?
This is really cool, the pixel art and everything, but p a i n.
#sodi-0 is the kind of game that would get a the angry video game nerd video,
just because of its insane reflex challenges and its color contrast issues.
it is deceptively easy to make a bad platformer.
i think my first pico-8 game will be a brick breaker.
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