Can you escape...
About
NIN is an stylized action-platformer I have been working on for the past 3 months. The game has 32 screens and takes around 30-40 minutes to complete. I had a lot of fun making this game over the past few months (although trying to keep within the token limit was very challenging towards the end). It has been a very rewarding and experience using pico 8 and pushing myself to see what I can create with it.
Gameplay
The goal of the game is to escape the lab you are trapped in as quickly as possible. The game features challenging platforming and blood filled action. The player is equipped with a sword and a ground pound, both of which can be used to help tackle obstacles in your way. There are also extra challenging coins to collect along the way which unlock a secret if you collect them all...
Controls
⬅️➡️ to move
⬇️ to ground pound
❎ to jump
🅾️ to attack
Extra
There are also extra challenges to complete for secret palette swaps and a timer option for anyone who wants to try and beat the game as quickly as possible. I managed to narrow my time down to just over four minutes but that is definitely beatable.
Downloads/CRT mode
I also have a version on itch.io with downloads for Windows, Mac, Raspberry Pi and Linux as well as a browser version with a CRT filter.
I hope you enjoy!
nice vibe and atmpsphere. But jumping mechanic is unresponsive as hell. And jumping is the main mechanic of the game. If you'll fix it then it will be a great game. But right now it's painfull to play
@ran4erep Thanks for playing and the feedback. I'll try tweaking the jump buffer values in the game to make it more responsive. Just wanted to check if you meant more so the wall jump or just jumping in general?
@OlieB123 I mean jumping from the walls. It's unintuitive. I losing momentum while wall jumping. Sometimes character just starts to move in the opposite direction (back to the wall). It's hard to describe what exactly happens with each wall jump
Pretty fun! I love the limited palette, the fact that red is the only actual color makes it stand out even more. The blood effects are a cool visual effect too. I liked the boss fights, but I'll say that I think having a single hit point doesn't lend itself especially well to combat. Still, the enemies all felt fair to fight.
I think I agree with @ran4erep that the jump doesn't feel right, but I don't think I'd say it's unresponsive - if anything, it's too responsive. The player doesn't seem to conserve momentum much at the height of their jump, they immediately start plummeting. Usually a small increase in gravity while falling is a good idea, but I think it's exaggerated here (assuming you are actually increasing gravity, I haven't looked at your code). This is even more noticeable with the fact that letting go of the jump button cancels out almost all of your vertical momentum. It's nice to have variable jump height, but variable wall jump height is much harder to control. It took me a while to realize I should be holding down C while wall jumping to get as much distance as possible (I died probably 100 times on one wall jump puzzle because of it).
My suggestion would be to make the increase in gravity accumulate a little less quickly when you're falling, and to make every wall jump give you the same height, no matter when you let go of C (the actual max fall speed is fine where it is). I did get the hang of jumping after a bit, but it probably took longer than it should have for most games.
Anyways, your game is really cool. The visuals, music, and levels all complement each other nicely. Here's my final time and death tally:
@ooooggll Thanks a ton for all the feedback. I agree the jumping is probably too responsive and I will try tweaking some of the values to get them feeling smoother.
The wall jump giving you the same height each time is a great suggestion I just assumed that you would want to give variable height for it as well but I see how having the wall jump give the same height would make sense.
I'm glad you liked all of the visuals I was really going for a strong vibe throughout.
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