JusTiCe8 Glad you had some fun with it πŸ™‚

For short jumps down you should decide in advance if you're gonna go with a parachute and activate it immediately (like a double tap down). On long falls you can wait until the last moment to open a chute so you get down faster if need be.

Game's spatial relations are kept from the original prototype which had very tiny sprites. The new ones are about x2 bigger. It doesn't look realistic but imho still works well from gameplay standpoint. I didn't want to touch the original "geometry" of the map because the play rhythm you get from it was quite satisfying.

The initial version I released back in the day was somewhat of a minor underground hit, especially loved by people who do game design, but the indie climate was different back then. There was quite a bit of discussion on things you mentioned (auto parachutes, cross-layer collisions...) and I tried many of suggested alternatives but none worked for the better so I kept the initial design for the most part.

For example, limiting collisions with enemies only to the same layer sounds reasonable in theory but in practice, due to very fast pace, it can result in many confusing situations where you die "suddenly" because it's wasn't apparent that a layer transition took place during a jump. Bringing all collisions into a single plane regardless of the layer, proved to work best from player's perspective. Also, distancing the layers vertically so that enemies don't "stick" above would impede the perception of obvious safe roundabout paths.

Most interventions that novice players tend to suggest would actually dilute the main three-option choice in the short term gameplay loop:

  • do I go via safe roundabout path (spending more time, and more mental effort to "calculate" the path)
  • do I go on direct but more dangerous path
  • should I use resources to make the path safer/faster

Game's design intentionally breaks some of the common platformer tropes. If you jump into it expecting a standard platformer behavior, you'll immediately want to issue an objection πŸ™‚ But stick with it some more until those expectations evaporate and you may enter a very pleasant zone. Some people find it quite addictive.

Btw, level 5 is still in the beginner ballpark. My wife who doesn't know what WASD means and only plays match 3 and hidden object games could reach level 10 after some practice πŸ™‚

I would be honored to test your game! I requested access on steam (user ID Squad Leader) with a flashing skull icon. Going to avoid reading posts on this thread till I can give it a thorough play through. I could also stream it to you (personally I find it very insightful to see people trying to figure out something I’ve put together).

  • xyz replied to this.

    Erich_L Hey Erich, good to hear from you. Please give it a go. It's a modest game but imho has some interesting mechanics. Looking forward to hear your thoughts.

    Just got access. Do you have to give access manually? Just curious. Will try it this weekend.

    • xyz replied to this.

      trizZzle Do you have to give access manually?

      Yes, I currently have it set up that way, but Steam's playtest features let you choose between that and automatic instant access.

      xyz I created a "Non-Godot Projects" tag. Not sure if it's the best name for it. But now there's at least something. Let me know what you think.

        I played it for a bit but never made it past level 6. Must be very stressfull in the later levels. 95% of the deaths were by falling. πŸͺ‚

        I noticed 2 things:

        Menu cannot be navigated with left stick (xbox one controller), only with d-pad.

        Some icons have borders, or are they there on purpose?

        Will try again with height indicator. πŸ˜ƒ How long will it be available for testing?

        • xyz replied to this.

          trizZzle Thanks! It gets easier with practice πŸ˜‰

          Yeah, menus can only be navigated via the pad. Not sure if it's customary to navigate by analog sticks.

          The texture wrap issue was reported by some testers. Could you share your hardware configuration, GPU in particular?

          The test will be available until the end of this month, so several more days.

            Ok! As you probably already know, you did a really great job on this and I can tell a lot of time went into it. Excellent choice of color, sound, and music. The spatial awareness required was intuitive to learn and well conveyed. It took me 30 minutes and one visit to the controls & instructions pages to actually figure out how to play. The most difficult aspect by far was remapping my brain from space -> open parachute to space -> fire bat. After figuring out how to play I enjoyed all the game play elements introduced. The only thing that slightly caused me distress was dying from beagles passing by; I don't think I'd actually die if a beagle wandered too far away.
            The steam achievements were also exactly what I expected and cute.
            I don't personally like side scrolling anything- but I persevered until coming up against the last enemy shown in the index (he smoked me good).

            I didn't encounter anything resembling a bug but I'm also an average PC windows user. Thanks for sharing and I was happy I could test!

            • xyz replied to this.

              Erich_L I don't think I'd actually die if a beagle wandered too far away

              Lol. It's 1980s gameplay logic. Back then they didn't have any sophistication. The only means of making some pressure was a threat of impending death πŸ™‚
              Here's a completely totally rational explanation, if you're willing to invest massive amounts of suspension of disbelief; When a beagle runs away, the lab will surely catch it back. The game character, who is an extreme dog lover, dies instantly from a combination of broken heart and guilt πŸ˜Άβ€πŸŒ«οΈ

              Thanks for giving it a go! From now on I'll be using "Approved by Erich_L" sticker on all branding materials πŸ˜‰

              xyz

              My system specs:
              Win11 Home 23H2
              NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER latest drivers
              AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor

              Now I'm wondering if those textures borders are hardware specific. I had a transparent texture for a grass mesh in a godot project and there was one edge that had a border though I'm pretty sure the texture was transparent on this edge and the uvs were set up correctly.

              • xyz replied to this.

                trizZzle It's definitely hardware specific. It happens when texture wrapping is enabled and edge pixels are not fully transparent, regardless of correct (0-1) UVs. So far it was reported with some Intel integrated cards. May be related to anti-aliasing settings and/or running a display at non native resolutions. Weird that you got it on this nvidia gpu.

                  xyz Anti-aliasing mode was set to application-controlled, which is the default. When I set it to off the borders disappear.

                  MikeCL I feel really uncomfortable about a non-godot project tag (I know it feels good to organize everything) but if xyz weren’t part of this community I would be annoyed with the post. We have off-topic and general threads which seem more than adequate.

                  @xyz I am going to have to try and make an approval sticker haha

                  • xyz replied to this.

                    Erich_L There actually isn't "off-topic" tag or I couldn't find it so I initially put it under "community". The thread is totally off topic but I think it doesn't go against forum rules. If it does, please remove it @MikeCL. My only intent was getting a few more testers. I'd actually prefer if people used the feedback thread on Steam instead of writing here.

                    Anyways, the testing will finish in couple of days, we'll let the thread die and you'll be able to sleep peacefully again Erich, but not before we see them approval sticker designs πŸ˜‰

                      xyz My only intent was getting a few more testers

                      Thank you for that, if you haven't did it, I would have missed a great game, truly. It's great to have a 80s style game made with modern capabilities without compromising the design.

                      It's hard at first but it's easy to get caught and play over and over, and by the way, some achievements are super tough (like skyline one as there is always a bad situation when chute is needed on a level, that's so evil !)

                      • xyz replied to this.

                        JusTiCe8 Thanks. Glad you liked playing it. Yeah, there's a short initial learning period until things start to click. Most old arcade games that I took inspiration from were like this.

                        That achievement is not the easiest but still doable. Your best chance, obviously, is to do it on first 5 levels. First 3 levels still don't use maximal elevation range so you can almost always find a safe path and then endure for 2 more levels. The trick is to wait for a good layer constellation to "scroll in" if there isn't one at the current moment. Of course, if you wait too long you risk losing a beagle πŸ™‚

                        The playtest is closed now. Thanks to everyone who participated and gave feedback! I greatly appreciate it. If you guys want a key for the final release, message me and I'll sort you out. Thanks again!