Alright, I think it’s time for some post-compo thoughts.

First off,  I must say there are a lot of really amazing games this LD and I’m hoping to work my way through all the ‘em if I can (I’ve rated or commented on ~70 so far).

I’ll write up a full postmortem sometime in the next while, but overall I’m very happy with how it went. Everything really just fit together and I managed to do a whole lot in the 48 hours, and so far I’m getting some pretty positive feedback (and the bytejacker article just made my week ).

This whole experience has really gotten me thinking, in the past I’ve focused on really large, long-term projects projects; and while they may have nice clean code and cool technical buzzwords under the hood, this 48hr game is quite a bit more enjoyable than my previous ~1yr effort. I’m thinking I’ll stop/slow working on my current long-term project and keep making little projects like this every couple weeks or so, the instant feedback (a couple days of coding and you know if it’s a good/bad concept rather than a couple months….) and the variety is really great.

I am still working on Island Hopping, I just now got an online high score thing working (the game doesn’t read the data back yet, but my current build uploads the data correctly) and I’m playing with some PHP/SQL stuff to make the scores/stats display nicely online.

I should have another build with high scores and such up in a few days.

Also on the todo are: better difficulty curve-age, allowing you to turn off the music (also, perhaps some better music…), some gameplay tweaks (maybe combos for the red islands, or more types of powerups, etc), lots of UI tweaks, a tutorial, etc. And after all else is working, I might whip up a fancy water shader as a high quality option…

And I have some comment responses:

AClockWorkLemon says …

fun concept, and really quite addicting. nice work!

Thanks!

smn says …

Fun concept indeed! The only problem I have with this game is interpreting the platforms as islands, but it works with some abstract thinking :3 Good stuff!

Haha, yeah it’s a bit of a stretch, but my art skills don’t include palm trees and such…

brian says …

Very nice graphically, very clear what you’re meant to do, just incredibly buggering hard to do so! Good fun but too hard due to the controls.

Thanks! and yeah I really need to tweak the controls/difficulty… (the updated version is a bit better, but I’m gonna be tweaking  it for a while…)

kplbe says …

Very nice 3d graphics, very fun, a bit too hard. Good work for a 48 hours short time

Thanks! and yep seeing a pattern here with the difficulty…

madk says …

Way too hard to get into. The learning curve is a cliff.

Ouch, but it does seem to be true… I’m workin’ on it

Daz says …

You *really* gimped the jumping, and that’s what killed the game for me. Not so much the aiming or timing, but the falling miserably short on every single platform I attempted… sad. My highest combo was a measly 4 islands.

I’m hoping the update with double jumping helps at least a bit, but yeah the jumping and handling still have a ways to go…

Tenoch says …

Very nice looking albeit simple. Pretty hard, though, and the first straight line is maybe a bit long, since we die and start over every 3 islands
Music is clean but a bit repetitive. Overall quite well polished.

Thanks! I might trim the start platform down a bit then. And yeah, I made the music in LMMS in about 20 mins (haha, and the fact that I’ve never played an instrument probably doesn’t help in my music generation skills…)

Cooshinator says …

Fun and addictive, but needed a smoother difficulty curve

I’m trying to smooth it now

Tyler says …

Madly addicting. If you continue this, I would consider allowing players to use their own music

Yeah, I’m definitely adding a toggle to the music for the next version…

tembac says …

Best game I tried so far. Really adictive!!!

Thanks!

xeon06 says …

Very fun game, reminded me a bit of Counter-Strike bunny hopping. Music got repetitive very quickly though. If you ever keep on working on this, I’d love a online high score.

Thanks! the music will be toggleable in the next version and I’m working on online high score right now.

eli says …

TONS of fun!!!!!!

The music really got me in the mood, but it got old quick.

Great idea, having the different difficulty settings. I was able to master “Easy” before moving on.

Excellent work.

Thanks! Definitely seeing a pattern with the music, I might search for something nicer online now that the compo is over, in addition to letting the player toggle it.

pekuja says …

I played the original version, and while it was difficult, it was also a ton of fun. One of my favorite entries so far. The graphics are very simple, but they do their job very well. The music is repetitive but not annoying. What the game does sorely miss though is a high score table. Preferrably online high score table. I haven’t played the double jump version yet, so maybe it’s not that big of a deal there, but what I thought could had helped with the difficulty is if you had a minimap that you could refer to, especially for long jumps where you’re staring at the sky. Frankly though, I think maybe you should limit the player’s vision or just make looking up not do anything, because that’s a bit of an annoying thing to have to do. My best score was 49700. I got close to that on other runs, but on that run I got a 4x multiplier followed by a decent combo, so I got lucky a bit.
Oh, I guess the game also really needs a tutorial. It’s not obvious that you have to tilt your view to affect your jump height.
I hope you keep working on this. I’m going to download the double jump version now and play some more.

Thanks for the in-depth feedback! The high score table is on the way, and I’m working on tweaking all the controls and things, and good point on having a tutorial, I’ll add that to the list

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 29th, 2010 at 10:47 pm and is filed under LD #17 - Islands - 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.