Chuck the Adventure Duck is just a preview so far. It is my very first “published” game. All kinds of feedback is welcome! Especially critics that helps me further improve the game.
Thats really good. On a critical note - The controls felt slightly sluggish, and jumping for the first gold feather was a little too hard though.
Love the funky music 
Good luck with it!
AbsoluteBreeze, thanks for your reply. I know that the controls are not that easy. That was one of the parts I spent a huge amount of time on. But obviously it still needs work
Going for feathers has to be hard, that’s the intention. It was probably not the best idea to put that one as first, because you need to understand the controls to get it.
I like the funky music as well… It’s the only thing that is not by me
Thanks for your input!
I updated the game a little bit, just here and there a few modifications. I am curious about further feedback!
Well my second time playing it, and the movement feels a little quicker - although that could be my imagination.
I completed the level, but still didn’t get that first feather! lol.
I just asked my daughter (7 year old beta tester!) to have a play with it and she instinctively reached for the space bar to jump - which didn’t work, and I could tell after a few minutes that, she was getting frustrated with just using one hand on the arrow keys.
I’d agree with that assessment. There’s really no reason, with such a simple control scheme, not to double-map Jump to Up, W, and Spacebar, as well as A,S,D and Left, Down, and Up respectively. Configurable controls are essentially a fix for that, but intuiting the default control scheme does a great deal for a player’s initial impression which, for smaller casual titles like this, is absolutely critical.
This is why changes to things like that first gold feather are so critical. You want those first moments to be a frustration free blast so they’ll stick around long enough to learn the controls deeper and, once then invested, stick around for the whole game.
But yeah, fun little title. Left other feedback in response to your Support thread, as I wasn’t able to provide much technical assistance.
Apart from these things.
Why can the platforms be broken. That really seems like an unneccesary hurdle for the player. Having to restart the section is also something I couldn’t understand. From a players perspective that is really frustrating and kinda uncalled for.
And yeh the controls are a bit weeeeeeeee 
Also making it so hard to reach the last feather is kinda unfair. I have one chance, time is ticking and I have this giant pit that I couldn’t see beforehand, so I fall and don’t want to go back.
Overall I feel that you might need to reconfigure your idea of the game being “challenging” against it being “unfair/overly hard”. There’s quite a difference between these 2.
If you should want a helping hand with some of the gfx, I’d be glad to help !
I sense cuteypie potential - a rolling chicken egg can’t go wrong - all you would have to is, make the platforms non-destructable
Agreed on the platform destruction. I appreciate the physics, but it was frustrating.
One small tiny, in your intro you spelled “hatch” as “hetch.”
You happened to inspire me to make a blog post, and I’ll probably mention Chuck as an example in the following post as well. Figured you’d like to know.
AbsoluteBreeze, you are absolutely right. I will never ever understand why anyone wants to jump with the spacebar, but I definitely have to add that :-). Last week I though about that too, but as the input manager didn’t allow me to add a third key, I left it away. Bad decision for not to add a few lines of code. Thanks!
WannaDev, I share your opinion. At the end I didn’t have enough time to spend on the level design, so it ended up like that.
Acumen, I have a few ideas where you have to break platforms. That’s why it actually exists. I will probably add a different kind of platforms that is not breakable. I got that input from a few more people as well.
In my opion the controls have to be weeeeeeeeee :-). I tried different things, very good response to player inputs and the egg stops suddenly and just about any other variant. I ended up with that one, but I agree that it still needs to be improved.
Your point about challanging and unfair is also true. Unfortunately it was again the lack of time. I see that there are too many things that are not fair. They will be improved as soon as possible.
WannaDev, corrected the wrong spelling. Thanks, it’s about impossible for me to find such mistakes as english is not my mother tongue. Interesting blog post and as I mentioned it, I will certainly add spacebar for the jumping. I definitely need to focus more on such things!
Update: Now you can use spacebar to jump! And everyone should get the first feather 
Wrong spelling is also corrected.
No more time to improve at the moment. I am looking forward for further valuable feedback!
Excellent. I’ll ask Jessica (my daughter) to replay this tonight for her comments - now that the controls have changed,
I realise your not improving it at the moment - but some thoughts for the future…
- Instead of a sphere as the egg - use an egg model that wobbles as it moves. It would appear more fun to the eye
- If an egg drops too far - it should break! - ask humpty dumpty!
- Steam - a small spray of pulsating particle steam every now and then would be a good obstacle
- An Eagle - once or twice a level might swoop past to grab the egg.
Also, thinking about it - live eggs need to be kept warm, you could have a temperature bar that is affected when the egg goes on certain types of platform (ice?) - stay too long on the platform and the egg dies.
Anyhow, good luck with this!
All the best,
Tony
Tony, if Jessica has more productive criticism, I am going to add her to the credits :-).
I am actually improving it still, but it is just not visible. I had to make a few hacks in order to get it done. Before I continue with new functionality and other things, I have to clean the code. At the moment it consists of about 9000 lines of code, so I should be careful to get something reusable.
I very much like your ideas! I am aware that I have to add particles for certain effects and the egg should certainly break. The egale idea is new, I will probably do that, very interesting! I am not sure about the egg shape. The sphere shape is extremely stable. A wobbling egg would become harder to control and I am not sure if it could still be 100% physics driven, which would mean a lot of work. I know what you meant and it is valid, but I am not yet sure about that.
The temperature idea is interesting as well. Adding more ground types is a must anyway, like ice, grass or simple stones. Temperatures would fit very well in there.
Thanks a lot for that productive feedback. I appreciate that!
Andreas
Cool - Maybe you could shade the egg so it looks like its wobbling.
Tony, I would like to have that. I expect there is going to be a conflict. Getting both physical believability and that graphical goody will be tricky. But the idea is just too good, so I definitely have to try it
Acumen, I forgot to answer you about your gfx help offer. I am a huge fan of collaborations! But for this project I decided to do everything on my own, just to learn all the different aspects of game making from start to end. If something changes my mind, I would be happy to contact you!
Sounds great !
Hope to see new stuff added in this thread in the future frequently
Me personally, I’d hate to have a wobbly egg. Instead I’d love to have the shell cracked open and half of the chicken popping out. That would describe a rather round shape and would make up for an interesting player avatar. Cause a plain white egg is just not that exciting. You got it all covered on the menu but then it just hides inside the egg. Just doesn’t look too exciting to me. Cute characters are always liked
Acumen, it was a tradeoff that was made early on. I know it is not optimal to hide a main character. On the other hand rolling half on the egg and half on the head of Chuck looks a little strange in my imagination. But adding other kinds of movement along with the rolling is absolutely an option. There the egg would be open and Chuck visible.
I was asked to make a video footage. Added it in the first post.
At least you could show some visible cracks to the egg, so it’s not just a plain white surface egg. There just can’t be made a connection to a plain white ball in any game but billiard :o
Something along these lines:
cool game… some kind of visual effect when you collect the fruit would make it look a lot more interesting. And maybe a more satisfying sound (although there is something strangely enjoyable about the one you have now)- you’d be surprised how much of a difference a satisfying sound effect on a collectible makes to a game, just think of mario or sonic or even most rpg’s have really cool sound effects for when you gain xp. Maybe its just my opinion…