It’s a straightforward but challenging platformer that’s essentially you versus gravity… and the fiery laser-y death that awaits you below ;). A “vertically scrolling platformer”, if you will.
My goal with this project was to have a very minimal presentation, and especially to create level designs that teach the player without need for words, tutorials, etc. (the ol’ “show don’t tell” philosophy).
Just played it for a few minutes, and must say I think its executed very well. I must say that starting the game was a bit of a problem, I had to look down at the instructions to find out how to jump. But once I got past that point it was great. I just read this a little while ago and think you should take a look too : http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/78178-Chuck-(Preview). The 6th and 7th posts detail the problem that I mentioned, and I think following that advice would just make the experience much more enjoyable. Other than that, keep up the great work!
Thanks! The more I think about this, the more I’m inclined to agree. Perhaps I’m being a bit optimistic thinking that players are going to look at the instructions first (I should know, I never do myself ;))
Nifty idea, though I do have a couple suggestions:
It seems like your game is a bottom-to-top scrolling platformer, yet in the beginning you have the player going from left-to-right like in a Mario game for some reason. Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with scrolling from left-to-right, but you’ve got to ask yourself what kind of game you’re making, and focus in on just that. Starting off with a left-to-right scrolling method when your game is primarily focused on bottom-to-top scrolling is misleading, and only serves to confuse the player when you switch directions.
Also, when I first got to the point where you switch directions and start going up, I was instantly killed by that white laser zooming across the screen, which was incredibly annoying. I know you’re just a beginner (pretty much all of us here are), but something you should keep in mind is that it’s a very, very bad idea to kill the player for things they could neither predict nor prevent. There was absolutely no way for me to have known beforehand that a huge white laser would come and smack right into my face, and it frustrated me a little bit when it happened.
I know the white laser is a central mechanic of your game, but you could introduce it in a more user-friendly way by having it crash through the ground a few blocks below the player, rather than crashing into the player directly. That way the player gets to see the laser in action before it becomes a threat, thus preparing them to deal with it more effectively when the time comes.
Good points. The horizontal part at the beginning is mostly a leftover from my original design that had the player running on solid ground (which would have made more physical sense), but that had to be cut because it would have been too time-consuming, since the vertical design of the levels would have necessitated the creation of a very large landscape (very long view distance). The other part is of course that I had so little time to develop it that much of the level layouts were designed in a highly improvisational, on-the-fly manner. While I did throw out sections that simply weren’t fun, most of the time I had to run with what I’d already laid out, playtesting and making tweaks to make them flow as smoothly as possible.
I agree wholeheartedly, and in fact the rest of the game is perfectly fair. However, I do have a major soft spot for old-school, Nintendo Hard games that aren’t afraid to mess with you. That was me indulging in this soft spot, and is meant to be an evil little surprise (the game was originally much more difficult as well, so it would have fit better). The fact that if killed you start again just a few steps back is meant to show this. I understand how this could be frustrating though. I guess that’s part of the difficulty of developing for a very diverse audience when you yourself have a very diverse taste in games
Anyhow, I’m absolutely loving the game design discussion and this has already been really constructive. Keep it coming
As for the laser, I’d have to say I agree with you more spaddo(not saying any view is wrong), but when I first played and the laser popped up and obliterated me, I couldn’t help but laugh for some reason. I understand it will frustrate some and make others laugh(at least I hope I’m not the only one)…now if there was only a way to read the player’s mind to see which one they prefer…
I agree with the other guys it’s a bit confusing at the start. You could introduce the lazer early showing it coming up from the bottom eating away the platforms below which should be enough of a clue to the player to start moving up.
I suppose there is a certain degree of validity to that, but at the same time you should remember that 1985 was 25 years ago, and it would be unwise to simply throw away the two and a half decades worth of evolution and learning that the industry has gone through since then.
