Jimmy the explorer by Kevlanche
The crabslimes have risen! You must delve deep beneath the surface and put an end to the madness.
"Jimmy the explorer" is a platformer game with some puzzle elements. There are a total of 10 levels. Can you beat them all and slay the mighty crabslime lord?
The game is written in LibGDX. Sound effects generated with Bfxr. Music generated by SoundHelix. "Art" made with Paint.NET.
Any feedback, positive and negative is much appreciated.
"Jimmy the explorer" is a platformer game with some puzzle elements. There are a total of 10 levels. Can you beat them all and slay the mighty crabslime lord?
The game is written in LibGDX. Sound effects generated with Bfxr. Music generated by SoundHelix. "Art" made with Paint.NET.
Any feedback, positive and negative is much appreciated.
| Web | http://kevlanche.com/ld29/ |
| Windows / OS/X / Linux | http://kevlanche.com/ld29/jimmy_the_explorer.jar |
| Source | http://kevlanche.com/ld29/Jimmy_src.zip |
| Timelapse | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_NnGc_g7tE |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=25421 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 48% | 1359 |
| Overall | 3.69 | 144 |
| Audio | 3.07 | 358 |
| Fun | 3.76 | 84 |
| Graphics | 2.83 | 767 |
| Humor | 2.25 | 691 |
| Innovation | 3.24 | 433 |
| Mood | 2.81 | 719 |
| Theme | 3.21 | 607 |
The music was generated with "SoundHelix" (http://www.soundhelix.com/). Quite an amazing tool. You give it a random number and it generates a midi file
The graphics are simple but functional, with enough visual feedback for actions like mining and killing an enemy. The sfx and audio are quite good, although I do feel the music is too fast for the gameplay pace. In general, this game could benefit from slightly faster movement, to make the platforming more engaging.
I completed the game, and I had 269 gold at the end I think.
I died just about the right amount, and the puzzle aspects were also spot on in terms of how long I had to think about them. I liked that the "rules" of the gameworld were a bit different than I'd dealt with before, and I had to use a number of tools. I enjoyed the mix of thinking and execution puzzles.
Also I am totally going to google soundhelix because that generated music was quite a nice touch. The sounds were all appropriate as well.
Now, since the game is good, I feel okay giving a bit of negative feedback as well, here are a few points that hurt my experience:
- The spacebar jumped in the game, but it also scrolled down in my browser, taking about 1/3rd of the game off the screen. Thank goodness W also jumped, or I couldn't have played. I hit Space reflexively a number of times, including in the final boss fight when I didn't have time to stop playing and scroll back up.
- Some of your levels had more entities on the screen than your game engine could handle, at least on my machine, which isn't cutting edge but is no slouch. Levels with to many slimes or too many blocks slowed down to a lurching jerky experience, though it didn't prevent me from proceeding. The reward at the end of the game had so many itmes that it totally became impossible and even "not responding"ed by browser, but obviously that was not the end of the world. I am happy to say that the many arrows and handful of enemies during the boss fight did not slow down enough to hurt the experience, so that was fine.
- I felt uncomfortable in the handful of instances where you required me to jump off the top of the screen and not be visible. It was never a real problem.
- I had an unexpected death when I used E to sail on a blockset over some lava, and when I un-E'ed and went to step off, a piece of gold in the lava pushed the block back away from the shore exactly as I went to step off, and I fell in. I experimented with this one more time, and it felt a bit weird the way the parts interact in that setup.
- Lastly, there was one spot in the game where I died maybe four or five times and was frustrated. It was where you are climbing up and you smash some bricks, and there are slimes above you. The third slime up, he falls down on you. I had a plan, but the way he moved while falling, I dunno, it didn't work out how I planned the first three times, and then I did what I thought was the same thing again but that time it did work. My fault, I'm sure, but that was the one and only death that I repeated.
Overall, excellent work!
@pkenney, that is the most thorough review/feedback I have ever gotten on a game :D. Thank you so much!
@Somfunambulist you are supposed to destroy the flat dark block. Then destroy the lighter block that looks a little like a "u". This should let the small 2 wide block fall down into the lava. You can then jump onto it, connect to it and sail to the exit. Alternatively, you can cheat and use the "+" key to skip the level ;-)
Good puzzles and mechanics, keep it up!