Space Hopper by Tom Robson
Synopsis
Space Hopper is a little physics-based 2D platformer, in which you must slingshot your astronaut across the terrain of an alien world, trying to reach a teleporter in order to return to their ship. But think carefully before you do anything! Your two most important resources, fuel and oxygen, are limited! Take too long and you'll suffocate, but jump too often and you may find yourself stranded. Fortunately for you, this planet seems to have these little orbs of energy, that give you a little bit more oxygen in your reserves, so it's not all doom and gloom!
Your scoring for each level is based on how much time you have remaining until you run out of oxygen by the time you land inside the teleporter. So, do you sacrifice a few extra jumps to give yourself a faster route to the teleporter, or do you take the safer route you know will have you clear the level, but at the cost of a better score. The choice is yours to make!
How To Play
In order to fling your astronaut around the level, simply click anywhere on the astronaut's body, and drag the mouse outwards from there. The further you drag, the more power the shot will have. When you release the mouse, the astronaut will shoot off in the opposite direction you dragged in, like a cosmic slingshot!
https://imgur.com/a/a5xjU8o
That's all you need to know, but you make want to know that you can quickly restart any level by pressing R, and you can also return to the level select screen from any level by pressing L.
Credits
Art & Animation: Ayo Norman-Williams
Scripting, Sound, & Implementation: Thomas Robson
Music & Game Concept: Dalvia Dhillon
Ratings
| Overall | 557th | 3.391⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 624th | 3.13⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 906th | 2.63⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1012th | 2.174⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 359th | 3.826⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 146th | 3.761⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 438th | 3.413⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 36🗳️ | 0🗨️ |
Some thoughts:
- The soundtrack is really good and fits the game well
- The game never feels too hard
- Missing a jump by a few pixels just to fall down all the way (for example in level 3) feels a bit unfair, maybe you could make the player bounce a little off the wall for a chance to save the jump
Solid entry, good job!
The music is great, and I really liked your art.
Congratulations
I love how the atmosphere came together and feels consistent between the theme, graphics, audio and gameplay.
I especially liked the music and overall audio balance.
I found myself struggling with recovering after landing straight vertically after missing a ledge (I had to move away again, but small movements were hard to execute).
Perhaps a small amount of bounce on the character could help the player recover from these cases?
It might also help get rid of the sliding effect that happens when landing almost horizontally (it tends to push you against a ledge as well).
Well done overall, good polish!
The collisions are a bit wonky too. when you land on flat surface you slide a really long way before stopping - likely falling off the edge is some cases. And sometimes you clip a corner pixel and you get stopped dead in your tracks... which is more frustrating because collider corners are not perfectly aligned with graphics corners...
But other than this - a really nice little pysics puzzle.
A bit frustrating to hit any walls since then you always end up right next to them and it's hard to make the next jump, it might be better if there was a bit more bouncing back.
The camera is also too near, often you can't see where you need to land the next jump. The levels could be made more challenging if there was a wider view and the player didn't have to struggle with the walls and judging the jump strength as much.
(the negatives, basically the same as have been given in other comments already :) )