Carpet Flea by MrPouletBZH
Carpet Flea has finally landed, we hope that you will enjoy playing it! It's a little platformer based on the following idea: you have a limited amount of jump and dash in each level to access the next step, diving deeper into the game. We've also made a Mac build; please note that we haven't been able to test it, so we hope that it will work as well as it does on Windows.
- Music Designer : Pierrick Veillerobe https://twitter.com/VeillerobePrrck
- Graphic Designer: tanguytanguy https://www.instagram.com/tanguy__tanguy/
- Programmer: Paul Mozet https://twitter.com/MrPouletBZH
Software used: - Unity 2D - Wwise for the sound - Photoshop and Illustrator for the graphics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_kj8XEAy6I
NB: At the launch you can have a Windows Security Alert, we don't really know why but you can just click cancel. It doesn't appear to change anything to Allow access or to cancel, so do as you please!
Update note: We've added a windowed version of the game on Itch.io, so that those who don't have a 1920*1080 screen can enjoy the game too. I guess it's ok with the LD rules as it's the same game with just a different resolution, making it really playable and enjoyable for everyone.
We are currently planning to work back on the game after the jam ends, to enhance it with all the feedback we've get and then realease it! If you happen to be interested by the project, I will surely talk about it on my twitter https://twitter.com/MrPouletBZH .
| Link | https://mrpouletbzh.itch.io/ludum-dare-48 |
| Link | https://mrpouletbzh.itch.io/ludum-dare-48 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/carpet-flea |
Ratings
| Overall | 318th | 3.898⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 269th | 3.836⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 755th | 3.344⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1214th | 3.406⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 270th | 4.258⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 377th | 3.762⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 820th | 2.782⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 767th | 3.597⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 83🗳️ | 141🗨️ |
I know about the player's movements that can sometimes be floaty (especially the jumps), I'll probably try to rework it sooner or later to make it feel less "lunar" and making it fit better with the player character
The last level is meant to be a bit frustrating but once you get how to pass through the last part the level becomes really ok (I think x) )
Congrats!
Thanks a lot for the feedback you gave us, it really means a lot to me :D
I'll try to work back on the game later, to give an enhanced version of it while taking in consideration all the feedback I'll have so far
Nice art direction, the main character was kinda cute and reminded me of super meat boy. The sounds / music were moody. The levels were nicely designed and offered the right amount of challenge, and you also had 10 of them which is a suprising amount of content for an LD jam. The whole package was quite polished, without any bugs and very functional UI, which is rare to see in this jam.
My only gripe is with the controls, which were a little bit stiff and could use some work. There are a lot of small tricks you can apply to make it feel better. I would suggest you to read this blog post on Gamasutra on how to make a satisfying platforming controller: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/YoannPignole/20131010/202080/The_hobbyist_coder_1_2D_platformer_controller.php
Great job overall.
This game definitely has some potential and definitely can thrive if done well.
* You have to make sure your collisions and objects are obvious to the player, no matter what.
* This reflects in situations where you hug a wall and suddenly died even though the spikes are way farther than where they were.
* That said, the visual needs to be a lot more obvious, especially in the last few levels where the lava and spikes do blend in the background.
* Improve your collision code.
* I managed to take advantage of this by being stuck on a wall, avoiding to use a jump.
* Almost all of the stages are fine in terms of stage design, except the last one.
* You know: how to annoy and repeat the stage because that one platform keeps blocking you and actually make a player rage quit despite having fast respawn times. Which is more of an annoying move AFTER doing all the hustle to get to that point again, wasting even more seconds of your time. **It's actually unfair stage design.** You don't want that if you want people to finish your game.
* Keep at with this room-by-room stage design if you want to make a full game at it. This is what you want for this kind of game.
* It's not a surprise at this point that the movement is floaty.
* As a contention to what others said: It could be a thing that you could go for. Since precision is definitely part of the stage design, having more gravity could be less forgiving for dashes that are situated between spikes.
* Coyote time is a godsend if you do push this further.
* I'm not a Unity guy, but of course I should remind you to not skip [the article that exofrenon linked](https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/YoannPignole/20131010/202080/The_hobbyist_coder_1_2D_platformer_controller.php)!
Though the idea is very sound and the stage design does support it, the execution of the mechanics could definitely be better and I sure hope you do a bit more research with collisions and all of that. Good work, all of you!
Thanks again a lot for your feedback! <3
Only downside is about the locked resolution of game, with my screen cutting of the edges of the game I couldn't see the sides of the level 7 and the jump was to hard to perform of screen.
I had some trouble with the controls, but it still pretty good for the time of the jam. Make good feeling platformer is more difficult and time consuming than it seems (here is a thread that i like: https://twitter.com/MattThorson/status/1238338574220546049?s=20 ).
I think the difficulty progression is good, even if the last level is harder, I was able to finish the game :)
I enjoyed a lot, very good job !
Sérieusement, bien joué à vous !
@juliestrator @gamedev-and-architecture @ithebredor @mahalis Thanks a lot for your feedback, glad that you liked the game :D
@pattedecanaard thanks for the feedback, I will definitely take a close look to this thread, especially coming from the maker of the game which was one of the bigger insperation for us!
@whismirk Merci beaucoup pour le retour, ça fait super plaisir de voir que le taff fournit par l'équipe plait :D
Controls were great, the jump felt a tiny bit floaty at first but you got used to it. I really liked the idea of having a set amount of jumps/dashes and thus seeing it as a limited resource. I also really liked how the level changed when you used dashes and jumps.
Graphics were fantastic, I really liked the feeling that it created in the game. It worked wonderful with the precision platforming. It was almost always very clear what was dangerous, what you can jump on etc. The only time I felt a tiny bit cheated was on the last level next to the bonus where the spikes were a tiny bit hard to see.
Great job! :D
In case it was the pc windowed version, it appears that the UnityCrashHandler64 was missing, so maybe the build wasn't working correctly for all computers (it worked on mine, but maybe that wasn't the case for all), I reuploaded a version of it on Itch which contains it.
@korfi the bonus from level 8 is the hardest to get, but they are all possible to collect I swear x) And also yes, some spikes deserve to be more highlighted, definitely
@srrinio @lintfordpickle Thanks for the feedback about the controls, I'll try to see what I can do about allowing the player to rebind keys. I think the game really need controller support too
La logique de limitation des contrôles est très bonne et elle force le joueur à réfléchir à deux fois. Le jeu n'est pas trop dur et permet au joueur d'apprendre rapidement les touches.
Beau travail :clap:
Wonderful game.
The mechanics of limiting the controls is very good and force the player to think twice. The game is not too hard and permits to learn the controls pretty quickly.
Good Job :clap:
I like the hand-painted graphics, good music..
The experience for controls It seems more easier of the following: Movement - ARROW Keys, and Dash - Shift, If one were to WSAD and Shift (one-hand assumingly) somehow it's not so responsive as I have expected..
I checked both fullscreen and windowed and noticed that some levels based on the same-screen appear cut-off on on the edges of the screen (very hard to dodge; eg. Level 05); Do a Agree that after more than 30 consecutive rapid fails like a morbid-assembly line type of rhythm I would need to advance forward by selecting another level..
Suggestions:
1. Controls: For Dash, Why-not double-tap of direction (like Unreal-tournament); Double-left/right to dash.. (optional)
2. Somehow have some animated lines of movement to help the visual-key of the Flea Dashing or reacting on rapid-movement..
3. Level of Persistence: I thought one way to help with the relentless repeat of consecutive futile-fails is that if the flea is mulled by the chainsaw blade, it would cumulatively remain or somehow it may eventually create influence of subtle changes to the hazards (lethal sharpness of blade dull/rusted, or enough mess 'softens' the lethal elements to eventually advance.. (but for those implied 'challenges' (one would reset as its usual-state..); Or somehow there's RNG of variation of the trickiness of the Hazards.. (subtle)
4. If not 100% same-screen, then have some contextual camera to dolly/pan/zoom [if there will be a more large-scale map on later build]..
5. Rebind keys may help..
Challenging Platformer!
@acronaut Thanks a lot for this massive feedback, it will help a lot. I agree that rebind keys is something that I need to implement in the game (honestly I just don't know yet how to do that on Unity, but it will be my priority when we will work on the game post jam), and I must admit that the double tap could be something really nice to implement! Also we plan to add a controller support, which is also something that the game cruelly miss. We will also work to give the flea more visual effects around it, some particles, and a real animation for the first part of the jump. Thanks again for the ideas, I definitely take notes of them :D
I want to thank you all again for your valuable feedback. It means a lot to me, and we as a team are really happy with the final results, we're glad that our game was well received as it was our first jam ever!
We will keep working on the game, and we hope that we will be able to make something good out of it thanks to all the ideas and advices you gave us! If you happen to be interested about the development of the game, I invite you to follow my twitter account where I will talk about it from time to time: https://twitter.com/MrPouletBZH
I can't really express how glad I am about this whole experience, but I must say that I'm happy that overall you enjoyed playing Carpet Flea :)