The long way around by Fluburbio

Controls : WASD/Arrows to move and select dialogue options Space or click to advance text
Oops, your neighbor's mail was wrongly delivered to you! Arm yourself with all your courage to get off your chair and deliver that misplaced mailedpiece! What could possibly go wrong?
| Link | https://fluburbio.itch.io/the-long-way-around |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/the-long-way-around |
Ratings
| Overall | 638th | 3.538⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 780th | 3.231⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 784th | 3.115⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 649th | 3.865⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 292th | 3.596⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 667th | 3.442⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 35🗨️ |
And the bartering part is also cute.
The GDevelop icon occluded the dialog. And the collision masks are sometimes tricky.
Thank you @xlores-liang! So cool to see you back for LD53! :smile: I found a way to disable that icon (didn't think I could), I'll update my game before the deadline.
@xlores-liang Usually, I don't either, but this time I was trying to go for a retro pokemon-style look. It's true that managing collisions is a chore in gdevelop, I could have done it better (and cleaner) but I opted for the quick and dirty way, ie using a fully assembled tiled map as a single png, plus an overlay png for treetops and such!
@tofucat Your feedback is invaluable, especially so early while I still have time to fix things. Many thanks!! I'm not a WASD player and didn't think to test that control scheme... it works now. I have also added to more NPCs to clarify how to progress in the game, one is near the house at the beginning and provides a general piece of hint, and the other straight up tells you what to do according to how far you're in the game.
If you can spare a few more minutes, would you like to try again? The game only takes 2-5 minutes to beat.
I managed to play it, the extra NPCs definitely helped. I enjoyed my little adventure a lot more this time! I thought the minigame was a cute extra touch.
The only feedback I have now really is at the end, after the Dad moves the barrels, I had to take a bit of a janky route to try and avoid him without triggering the conversation with him again. I couldn't just walk straight past him.
@johnsensei Wow, thank you for such a great compliment! I'm a massive Persona fan, I played through Persona 3 way more times than I care to admit, so much that even the minor social links feel like family members to me now :sweat_smile: I wanted this to feel mostly like a quick mix between Earthbound and old school Pokemon with some Persona-like music on top, I'm really glad I struck a chord with you.
GDevelop is quite easy to learn and use, I'm currently making a 3D dungeon crawler that's inspired by the older shin megami tensei games with it, the first part is on my itch page if you want to check it out sometime! 🤓
@iggy-lonely Thanks! I stand by that mini game 🙂 The ball was originally a doll, but I changed it to add a bit of variety to the gameplay, plus it fit perfectly in the narrative. Similarly I wanted to include a sokoban-like section with the barrels, but at that point I needed some sleep in order to be able to go through my working week 😅
And damn, the story was pretty expected, but I clearly didn't expect the pong minigame, nice job there!
The visual art-style immediately reminded me of the Pokemon games and, now that you mentioned it, the humor is very characteristic of Earthbound, so I believe you hit your mark :)
Like others above I also had a little trouble moving and avoiding collisions, the music played twice simultaneously with a delay and it was a little hard to get past the dad at the end, but for the time of the jam it is well enough polished. Well done!
Very good job!!! 😊
@balimaarthebassfish Thanks for your very kind words! I always have some issueor other with GDevelop and music, there must be something I'm not quite doing right, but I'm happy that you still had a good time!
@yuriscat Thank you for your praise! I'm glad it struck a chord with you 😊
@infinatefalcon @5huno-3 @theparticularpixel @paul-maxime @tex-killer This was my first time making a topdown game and I took some shortcuts, but I took note of what I could do better next time. The collision masks were a bit rushed, so that can easily be fixed. I'm glad you enjoyed the game anyway!
Thanks a lot for your king words @tan90 and @nekuake ! I don't know MINIT, but I have to check it out now. Thank you!
@tofucat Many thanks again for your comment that helped me realize the game wasn't nearly as evident as I thought, thanks to you a lot more people enjoyed the game 😁