This past weekend, I did my 11th Game Jam and decided to try my hand at making a platformer. In this game, death is not the end. Turn into a ghost and fly to previously inaccessible areas. Can you finish every level in time?
This game was made for the Wowie Jam 3.0 and was made with the topic of “Failure is progress”.
This was my first time trying to make a platformer, I used the built in template as a jumping off point and am pretty happy with how it turned out. Any feedback would be really nice!
I had a very similar idea many years ago. Mine was more focused on puzzles and I quickly discovered that to keep puzzles interesting I would need to introduce other new elements.
Your focus on speedrunning is a good solution to make the game not feel too easy, without needing to create new mechanisms, good job.
Regarding bugs and all that, the character sometimes gets kind of stuck when falling next to a pile of bricks. You might also want to make him jump only when the button is pressed.
Thanks for the feedback! You’re game sounds really cool, if you want to link it, I’d be happy to play it.
I was aware of the getting stuck bug, it came about while I was trying to implement a form of Coyote Time. As for the “only jump when the button is pressed”, did you have issues with the character randomly jumping or bouncing?
Congrats! This was pretty fun! I liked that you had to get creative to get some of the records. I also liked the music choice. It kept me engaged till the end and managed to get all the records as well.
I stumbled over a couple of bugs here and there (but that’s to be expected for a game jam game), but I’ll list them anyway so you’re aware:
If you press R on the same frame you die, you restart as a ghost. Happened to me a couple of times, so it’s probably reproduceable.
Jumping interacts weirdly with walls. Sometimes you can “jump” just by pushing yourself against a wall and sometimes you don’t fall if you push yourself into the wall.
I really enjoyed this! It’s super well made and the idea shines through your design. I got really invested in getting the set a significant lead in some of this even if temporary. I love it.
The long Coyote Time was intentional, it’s somewhere around half a second. I made it super relaxed in an attempt to make the game easier for the Jam. It’s something I’ll play around with in the future. Do you know what a better time range for it would be?
I don’t know about time range in seconds, per se, but I know a few times my character was well below the block I’d just jumped off and coyote time still kicked in. I think roughly half a second would still be good if the gravity curve was flatter at the top, so you wouldn’t have fallen as much before jumping.
