Nyan Nyan Stack - LD22 puzzle platformer

[dock]

play in browser: http://starfruitgames.com/ld/22/web/
download: PC/ Mac

I made a little puzzle platform game for LD22 recently. It's relatively short, and perhaps a bit too difficult, but I was pretty pleased with the results. There are a lot of things I'd do differently in hindsight, however. :)

Let me know how you get on. Criticism welcomed!

[Noyb]

I love the aesthetics, but the level design ethos you've chosen is very frustrating!

I tend to appreciate platform games that let me jump a few frames after I've technically fallen off. Definitely important here since your level design asks the player to often jump near the extremes (which I'm not a fan of).

Stopped at level 3. Found it to be quite painful. Lots of back and forth repetition with many, many chances to make a mistake. Difference between successful tap-jump and killing either the cat or a piglet is miniscule for my reaction time. For my subjective play session this weary morning, it was functionally random. I'd play around with waiting a longer time before transitioning from the minimum jump height on a tap to scaling to the max jump height. I'm also not a fan of preceding challenges with relatively long easy parts. The time it takes to replay those segments add up over many deaths!

There's potential here, but as it stands the level design is really unfriendly to the player, especially with the current platform physics.

[dock]

Thanks for playing! I really appreciate this feedback.

I really regret not letting players just skip levels. The jump trick on level 3 was a big mistake, because more than a few people have that behave reliably.

You're right that, I probably should have given a few extra frames of jump allowance, especially as my character collision area is slightly narrow. I had a few people report that the jump button doesn't work, but it seems they're pressing it 'late'.

[Ian Snyder]

I really appreciated the fact that most of the levels could be beaten by running over the top of them instead of going the normal way.

The jumps were pretty harsh, but it seems you know that. Some kind of more reliable checkpointing system would have been welcome.

[Ashkin]

I love this so much nyan.

[dock]

I really appreciated the fact that most of the levels could be beaten by running over the top of them instead of going the normal way

I know about the bug on level 2 that lets you do this, but can you do it on other levels? I had previously fixed that bug in level 2, but it snuck back in. Playful solutions are fair enough, but it's a shame to miss out on the puzzle.

[Ian Snyder]

The first level is supposed to be beaten like that (I think).

The third level was set up in such a way that it looked like it was supposed to be possible, but I never actually did it...

In the fourth level you can jut take one of the piglets back under to the starting area and use the pig as a block to jump off of, letting you take it to the wall protecting the flag and double jump over it.

The fifth level is vertical, so it's obviously not possible there.

[dock]

The first level is supposed to be beaten like that (I think).

The third level was set up in such a way that it looked like it was supposed to be possible, but I never actually did it...

In the fourth level you can jut take one of the piglets back under to the starting area and use the pig as a block to jump off of, letting you take it to the wall protecting the flag and double jump over it.

The fifth level is vertical, so it's obviously not possible there.

Oh wow, you're totally right! :D I didn't spot that obvious jump over the wall on level 4 at all. Curses, that totally spoils the puzzle as well. :) That's what I get for designing levels in a hurry!