Wow! Checked back after being very busy for a while, and damn, thanks for all the nice comments! We are currently working on a post-ludum dare version of the game that will be more complete.
Great game, very original.
Personally I'd prefer a little colour but in keeping with the sketchbook idea.
It would be nice to have a score ie based on time, special bonus balloons hit & lack of retries.
If you hit so many bonus ballons then you can have a double jump.
There's a dial on the left but I couldn't work out what it was for? - how high I jumped?
I played a dozen or so levels and was constantly surprised that you could still keep the game interesting considering the "world" is a little constrained.
The only hassle is you have to create a new level for every 10 seconds played - that seems like a lot of work for you guys to have to put in if you want someone to play for 10 mins.
Perhaps you could have bonus items to jump for or bad guys waiting for you and trying to catch you?
PS It ran pretty fast on my machine but then it should (i5-3570k/GTX 660).
PS2 I did have one small glitch when my man seemed to disappear - at least I couldn't find him - I just waited for the time to run out.
PS3 You should number the screens so people can say what screen caused an issue.
PS4 needs some form of background story so the running has a purpose.
PS5 you could have a little flip-art (?) stick figure running man in the top right to show what's happening ie waiting for start, running, jumping, finishing
PS6 maybe have a sketch book comic introduction where you fall through the page into the game
In what way would you like color added? Can you provide an example? We've been considering this idea ever since the start of development, but we've yet to find a subtile yet mood-heightening way of adding it. Would love any input on the subject!
We've added quite a few new features to the game that are making some new levels feel and play in an awesome way! But yeah, it's a lot of work for us to create interesting and different levels. (We've fixed the glitch where the player drops through the ground and dissapears - but thanks for pointing it out!) An introduction and a level transaction that has something to do with a sketchbook is something we've considered aswell but it was too much work for the Ludum Dare version. (We tried to animate how the top page of a sketchbook is crumbled and thrown away.. Difficult stuff when you're not an artist!)
The best original, cool and challenging game I played this year.
You should create a multiplayer version where you challenge a person, then you and your adversary play in the same map(You wouldn't be able to bump with your adversary), and who survives for more time, or complete first, wins.
Amazing work, guy!
Thank you so much! Very encouraging to hear! We will definitly be considering adding a multiplayer version! We've already considered adding "endless-mode" with increasing speed and difficulty, but we'll see!
Wooow.
Totally awesome.
It's original, it's polished, it's hard, there's very good level design (that last level was awesome and hard), the music is enjoyable and fits, the game looks good, it responds to input nicely, it's runs fluently on my pc (even though that's nothing special).
10/10
I would even give it 10/10 if it wasn't a ludum dare game. Total awesomeness, nicely done!
Thank you! I'm sure you would enjoy our new levels too, if you enjoy high difficulty! Some of them are crazy hard!
My thoughts while playing this: Well this is fun. Okay I'm just holding the arrow keys down a lot but the levels will get harder. Oh, a tunnel level. More levels with lots of simple left/right turn sequences... This is more frustrating than I thought it would be.
It's not praise but here are the parts I think frustrated me: All jumps were the same height. There was no challenge to steering. (It was all about lining up the level or holding a button down in a spiral area.) The boost mechanism is hard to take advantage of and confusing. (The flame was not very visible.) There was only one way to "solve" a level. (Basically it is really frustrating if it feels like the game is about getting timing right rather than reacting in real time. If a level can be beat with your eyes closed after you beat it the first time, then the level is not very fun.) Finally, there are lots of levels with poor visibility.
The graphics were nice.
Hey, yeah, the first few levels are very uninteresting. They're simply there because the target audience (the ludum dare folks) doesn't seem to enjoy games that start of difficult. We've since then removed the tunnel levels (cause lets be honest, it was a stupid level. What were we thinking?) and added loads of new challenging levels. There are now multiple ways to solve many of the new levels, and each way can be achieved in different time. So, you can complete the level by just going for the most straightforward solution to the puzzle, but if you want to complete the level with a "perfect time" and be awarded the maximum award of three *insert cool object here* out of three, you will have to find the perfect way to complete the level. (Sounds wierd, but it really does work!)
So all in all, the new version we've been working on is targeting mobile devices aswell as desktops. It currently contains "loads" of more challenging levels, as well as tracked highscore, performance fixes and improved and fixed gameplay. We're also considering releaseing a level editor so that users can challange their friends with their own levels. If you're interested, we'll keep updating our website (
http://www.dagger.se) aswell as tweeting (
http://www.twitter.com/daggergamedev) about our progress!:)
