Microbe jump by jmaasing

[raw]
made by jmaasing for LD23 (COMPO)
You are a tiny microbe.
You survive in tiny rain drops.
Click and hold on a rain drop. Press Space (or A or P) to jump.
Jump microbe, jump, if you hit the ground you die.
There is no other goal than to get higher.

No sound in the game.
Requires Java 6 and Graphics card supporting OpenGL 2.

Ratings

Coolness 52% 3
Overall 2.23 822
Audio 1.00 794
Fun 1.97 807
Graphics 2.42 668
Humor 1.20 798
Innovation 3.23 295
Mood 2.09 757
Theme 3.06 419

Feedback

Sheep
23. Apr 2012 路 07:51 UTC
It doesn't work?
I downloaded the windows zip, unpackaged it, clicked on MicrobeJump.exe, and it did nothing?
CherryNukaCola
23. Apr 2012 路 08:17 UTC
Worked for me - maybe you need java?
Anyways, I found the controls to be a bit tricky to get to at first, but once I got the hang of it it was pretty fun. Some more feedback for the player (animations, sounds, etc) would be great. ^_^ Also, I found the feeling of the rain drops 'falling down' wasn't quite sold to me - could maybe fixed by having non-jumpable raindrops falling down faster...?? Also, I loved the camera work! Cheers!
V0ID
23. Apr 2012 路 08:44 UTC
Had problems understanding how to control it, too. It seems you have to hold-left-click onto a rain drop and while that pressing a or p.
I also like the looks and the camera.
As the author mentioned himself in the jMonkeyEngine forum the fun lacks "a bit" due to time issues^^
Sheep
23. Apr 2012 路 09:05 UTC
Oh never mind, it works. For some reason the screen opened behind other screens. So I couldn't see it :P
馃帳 jmaasing
23. Apr 2012 路 09:11 UTC
Exactly, you have to point at a drop then hold down the mouse button, while still holding down the mouse button you can press a or p (or space) to jump.

And I agree completely, it isn't that much fun and certainly lacks feedback of all sorts (like sound) :-) Thank you for taking the time to both try it out and comment!
@daniel_sundberg
23. Apr 2012 路 09:59 UTC
I think it awesome :D Works well on OSX. Hard to predict the jumps.
Tumaini
23. Apr 2012 路 11:33 UTC
Nice but very difficult! :)
Or maybe it's me who's bad at aiming.
I managed to jump to another droplet once and got a whooping score of 239!
Skully
23. Apr 2012 路 23:52 UTC
Found it really difficult to calculate the jumps, felt like there needed to be a variation in the power behind a jump plus maybe a different/more of a guide to the jump trajectory.
Loved the concept though and the visuals
oldtopman
23. Apr 2012 路 23:53 UTC
Pros: Gameplay is solid
Cons: Nothing really
Suggestions: Perhaps more complex gameplay with arcs as you jump, and some generic rainforest tracks are in order.

Score:4/5
OPifexEntertainment
24. Apr 2012 路 12:43 UTC
Nice job on this! Its fun for a good while, mostly because its challenging as all heck!
netmute
25. Apr 2012 路 11:54 UTC
What a great idea! Aiming for the other raindrops is pretty hard thought, I missed them most of the time.
Anyway, cool concept!
Jezzamon
27. Apr 2012 路 11:31 UTC
Interesting game, although quite hard. Maybe bring all the drops closer, or make them larger, so it's easier to get up. The graphics were kinda cool, although very lacklustre. Adding a bit of colour and stuff would be good. Also powerups would be fun. :D

Anyways as far as a 48 hour game, it's pretty good, but you needed to focus more on the gameplay and making it more fun.
dansludumdare
01. May 2012 路 05:51 UTC
6 fps. Doesn't seem like it needs such a computation intensive way of doing graphics.
wademcgillis
01. May 2012 路 14:53 UTC
It's bloody difficult to aim. :(
Martin Vilcans
02. May 2012 路 12:45 UTC
Pretty fun for a while, but frustrating as it's so hard. Even having sat beside you while you coded this, I found the controls confusing. Getting close to the ground you can always try a "panic jump" and just hope you catch a drop. Which you never do. I'm not sure how to solve the problem that you can never catch a drop other than aiming very precisely. More drops would help perhaps?
馃帳 jmaasing
02. May 2012 路 18:53 UTC
I agree, it is very hard to aim since you have almost no feedback on direction, strength and so on. The jumps needs to be more predictable and "feel" more natural.
Currently refactoring the code, hope to produce a second version (out of competition) since I want to get it right :-) I'll announce it on http://jmonkeyengine.org/groups/free-announcements/forum when it is done.

Thank you all for rating and commenting!
MadGnomeGamer
03. May 2012 路 00:40 UTC
It crashed!
jedilemons
03. May 2012 路 16:49 UTC
It's difficult, but addictive! I was playing it for a while and I'm terrible at aiming evidently xD :)
TenTonToon
07. May 2012 路 04:56 UTC
Very nice concept! As it is right now, it's not that playable - as you yourself said, it's really lacking feedback for the player to be able to know what to do and how to do it (maybe just aim from a sort of first person perspective?). But I found the idea very intriguing. I hope you manage to smooth the experience in a post-compo version.

One to keep an eye on!
robcozzens
08. May 2012 路 06:18 UTC
Pretty tricky to control. Cool idea though.
BlackBulletIV
12. May 2012 路 09:15 UTC
Most of the time I missed the raindrops; it's very hard to hit them. It took me a while to work out that I was supposed to aim in the first place.
JellyFame
13. May 2012 路 15:51 UTC
Cool concept, missing gameplay :(