The Underventure of Polin by manolo_rei
Introduction:
The Underventure of Polin is a puzzle platformer in which our titular squishy yellow ball of pollen has fallen into a deep chasm full of outlandish creatures. The only way back is through climbing, but thankfully, the sticky “arm” Polin has is good enough for the job.
How to Play:
By pressing the left mouse button once, the player launches Polin’s “arm” in the direction he’s currently looking at. If it connects to something (like a wall or platform), then Polin will be pulled that way. You can also cancel the pull by left-clicking again during it. Doing so will cause Polin to ‘drift’ in that direction before stopping.
Useful links:
PLAYABLE ON ITCH.IO: https://nikopaes.itch.io/the-underventure-of-polin
Windows Build: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8IXfxBseQlmNDdvellhcE5jUG8
Mac Build: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B74TGa7VvlDNYlBNeWtRYlFnMVk
Ratings
| Overall | 209th | 3.667⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 174th | 3.567⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 274th | 3.333⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 197th | 3.767⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 87th | 4.367⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 162th | 3.586⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 161th | 3.31⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 85th | 3.931⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 24🗳️ | 29🗨️ |
Enjoyed it but quickly got frustrating without any checkpoints (or maybe I just suck and never reached one)
Also, I think that controls would get a lot better I could just see my cursor, and point the direction with it. It's clear this is exactly how it works now, just the presentation is not right – my invisible pointer can be all over the place and I have to guess where it is now, just by looking at how fast the direction dot changes place.
The biggest complaint I have is the lack of checkpoints. It was okay when I died at the spikes near the beginning, but after getting quite far into the game, I don't want to replay through everything I already did. If you do end up making a version with checkpoints, I'd be happy to play it all the way through, but right now I have no interest in replaying the first 5 minutes of the game over and over again.
Other than that, I thought it was quite nice! The visuals and music are very polished, and the player character is extremely cute. The part where I had to get past the creatures that were moving back and forth involved some nice puzzly thinking, though it would have been nice to demonstrate to the player in-game that you can click again to let go, because I had already forgotten reading that in the instructions and got stuck for a bit. I can imagine some really fun levels that could be made with this mechanic (and perhaps you did make them, since I didn't see the whole game).
One more small suggestion (it looks like others have already made this point, so I'll just pile on): have a cursor on the screen, as opposed to just a white dot a fixed radius around you, since that would make positioning yourself a lot more intuitive. Right now it's pretty annoying since you have no clue where your mouse is.
Honestly, the lack of checkpoints is a pretty big bummer since I really do want to see the whole game, as it looks great and has some cool mechanics. I did have a decent amount of fun, though, so nice work!
Amazing music!
After that happened I enjoyed the game quite a lot. The graphics remind me of "World of goo" and the gameplay was smooth enough to be interesting :)
We've talked and decided to fix/add some requested features to the game so we can have some closure on the project. So I've added **Checkpoints** and a **Mouse cursor** to the game. I hope this will improve the experience for all of you. All of this is available on the new itch.io page we've created !!
Enjoy and thx again !!
PS.: @hunttis @misterstripey @jk5000 @qzqxq @pankamil @nahkala