Boop's Space Adventure by winnie33
A simple platformer, with a twist: you can clone yourself! But don't get too excited, because too many clones and you'll run out of space quickly. I only started learning Unity 2 weeks ago so don't expect too much, haha :sweat_smile: .
I encourage you to play until the end, there are 5 levels. Don't worry if you are stuck on a level, after a short while a sign will appear which lets you skip the level. At the end is something special, so please don't give up too soon.
Note: the game is HARD, boring and punishing. Only play this if you have lost the will to live (or want to lose it). The infinitely repeating 20-second music clip will numb your senses while you do so.
Most "puzzles" have an easy solution however, and if you find yourself doing frame-perfect moves or pixel-perfect clones you are probably not solving the puzzle as intended. If you really think there is something wrong, please leave a comment and I'll take a look at it.
Note 2: yes, it is quite easy to purposely glitch out, but I don't really see a reason for doing so. If you are stuck in a level a sign will appear letting you skip it.
Let's hope the game launches and you'll have fun playing it! :)
Thanks and good luck!

Ratings
| Overall | 287th | 3.488⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 356th | 3.256⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 161th | 3.57⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 397th | 3.488⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 528th | 2.86⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 348th | 2.9⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 161th | 3⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 312th | 3.026⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 40🗳️ | 33🗨️ |
(Probably should've made this clear in the game, heh)
Another option was to reset the level if the game thought you were "stuck", but I didn't want to have false positives - nothing more frustrating than having to start over again when doing nothing wrong.
I'm happy to hear you enjoyed it! :)
Though sometimes you will stuck with your self and you can even push your self into obstacles (and then jump into space).
And the control seems hard to master, you need to hold mouse at exact time (some times during the first half of jump, sometimes a while after the jump).
I agree with you, it's too easy to glitch out. Hopeful me thought people would reset if they ran out of space, but of course every gamer will try to continue ;)
The first one who tells the player that he can place a copy of himself is in a pit with the laser thing going, so we don't really see the panel, and the mechanic it explains don't really help us in that first situation. It might have been best to have the first panel somewhere else so it won't be hidden by an obstacle, and maybe if the first thing we encounter is this laser/wave enemy, the first panel should talk about that :wink:
Nice game !
Easy to learn, hard to master. The perfect game approach!
Thanks a lot for not giving up and for playing my game!! :smile:
But game have some troubles with a wall detection:



And I understand your troubles, I noticed it as well when playtesting. It happens if you don't reset when you run out of space and keep cloning. The alternative was to give each single box a collider, which works, but makes your cpu run 100%, haha.
I appreciate the happy response! :)
Thanks again for your engagement! :)
You might be able to quick fix the physics engine route too if you can add your own collision callback. Just track object to object collisions, and ignore all events between objects until they don't collide for a tick.
In any case, neat little game idea, and the glitches are pretty easy to avoid in normal play.
AABB sounds very interesting, never heard of that. WIll definitely do some more research into that!
Thanks for the feedback! :smile:
I think you did a very good job, funny art style, good game mechanics, lovely music...
Congratulations dude :) Keep it up!
Glad you enjoyed playing~
The design and puzzles were really clever.
But I want to critique the controls, because they kind of trolled me pretty hard. Is it okay if I unload on the controls a bit? I do this not because I want to say "bad game." I want to say "very good ideas with a lot of potential, but a few tiny choices in the controls that threw up too much interference for me to engage."
I hope this is helpful, and not hurtful, okay? My apologies if I cross the line, I'm trying to point out a few things you could keep in mind next time.
#1 - The Clone Line Problem
In general, it can be a problem when the player has to RELEASE a button within one frame. In this game, I often wanted to surgically place a single clone in midair by jumping up and hitting the clone button. But sometimes I would accidentally get three clones. I'd hit the button exactly when I wanted to, but I didn't RELEASE the button within a split second, I let my finger linger just a split second too long.
The punishment was often severe, as you see in this example here: https://imgur.com/a/ov6fzbp
The highest of those three clones is EXACTLY where and when I wanted it, and solves the puzzle. But it's death by restart for me, because I accidentally got a line of clones that block my way.
#2 - The Clone Delay Problem
There is a slight delay in between when I press the clone button vs when I get the clone. This slight wonk wrecked my ability to fluidly and precisely clone mid-air. An example is the very first tall climb in the game.
In my mind, I wanted a solution like this: I will jump. 70% of the way up I will hit clone. I will produce a clone and then keep rising above him for the rest of my jump height. Then I will land on his head. I will repeat this to do the climb.
However, the clone would come out a little late, and it would come out then at the PEAK of my jump, and push me down. And I would be below the clone, unable to proceed. Game over by restart again.
Sometimes I could compensate for the timing but it was unreliable enough that I found a reliable but super-grinding alternative strategy: I would hit click-wait-space. This would start cloning, wait until it was about to appear, and then jump up. So I would only climb one single block this way, but it was guaranteed. I climbed this way most of the time, and so it made each death that much more punishing. All the time I was wishing I could play what you probably intended, but the delay threw me off so hard I couldn't.
#3 - The Clone's Not-Blocking-Stuff Warmup Moment
The clone can exist on the screen and yet not block hazards. Here is an example of this screwing me: https://imgur.com/a/1qENr7u
I solved the puzzle: Ran out, put a clone down the block out some safe space. But the hazard went right through the clone and although I retreated in time, there is no way forward from here - death by restart. This kind of situation happened to me a bunch of times.
Now, if these three are all intended aspects of the difficulty which you did on purpose then plz ignore me! I might just suck at these kinds of games and you can say "git gud" and that's fair! But in case these are not aspects you meant to have, I wanted to drill into them a bit in case it helps for your next one.
To return to the positive, I felt like you got a TON done here. Five levels of interesting and difficult puzzles, a novel mechanic explored in depth, and a cool art style with some pizzaz. It was also really clever to have the signs come up after I'd struggled, a super-slick touch.
So don't take this too poorly, please - my ratings I left are balanced even if the comment here focused on the critique aspect. This is actually a good entry for just having learnt unity 2 weeks ago!
If this post is something you don't want on here say the word and it's gone!
I'll try to respond to each one, however I'm not too sure you can do anything with this information.
1) The clone line problem
This problem I understand, but to be honest I've never been bothered by it myself, nor have others I know. It is kinda hard for the game to know when you want to draw a line and when to place only a single one. Right now you places 10 clones/second which might be a bit overkill though.
2) The clone delay problem
Yes. I 100% understand this. It is ugly and inefficient, and to be honest I had no idea how to fix it at the time. If I made the clone appear instant you'd never be able to move while placing clones since you'd be stuck in the very first one. But now the solution is pretty clear: make the clone solid as soon as you have left the copy. This solves a _lot_ of problems, and I find it a shame I hadn't thought of it earlier :)
3) The Clone’s Not-Blocking-Stuff Warmup Moment
I fully understand this too, had a lot of problems with it myself as well. But, this pretty much comes down to problem 2 and its solution would also fix this problem I believe.
So thank you very much for the feedback! It is something I'd almost forgotten by not playing my game for a few days, but something that certainly should be fixed. I'll go and play your game now, it is the least I can do to return the favor :)
I see what you mean about the problem. I guess even the solution you mention to #2 is not QUITE perfect. Imagine this case: I am moving left and have hit clone, the clone is spawning. There is also a danger-blob moving left from the other side, about to hit the clone and pass through it and get me.
This creates a paradox: I want the clone to be un-solid because I don't want to be stuck inside it, I need to pass through it. But I also want the clone to be solid because I do NOT want the danger-blob to pass through it, I want it to bounce off it.
This kind of situation, I usually use Unity's "layers" system. Layers let you say that certain objects should just not interact, and layers can be shifted around in realtime.
Maybe a set of rules like this could work:
- The player is the only object in the game with a layer called "player".
- The clone spawns with a layer assigned called "clonespawning". This layer is set *NOT* to interact with the "player" layer, so that the player will just pass right through it. (Everything else in the game does interact with the player's layer).
- The clone has a check every frame: Am I on layer clonespawning? If so, check if I'm overlapping with the player. If not, then change my layer to the "clonesolid" layer so that I start interacting with the player.
This way, when the clone exists, it is always solid to the whole world except the player.
For the clone/player interaction, the clone is un-solid upon spawning, but as soon as there is even a single frame where they don't overlap, the clone changes to being solid even to the player.
Here are some documentation pages on layers:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Layers.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/LayerBasedCollision.html
That's 3D but it works bascially the same for 2D colliders.
Also for the problem #1 of the line, I'd probably just make it "left click for one spawn, hold right click to get a line" but that's more a matter of taste. Watch a few friends play and ask them to make just one clone. If they're able to reliably make one vs making a line, then I could just be clumsy. But if the problem is common, consider introducing yet another button (altho too many buttons is bad too!)
Good luck!
As you can imagine I've never worked with unity layers before, but it doesn't sound _too_ hard (future me might laugh at my innocence). However, while I understand all of what you wrote, I'm not sure if that is what kind of game I want. If a newly placed clone already protects you the frame you place it, then the risks decrease significantly. You don't need to time the danger blobs right, you can just start walking and if it starts getting close you simply place a clone. Or if the lasers will turn on any moment, all you have to do is place a clone, drop down for 1 frame and you are already safe. I get why this could be handy sometimes but it isn't really something I'd like to have (that is, if I even continue working on this game. I'll definitely look into layers though :smile: )
For problem numbero uno, I've already watched friends and while it _did_ happen, it was never bothersome. Other than the one spot you showed in your image there aren't many of these dangerous zones where you can block off the way completely with 2 misplaced clones. Your picture is a bit of drastic though, I've never seen someone place that many clones in a single jump (Perhaps you are clumsy, who knows ^^). But more realistically, perhaps it has something to do with the fact it is being played in browser? It's yet another layer of input delay I'd think, and I've never seen someone play the entire game in the webgl version. Anyhow, a new button seems a bit overkill to me, especially as the layer-solution would fix this (you could walk "out" of the bottom clone in most cases).
Thanks for your continued support, I really appreciate it! Never thought my rushed game would get this much response :)
I like the concept of it, just needs some polish on the mechanics.
The difficulty of the game is really harsh and unforgiving, it took me a while to get through the first level. The collisions need more work, I would get stuck on my clones a lot. I did enjoy sometimes breaking the game and getting out of bounds because of the collision glitches.
Checkpoints would've helped a lot, getting back to the start of the level after putting time into timing lasers and placing clones really takes away from the experience imo.
Also the ending was amazing!
Overall really good entry that just needs a bit more polish around the edges.