Curly's Chase by aeveis

Description
Guide Curly the dragon through the clouds to collect the fireflies. Curly needs space to turn, so please help!
Thanks for playing!
Updates
10/10: Added Alternate Controls for testing
Controls
- [Arrow Keys] to Move
- [Z] to Teleport (Undo)
- [X] to Interact
Tools
- Art: Gimp
- Library: HaxeFlixel
- IDE: HaxeDevelop
- Music/Sound: OpenMPT
- Level Editor: Tiled
Ratings
| Overall | 50th | 3.957⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 108th | 3.792⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 111th | 3.771⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 368th | 3.458⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 16th | 4.396⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 49th | 3.909⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 100th | 3.409⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 80th | 3.783⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 27🗨️ |
@theseusinabottle Yah the game is all about the controls and trying to get the player to get used to them haha. The undo was not as hard to implement as I thought too, but I think that's also due to how Curly moves.
@blobo thanks, that's what I was hoping!
@nerdytopic Thanks! I think the text box icon also helps connect the pixel art to the cover art. Controls wise, I thought about it matching the head, but thought that would get confusing if Curly is going the opposite direction and how there would have to be some context switching(?), but could be something to think about.
For the clipping issue, I noticed if the browser window is small enough, itchio's website sides starts to letter box the game. Not sure what I can do about that unfortunately.
Well done!
At the beginning i found it a little confusing, it took a while to understand how to actually move in the direction i wanted, because i kept pressing buttons and i wouldnt change direction, or redirect randomly (now understanding it just took whatever input i happened to press at the time it looked for the next direction). I feel like some indication that the next direction was registered would help with that. also theres an area in the dark clouds where i could reproducibly undo into a wall that i never entered, which was strange. but it only seemed to mess with a couple undo steps.
Otherwise super clean and fun to experience :)
Great job!
@mateusboga thanks! I thought about an undo function that would be like reverse in car mode. But ideally I wanted that to be restricted to the path the player was already on. So there would be more thought/logic put into how that would exactly work.
@schraf Thanks! Since it was puzzle like I thought those controls would make more sense, but I also put a post-jam version with alternate controls where up is forward, if that something you'd like to try.
It would have been nice to have some indicators of the general direction of fireflies (especially once only a few remain)
I looped around some areas I had already been because I was worried that I might have missed one.
@zeu31 thanks!
@almost Yah, you are forced to bonk at times. I think there are some level design things I'd structure differently to make the controls bit more tight. I thought about indicators for fireflies but uhh forgot/ ran out of time haha.
@omeletton thanks!
- Super lovely artwork. I can't get enough of this cuteness!
- Interesting way to unfold story. I was mildly surprised and amused at the same time when I can fly through the cloud and just as I was about to think "So, what now... oh, so now I face water challenges, cool."
What I think could be improved:
- The view distance is a bit too close. When you are moving vertically it is impossible to react fast enough to turn. In other word it's pretty much guaranteed that you must press Z whenever you see a turn while moving vertically, and it's a bad experience. I think this is the biggest issue with the game. The "problem" of the game is very alike to parking car, and certainly no one enjoy parking car while forced to not turn their neck.
- Smoother retry would be nice. I mean after I hit the wall, maybe instead of resuming with my face touching the wall, maybe one auto Z that put be back a bit further in time would be great quality of life.
I know it's something I'm supposed to intuit, but it took me a rather long while to figure out Curly's turns take up 2 blocks each time. It might have helped having some sort of look-ahead or silhouette indicating the trajectory of Curly, to make this learning process a bit quicker. It also wasn't clear to me that some fireflies required being touched twice. When they did run off, they often got stuck in corners: it wasn't intuitive that "undo" doesn't reset the firefly count, so adding a tip on that might have been useful. I did like that the maze had a non-straight-forward path that required some thinking, and I would have liked to see more of those in the level.
Had fun, nice job!
I was able to collect all the 14 fireflies and also the trophy. And going through the maze was my favourite part. Also it was there... where I actually put some actual thought on how many tiles does it actually take to make a 90 degree turn. Overall, a great entry. Had a good time playing it! :)
Wowowow that was amazing! The game had me hooked, and even though I couldn't make it past the black clouds, I had a lot of fun trying. This is just perfect all around, excellent work!!
@omiya-games Thanks! I think the latter "harder" levels might actually do a better job of teaching the controls as there are less options, but there's some feedback I may think about adding too.
@korteh Thanks! I've seen the game before but wasn't explicitly thinking of it. That's a good note!
@skyvastern @ale thanks for enjoying the game!