What a nice and unique concept, although I kept pressing the W key to jump :)

pretty cool platformer with a breakout twist. Hard though and randomized makes it harder. Or maybe just me :). Still playing

I really love breakout and this is really nice idea ... it just sooo hard to get some proper progress :D Awesome entry! Very addictive. Thank you for that

Difficult, but I like it. A nice take on the theme. Took me a bit to figure out how to move the potato across the map, but otherwise well done! :)

Really cool concept, very hard but kinda addictive. Cool idea how the ball and player can go from the far left to the far right and vice versa. Thank you for the experience! Maybe if there was ever an easy mode, maybe could you make the player platform a bit longer :D ?

Nice entry, it feels really juicy and juggling is fun. The game is maybe a bit too hard tho, I feel like player's jump wasn't high enough ?

Like old school style game so much. Just proper music missing :( but really great job!
If you go one day for another one - feel free to text me if you will need help with audio :)

Man this game is tough! I feel like it's a bit unintuitive to gain points by hitting the ice, my brain kept defaulting to "climb higher!" instead. At any rate, I played this longer than I'd like to admit, it's pretty addicting. Good execution, well done!

Great idea! As I understand it, the retro game Arkanoid was taken as the basis, I liked that the ball can be controlled with the help of a little man ;з

i got 48 :0

Neat idea, but I found the controls really distressing and gave up really quickly - I'm sorry for my limited patience. I really liked the visuals/sounds/concept, though!

Perhaps if there were more blocks, or the movement was more flexible, it'd be more accessible? Perhaps the frustration is the combination of both the player and ball being sensitive to hitting the bottom of the screen, it's hard to keep track of two moving objects with such limited ground to stand on!

A very interesting concept, it's just too difficult for me (but that's probably just me — I am used to turn-based games). I'm also impressed that you wrote this in C. You did a great job given the time constraints and the difficulty of C programming.

Cool idea! Wow, what a hard game, though! I wish it was slightly easier, even if at first. Maybe a bigger character/paddle? Great combo of ideas. Nice work!

This idea is really cool but I found it quit hard to play. Maybe increase the jump hight a bit so that the player can jump on more platforms.

as everyone else has said, i think with improved platform spacing and character control (a variable jump height certainly wouldn't hurt?) this could be a super fun addictive game.

add some additional obstacles and mechanics further up and you've got yourself something real real cool i think

im a sucker for simplistic graphics so i'm a big fan of how it looks

:)

I really enjoyed this game. You took a simple concept that fits the theme well!
However, like others have pointed out, maybe the game is a little too difficult. In general with jam games people don't spend a lot of time trying to learn it thus I think it is a good idea to make easier games that you can get good at really fast (although the game that I made is also too diffuct... woops).
Anyway, I like this game a lot, well done!

What superb concept it has and the gameplay is rather addictive too. I like the challenge of it, though I can also see how a lot more could be added into this in the future. The minimal art style suited it well too, overall a really nice game,solid!

Struggled to get 10 and I'm looking up there at the guy who got 48. Apparently I have a crippling need to git gud. Super fun take on the theme! But I do agree with folks who felt like the player jump needed to be just a bit higher.

@aaron-taube Just wanted to let you know that "the guy who got 48" is my friend IRL and he was kind enough to put in a lot of time into the game. Plus, he's very good at video games in general. His high score in my game is higher than mine. So don't feel too discouraged :slight_smile:

I understand the feeling that the jump is too short. I think this ultimately stems from the fact that the way I generated platforms makes it so that it's possible to see platforms that are just barely out of reach. If I were to improve this aspect of the game, I would tweak the level generation so that platforms are either clearly within reach or clearly out of reach, basically avoiding the gray area. I have a dozen more ideas to address the other feedback, but are out-of-scope for the jam version. I would consider them for a post-jam version though. Thanks everyone for the feedback, I read every comment and I appreciate it.

While I'm writing this, I might as well explain myself a bit:

- @mr-field The reason there is no variable jump height is because I couldn't make it feel good. I struggled with it for many precious hours before giving up and taking it out of the game. Maybe next time.
- @omaskery The fact that platforms disappear as soon as they leave the screen was a mistake. However, it was a decision I made during the jam and I'm sticking with it for the jam version. It frustrates me when I play too, so don't worry, you're not alone in feeling that way.
- I realize the game is difficult. If I could do it again, I would make the difficulty curve a little less steep. Here are some (secret) tips, as a thank you for reading this far:
- You can fast-fall by pressing down
- Crossing the screen boundary is critical and sometimes the only way to progress
- The potato can have 1 of 3 horizontal velocities depending on your inputs at the beginning and end of the 8-frame bounce window. If you are not pressing either left or right at the end of the window, the potato will bounce straight up. If you are pressing nothing at the beginning of the window, but start pressing left or right at the end of the window, it will move at a low horizontal velocity. If you are pressing the same button for the entire 8-frame bounce window, it will move in the direction you pressed at the highest possible horizontal velocity.

Simple but engaging. There's not much up to chance, it's all about skill... and I am not that skilled at climbing a mountain while bouncing a hot potato lol

Great job.

Very nice game! It plays super interesting! Gameplay is very attractive.

This is a cool concept. It is fun to control a player object to control another object. The screen loop was not intuitive for me. Maybe showing the edge of the screen aside the main screen might help players guess where the potato goes. Like this.


Anyway, you did a good job.

Interesting gameplay idea! It was counter-intuitive at first that the score was how many platforms I destroyed rather than how much I climbed or how long I survived, but I guess it allows for interesting strategies. Maybe it would be nice if the player spawned in a more platform-dense area to begin with, since sometimes it seems hard to make even the first jump. Doubly so because even though the screen wraps around, the camera does not reflect this (@notan-lemon's idea would help here). Oh, I see in your comments now that there is a "fast fall" by holding down. This is not indicated in the description! Still, this was pretty fun!

That was awesome! Very cool game play idea and the execution was also very polished. The controls felt intuitive and response and the bouncing mechanic was very satisfying. Good job on making it that predictable how the ball will fly after jumping against it. The art was very basic but worked in the context of game play. Some goes for the sound effects. Very bare bones but with a stark emphasis on retro gaming charm. I guess that was, what you were going for :) Also, considering, this was a one-person-job, the decision maybe even made itself. Still, it looks and sounds very polished for what it's presenting itself as.

The random generation of the map made progression rather difficult at times, though. I had troubles to get on higher ground with some of the platform constellations. Either because I couldn't jump on the next highest platform, because the jumping height did not reach, or it was very hard to make a detour and keep the ball live without destroying all the upper platforms on the way. One could say, that this is the actual challenge of the game and it felt very rewarding to get through a difficult part with a well placed ball bounce.

I'd agree on some of the other reviewers, that the screen looping mechanic wasn't all that transparent. And even after knowing, it was there, it was still hard to use it to my advantage.
Also, it was very easy to lose due to one jumping mistake or a misplaced bounce. Some kind of one-time-use skill or something would've been cool to have at ones disposal to clear a very difficult part or save the ball from falling once. Maybe even have collectible power ups on the way. Since this seems like a infinite climb, it's always a good idea to give the player some kind of motivation to play further.

All in all, still a very very good and polished little skill based juggle platformer. Great job!

Really cool game. Only gaining points by destroying the ice you need to walk on is a really cool risk-reward mechanic... if you do it intentionally. It might be because I am bad at this game (I most certainly am) but most platforms I broke were due to the potato just going off on its own, leaving me to try to catch up to it as fast as I can, hoping that it doesn't destroy everything. And that is in itself a cool mechanic but if that was the main aim the score shouldn't depend solely on that. If I would have actually been able to confidently handle that potato I could have also just destroyed the platform I'm standing on at the moment that I would have left behind anyways for free points.
But those are really just issues with the scoring. I still had a lot of fun walking around, throwing the potato and failing to ascend much at all and the aesthetics certainly helped with that. For being as minimal as it is the game looks pretty amazing. The potato bouncing animation has no business working as well as it does.

Also I'm always happy to see people using SDL for their LD games. I used to do that and if I'm being honest with myself it might not be worth the extra effort but not relying on any engines is a great feeling. And it's always nice to see I'm not alone, even if your reasons might be different. (sorry for my ramblings here)

Great job!

Hey, very nice game, although pretty difficult. Your tips helped me a little, but still the struggle is real! :) Not the bad thing though, definitely keeps you playing much longer just because you feel getting just slightly better each try!

What was a bit weird was that game didn't end when my character fell down off the screen, was that intentional? Sometimes I found myself watching bouncing potato for a while and unable to do anything :)

The mechanics mashup is awesome btw., had it been the "combine two incompatible genres" theme like in one of previous jams, you'd have definitely won the theme category! :)