Can't stop playing it XD, love these bugs

I just did the GB Jam over on Itch before this jam, and I didn't expect that I was going to see a four color platformer here. But here it is, stellar and fun and visually delightful. Brilliant work!

Interesting! The game is simple yet feels very polished. It would be even better with some sound effects!
Appreciate if you can review back

@glassmoongames Oh, I love making Game Boy games! I almost did the GB Jam too! I didn't think that I was going to be able to dedicate enough time to do what I wanted to do for the GB Jam, though. For some reason being given more time to work on a project feels more intimidating than being given less time. At the very least I feel like I have to produce a lot more, heh. Definitely share your project! =)

Oh, and thanks for the kind words on the game! I'm glad you recognize my tip of the hat to the GB color palette. I was considering redoing the color palette if I had more time in the end (I didn't), but by restricting myself to these four colors I honestly saved myself a ton of development time.

@lue That is like the ultimate compliment. Thanks! I was honestly hoping to make a bunch of a bugs that people could find loveable. I blame Hollow Knight for this. =)

@qiqiqi Many thanks for the kind words! Ya, I only got a few sound effects in. I found working the art, audio, and programming in a one-man-show to be quite daunting, lol. I would definitely like more sound FX / environmentals for sure. =)

Cute bugs, fun music. Good platforming.

awesomeeeeee！omg，it feels soooo polished.and for a real bugs colletor, it drives me ‘crazy’ to see a bug collect game.well down!!

I really dig the style. It feels good to play and move around too

Its nice to see a gameboy inspired game. Art is pretty cool and liked that there are bosses after each level. Played a few of them, but controls felt too clunky for me to continue playing. Collisions are also very unforgiving.

@ehtd "Clunky" or "Klunky?" Huh? Huh? See what I did there? =P

You can totally beat it! And the game gives you an awesome ending if you do! =)

@debugman18 Thank you debugman18! I hope you got to debug a fair share of bugs in this one. =)

This was good. I got all the bugs! I liked how the difficulty in both platforming and enemy AI ramped up. The web build had slowdowns in some of the levels, but not enough to keep me from continuing. Well done!

@einfach Thank you so much! I love how you share the same affinity for bug collecting as I do, haha. You, sir, are awesome. =)

@mramaizng Thank you! The part about it feeling good to move around is enormously appreciated. Oh heck, and everything else that you said is enormously appreciated too, haha. I was definitely trying to achieve some sort of cohesive style with the art, gameplay, and music. So I'm equally glad that you are diggin' it!

@nuzcraft Yay!!! Thank you for playing it all the way to the end! That's the best feeling, lol. Ya, I think stage 1 and stage 2 in particular had a little bit of a slow down. Of course I'm only now thinking of ways that I can make it faster (like now that we're past the submission deadline). =)

Thanks again!



This is an awesome entry. You managed to make a tight platformer over the course of a weekend with a coherent art style without the gameplay loop getting boring. That's huge straight up!

Gonna give a full review here and some notes because you took the time to make this awesome game.

The great:

love the limited color palette and the spritework, everything seamlessly comes together and it's nice to look at. The enemies are varied enough with your limited sprites to not feel stale, you got around this with reskins and resizing which is a great skill in a game jam.

I can't believe you were able to create individual boss mechanics (simple as the mechanics may be). With a boss battle music track too! Damn man. That was gas. The platforming was tight as well, it can be difficult to keep platforming interesting across a couple levels, you executed that really well here.

The bug collection room is awesome too, it made me determined to see my progress after every stage, and wonder what other bugs I could collect.

The improves:

I found myself able to double jump up some of the two-stacked high tiles, if I'm thinking about it, I think maybe I was able to get my "feet" collider up to the platform close enough to allow me to jump again (if that's the pattern you went with).

There was some slowdown evident in some parts of the levels, and especially the beginnings of the boss rooms, I'm not sure if maybe there are some physics clipping or something going on in the background that is contributing to that, but there is plenty of time of optimization later.

I think the weapon range is just a little bit small, you can often take damage when trying to get close enough to deal damage. Once you get the hang of it this isn't a problem, but I think a little bit more range would be very free-ing to the player, not having to worry so much about collider overlap.

Something to think about:

Some of the channelization tactics you used to show the player where to go (overhead tiles to create a corridor to the boss level) made me curious to try to find secrets. This was aided by the fact that the bugs in the trophy room aren't in the sequential order they are found, they are separated by "boss" bugs and "level" bugs. So I spent a bit of time in each level trying to find secret passages or extra content.

I don't think that's a bad thing, just maybe a possibility to add some secrets if you're not burnt out post-jam (I know sometimes I get that way). And if I missed something please let me know! I'll go back and find it.

Synopsis:

This was a great entry and you should be super proud coming up with a complete and tight platformer. I hope to see you in future projects and game jams because I am definitely a fan of this entry.

TLDR: Good game, smash bugs with club.

Feel free to hit me up if you wanna chat games sometime!

@jpgfg Holy smokes! Thank you so much for your write up! Let me respond to a lot of what you said. I really appreciated how much thought you put into it.

I'm glad you appreciate the color palette! I told myself that I could change the color palette later if I had more time, but I definitely ran out of time. Limiting myself to these four colors honestly saved me a lot of time, though. It was also a tip of the hat to Game Boy. (I really love making Game Boy games.)

For the boss mechanics (this was done in Game Maker) I made each one a unique state machine. So essentially in the code you will see that I defined the different states that I was thinking could work:

enum BIG_FLY_STATES
{
flying_down_left,
flying_up_left,
flying_down_right,
flying_up_right,
flying_left,
flying_right,
}

Using this coding pattern I was able to code really fast because it's basically speed-coding a laundry list of behavior that I wanted to see. It was easy to transition to different states all using just 1 timer.

Thanks for the comment about the bug collection room! I love the original Kirby game for the Game Boy and the NES. Whenever I ate some character and absorbed their power, it was amazing to see them on a pedestal in a museum later. (You had the added ability that you could eat the museum exhibits and gain their powers as well.) Also, things like hunter's journals I find to be very satisfying. So I kind of combined the concepts where you'll see an empty pedestal and then wonder, "What's supposed to go there?" The ordering of the characters was semi-random as you can tell. I became sort of organized by putting all the boss bugs on the right and all the regular bugs on the left, but their ordering is also kind of indicative of the creation order of the bugs. Some bugs that I created early on were noticeably too hard for early levels, so I moved their battles to later, but I didn't update the location in the museum.

Okay, you are the FIRST person to tell me that I can double jump! I didn't know, lol. I tried it just now. If I walk up to a wall from the right side and mash the jump button, there it is. I guess this will stay in the game as a cool artifact of speed coding for a Ludum Dare.

I noticed there was some slow down too. I know a really easy way to make the game faster... This optimization might have to make it into a later version of the game if this ever gets made into something grander (post-Ludum Dare).

I concur with the weapon range. Believe it or not, you're also the first person to mention this. It's definitely true. Klunk needs him a larger bug smashing club.

On your comments about secrets, I really really want to do that. The enjoyment that one gets from exploring through long windy caves is exponentially increased when they can smash down obstructions, create shortcuts, and find secret stash. It elevates a game from being fun to being great. =)

Thanks again! Let's definitely hang! Maybe we can make a sick Metroidvania some time. My dream is to get into a small group where we achieve this fantastic flow and create large and wonderful worlds to explore.

Cleared all levels and collected all the bugs. Had a great time. This is a cute but not easy game.

@salm Thank you so much for getting all the way through to the end! It makes my day knowing that you did.

I also like the "cute but not easy" comment. Klunk is deceptively not easy for sure. =)

Great job on making it feel cohesive. I really nails the original monochrome GameBoy vibe. The music, the art, and the game play all felt like they belonged together; and to have many different music tracks and bugs was impressive. Great entry. I did die a lot to the spikes though... but I'm terrible at platforming.

@jacobingalls Many thanks! I greatly appreciate it! Achieving cohesiveness was definitely something that I was trying to strive for. I wouldn't say that you're terrible at platforming, though, as I was definitely adding difficulty into it so that it would genuinely feel like an accomplishment. Thanks again! =)

A good platformer, inspired by old games and with a well-thought-out concept

@discon Thanks! Ya, I'm a sucker for the old 8-bit NES / Game Boy era games. ;-)

Wow, that was great. Movement is great, audio and graphics are peak 8 bit art. I love it. Nice work. 5 overall no doubt.

Gameboy vibes is real. Very good

A very cute little monochrome gem full of nostalgia. Plays good too. The only thing that bothered me was that the crystals kill you instantly, while the enemies only take one heart.

Wow, this is a masterpiece. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a truly complete game.

@tyminix Thank you very much! The kind words are greatly appreciated. Your "Call Hector, Organ Collector" game is bad ass by the way! =)

Thank you @makoteam! I love making Game Boy games too by the way. I'm sure there are no surprises there. =)

@flying-dog-fish Thanks for playing! It's greatly appreciated. =)

@kit-gorn Thanks! I greatly appreciate the kind words. I definitely tried to create a video game with a beginning, middle, and end (and achieve cohesiveness with it).

Wow, what a great game. I think this one has the one of best graphics I've seen this LD. I love the pixel art, you clearly utilize the resolution well. I love the palette as well. Actually, everything works really well together, because the music is also quite awesome.

The gameplay also works well, although I would prefer to be able to jump higher/lower depending on the amount of time the button is pressed (like in Mario games) - this is just my personal preference, the controls worked very good as they are. I was astonished with how much you squeezed in a LD entry - the game feels very complete and has all the features I would expect from a platformer.

The only (minor) problem I saw is that when I got hit and attacked at the same time, sometimes I didn't notice the feedback of being hit (might have been overwritten by attack animation?). An audio cue on hit would help with that. I also saw some minor slowdowns when entering boss rooms, but nothing that would really bother me.

Either way, I've had lots of fun. Thanks! Great entry, congrats!

Nice game! I only completed the first two levels so, judging from the map, there's a lot of content there!
As others have stated before, I think the attack range is a bit too short. It was really annoying when I tried to attack the first bug, which was even facing the other direction and taking damage because I got too close. Another problem that I noticed (which was also the reason for me to quit), the game is really laggy sometimes. I assume it is because of the level content/ amount of stuff in the level as the boss fight was super smooth.
When I entered the second level though, the FPS dropped to maybe 10 (I'm on Firefox if that info is of any use to you). So it became unplayable for me.
Another point of improvement: In the beginning of the second level, there was a ledge to jump from with some death traps below. I couldn't see them because of the limited viewport size so the only way to pass this is dying the first time and knowing next time, which is generally not what you want.
Anyway, nice sound and graphics. Also theme is on point ;)

@marudziik Many thanks! I greatly appreciate the kind words. I used Famitracker for the audio by the way. Essentially composing within the confines of the 8-bit NES Ricoh 2A03 sound chip. =)

@evil23 Many thanks for the kind words and for all the feedback! It's much appreciated. =)

the graphics were surprisingly satisfying to look at, and while the idea and the game are fun. dude. the controls?? what?? they keep tripping me up and it's really frustrating because i would like to play more but i just i can't

Thanks @maneoliz ! I appreciate the kind words! =)

Nice game ^_^

Thanks @xpoho !

Awesome game. Usually platformers like this (taking more inspiration from older platformers rather than newer ones) don't feel great on the motion. This feels noticeably better for that style (sorry, I prefer the newer stuff).

My only real suggestion if you go do more with this is to swap the last two levels. I found the one before last on both boss and platforming way more difficult.

Looking forward to hopefully doing another jame with you at some point (although comp was interesting)!

@zliebowitz Many thanks! And many thanks for playing it all the way through to the end. That completely makes my day. =D

This style is so cool! It really reminds me of old game boy games and everything fits together well. I could imagine playing this on one.

Thank you @miku ! I really appreciate the kind words. =)

Wow! This is an amazing game. I love the colors and style, and the music is beautiful. You’d expect an old-school game like this to feel clunky, but it plays wonderfully. The overworld map and screen transitions are really cool, and everything fits together so well. Truly outstanding work!

Thank you @liquid ! I'm glad you like it! I did the music with Famitracker, which allows you to do old school 8-Bit NES Ricoh 2A03 sound processor compositions. I think I have an unhealthy obsession with it. O__O!

Such a fascinating pixel art! The animations are soooo cute! We, as good old platformers fans appreciate your work!

Many thanks @apdt ! I enormously appreciate the kind words from someone who has the same affinity for platformers as I do. =D