MOMENTUM JUMP 1.0

Here is the link to the final game.

I've spent so much time today polishing the mechanics, levels and the artwork, I haven't left myself enough time to make or implement and music or sound effects. Listen to the Super Metroid OST whilst playing or something =P

This is only the first week but I feel 10 times as competent in Gamemaker already. This is a fantastic real-world skill as I now feel confident enough to implement any 2D prototype I want to.


Pros:
- The game is mostly bug free as far as I can tell.
- The core mechanics are fun to play around with.
- The artwork looks good (could be better).
- I spent a fairly long time balancing (trying to teach the player specific things in a certain order so they were never completely lost) against (letting the player make their own mistakes and feeling autonomous). I don't know how well I did this though as I didn't have much time to play test.

Cons:
- It should have been longer.
- Ulterior motives and a higher level of risk/reward would have made the game more exiting and interesting.
- The game could just be more fun in general. I tried to decrease how punishing the game was by cutting the game into short levels but I still get the feeling that people will lose the  motivation to carry on if they repeatedly die. This problem could be solved however by doing the previous point well and perhaps including some kind of narrative motivation.
- There isn't much variation on 'collect all the green things' to advance. If I had the time I would've tried to include more variety.

I really wanted to include some kind of timer to add replay value and to create tension in accurately navigating the levels quickly. I didn't have time to program that in unfortunately but you can time yourself if you like =]. I've found it adds a lot of fun to the game.

If I had more time to work on the game I would have definitely explored the wall destroying mechanic more, I'd probably experiment some more on theme and I'd like to have tried it as an arcade style game too. I will probably spend another week sometime making this.

Next week: Card Game (probably)

Momentum Jump 0.3

Momentum Jump 0.3
I spent most of my day socializing against my will. I have however managed to get in a few hours of game dev this evening. As I stated previously, much of my focus today has been on aesthetics although I haven't ventured into audio as of yet. Nevertheless I'm happy with the feel so far. It feels very Metroid.

I've been using beta pixel art software today called Pyxel and I'm currently very impressed with it despite the 'glitch?' preventing me from saving my tile-sets as separate images. Hoping the next update will fix that plus a couple of other problems I have with it.

Tomorrow I hope to wake early and spend the whole day finalizing Momentum Jump.
Next week: Card Game?

Momentum Jump 0.2

Here is the link to the newest version of 'Momentum Jump' (working title).
I've been playing around a little bit with various types of level and improving collisions etc. The game now has some beautiful lighting and randomly generated backgrounds =O.

Much thanks to AntRazorPlay for his informative video on 2D lighting in game maker.

From this point on I think I'll stop adding mechanics etc and start focusing on level design and aesthetics. I want the game to at least be playable with minimal bugs and an end screen for Monday.

I want to focus more on the feeling of swooping around so It's quite possible the levels will be larger to allow for more fluid movement. It might be beneficial to work on some sort of zooming out feature if I were to increase the size of the levels. This way, the player will be able to actually see where they are going and make a series of interesting decisions about where to go and how to get there =P

I'd like the zooming feature to be similar to that of Tom Francis' 'Floating Point' (also made in just a week) as it feels very smooth. It also puts the intensive on speed since a larger view gives the player more information and there is the Risk/Reward of speed/danger vs information.

Week 0.1 - Momentum Jump Game

I started working on this game 2 days ago so I have until Monday evening to finish and upload the final thing. The idea for this game came from accidentally deleting the jumping code I'd written for another game I was working on. This forced the player to have to use their momentum to 'fling' themselves across gaps. This method of travel I found to be much more interesting than what I had previously so I made this new game to experiment with the idea.
This is the first build of the game: 0.1
(Windows only) (Exporting to Mac and Linux cost money I don't have)

Controls:
movement - arrow keys
harsh brake - Z
place checkpoint - X
previous level - A
next level - S

Feel free to leave criticism, insults and smiley faces in the comments =]