I’m a 15 year old game dev who’s been working for the past couple of months on a puzzle-platformer game.
In Igknight you have the ability to throw your head of fire and then teleport to it later. You also have the ability to propel forward and jump off a wall if you happen to hit one. The trick of Igknight is resourceful use of your abilities while midair.
The game below is the first of three levels I intend to make.
I liked it when I finally got my head! I like the idea of throwing my head and teleporting to it. I got to the second level but the controls are just too un-intuitive. I think I would have preferred something like using the arrow keys for throwing the head.
Also you need some more control hints. Like when I finished the first level I pressed space thinking that would take me to the next level, but instead I had to do the first level all over and had no ‘back to menu’ key. I didn’t realise at first I had to move my knight and then press space.
I think you may need to have your levels a bit clearer for the learning curve. And I don’t see why I can’t start with my head already. Your exits should be more clearly marked as well. I have to die to check if down is the right direction. It took ages to realise I had to light the candle. The up exit was not clearly marked, I found it by mistake. Also, after burning the first candle it was not immediately obvious that the platform was a one-way platform.
So your first screen should be flat with just something like "use A and D to move left and right. I move right towards a clear target arrow indicating I should move off screen. Screen two then is flat with one block in the way, again with an arrow indicating I should move off screen to the right, but with some label saying “use space to jump over things”. The next screen could have a pitt to jump over, but if going down leads to death indicate that with some spikes, lava or fire or something. The next screen could have start the process of throwing your head. So again a single block too high to jump to.
I feel that when I throw my head, it should feel like I am throwing something, so perhaps in an arc under gravity. Or if it just goes in a straight line like it does now it should keep going until it hits something. Your second candle puzzle would have to be changed a bit, but as it is it is less of a puzzle and more of a skill challenge. These are very different things.
Some things to think about at least. I played it longer than I thought I would once I got past the hurdles of just thinking “well what do I do now” and not in a puzzly sort of way, more in a “what exactly do you want me to press to continue” way, which is frustrating, not puzzling.
For a first game this is an excellent start, and you certainly have something with the whole throwing your head mechanic! Well done.
Thank you so much for the feedback! I’ll be sure to give clearer input and buttons prompts in later editions.
I disagree, the combination of movement and throwing was not only convenient but interesting. Great game you’ve got here, but I agree that some features could be clearer. For instance, I had no idea you could jump onto your own head and walk on it.
Also, I like how the head goes a fixed distance, it being variable would have been rather annoying.
Some puzzles had me stuck for a long while, but the solution was very satisfying to find; nice level design! I would suggest writing LMB and RMB more clearly, though, and making the water more blue so it stands out.
EDIT - oh I responded to a post by @ComicallyUnfunny but they deleted it. I thought it was a nice post. I don’t know why it was deleted.
Yeah I am not sure the arrow keys would improve it, but I found using the mouse just for doing left click and nothing else actually mouse-related a bit annoying.
Anyway it was only food for thought for the OP @yeah.
I was thinking that the head is an object, so it moving in a straight line was a bit weird, that was all. Perhaps it should fall off if you are moving fast and abruptly stop. I don’t know, that might not work either. All that stuff though is up to the OP and what he wants his mechanic to do of course. Just spit balling really. Perhaps it needs some deeper thinking about it, to get it just right.
For the OP though I would suggest strongly that you acknowledge in your own mind that a puzzle game and a skill game have two different audiences. I think you should decide which you actually want.
(Or perhaps you have decided to combine them into a kind of hybrid to appeal to both audiences - that is completely ok too.)
Anyway, once again, a very promising start.
PS I just noticed you do call it a “puzzle-platformer” so perhaps that was the intention all along.
I agree. Also, found a bug for @yeah : if you press R to reset when you’re in the process of resetting, the game seems to freeze. If you reset again, it’s OK again.
Also, what @pauldrewett said about puzzle vs. skill is very true. In the process of solving puzzles, I was never sure whether my approach or my timing was off when I died.
Oh good point. Me too. I think for a user this is frustrating.
Good catch!
That’s something that I’d realized about a month in the project, trouble is there aren’t a lot of simple solutions to such a problem.
Do you think that separating ‘puzzle’ and ‘dexterity/timing’ stages, and giving the ‘puzzle’ stages a different kind of gameplay system would help? Specifically having the puzzle stages be a grid based system where moving right would move you to the grid right to you, and throwing your head would move it ~ 2-3 grids in the direction you threw it in.
That way you can have a system that has way less ambiguity about whether or not you can do something. Did that make sense? Do you think that would work?
I think for me, it’s a skill issue, but one thing that might be nice for certain levels is an option to slow down time to get all your inputs in. I don’t think a grid-based system would be nearly as fun.
