I wanna be the Island

[Kpa6]

Short needle game.

Download: https://www.mediafire.com/download/b12kki69a9a9qa9/I+wanna+be+the+Island.zip

Screenshots:

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[kilgour22]

I feel like this game has a bit of an identity crisis. While there are some neat jumps in it, the save difficulty in general is out of whack with arbitrary save placement & somewhat nasty first jumps.

Try as I might, I can't figure out the type of player who's going to enjoy this game. Because of the semi-regular usage of v-align jumps and grindy jumps (see https://prnt.sc/az7xk3 and https://prnt.sc/az82qr for what I mean), it would seem to be geared towards players of a higher skill level. However, with the variance in save difficulty and the jumps themselves, I think that the players who would typically enjoy these kinds of v-align grinds and low-percentage jumps will find this to be too easy or too boring. Players of average skill level would almost certainly either be unable to complete this or unwilling to.

To sum up, I just can't figure out a (typical) target audience for this game. I cleared but didn't enjoy it, nor did I feel fulfilled to have cleared it. Some suggestions would be to reconsider the save balance (and game balance on a broader scope), get rid of grindy double full jump starting jumps, more engaging visuals, and making good aligns as convenient as possible.

[Kpa6]

Thanks for the feedback, kilgour.

I expect this game to be an average level needle. I definitely don't mean it to be a v-align grind (except the final jump, where the needed v-string is achieved through full jumping). For the first jump you mentioned, I removed the downward spike that made the corner - that lets you hug the wall at any v-string (new version is at the same download link). For the last jump, it's more of a joke than of a real jump - once you know that you should full jump, it shouldn't take more than 20 tries. Tell me of other v-align dependent jumps that you found, and I'll look into them as well.

Save balance: I tried to make saves equally hard, and when I played through the game, I never felt like some saves were significantly harder/easier than others. Some saves have easier jumps, but then those saves have more jumps in them. Let me know of the saves that felt too hard or too easy, I'll check them.

First jumps are intentionally harder than the rest of the save, it's the kind of progression that I find comfortable as a player.

Aligns: to be honest, I don't see what is wrong with them. The most natural align in the beginning of every save should be good.

Visuals: I experimented with them, but I don't feel like I have enough creativity to come up with visuals that would be complicated and good at the same time. So I just settled for something simple that wouldn't distract from the needle.