I Wanna Be The Casual Grassland [v.05]

[trollathon]

This is a fairly easy (for now) fangame that I've start work on, It only has a tutorial and one set of 4 screens at the moment.
I'd love to get some feedback and criticism, as this is the first fangame I've been fairly serious about making.

CHANGELOG:

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v.05 started stage 2! cave area. added transition and 4 screens. tweaked some other stuff

v.04 added more grassy area, tweaked some stuff

v.03 Added some more areas, and some bonus garbage

v.02 Re-vamped tutorial and made another section, with minor tweaks to first section

v.01 Inital release with tutorial and 1 section


Screenshot

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Download:
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[Kyir]

I think you made an error in exporting your game, since I can't seem to run it. You want the Compressed Application Zip option I believe.

[kendotlibero]

I think you made an error in exporting your game, since I can't seem to run it. You want the Compressed Application Zip option I believe.

nope
you need to add at the end of the game launcher a .exe
it's a really simple needle game; already seen gimmicks...
nothing special, but it isn't really bad.


*DISCLAMER* i don't know anything about game desining... Maybe someone more experienced would say something better for your game

[Derf]

I don't think this is bad for a first attempt and you certainly have something here that you could expand on to make something decent.

- The tutorial section is kinda bland. You should include a way to skip it on the first screen because many people are just going to be bored by going through screens of info they already know. I disliked the way every lesson was on a new screen since some screens have only one thing of interest in them and then just a load of dead space wasted walking. Also put a save before the cherry trap just so people don't have to trek through the previous room to give it another go (since people will obviously die at least once to it). Also the jumps in the harder jumps section were for me in reverse order of difficulty. Still end with the f-jump, but for sure I'd reverse their order.

- The level design is ok. I can tell you're just going for easy and tame jumps in the first area. There's not much to comment on with them, even though the difficulty is low you could still try spicing them up a bit. But honestly they're decent and they aren't boring.

- The graphics are ok too. The grass tiles are fine but I don't understand why the background is just the default game maker cyan, it's really ugly to look at. Even a picture of some sky would be better.

Overall, it's better than the first work a lot of people put out, but it's so early days with this project it's hard to give much feedback. I'd say wait until you have a whole area before showing it again as it's hard for people to extrapolate your style from just two rooms of real gameplay.

[trollathon]

- The tutorial section is kinda bland. You should include a way to skip it on the first screen because many people are just going to be bored by going through screens of info they already know. I disliked the way every lesson was on a new screen since some screens have only one thing of interest in them and then just a load of dead space wasted walking. Also put a save before the cherry trap just so people don't have to trek through the previous room to give it another go (since people will obviously die at least once to it). Also the jumps in the harder jumps section were for me in reverse order of difficulty. Still end with the f-jump, but for sure I'd reverse their order.

Making The tutorial into one to two screens that are more compact was something I thought of, but I wasn't sure about doing it. I think I'll definitely do that.

- The level design is ok. I can tell you're just going for easy and tame jumps in the first area. There's not much to comment on with them, even though the difficulty is low you could still try spicing them up a bit. But honestly they're decent and they aren't boring.

Thanks! I tried to make a game I would enjoy, using mostly jumps that I like. Though, I am not sure how to 'spice up' the jumps?

- The graphics are ok too. The grass tiles are fine but I don't understand why the background is just the default game maker cyan, it's really ugly to look at. Even a picture of some sky would be better.

Ok, I was using the sky color that came with the tileset I was using. I'll try to get a good background for it.

[Derf]

I think it's a good idea to do that honestly.

I just meant like messing around with them and trying out new configurations; but if these jumps are the jumps you enjoy then don't let that stop you. My personal way of making games is to also make the game i would want to play so I believe strongly in that.

Oh sorry you're right it's not gms set blue. The problem isn't so much the colour just that a block colour background looks very flat. It isn't an issue if the tiles are flat and minimal too, but yours are detailed and so it looks less like a sky and more like you forgot to put something in, if you get me?

Good luck! :~)

[Kyir]

I think you made an error in exporting your game, since I can't seem to run it. You want the Compressed Application Zip option I believe.

nope
you need to add at the end of the game launcher a .exe
it's a really simple needle game; already seen gimmicks...
nothing special, but it isn'r really bad.


*DISCLAMER* i don't know shit about game desining... Maybe someone more experienced would say something better for your game

Having to do that means he picked the wrong export option.

[trollathon]

/snip/

Having to do that means he picked the wrong export option.

I actually did export as zip application, I just forgot to re-add the .exe when I renamed the executable in the zip archive.

[Kyir]

Fair enough.