I updated my final Ludum Dare #20 Jam entry to include a link to the Windows port of Hot Potato. Whew! Now I can get back to working on Stop That Hero!. B-)
Categories
GBGamesEncouraging curiosity and supporting creativity
2 replies on “LD20: Hot Potato Windows Port Now Available!”
A little tricky to get to grips with this one, the strategies weren’t obvious after reading the instructions and checking out the game so I thought I’d just play and see if I could get a handle on it, but it takes quite a lot of clicking to get the pieces close enough to the enemy to start interacting. Once up close it felt a bit rail roaded, like I was doomed and couldn’t adjust before game over. I think it would have helped to have tiny initial levels with pieces in pre-defined positions so you can walk through a few scenarios tutorial style. Also, some pixel characters and two or three frames of animation would have helped it feel more approachable I think. I know it’s a 48hour game jam so it’s amazing to get a complete game at all, but a bit of healthy feedback is always nice. Good one! 🙂
Thanks, Poo Bear! I do appreciate the feedback.
Ideally I’d have spent most of my time on the actual game itself instead of the infrastructure to make it work. I also wondered if the game would work better as a series of pre-made puzzles, especially since the movement of the agents makes it fairly difficult to get past them. To be honest, I haven’t actually won the game myself yet.
Animation is one of those things that would have helped visualize where each of the entities were moving. When you have a bunch on the screen at once, and they all jump into place, it’s hard to know what happened, and you have to study the screen more than you should. Unfortunately animation isn’t one of the things I had ready-to-go, so it was left until later as a nice-to-have and eventually to v2.0. B-)