Rqge Quit - A Raycasting excersize -Let's play

edited in Projects
Hi all.

So playing around with unity I used some ideas from other games. Making this character controller without using rigid bodies and unity build in Character controllers. The character detect most to all collisions via ray casting.


Please have a go and see if you can reach the end of the level.
Just wish I had an animated character LOL. so Excuse the block......

Link to play
https://deon-smit.itch.io/rage-quit



image



Comments

  • I know there are games like this out there, and people like them, but I don't :) There is some elegance to working out how to frustrate people.
    Thanked by 1dark_seth
  • I think if the goal's to get maximum frustration, then you should be offering enough of a glimpse of enjoyment (great atmosphere and narrative a la Limbo, or great humour) that they're willing to go through more and more frustration to get more and more enjoyment, and even then I think it's the game dev equivalent of a designer going "HA HA MADE YOU LOOK I'M SO CLEVER".

    It also makes it difficult to give any kind of useful feedback, because "the controls feel bad" or "the game ignores most platformer UX conventions" or "there are no visual cues for where a trap was, so that when I respawn, even though I know a trap is there, I can't be sure exactly where and have to guess" can result in responses like, "Yes, but I was trying to make it frustrating on purpose, so I succeeded!"

    The rain's a nice touch, though I expect the splash particles to launch upwards instead of splitting off under the platform.
    Thanked by 1dark_seth
  • edited
    Played a little, the controls feel very nice, however the game is too frustrating, maybe once a player has died on an obstacle, that obstacle should remain visible? Think that would make the game more enjoyable.
    Thanked by 1dark_seth
  • Thanks for the feedback. Got an idea for the traps. I always want the traps to be hidden but I need to give the player a clue to know about them and where they are.
    Thanked by 1Elyaradine
  • edited
    I am a fan of these kinds of games... or at least a fan of watching people play these kinds of games.

    I think the game might be a bit too difficult to make progress (particularly because it's difficult remembering the traps). But the real problem is that because it is just white blocks jumping around and spikes appearing randomly, it isn't very funny, and the surprises aren't interesting.

    I hope this doesn't come across as condescending. But I need to explain that (and it's a longish explanation).

    The game like this that I like the most and have played the farthest in is "Cat Mario". Check it out if you haven't already. (Other games like Eryi's Action do a similar thing... I Wanna Be The Guy... and Default Dan is another one, though I think less successful).

    What's great about Cat Mario is that it looks like Mario, but the rules are surprisingly different. So the player has expectations (based on Mario), and then those expectations are thwarted.

    I Wanna Be The Guy is somewhat similar, though it is a mashup of many retro platformer games (particularly Mega Man). I Wanna Be The Guy is less funny as a result (because it isn't clearly evoking one game and parodying it), but I Wanna Be The Guy does a good job of challenging the player and the rules that are reminiscent of classic platformers are often warped.

    Cat Mario was one of the first games like this (along with I Wanna Be The Guy), so it was all very surprising. Whereas Default Dan was more recent, and the way Default Dan chose to warp the Mario formula was to do exactly the opposite of Mario.

    Why Cat Mario is better than Default Dan is that Default Dan is actually kind of predictable, whereas Cat Mario feels more like Mario coming from a warped and cruel mind. Cat Mario's aberrations from the Mario formula seem to say something, and it's generally understood as "fuck you" and "cats are bad". Whereas Default Dan sort of says "still the opposite of Mario" each time. Cat Mario was simply more entertaining.

    I don't think Cat Mario is still the best thing to make though. It's 10 years old now, and several games have copied it now (like "The Unfair Platformer"). That formula of "Make a pleasant looking game reminiscent of oldschool games"->"Make it perversely brutal"->"Profit" is a bit old now.

    But what was great about Cat Mario and I Wanna Be The Guy back in 2007 was that it felt like playing against the mind of the creator. The creator of the game was trying to kill you and that was quite apparent. There's lots of very difficult games out there, but Cat Mario and IWBTG were different because of how surprising the difficulty was (particularly because the retro theme lured players into a false sense of security, particularly with Cat Mario). And this can be done again, but obviously it'd have to be different in 2017.

    The point I'm getting to is: (sorry about the long explanation)

    In Rqge Quit there isn't an apparent internal logic that is being perverted. A game about a white block jumping doesn't present obvious rules as it's super abstract, and so when Rqge Quit does something unexpected it doesn't say anything and there is nothing that can be learned from it (as it's essentially a random surprise).

    Like I said at the start, I am a fan of troll platformer games. But with Rqge Quit I only got past the first checkpoint and died 24 times.

    What I really want in a game like this is the ability to start deciphering the warped logic (like in Cat Mario, the fluffy Mario clouds always kill you), so that despite being in a cruel world I can have some sense of mastery. Even the deadly falling apples at the start of IWBTG have some logic (in that after being killed by one the player knows to expect the other apples to try kill them).

    And the other thing I want is the warped logic to be saying something. Like the way Cat Mario parodies Mario, or IWBTG parodies MegaMan (sort of). Or like the way in a game like Bloody Trapland the game is about killing cute animals, or in Happy Wheels a lot of the deaths are of normcore folks (like parents).

    Megaman in particular is ripe for parody. There's been a resurgence of people playing Mega Man inspired games recently (like Shovel Knight and 20XX). The audience for Mega Man likes brutal platformers (as early Mega Man was pretty brutal). Though I think the game would have to parody Mega Man in a way that feels different from Cat Mario's parody style (as that is 10 years old now and there have been many immitators).

    Thomas Was Alone might be another game that's popular enough that a perverted version of it is resonant with an indie audience (and because Thomas Was Alone is just blocks, it might be more achievable technically).

    A game maybe worth checking out, if you're interested in making a game where the game itself feels antagonistic is Pony Island. It's not actually a brutal platformer, but it makes the player feel like they're playing against the game in a personal way. IWBTG did this to some extent, but Pony Island does it better than any other game I've played (and it's just 2 hours long).
    Thanked by 3Tuism critic dark_seth
  • I played for like a minute and got frustrated because there's no way you can complete a level without dying at every trap. It feels a bit like a memory game that punishes you when you mess up or forget the next move.

    I don't know if this is the same genre but I really enjoyed the mobile game Hyper Flex. Where the flow and music makes it extremely addictive and puts the player in a sort of trance :). Every time you die it's very obvious why and you blame yourself instead of the game.

    Maybe if you simplified the controls a bit more by only allowing the player to jump, and the character moves forward automatically. Also maybe adding some rubber band effect, like in 'Thomas was alone', to the square when it jumps and lands might add a nice feel to it.

    I hope my feedback helps. Good luck!
    Thanked by 1dark_seth
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