In a completely unsurprising serious of events, the "last 10%" is taking longer than 10%. So current projections put us running a bit later than originally planned, by about 4-6 weeks. The original plan was for about 6 months of production (till the end of July), with a team of 2 or 3. The team will have a bit less capacity from August onwards, but we have a fairly big buffer with any external deadlines (like with our publisher). Overall I feel like that's an okay delay (I've heard of way worse), but we'll see how things progress.
Here's a quick GIF with some portals. The portals symbolise the way our time is disappearing into the aether, where the last-mile demons are having a glorious banquet.
I'm back with a small build of the game. This is a "micro build" so it only contains 8 levels (with the lock & key mechanic). These levels were in Streamline, but they now have the Jetstream coat of paint. I'm looking for any and all feedback, on the art, the UX, the juice, anything. The one thing we know that needs to change (and will soon) is the sound effects, but the rest isn't far off from what we're aiming for (so feel free to tear it apart!)
I mentioned the micro build system a while back, but so far we've just been using it for internal testing and sharing with our publisher and such. I wanna start putting out these small builds more regularly, as we get further along and closer to the end of production.
This is a really neat little game. The Trials build you linked is deceptively difficult. I tended to brute-force my way through some of the harder levels, but I think that's okay. Here's some random feedback.
Something about the keyboard controls feels a touch unresponsive to me. I'm not sure, but I think it might be that the move only happens on key release instead of on key press?
It would be nice to have a level number displayed somewhere. Perhaps you could have something like X of Y for each set of levels. I think it might help with a sense of progression, and it would let players know if they are near the end of a set. I feel like I might persevere on a level that I'm stuck on if it's the last one in the set and I know there's a good break point after it.
And finally the keys and locks somehow don't seem like they fit in with the rest of the aesthetic.
Something about the keyboard controls feels a touch unresponsive to me. I'm not sure, but I think it might be that the move only happens on key release instead of on key press?
Yeah, that's probably the reason. We're gonna revisit that soon!
It would be nice to have a level number displayed somewhere. Perhaps you could have something like X of Y for each set of levels. I think it might help with a sense of progression, and it would let players know if they are near the end of a set. I feel like I might persevere on a level that I'm stuck on if it's the last one in the set and I know there's a good break point after it.
There used to be a number displayed on each level, but way too many players assumed it was the number of moves you had or something like that. I considered replacing it with a row of dots, one for each level in the current group, and the showing which level you're on, but I thought that would more likely confuse players than anything else. I'm not sure if "X of Y" would solve that - I think a significant portion of players wouldn't understand that it's just the level number.
Another related aspect is: the progression system is gonna be a bit forgiving, so you will only have to complete 75% of the levels in a group to progress. I don't want players that are stuck on a level to sit there forever and then quit playing in frustration. Once you unlock a new level group you will be able to play them in any order, although you'll probably not get far if you don't play the first few levels that teach a new mechanic.
I totally get the "finding a good break point" aspect though. Ideally I want players to play through a particularly difficult level or two and then get rewarded with a break in difficulty and an interesting new mechanic to play with. My plan was to do that with the menu system, so there is visual reward for completing levels and you get a nice little teaser that there are new levels to try.
And finally the keys and locks somehow don't seem like they fit in with the rest of the aesthetic.
Definitely true. I couldn't think of a lock/key visual aesthetic that would tie in more. Unfortunately I don't think there are any real-life scenarios of conditional clouds ;)
I found the cloud impact sound to have a bass that was quite harsh. I think a sound that's as repetitive as that one's likely to be should be much "softer" (not in volume, but more in "texture"). I found a lot of the sounds to be louder than I expected. I am wearing headphones though, if that makes any difference.
I'd agree with @Elyaradine's feedback. I'd also suggest having more variety of sounds (so like 10 cloud collision sounds, and 3 undo path sounds, 10 movement sounds etc), even just with subtle variations. I'd guess this is something you'd be doing once you've finalized the sounds?
Like @Elyaradine said, the cloud sound sounds very solid, almost like punching a body. I like that it's timed nicely to the animation of the impact though!
I feel like the shorter sounds, like the collision with the line, are more successful. That sound feels closer to a minimalist puzzle game, although it's texture is a bit sharp and digital. I like the more musical undo sound, although it feels louder than it needs to be.
I think the sound for the movement of the plane is my favorite, it feels breezy and relaxed, which feels in line with the experience the graphics appear to be selling.
Hey guys, we're currently looking at adding waves and other small doodads to the ocean in an attempt to make it a little less monochromatic and more visually interesting. We've had some back-and-forth and discussion internally, but now we think it might be interesting to get some public opinion.
In this first mock up, items A - D experiment with conveying waves in an abstract way, unobtrusive way while trying to keep to our overall aesthetic. E & F are concepts of deeper water and doodads or visually interesting elements that could appear randomly in a level. Note that for the purpose of the mockup these levels are exceptionally busy and only 1 or 2 items would appear per level.
In this subsequent mockup, we took the ideas we felt worked the most and refined them a little. We also chose one or two of our favourite doodads and polished them a little to give a better idea of how they might appear in the game.
Which do you think is the best way to convey waves without being too "visually busy"? Do you think the square deeper regions fit better with the game's grid-like world, or do the rounder ones provide a nice visual respite? Which doodads are the most appealing to you, or do you have ideas for things you'd like to see?
We're looking for some feedback to aid us in moving forward.
I like F, neat looking concept, I think it will can do well...
@Elyaradine: thanks, I'll pass the feedback on to our sound designer (she's not on here).
Until now~~~
hey folks I'm the sound artist on the project. I thought i'd throw myself on here so I can chat to anyone about feedback on audio for Jetstream. @Elyaradine, @EvanGreenwood, thank you for your feedback! A fairly common bit of feedback I'm getting, like here, is mostly on how 'hard' the sounds are, which I do agree with a few of them! It may also be to do with the music not being implemented in yet, which is likely going to come around later this month. That way, everything will be mixed in and will likely change the effect of the sound as a result, so yeah, I believe that does contribute to why the mix is a little louder than usual.
There are plans for variating certain sounds already, and this is something that will be checked on moreso when finalising the music, as I do want to make sure they all stay in tune; i've been playing a fair bit of games like Two Dots as part of my research and I really like their approach of sound variation. That being said I don't intend on making every single variants musically based, just the ones that have that note to them, really.
But yeah, thanks for the feedback so far, I really appreciate hearing thoughts on it all. If there's any other audio feedback you'd like to pass on, by all means @ me on here too~
@Boysano: thanks! We've decided to go with something more like C so that non-functional graphics don't get confused with functional graphics. As such it's become a lower priority, but we still intend to get to it soon (tm).
Just finished working on a nifty little analysis and overlay feature for the editor. It can show me some useful things about levels at a glance, like which cells are inaccessible or useless, or if I missed a solution. I started working on the editor improvements a while back, but time has been limited so I only managed to finish it now. Undoubtedly I'll still make some small tweaks as it gets used more, but right now I'm super excited to get cracking with level design and use the new editor!
Quick update: it's been a while, but things are still coming along with Jetstream in the background, slowly but surely. We've been showing it to testers and some people at GDC recently, and the response has generally been great. We're getting very close to a release on desktop, probably coming in a couple months or so, and then coming to mobile a bit later. If you're interested in being involved in testing, we have a form to gather interest and hardware details here, and a mailing list for updates here .
@francoisvn I'm sure it's been in the game for a while, but this is the first time I'm seeing the Plane>Bus transition when on land - it's super cute! :)
@Bensonance: Thanks! It has been in the game a little while, but we haven't shown it publicly much yet. It is in the beta testing build tho! The landing zone gfx is still WIP, but the little vehicle and transition is thanks to @miltage :)
Hey folks! It's been a while, but we've still been quietly chugging along on this. I'm very happy to report that Jetstream is coming soon to Steam and you can wishlist it now! Other platforms will definitely be happening too :) Thanks for all your support so far <3
The excellent @Miltage did some new designs and variations for the reset tile! For those that can't remember: when you fly over this tile your trail up to that point gets cleared (so you can now fly where it was previously blocking you).
The problems we're trying to solve with the original: - It had some negative connotations, and players didn't want to fly over it initially. Once players figured it out, it was fine, but we'd like the screenshots to better communicate things to prospective players. Probably the color and the cross and the connotations with fuel canisters in games. - It has a slightly weird angle and perspective compared to some of the other graphics.
I am placing my bet on number 4, its clearly gas and its clearly there to fill up your vehicle. Blue is neutral (so can't be seen as bad) and doesn't escape your existing color pallet as it matches the water, the green fades away.
The original gas canisters read the best, it contrasts well with the background. But I don't universally associate them with having fuel in them (sometimes water or other liquids).
The gas pumps I instantly recognized as things that might refuel me. I would say gas pump #1 is my favourite (red feels more fuely), but with the contrast of the original gas canisters.
Refuelling is kind of an interesting way of thinking about the mechanic. Technically it's more like wiping out the plane's trail. You just fly over (you don't stop), and your trail disappears. A lot of players would look at the original canisters and be like "Hm... that seems like something I want to avoid," and then after being forced to fly over (cause there were no other options), "Oh, so that's what happens!" Then they usually carry on playing and don't have any issue with it. It's kind of interesting to see that switch happen in players' minds, but the idea here is that hopefully we can avoid the internal conflict and cognitive dissonance (buzzword bingo!)
Are the colours more muted to avoid conflicting with the destination icon?
The red of 1 was more muted to hopefully not look as dangerous. 4 was actually the first of the fuel pumps, but I was worried it might not distinguish itself enough from the water (I still think blue isn't the best for that reason). I also did a poll over on the twitters, and interestingly 4 got the most votes and D was next in line. That was a bit surprising to me, but there weren't that many votes. Personally 1 was my favourite, but I think some more vibrant colors might be good. What about these?
While I like the look of the new "gas station" ones more, I also think that maybe a little bit too much worry has gone into the red ones you had in the first place. For example, both Doom 2016 and Left-4-Dead use classic red cans as you had them. When I look at those, I instantly think... ah, fuel. I'm sure a lot of games use that classic "gas canister" look, and it's OK.
While I like the look of the new "gas station" ones more, I also think that maybe a little bit too much worry has gone into the red ones you had in the first place. For example, both Doom 2016 and Left-4-Dead use classic red cans as you had them. When I look at those, I instantly think... ah, fuel. I'm sure a lot of games use that classic "gas canister" look, and it's OK.
It's not a huge thing, I agree, but fortunately we're at the point near the end of the project where little things matter and can get some consideration - a fortunate place to be in! :D
It's not that players didn't know what the fuel canisters were - they did - but the problem is that they often assume you shouldn't fly a plane into them - not an unreasonable assumption! In a lot of games, fuel containers tend to explode when you just "bump" them. Also, as far as possible, we don't want players to require literacy in other games, especially not Doom or L4D. Jetstream is targeted at a much wider not-core-gamer demographic - we're trying to cater more to the market that isn't served well by games like Doom and L4D, and probably won't ever even play those games :)
I prefer the new gas pumps, either number 4(blue) or 6 (yellow). With the original red canisters i was a bit scared it was explosive gas that would explode my plane! :D
Super excited to let everyone here know Jetstream will be releasing on desktop (Win, Mac, Linux) on 2 April, and mobile later this year! We're super grateful to all the advice and feedback from this community, both on the forums and at meetups.
... and it's out now on Steam! if you'd like to help, you can buy the game and leave a review, or RT this one. Thanks! I'll leave you with this super helpful explainer video
Comments
- Improved the movement tweening a lot, especially when it would hit a lot of forcer blocks or travel through portals in the same move.
- Scale the UI for landscape (on desktop).
- Added a new trap timer mechanic.
- Some interactions between mechanics.
As always, you can play the new demo build here: http://jetstreamgame.com/In a completely unsurprising serious of events, the "last 10%" is taking longer than 10%. So current projections put us running a bit later than originally planned, by about 4-6 weeks. The original plan was for about 6 months of production (till the end of July), with a team of 2 or 3. The team will have a bit less capacity from August onwards, but we have a fairly big buffer with any external deadlines (like with our publisher). Overall I feel like that's an okay delay (I've heard of way worse), but we'll see how things progress.
Here's a quick GIF with some portals. The portals symbolise the way our time is disappearing into the aether, where the last-mile demons are having a glorious banquet.
Play the "Trials" micro build here: http://jetstreamgame.com/micro/b/64fbdb3b85578e5839cf4d2f/
I mentioned the micro build system a while back, but so far we've just been using it for internal testing and sharing with our publisher and such. I wanna start putting out these small builds more regularly, as we get further along and closer to the end of production.
Something about the keyboard controls feels a touch unresponsive to me. I'm not sure, but I think it might be that the move only happens on key release instead of on key press?
It would be nice to have a level number displayed somewhere. Perhaps you could have something like X of Y for each set of levels. I think it might help with a sense of progression, and it would let players know if they are near the end of a set. I feel like I might persevere on a level that I'm stuck on if it's the last one in the set and I know there's a good break point after it.
And finally the keys and locks somehow don't seem like they fit in with the rest of the aesthetic.
Yeah, that's probably the reason. We're gonna revisit that soon!
There used to be a number displayed on each level, but way too many players assumed it was the number of moves you had or something like that. I considered replacing it with a row of dots, one for each level in the current group, and the showing which level you're on, but I thought that would more likely confuse players than anything else. I'm not sure if "X of Y" would solve that - I think a significant portion of players wouldn't understand that it's just the level number.
Another related aspect is: the progression system is gonna be a bit forgiving, so you will only have to complete 75% of the levels in a group to progress. I don't want players that are stuck on a level to sit there forever and then quit playing in frustration. Once you unlock a new level group you will be able to play them in any order, although you'll probably not get far if you don't play the first few levels that teach a new mechanic.
I totally get the "finding a good break point" aspect though. Ideally I want players to play through a particularly difficult level or two and then get rewarded with a break in difficulty and an interesting new mechanic to play with. My plan was to do that with the menu system, so there is visual reward for completing levels and you get a nice little teaser that there are new levels to try.
Definitely true. I couldn't think of a lock/key visual aesthetic that would tie in more. Unfortunately I don't think there are any real-life scenarios of conditional clouds ;)
In version 0.3.2 you can find the following:
- New sounds! Finally!
- A new tapered plane trail
- Other bug fixes and changes that are unfortunately not visible in the demo :(
Play the build that finally doesn't make you auto-mute here: http://jetstreamgame.com/The sounds are just the first draft, but we'd appreciate any feedback on the sounds or the new tapered plane trail. Or anything else :)
I'd agree with @Elyaradine's feedback. I'd also suggest having more variety of sounds (so like 10 cloud collision sounds, and 3 undo path sounds, 10 movement sounds etc), even just with subtle variations. I'd guess this is something you'd be doing once you've finalized the sounds?
Like @Elyaradine said, the cloud sound sounds very solid, almost like punching a body. I like that it's timed nicely to the animation of the impact though!
I feel like the shorter sounds, like the collision with the line, are more successful. That sound feels closer to a minimalist puzzle game, although it's texture is a bit sharp and digital. I like the more musical undo sound, although it feels louder than it needs to be.
I think the sound for the movement of the plane is my favorite, it feels breezy and relaxed, which feels in line with the experience the graphics appear to be selling.
hey folks I'm the sound artist on the project. I thought i'd throw myself on here so I can chat to anyone about feedback on audio for Jetstream. @Elyaradine, @EvanGreenwood, thank you for your feedback! A fairly common bit of feedback I'm getting, like here, is mostly on how 'hard' the sounds are, which I do agree with a few of them! It may also be to do with the music not being implemented in yet, which is likely going to come around later this month. That way, everything will be mixed in and will likely change the effect of the sound as a result, so yeah, I believe that does contribute to why the mix is a little louder than usual.
There are plans for variating certain sounds already, and this is something that will be checked on moreso when finalising the music, as I do want to make sure they all stay in tune; i've been playing a fair bit of games like Two Dots as part of my research and I really like their approach of sound variation. That being said I don't intend on making every single variants musically based, just the ones that have that note to them, really.
But yeah, thanks for the feedback so far, I really appreciate hearing thoughts on it all. If there's any other audio feedback you'd like to pass on, by all means @ me on here too~
@Boysano: thanks! We've decided to go with something more like C so that non-functional graphics don't get confused with functional graphics. As such it's become a lower priority, but we still intend to get to it soon (tm).
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Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/738860/Jetstream/
Website: http://jetstreamgame.com/
If you're looking for a good tweet to RT: https://twitter.com/francoisvn/status/1032669063720456198
Thanks again! We should have some more updates coming soon!
The problems we're trying to solve with the original:
- It had some negative connotations, and players didn't want to fly over it initially. Once players figured it out, it was fine, but we'd like the screenshots to better communicate things to prospective players. Probably the color and the cross and the connotations with fuel canisters in games.
- It has a slightly weird angle and perspective compared to some of the other graphics.
What do you think? Which is your favourite?
The gas pumps I instantly recognized as things that might refuel me. I would say gas pump #1 is my favourite (red feels more fuely), but with the contrast of the original gas canisters.
BTW, I like #8 the most.
It's not that players didn't know what the fuel canisters were - they did - but the problem is that they often assume you shouldn't fly a plane into them - not an unreasonable assumption! In a lot of games, fuel containers tend to explode when you just "bump" them. Also, as far as possible, we don't want players to require literacy in other games, especially not Doom or L4D. Jetstream is targeted at a much wider not-core-gamer demographic - we're trying to cater more to the market that isn't served well by games like Doom and L4D, and probably won't ever even play those games :)
I prefer the new gas pumps, either number 4(blue) or 6 (yellow).
With the original red canisters i was a bit scared it was explosive gas that would explode my plane! :D
Announcement tweet: https://twitter.com/ClockworkAcorn/status/1106242559087726593