WALKING CASTLE [DEVLOG] 2D platformer

Lesedi_Mosadi

Hi everyone

I've been trying to learn unity for a while now. I'm still pretty rough, but I'm at a point where I want to make a full game. Its not much at this point, but here is an early version of the game. Its a simple 2d platformer with three levels so far. My intention is make a story driven mobile platformer with simple controls.

I'm hoping to find out if anyone finds what I have so far fun. Any feedback would be really helpful.

Controls:
Move: WASD
Jump: spacebar

lesedi-mosadi.itch.io/working-title-walking-castle


Hope you enjoy checking it out.

dark_seth

Hi. The link is not working for me.

Lesedi_Mosadi

dark_seth said:

Hi. The link is not working for me.

Sorry about that. I thought I had everything up and running correctly. I'm trying to fix the link, might take a moment. Apologies.

Lesedi_Mosadi

dark_seth said:

Hi. The link is not working for me.

Okay the link above should be working now, but here it is again just in case:

lesedi-mosadi.itch.io/working-title-walking-castle

ashashza

That was cool. I found that engaging enough to complete all 3 levels.

Here's a bunch of notes in no particular order:
- Controls felt quite responsive. I felt quite in control of the character.
- It felt like there was enough leniency on the platforms to make jumps reliably. This is great because it's a problem that plagues most platformer prototypes and you've addressed it early on.
- It was cool to see a few different mechanics here, like the balls and booster platforms. That kept me intrigued to keep playing and see more.
- Depending on what kind of platforming you're aiming for... it might be worth making the jump dependent on how long the input is held. Something like this.
- When hitting the yellow platforms / red balls, the player does a bounce or two before dying / restarting. This felt a bit disappointing to me. I think I wanted to either visibly die earlier or be able to use the bounce to try get back into the level flow.
- After hitting a pink booster platform, you get thrown upwards. The player goes up quite a long way and it feels a bit awkward to wait so long for it to come down. If I try move while up there, I often end up off the level.

Overall this feels like a nice foundation. I'm curious to see how you build on this with mechanics, world building and story.

Fengol

I saw the working title and it made me think of a recent Ludum Dare entry, Crumbling Home

I got to the second level and the controls feel very good. Those long jumps really give you a chance to get the feel.

Lesedi_Mosadi

ashashza said:

That was cool. I found that engaging enough to complete all 3 levels.

Here's a bunch of notes in no particular order:
- Controls felt quite responsive. I felt quite in control of the character.
- It felt like there was enough leniency on the platforms to make jumps reliably. This is great because it's a problem that plagues most platformer prototypes and you've addressed it early on.
- It was cool to see a few different mechanics here, like the balls and booster platforms. That kept me intrigued to keep playing and see more.
- Depending on what kind of platforming you're aiming for... it might be worth making the jump dependent on how long the input is held. Something like this.
- When hitting the yellow platforms / red balls, the player does a bounce or two before dying / restarting. This felt a bit disappointing to me. I think I wanted to either visibly die earlier or be able to use the bounce to try get back into the level flow.
- After hitting a pink booster platform, you get thrown upwards. The player goes up quite a long way and it feels a bit awkward to wait so long for it to come down. If I try move while up there, I often end up off the level.

Overall this feels like a nice foundation. I'm curious to see how you build on this with mechanics, world building and story.

Thanks for the tutorial. I never really thought about adding weight to jump. I'll definitely add it in and see how it goes.
When it comes to the character dying I was thinking of just having the character disappear for the time being, but ended up leaving it as it is. I'll play around with it for the next build.

Lesedi_Mosadi

Fengol said:

I saw the working title and it made me think of a recent Ludum Dare entry, Crumbling Home

I got to the second level and the controls feel very good. Those long jumps really give you a chance to get the feel.

I just played Crumbling Home. Its awesome. It actually gave me an idea of where I wanna take the story and art. Thanks for the recommendation and for playing.

Lesedi_Mosadi

Hello Everyone

I just wanted to share the latest build of Walking Castle.

Updates:
-The number of levels are now at 7, which is the number I was aiming for from the start.
-The player now disappears after having died.
-The jump is now dependent on how long you hold the button.
-You no longer stay in the air for an extremely long time.
-The first 3 levels have all been tweaked in order to work with the updated player movement.

And that's it so far.

Any feedback on any of the a updates and the overall game would be greatly appreciated.

https://lesedi-mosadi.itch.io/working-title-walking-castle

Fengol

I have two issues. On level 2, there's a leap of faith where the player must jump and hope there's a platform off-screen. This isn't good design. And on level 3 the game goes from right-to-left but you've taught the player in the last two levels to go from left-to-right. If you want to change the direction you should make it clearer that the direction is reversed.

Also, I know it's not important to game play but please fix the stretched images by using a split sprite or something :)

Lesedi_Mosadi

Fengol said:

I have two issues. On level 2, there's a leap of faith where the player must jump and hope there's a platform off-screen. This isn't good design. And on level 3 the game goes from right-to-left but you've taught the player in the last two levels to go from left-to-right. If you want to change the direction you should make it clearer that the direction is reversed.

Also, I know it's not important to game play but please fix the stretched images by using a split sprite or something :)

Thanks for the feedback. I'll definitely address the issues in the next build. I might have trouble with the split sprite, I've never heard of that before. Do you know where I can look it up?

Lesedi_Mosadi

Sup Everyone

Just finished the latest build, There still quite a few problems that I'm still trying to figure out, but this is what i have so far.

Updates:
-The leap of faith problem in level 2 is gone.
-Level 3 now starts from left to right.
-I've animated a character, although the jump animation is still a mess(sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't.
-There's music and pixel-art(Didn't make them, they're free assets).
-For the time being we're back to just three levels, because the others don't have art yet.
-I'm still working on animating the obstacles so they are still using default sprites.

And that's it.

Any feedback would be really useful.


LINK:
https://lesedi-mosadi.itch.io/working-title-walking-castle

Here's a look at protagonist:

ashashza

Oh wow, this has come a looong way since I last played.

Here's some notes I jotted down in no particular order:

• The text grouping on the first screen instructions could be clearer. If the space between "wasd = move" was tigher, and other spacing was larger, it would be clearer. Uhm, I hope that makes sense?
  
• Up to jump? Randomly I was eating a pear while playing this and wanted to use my right hand to play. I wish jump was also bound to Up then I could play with arrows and up :)
  
• It's so cool that holding jump goes higher!
  
• It's a really nice touch that music smoothly persisits scene changes.
  
• I found myself wanting more variation in the platforming puzzles. Level 2 has a bunch of red-single-bouncy's in a row. Level 3 felt more interesting because the platforming varied a lot more.
  

At this point I'm most drawn to learning about Walking Castle's story. While playing I found myself asking a bunch of questions:

• Who is this girl? Does she have a name?
  
• Are they wearing a school uniform?
  
• How did they get up into the clouds?! Can they fly?
  
• What are they running from? What are they heading towards?
  

I sense that adding story (if that's a something you're interested in doing) would add a lot. Giving players a reason to continue exploring and doing their best to help the character get through the levels.

Lesedi_Mosadi

Thanks, I'm really glad you liked it.

ashashza said:

Oh wow, this has come a looong way since I last played.

Here's some notes I jotted down in no particular order:

• The text grouping on the first screen instructions could be clearer. If the space between "wasd = move" was tigher, and other spacing was larger, it would be clearer. Uhm, I hope that makes sense?
  
• Up to jump? Randomly I was eating a pear while playing this and wanted to use my right hand to play. I wish jump was also bound to Up then I could play with arrows and up :)
  
• It's so cool that holding jump goes higher!
  
• It's a really nice touch that music smoothly persisits scene changes.
  
• I found myself wanting more variation in the platforming puzzles. Level 2 has a bunch of red-single-bouncy's in a row. Level 3 felt more interesting because the platforming varied a lot more.
  

I'll take a look at the text grouping and using up for jump, and I'll play around a bit with level 02. Yeah, level 02 did worry me a bit. Its meant ease you in, but it is kinda uninteresting.

ashashza said:

At this point I'm most drawn to learning about Walking Castle's story. While playing I found myself asking a bunch of questions:

• Who is this girl? Does she have a name?
  
• Are they wearing a school uniform?
  
• How did they get up into the clouds?! Can they fly?
  
• What are they running from? What are they heading towards?
  

I sense that adding story (if that's a something you're interested in doing) would add a lot. Giving players a reason to continue exploring and doing their best to help the character get through the levels.

I was hoping to have the story finalized by this point, but I'm still working on it. Her goal keeps changing, so settling on a direction has been frustrating. With that said I should know where I'm going by the time the next build is up.

Fengol

What an incredible difference from the last update, well done! Level 3 was a joy to play

Lesedi_Mosadi

Fengol said:

What an incredible difference from the last update, well done! Level 3 was a joy to play

Thanks, I really appreciate you checking it out and enjoying it.

Lesedi_Mosadi

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since updating, but it's finally done.

I released Walking Castle(I decided to keep the name)in December last year on google play. I then worked on bugs and ASO up till now.
It's not perfect; it doesn't have everything I wanted to put in, but it's done.

The biggest mistake I made was underestimating how much I still had left to do. After the last update, I honestly thought I was a month away from wrapping up. 5 months later I was still busy. I'm pretty sure there was a solid 3 months when it felt like nothing was getting done.

So learning to be more efficient is definitely at the top of my list for the next project. I made a ton of unnecessary mistakes throughout development, so I have a lot to do if I want to do this again.

As for Walking Castle it does have a story now:

A little schoolgirl must journey up her broken castle in order to retrieve the key that will rebuild said castle.

Unfortunately since I have been focused on the mobile release, the latest build is only available on Android.

PLAY STORE:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ToyMakerGalaxy.WalkingCastle

Since the Last update I added
-25 levels
-added a few cutscenes
-post processing and menus
- mobile controls
- trailer

I hope you enjoy checking it out.