Awesome game! Really cool music choice!!
Reviews for "Snowbrawl in HELL"
Not bad. Everyone's complaining about the life system because they're used to games where you can just keep going and going and going and will eventually beat the game. They're the same type of people that proudly display participation trophies/ribbons on their mantle.
Great little game. It may be the keyboard on my Toshiba laptop but I really like the control scheme. My right on the arrows and left on the space. What could be easier for a right handed person?
The game is not bad at all but the controll scheme is akward, the art style is cutsy and pixelated its good, but the live system is a little unesesary
farfromsleep responds:
I know the life system isn't to everybody's taste, it's mostly there to offer a little challenge as it's a very short game (just a lil thing I threw together in a couple of days really). I might remove it though if it bothers people so much.
It seems a lot of people aren't too happy with the control scheme, guess I'll get on that then :)
(Update: controls now offer a broader selection of options, see description for details)
Um, it's not completely without value. It is a working game, and provides its own challenge, but polish seems to be lacking at several points. For the sake of hopefully providing some positive insight, I'll list off the ones that stick out to me:
-No sound. Or Music. If you're not used to working with audio these can be hard to procure or install, but they are very key to setting the ambiance of a game. Players are gifted with sight, sound, and thought as their 3 real sense for a virtual environment, so completely leaving out one of these is a major blow the game's impact and environment.
-Window size seems non-relative, especially seeing how it quite literally breaks the bounds of the player area. This isn't so bad, but I suspect this could get weird depending on monitor size and ratio.
-Intro and main menu are basically nonexistant. We're given no major backstory (though this is not always necessary) and the controls and mechanics were very "get your feet wet". The controls seemed odd as they were limited to A D and space. Complete WASD, AD and say Z or X, or even options for all of the above and arrow keys would have made more sense, and generally fits a larger range of player tastes.
-Controls and physics are a tad weird. I should explain this one well I think. It seems the way the player jumps and runs are very separate, in fact, they also feel like very separate physical states as well. Jumping simply holds the current velocity of the player and adds some upwards movement to it, and this does, for the purpose of jump, work. However most major platformers also tend to install "air control" (The ability to alter or influence one's aerial velocity) or have running and jumping seem fluid or combined. The way jumping is and the way it is required in this mini-platformer seems very rigid and unnatural, or at least in the realm of gaming. The way players stuck to ropes with just the current height being used as a stick-point relative to swing. Considering combination of fireballs and no further controls except releasing post-stick, this was counter-intuitive as well as really awkward. I would incorporate W & S for that maybe, if you insist on a non-WASD control scheme for jumping, this could work better in-combination.
-Little devil fire dudes rising in the back. I assume this was a finite time limit being implied, but this was neither explained or very well demonstrated.
This is, for most purposes, a functioning, relatively bugless, and style-making game. These are all good points I want to re-emphasize because these are things the game has going for it, and are important in that sense. What stops this from being a great game instead of an OK one though seems to be the fluidity, the polish, and generally the incomplete ambiance of the game.
I think this is the start to something truly wonderful, and it is anything BUT a waste of time to continue pursuing things of this style or layout. I really see a lot of potential laid down here, and think you should follow-through as best you can. For now though,this remains a solid "OK" label game. Hope to see more from you in the future, cheers.
6/10, 3/5 ~WCCC
farfromsleep responds:
It's actually got sound and music, but due to some HTML5 limitations with the audio system it'll only play on certain browsers (Chrome definitely works, but Firefox can be very flaky with HTML games).
Apologies for the relative lack of polish, it was entirely put together in a few days after another project fell through, as I still wanted to release a little something for xmas. Think of it more as a playable xmas card than a full-featured game.
The fixed jumping is a deliberate part of the design. If you check YT videos of the game "Hunchback" (or if you've played similar stuff like Pitfall) you can see the inspiration. It's meant to be a throwback to early (pre-mario bros) platformers, with the set jumping patterns, fixed lives, slower pace and limited range of movement. It's definitely not to everyone's taste, for sure, but I felt modernising it too much would remove too much of what I enjoyed about those games.
Some fair comments about aspects of the controls, I'll try to tweak those a little for later versions (update: changes have just gone live). Thanks for taking the time to offer such a detailed critique, I appreciate it!