Little Game - hardcore puzzle-platform about teleporting

[Lirija]

Hello everyone! I'm glad to announce that last week i released my first game ever, Little Game!
It's a instant death puzzle platform, the goal is getting to the exit of each level (there are 30 more or less) by avoiding hazards (you can teleport one tile away) and solving riddles.

Some gameplay here:



As it is my first game i haven't implemented super fancy stuff but instead i focused more on the interaction of what i had to create (at least i hope) interesting levels. It's pretty hard (probably too hard).
More or less it took me 6 months to make it (considering that i was learning during the process, and i had to redo some stuff and at some point), for the most part spent on level design.

I used bump, hump, anim8, sti, push, and strict.lua libraries.

It's far from flawless, there are still some bugs that i never managed to solve but i'm pretty happy of the result and even more of the experience i gained. I'll definitely make more in the future.
Here the links btw:

https://mrkdji.itch.io/little-game
https://gamejolt.com/games/Little-game/385332

Let me know what you think about it!
Hope you'll like it

P.S.
A special thanks goes to noooway for his breakout tutorial, cs50 for their introduction to game development course and to the love2d discord guys.

[Snaker1]

Really love the art style, sound and spooky atmosphere of the game.

The important thing missing: a .love file.

The game is pretty hard. I only managed the first four or so level before giving up. In fact, already the second jump of the first level was a bit hard. The third level with the boxes was frustrating You clearly went for a more challenging game and that is good but some very easy tutorial style levels would not have hurt. You need to get the player invested in the game with some quick achievements first before you can go for the sadistic part.

Also the name "little game" does not fit, needs something spooky.

All in all, a very awesome and spooky platformer, good job!
If that is really your first game, I am very impressed. It is really polished and well designed.

[Lirija]

Thanks for the feedback (i'm glad to hear you liked the graphics and music!)
I plan to release the .love in the future, but i need to apply some changes in order to make the game compatible with love 11.1 (i had some problems related to stencyls i think).
I'm considering to make the jumps more forgiving but i've to think that thoroughly as it could break some gameplay (anyway the game isn't really about jumping, most of the puzzles deal with pushing boxes).
Thank you for mentioning that the third level was frustrating, this kinda took me by surprise as i thought it was too easy / uninspired, i might move it further (to be honest i might have neglected the first 10 levels or so and concentrated more on the last 5, which are way more lenghty, this is totally my bad).
I tried with another project before Little Game, it was a spaceshooter with only one level but the code was not scalable at all so i abandoned it; but you could say that Little Game is my first actual game / level design experience.
Eventually i'll release a 1.1 that should fix the problems you addressed. Thank you for the kind words!

P.s. this is the spaceshooter by the way: https://twitter.com/Lirija7/status/1000038936943702017

[karolek]

Nice gem Dope audiovisuals and gameplay. I haven't played through the whole game yet, but I like the ideas for levels.
I felt that this in which you protect button from fireball using boxes, the one with skeleton deadly loop (which you've shown on a gif) and part when you hide behind the box while falling through fireball were most satisfying and ingenious

Nice work with setting everything so it works as one coherent system. I feel that there are issues with walking precision though – in many such platformers you can easily move by very short distances and here you have to step at least a bunch of pixels which makes it hard to operate in tight set traps. Like, you cannot change direction without moving just a little. Also, the puzzles wouldn't be as difficult if I had any idea what every button was doing (like moving the camera to corresponding platform or sth).

As for technical issues – screen flickers a little when you move left on platforms and the character seems to be doing some subpixel vibrations But that seems to often be an issue with moving platfoms. And the screen resets if I use left/right arrow when looking up. It would be better if Y coordinate of the camera would stay the same while I hold up/down button while moving.

Anyways, platforming sections are rarery difficult so far if you know the solution. I am stuck at level with purple ghosts and yellow switches though, any hints? // edit: Ok I have figured it out, that was a tough level for me

[Lirija]

Hey thank you so much for the kind review and for taking your time playing my game, i'm glad to know you liked it so far!!!!
I'm sorry for the late reply but i went back to work and didn't check the forum lately.
As with the various issues you highlighted:

I feel that there are issues with walking precision though – in many such platformers you can easily move by very short distances and here you have to step at least a bunch of pixels which makes it hard to operate in tight set traps.

thanks for the feedback, i'll consider to implement a slower acceleration!

Also, the puzzles wouldn't be as difficult if I had any idea what every button was doing (like moving the camera to corresponding platform or sth).

I totally agree with you on this one, actually it's been a while i was thinking about doing that, it will be the very first thing i'll do for the next update!

As for technical issues – screen flickers a little when you move left on platforms and the character seems to be doing some subpixel vibrations But that seems to often be an issue with moving platfoms.

i'm well aware of this one, tried to solve it for months but with no use
I still don't know if this bug lies in the camera or in the platforms code (probably both )

And the screen resets if I use left/right arrow when looking up. It would be better if Y coordinate of the camera would stay the same while I hold up/down button while moving.

this was intended actually, but i definitely can see how this could improve the gameplay, thanks for the suggestion!

Lastly, Kudos to you for having solved that one!! A lot of people got stuck there! Also let me know if you manage to finish the game or if you get stuck somewhere else!