I'm gonna join the fun!
Here's my impressions. I've unlocked all maps and listened to the amazing ending-speech about... twice. I thought it was funny.
Speaking of humor, your game has a lot of it, and that's great! I didn't laugh at all the meetings with other jumpers, but its still a nice surprise to see one of them. The item descriptions are hilarious, and sometimes I wish the levels had something along those lines as well. The "What is your value as a human being"-line made me laugh, and the tutorials were fun as well. Good job!
The level selection screen might become really annoying with lots and lots of levels - at least, thats what I guess could happen? Arrange the levels in groups, perhaps by difficulty (and call it "Jumper League" or something - start with "Novice", become "Jumper god"). Then I can select the difficulty first in a similar way, then the level. Of course, its a selection screen like from a console, but you have the mouse here, so maybe you can use it. No idea HOW, though, apart from button right/left-buttons to be clicked on with the mouse. Or allowing other level"cubes" to be selected by clicking on them.
There are a few bugs and annoyances that were mostly commented on: Flickering when polygons overlap, and the really, really annoying overly long loading times, made about a million times worse by the fact that there is no simple "restart"-option ingame. This is a must, mr. Dejoo.. Dejobaa... Mr. Game designer! It's a game designed to beat your highscore, and as such, it is about redoing a level over and over again, cancelling at the tiniest mistake (see also: rhythm game). This is good, because that concept
works. But it needs to allow me to restart the game easily, so I can try again (and, likely, fail again). As such, allow me to restart it with no (notable) loading times! If you do that, then the loading times in the menu (which are way too long for what is loaded, to be honest) aren't so bad anymore. But right now, in order to beat a level that takes a few tries, the loading is way too long.
Oh, and currently, my experience is shown as "8200.001" (or something, the important thing is that its not an integer)
Alright, on to the gameplay
I like it! It's a very simple concept, but it just
works - it's risk-reward-structure is great. Thats the magic of it. Its fun, and quite addicting. Plus, its something not seen before - by me, anyway - so its innovative as well. I like that combination!
The sense of speed is already there, but it could be even better - maybe with blur, maybe with particle lines moving fast in my movement direction (think any space game ever, or speedlines in comics). I see you've implemented camerashaking - great! Try adjusting the roll a bit, too, even if its only from -5..5 - I've noticed a strong effect on that.
On some levels, I'd like to go even faster, but one would need to adjust the movement for that, since it can already be pretty tricky to control the falling at the higher speeds. So... maybe not.
Nice little detail: The rotating crosshair.
What I don't like:
Things get difficult pretty soon. "Your Jackhole" was a slap in the face after the relatively easy levels before that. Even after playing it several times, it's easy to get stuck on a point that you can't get out of, and you are either forced to land or die (or both). It's clear that you've outlined several paths for the player to follow, and I really like the fact that there IS a terrain to follow. Maybe add something like a "jetpack", that allows me once per jump to gain a bit of height again? This might even be a beginner item.
This will also help with landing the first few jumps: I better don't think about the amount of times I failed because I missed the landing spot. It's okay to have these death-zones there, but oh god, be nice to us and place possible spaces more generous
(Also: It's possible to see the rectangle shape of the terrain in "Your Jackhole" (I think it was that, maybe the other level). That was kind of ugly looking, but it really only happens if you happen to fly at the right spot)
The "kiss"-detection is a little bit dodgy (but that is to be expected from game designers (HO HO HO GET IT
)), not sure how you do those: Do you trace from the player in several directions, or do you use events? Maybe try that tracing-method, shouldn't have that much of an impact on the framerate, but might be a lot better at detecting stuff
The scoring system is a bit weird. I'd guess that it's simply: The more dangerous, the better - right? That would mean that "hugs" and "kisses" would give a different amount of points depending on
how close and
how fast I am. The effect for both are really weak. Since you don't use the meter anyway, you could use it for those two. Let's say that you can get "Awards" in the levels by "kissing" 20%, 50% or 75% per level (or make this percentages depending on the level, since it might be impossible to get even close to that in some). The meter on the right could then show me how close I am to these goals, in other words, how many buildings/structures I've kissed.
That should give a crazy score bonus too: Say, if I "kiss" x% of the buildings, I also get a x% score bonus (If x >50). A game like this needs absurdly high scores (think pinball). For "hugs", you could implement something like this as well: As long as I "hug", a meter goes up. If it reaches a certain treshold, my "hugs" that follow are worth double the amount, and the meter starts anew. As soon as it reaches the treshold again, I get fourth times the amount of hug-points for all following hugs, etc. If I don't hug anything for too long, OR if I collide with anything, reset the meter and set my multiplyer back to one. No idea how this plays, may need a lot of tweaking, but could work!
Show me the points I've accumulated thus far. The current "HUGS/KISSES"-display is incredibly, mindblowingly, award-winningly boring. If you go with the above suggestion, then you could place it where you currently show me the very valuable information about your GUI-coder. Also, show me the GOAL next to it: As long as my highscore is <5 stars, show me the amount I need for the next level, otherwise, show me my highscore.
Be cruel! If I fail, then don't hesitate to show me the results of my mistake. Like in those game shows: "And here is what you DIDN'T win! [Sucks to be you]". While the game, ahem, "calculates the score" (which is great! timestalling here works really well), have the current total visibly displayed, which counts up in increments of one (really fast, obviously, but it's great to see the meter going up) - and then, at the end, strike it through. Rank could be "FAILURE" instead of 0 stars, since that fits in the audience-structure.
But don't be TOO cruel: Hitting anything is almost always the end of the round - I understand if its because I, well, DIED, but otherwise, the camera rotating like crazy makes the whole thing uncontrollable (especially in terrain levels). Make the GUI red for a split-second, and maybe rotate me a little, but don't overdo it.
The scoring plates seem really worthless: Since a kiss is worth 1000 points, and a scoring plate may be just a fourth of that, its stupidly ineffective to go for them, even though at first, I went for them. All of those should give, say, five times the points.
Instead of coloring them after points, put them together in groups so that its possible to get them all. If I *do* get them all (combo!), then double the points I got from them. Don't forget to adjust the pitch of the sound you play when i get one
Also: It was already suggested, but add an effect to that. Let me see parts of the scoring plate falling down, that might work nicely!
An alternative to make the score plates more valuable: Place special plates that mark a certain route. If I manage to get all those, I will not only have moved on a very difficult path (resulting in lots of kisses), but I might get a "path bonus". Maybe this could work, maybe not. It's worth a try, I think
Make the effects when I kiss a building nicer! Right now, its pretty... eeeeh. Animate it, make it look nice, maybe even let me chose the color that kissed structures turn to.
Add moving objects! A plattform (or a scoring plate?) that moves might make things more interesting. Some objects rotate, I've noticed, thats a great start!
I have a hard time judging the collisions: A few times, I was sure I would only bounce away, but it apparently caused me to die - I don't know how you judge that, abs(vec_dot(normal,bounce)*velocity)>x, maybe? Or just that vec_dot-thing? Or maybe SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT? -- maybe you can adjust it. The angle and velocity both should play a part in that, but maybe its better to check them seperately (i.e. as long as velocity<y, you'll always survive)
The stars should be a nice little picture, maybe even with sparkling particle effects, and not the poor mans "*". I guess that this is part of the alphacharm, so we'll let this one slide
Oh, and after opening the parachute, maybe it should be possible to close it again -- since if you happen to press the right mouse button at the beginning on accident, you'll have to wait a LONG time (or cancel the level, of course, but both are annoying)
The sound and music are great! I'd love to have an announcer that comments on very amazing stunts, and an audience is always great (yes, I noticed the applause at the end of a jump ;)). The music really works great for the game, and is something I'd love to have a soundtrack of
(please offer a downloadable soundtrack
)
