[Platformer] Trial of the Imps

[MissCapricorn]

Hello The Process!
I made a little platforming game and posted it on another forum. Someone suggested I posted it here and that you people may enjoy it as well.
The lack of original sprites is regrettable but avoidable right now.
Enjoy!

[Basic Information]

Trial of the Imps is a Platformer built in Multimedia Fusion 2.
The main character uses a graphic of Kim Possible from a GBA game.
The transformations featured are mostly Animal transformations and Inanimate transformations.
The difficulty is rather low, and should be easy for a gamer to finish without seeing any game over screens, however a non-gamer may need to retry once or twice.
*Game contains some flashing lights!*

[Controls]
Left/Right Arrow Keys to me Left/Right
Down to Duck. This does shrink the hit box, so it makes you harder to hit. However, you cannot move.
Up or Z or Space to jump! This takes a tiny bit of Stamina (yellow bar) but not enough to worry about.
Down + Backwards Left/Right Key to Backflip! Takes a huge chunk of stamina, but while back flipping any thrown or launched soild object will miss you!
Enter will restart the level during a transformation, and take you out of the Game Over screen.

[Basic Instructions]

The general idea is to get from point A to point B without the mischievous imps causing your health bar to reach zero.
The glowing blue arrows will progress you to the next stage of a level, and each level has 5 stages. When your health reaches
zero an animation will play and you will need to push enter to restart the current stage, if you have retries remaining, or get a game over otherwise.
However: Upon completing a level attempting to reenter the portal will instead allow you to select any stage, so do try to finish the first time as it's easy to see all the endings afterwards.
Your health bar and retries carry over between stages, and only recharge on the level select screen.
Your total number of Retries depends on how many levels have been completed. You start with one, and gain another for each completed level.
It's up to you to figure out what is safe and what is not! As a general rule: If Imps are doing it then it is NOT SAFE. However some hazards do not have (visible) Imp involvement.
The Funhouse is the most difficult level, and should not be played first. The others are all around the same, with Jungle probably being the easiet.

[Saving the Game]

Trial of the Imps uses a save game feature, that allows levels to remain completed even after the game has be exited. However on Windows Vista or Windows 7 this WILL NOT WORK if it is not RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR. Please remember to run it as such before you play or you will not have a save file!


[Ideas/Suggestions/Bug Reports]

Feel free to post all of them here. Keep in mind I like to hear what you liked as much as what you did not, so try to post a bit about both! If you post something you love, post something you hate as well please. And Vice Versa. Feedback is welcome and encouraged.
You can send me a PM too.

[Updates]
v1.0
-Completed.
v0.90
-Added a reward for finishing the game! (You will need to defeat the final boss again after updating to unlock it)
-Big fixes
v0.50
-Added The Imperium
-Added an ending
-Rebalanced old stages, and fixed bugs in them.
v0.20
-The Process Release

[Known Issues]

• -The Imp on Jungle 2 will sometimes get stuck and make the level impossible to fail
  -The milk on Farm 3 will get stuck on the corner of walls. No real game play problem here besides that it looks bad
  -On certain stages Kim can fall of the screen (Fixed in next Version)

[Download]

http://www.mediafire.com/?xc924txcdcvkmtb (actual v0.9 now)

[ZZZZ]

Right. First impressions. A moderately challenging little game, with no serious bugs that I could find. Very nice sequence work on the death animations, and given how many of them there are, that's quite a bit of very good sprite work. Well done. There were a few minor flaws, though. A quit level button would have been nice, and since the deaths and game over screen are half the fun, a suicide button would've been nice too. Given that you were going for an extremely easy game, there's some minor issues with difficulty, stemming from the fact that kim loses all upward momentum when she hits a platform above her, which significantly reduces how far you can jump. Whenever there's a platform preventing kim reaching her full height you can jump, easy jumps become tricky ones and tricky ones become very difficult. Still, this doesn't really become much of an issue except in the first Jungle stage and a few of the fun-house stages. There, things became somewhat frustrating.

On the first jungle stage, when you jump between branches you tend to hit a branch above you. It's still possible to make the jump, but it becomes impossible to effectively aim your landings- you only just make it to the other branch. This turns the stages challenge from "aim your jumps to avoid the bananas" to "wait until the path's clear and hope you're not beaned with a banana in the process"

The funhouse stages often split your attention, screw with the interface, or use some other gimmick to turn an otherwise effortless set of jumps into tricky ones. Still, the only stage where this becomes a problem is stage 2, which throws a bunch of low-clearance jumps at you while messing with the screen. Between the two, missing a jump is easy, and given that you're trying to outrun a wave of peanuts, missing a jump means death with no chance to recover. Still, aside from those few problem stages, it's not hard at all.

You've made a brilliant game, I applaud you.

Edit: Just found a small bug. If you make the game full screen, there's no way to shrink it again without quitting.

[MissCapricorn]

The loss of momentum when hitting a platform is how it is and I don't mind it.
Infact I like it.

However I realize now I should have made each stage much larger and have a scrolling screen so I wouldn't have to fit everything into one little space and have each stage have a good amount of items covering the upper bits of the screen. THAT would be where your complaint is from mostly and is something I regret, but is not something I can change at this point.

The Funhouse is supposed to mess with your head, that was sort of the idea with the whole stage. I want to make the second screen a wee bit easier but have not found a way to just yet without making is absurdly easy. I like the Funhouse being quite difficult.
But if you do miss a jump, it is possible to hop through the peanuts and get back ahead of them without a game over.

[SoylentOrange]

Okay, and after you've beaten all five portals, how're you supposed to get into the sixth?

(And I'm sorry, but level 2 of the funhouse is just bullshit, design-wise.)

[MissCapricorn]

Originally Posted by SoylentOrange

Okay, and after you've beaten all five portals, how're you supposed to get into the sixth?

(And I'm sorry, but level 2 of the funhouse is just bullshit, design-wise.)

you don't it's not done yet.
Sorry should have mentioned the yellow/black stripes mean that bit of the game isn't done.

Could you elaborate on the 'bullshit' thing a bit too?

[SoylentOrange]

You're throwing too many gameplay elements into the same space and it's down to dumb luck if the section's solvable.

I mean, your programming switches te controls immediately, not taking into account if you player is in the middle of a jump. If you're halfway through a jump and left suddenly becomes right with no warning, that's not challenging or tricky, it's just cheap and dumb. You should eithe rprogram it so the momentum carries for the remainder of the current input press or else put some kind of warning, like the arrows flashing briefly, to let the player know to be careful. But to change the player's controls with no warning and no way to recover, causing them to just suddenly lose through absolutely no fault of their own, is just poor game design.

There are a few other levels like that, where the mechanics and the goals just don't match up at all, and it crushed the enjoyment of an otherwise interesting game.

(Oh, and just as a bit of personal preference, I'd like it better if the screen didn't fade between every frame of a TF...)

[rettiroen]

Originally Posted by MissCapricorn

The Funhouse is supposed to mess with your head, that was sort of the idea with the whole stage. I want to make the second screen a wee bit easier but have not found a way to just yet without making is absurdly easy. I like the Funhouse being quite difficult.
But if you do miss a jump, it is possible to hop through the peanuts and get back ahead of them without a game over.

The second level was easy once you tried a couple of times. Whatever you do keep using the keys as you normally would and adjust where you're looking. Because the keys never change it's easy (imo). If you had changed the keys around that'd be hard or worse both the keys and the screen.

Anyways, I thought it was a pretty good game. My only issue was the death sequences. In an older game that I assume was by you called Rune Crusher the death sequences didn't flash when Kim was transforming. In this game they do.

[MissCapricorn]

Originally Posted by SoylentOrange

You're throwing too many gameplay elements into the same space and it's down to dumb luck if the section's solvable.

I mean, your programming switches te controls immediately, not taking into account if you player is in the middle of a jump. If you're halfway through a jump and left suddenly becomes right with no warning, that's not challenging or tricky, it's just cheap and dumb. You should eithe rprogram it so the momentum carries for the remainder of the current input press or else put some kind of warning, like the arrows flashing briefly, to let the player know to be careful. But to change the player's controls with no warning and no way to recover, causing them to just suddenly lose through absolutely no fault of their own, is just poor game design.

There are a few other levels like that, where the mechanics and the goals just don't match up at all, and it crushed the enjoyment of an otherwise interesting game.

(Oh, and just as a bit of personal preference, I'd like it better if the screen didn't fade between every frame of a TF...)

Was considering adding a warning it's about to flip...

But...

You don't suddenly start moving another direction. If you were hold down left and it flip horizontal you will still go left. The view the flipping, nothing else, you still push the same buttons to get to the same place. Infact if you were able to memorize the level enough to press the buttons off memory then it could be done with your eyes closed.

Can you give examples of other levels with issues? I am trying to improve the game as it's not done, so the clearer the feedback the better.

And the black flashes are to make up for the animations having a few fewer frames then I would have liked. Next time I make a game I will probably be commissioning character graphics and defiantly using screen scrolling.

[Mr_DNA]

Waah, I have a Mac. Can anyone post screens/videos? I'm interested.

[blackshirtboy]

Originally Posted by Mr_DNA

Waah, I have a Mac. Can anyone post screens/videos? I'm interested.

Same T_T any hint of what this game looks or plays like would be nice.

[Lat]

The 2nd level on the funhouse level is just too cheap. It's a challenge aline to actually get further than the second platform let alone do that fast enough to avoid the peanuts.
It's better to give a penalty for falling or have the room slowly fill with peanuts instead of covering everything with peanuts. The player has enough to worry about apart from losing health from the peanuts hitting the platform they're on.

[MissCapricorn]

Originally Posted by Lat

The 2nd level on the funhouse level is just too cheap. It's a challenge aline to actually get further than the second platform let alone do that fast enough to avoid the peanuts.
It's better to give a penalty for falling or have the room slowly fill with peanuts instead of covering everything with peanuts. The player has enough to worry about apart from losing health from the peanuts hitting the platform they're on.

The peanuts are thrown on platforms in the same pattern as they pass them.
Meaning they will trail behind a player going the right way and cover platforms they should have passed.
I've made the arrows flash before the screen flips, I've made the peanut throws move slower and be thrown less frequently, and I made the screen take longer to flip so it's alot easier. This will show up in the next version I post, but I won't be posting it until there's more content to go along with it.