Alright, so... I can see re-reading that how it'd come off as pretty negative; too little sleep makes coherent writing hard. So, apologies if it read that way. I'm not looking for a pity party. (And re-reading, it kinda looks that way.) The additional feedback is always appreciated.
I like the idea of a flapping animation. My graphical skills are pretty clearly lacking, so I'm not sure how well I could've pulled that off, but hey- I'm better than when I started, so maybe next time.
For my own reference, someone pointed out the jumping sound was grating... something I knew/agreed with but never really took the time to fix.
One thing I do want to call out - I am not bothered by where I placed compared to other games at all. I was beaten out by a number of games that were, without question, better than mine. And that's awesome; I got to play some fun games. I guess why I'm being so hard on the game/myself is the raw scores, and the implications of some of the feedback. I didn't meet my goals with this game, and it took me until the end of judging to realize that, which makes it a little more painful.
-- Rambling post starts here. Skip to the bottom for your sanity --
If I look at the judging details, I scored really low across the board. Ignoring how it compares to others, I'd treat 2.5/5 or 5/10 as average. (At least, this is how I chose to judge.) Using that bar to understand my scores, it tells me there are some severe problems with the entry - to the point I should have picked up on them sooner. If I then look at the scores for graphics and music, I got an average of 1.5 (roughly) - that tells me my graphics and my music were severely below what people might expect from a game in this competition. I kind of knew this was the case so I wasn't shocked. But where it starts to hurt is polish/completeness - I scored a 3/10 - which tells me the game felt pretty bad to play, and wasn't nearly as fun as the average game on the NES. I'm trying to avoid making comparisons to other games, but this tied in score with a game that didn't have sound or music at all despite being a complete game. This tells me there's really something wrong with it. Moving onto originality, I got a 3.67/15 - that tells me people found the game completely unoriginal - it's another generic sidescroller. (Something I tried really hard to avoid it becoming)
The other thing is the more direct feedback I've gotten. It's super valuable, and I'm really thankful for it, but it really tells me again, that I've made some mistakes. Here's a few samples:
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The warping mechanic was fun and intuitive, but the rest of the game was torture.
(From the main competition thread)
Quote:
The collision detection is highly flawed.
Quote:
The game teaches one lesson (hold the B button, always), then punishes it immediately.
There's also a bit of a condescending tone in some of the responses, telling me "you should already know this, why do I have to explain it to you?"
All of this feedback is valid, and I don't disagree with it. It's helped me see real flaws in the game that I was blind to, and real things to focus on more next time. That's extremely welcome, and I'm thankful for it. That said, it's pretty hard to not write about it in a negative way having seen all of this.
I did not meet my personal goals with this game, and I do kind of have to view it as a disappointment after the effort I put in.
Sorry for the long post - I think that was mostly for myself more than anyone else.
-- End Ramble --