My first-ever game, Foxcatsquirrel, is out now for Pico-8!
🍦🍪🍔 Chomp tasty food in quick arcade action
💫💀🦆 Repel enemies with your shockwave
🎼🎵🎧 Hum irritatingly catchy music!
Can you finish all five levels and get on the high-score table?
Thanks to this forum's own grumpydev for the fantastic high-score table code that let me finally call this game complete!
December 2022 update: Now running at 60fps!
Jumping physics feels a little too triangular.
At one point I was able to stand on top of a food that was directly below a platform (so I was standing in the platform).
When bouncing on the trampoline, holding X causes you to jump less (because you're "gliding" on the way up, I think). This is weird compared to other platformers where holding the jump button causes you to jump higher.
Overall, great work!
I've wanted to build a game for a while too, and starting from scratch with pico, but I have some ideas for this. I enjoyed the jumping mechanics - especially pressing down while midair to increase the fall rate. Would even be funny to see him get bigger when eating, so when falling his rate crashes down faster. And instead of lives, when the skull hits you and one-off die, you lose "bigness" which in turn resets the game and makes you slower. This probably means more skulls faster. You could also try to do some form of ability unlocking. For example, the different foods can fill up 1 of 3 different ability meters - such as shield, speed, appetite - so when its full, you get a temporary buff - like shield protects you from skulls, speed increases your rate by slowing down all the skulls rate, and appetite lets you eat one and it will suck in everything nearby. The music is fine! It's funky, which can be catchy ;) Good job!
Thank you both for playing and for your feedback!
@sparr - I noticed that too with the jump/trampoline mechanic. Happy to say that I've fixed it now! You won't go higher by using jump on the trampoline, but you won't go lower either. The "standing on food" bug is totally new to me!
@ghostrunners, thanks too for the ideas! I think the buffs and abilities are going in a different direction (I want to keep this very simply and arcade) but I like that he might get bigger as he eats. I'll look into it!
Big thanks again to you both :)
First off, welcome! :)
This is a lovely simple game. The graphics and animation are beautiful. I like the handling of the player character, once I'd figured out you could glide it all became much more fluid. It'd be great to see some different difficulty settings, I find games like this where you die with one hit really hard! Nice music too. :)
Thank you very much for your kind and positive feedback!
I definitely would like to add more difficulty settings/lives - one hit over five levels is a bit stingy!
Hello. I think it's a great result for the first game. Discreet and simple, but cute graphics. Smooth movements. I love it! Of course, in the future, this game can be improved and gets better and better, but for the first job - it's great. Don't stop there, you're doing great. Andersen
Maybe you have other jobs? I am very interested to take a look at other games :)
Herzlichen Dank, Stefan! I really appreciate that you played my game and your kind words too. I did release a second, much smaller game jam game on https://jamesnewton.itch.io/
Thank you again for your kindness!
Hi @daddynewts.
Helluva introduction by posting this great game ! I was having difficulty seeing the treasures to grab on the 1st level as you already have some sprites on the screen as part of the background.
Here now is a version that flickers the treasures ever so slightly so you can always know what and where they are.
Additionally it seems that if you jump from HERE to HERE you get stuck at the top of the screen momentarily.
Nonetheless, gold star work all the way !
Hi baker, hi dw817! @baker, glad you liked it :)
@dw817 – I've never had anyone mod my work before, so I'm really surprised! Thank you so much! I hoped that the outline on foreground objects made them clear enough, but sounds like it's still hard to see. I thought of making the outline thicker, or adding a subtle glow (maybe a smaller version of the glow around the key). I'll keep tinkering!
Thanks for the bug report too – it's a problem with the jumping physics, so your upward momentum doubles when you land on a platform at just the right height. In the end I changed the level layout to get around that :D
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