PyWeek - The Olde Battleaxe 4 - feedback

most of us decided to upload corrected versions to our blogs. this team asked for a bug fix - although almost everone was needing it - instead of doing the right thing and let people decide which version to play. that's unfair.

Fun game with plenty of depth. The first levels were hard though.

I disagree with the patching done by pekuja after submission , if this patch has not been done i do apologise.

Very fun, but there were a few bugs that made me have to restart levels and stuff...

Solid and well-made, but it's the year 2007... there's a bazillion games exactly like this one... can I have higher-res graphics please?

Cool old-school design! Fantastic!

definite winner ... kodos to you for doing such a good job

seemed fine for the most part, but there were some areas where you had to either go up or down and the area of view did not follow you, which made it difficult to play.

+ This game feels very polished!
- A bit hard, at least in the first world.
- You sometimes have to jump into the unknown without any clues if its void or terrain there.

Great! Very hard without cheating, though.

the game crashes when running the pyw file, and the console buffer gets filled (at least on my
machine [windows]) too bad the graphics,music, etc. were all low-tek, but it's my personal
opinion about the idea - where exactly is the theme?

Absolutely brilliant game! I am a huge fan of Super Mario style side-scrollers, so this was a great game to see in a competition like this. I was very impressed just how much I felt like I was actually playing an old 8-bit game, and the Elvis hair is very cool. Looking forward to going through Phil's code and seeing how all this was done. Good job guys!

Great old school platformer, good graphics and puzzles.

You are sick ><

Great game.

Ah, the joys of old platformers.

Great game. :) Music and graphics are quite nice, reminds me of old, retro games. Boss was quite hard.

Nice work

Awesome retro platformer!
Did you use the EGA color palette?? it looks close at least.. Commander Keen flashbacks!

What can I say? This is obviously one of the most polished games in the competition. Excellent retro feel, wonderful graphics, good gameplay mechanic, fun levels, enjoyable music, and engaging menus. It's like a nice mix between Mario 3, Bubble Bobble and Doukutsu. Since you're looking for feedback and critique, here's a little for ya'.
It's not always obvious when you can jump through blocks and when you can't. Perhaps a harder border on the sprites to let you know which borders are not safe to go through.
The boss is really annoying how you go all the way back to the beginning of his level when you die. Ugh. However, I guess that's what makes the game fun, and more satisfying when I finally beat it.
The level selector is a huge help, thanks for adding that in!
The animations are incredibly cute -- I'm amazed at the quality of artwork that went into that boss sprite -- his squid face was incredible.
It wasn't at first very obvious how to kill the boss, I at first thought I had to ride a bubble up and shoot him, but perhaps you didn't want it to be obvious. I'm just giving you feedback.
The level exits weren't always clearly marked, and this was a little unsettling to be exploring and *poof*, all the sudden you're done.
There were some levels where I was scared that I could be stuck if I did the wrong thing. I'm not sure if this is a real concern or not, but I'm sure you know about that.
Great job having such a rewarding win screen! The music is fantastic, though it should exit or play credits instead of just looping the same short riff.
Thanks so much for the great game! You're really showing off the potential of PGU here, and this excellent game is a great testament to your excellent framework.

nice platform game

Fun game.. the level endings were a little bit strange though, and sometimes it's pretty hard
to control the seahorse.

Nice game. A bit simplistic gameplay for my taste maybe, and it's really irritating to start
from the beginning whenever you die. It would've been nicer with higher-res graphics too.
Besides that, it was cool :)

Excellent game. Thank you!

A very accurate reconstruction. I think you made your goal.

That game has a nice retro-feel and it's all so polished... oh, and it's fun, too, yes...

Nice game and really nice graphics! Made me feel like I played some really old console game ._.

very fun game. I always look forward to playing your games and yet again another awesome game. I loved the nes style graphics. Can't wait for your deluxe version :)

great feel. congratulations. its a realy complete game. impressive.

Being able to save or some more frequent powerups would have made the game less frustrating. Awesome graphics. I wouldn't say it was exceptionally innovative.

Nice game, old graphics. Hmmm, which way is up?

Nice retro game play and graphics.

I really am not sure if I like this game a lot. The graphics and sounds are truly exceptional
compared to the usual PyWeek stuff, and the rising bubble mechanic is interesting, but the
game is also filled with many little annoyances. Firstly, the scrolling camera is quite bad -
most of the time, the player doesn't properly see where he is going. Then the difficulty level
of the different levels seems pretty much random - I found Jungle 3 to be almost impossible at
first, but Moon 2 and 3 not that hard at all. Then there's the game design. While classic styled
games like this can be fun once in a while, a little mercy with the instant deaths wouldn't hurt
any game. The feeling of the controls is also a little shabby and inertia is painfully absent.
Making retro styled games is ok, but it's important to take the good parts, not the bad.
Nevertheless I'm giving you 4 for fun, since despite all it's flaws, this game really, really
is fun to play. Those Mario references help too. And the flying Cthulhu as the final boss? I love
it! :)

perfect

I'm still a bit irritated that this runs slow on my computer, the olde battleaxe games I can usually count on to be optomized and run smooth and fast. Still, this is an impressive bit of work with a lot of levels and complete gameplay. The backgrounds make my eyes hurt, while the rest of the graphics are very good. It's not as good as I was hoping it would be, but hey, it's still the best mario 3 ish game ever written in python :) I can't wait to see updates on it.

ready to sell

I love the NES feel to it. This brings me back... as a sea horse that shoots bubbles and goes to the moon!

Awesome. I think the pixel art was great, but it would have worked better with a larger color
palette.

I know you were going for a NES type game, but the tech level felt a little closer to
SNES/Genesis, so full 8 bit color would have fit better.

I really liked what was done with this game. Excellent character designs, nice soundtrack, great screen transition effects.

Is there any hope for an extended version of this game later?

Great platform game. The music perfectly fits.

Amazing what can be done in one week. Complements to all involved.

Debug messages cause it to crash in .pyw format.

Very hard and frustrating. I think perhaps it could've started out a little easier and then progressed to being harder. Too many sudden-death drops if you get your jumps wrong. Too many times I jumped to land on a baddie I didn't know was there.

On the plus side it was a well-polished game. Clearly a lot of effort went into the production.

Oh my gosh, the polish on this game was superb. I'm a huge retro game fan, so good job! Plus, super kudos for adding joystick support, I played the game with a USB-NES pad.

Kickass! Feels just like a SNES game.