PyWeek - Nanji the Ninja and the Nine Ninja Signets [by Team zahmeKatzen] - feedback

It was very fun, although the game was rather straightforward - having nine hp allowed me to just go through the level without worrying much about the enemies. I think that if you had only, say, 3 hp, the game would be more challenging and fun. Also, I think it would have been cool if you had added a touch of backstory to each clan (one title for each clan would be enough) and made it consistent to the level. You sort of did it implicitly with the brown underground clan.

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Cutest assassins ever :D

Enjoyable.

Nice little platformer. Controls were a bit annoying, but a decent game.

I had a blast playing this! Nice ending too.

Nice interpretation of the theme, I appreciate not having to kill cats nine times :)

Jumping feels a bit strange, as if there was a bit of delay between pressing space and jumping: is this by choice?

Great GFX and SFX

The tutorial is very very great. It allow to play quickly

The jump is very hard to control. There is no acceleration when jump.

"Oh noes if only I can readz!"

The good:

The story was light and fun. The graphics were very cute. The audio, while not studio quality, fit the game atmosphere well. These aspects made a nice, cohesive presentation. The climactic cinematic was just great. :)

The not so good:

I found the platforming mechanics were not so smooth. I would like to see them improved. But they were adequate given the low difficulty of the game, so this was not a major problem.

As you mentioned, there were some blind spots that required an experimental "leap of faith". On many jumps, the target platform would disappear off the bottom of the view and I had to resort to mental projection to land. It sounds like you would have fixed this if there was time.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not "get the jump" on the enemy ninja. I could not, for example, land and fire a shuriken before the enemy did. I found this annoying. I really like the idea that I could sneak, leap, and throw projectiles, and I felt I should be able to skillfully combine these to dominate the enemy; not just trade blows. My expectations are a personal preference, I admit, and perhaps not what you had planned.

In summary:

I really enjoyed this unassuming game. It is one of the few PyWeek 12 that I was able to play to the end. You worked the Oriental theme consistently and effectively, and the tongue-in-cheek humor moments were excellent. The platform and combat mechanics could stand to be made more smooth and more fun. The game was just long enough that I am now hooked on the sequel. I'm glad Nanji's story will be continued. I look forward to it. Nice work. :)

The slight delay between hitting space and actually jumping broke all my reflexes for this kind of game and had me falling in pits and being hit by shurikens a lot. Other than that, not a bad little game.

Enjoyed the music and cat ninjas in Japan theme. The controls feel a bit sluggish though. Nanji
should feel l33ter.

I enjoyed the cats.

Not a bad little platformer. It could have been a bit more responsive, maybe have a boss battle, or at least more than one different kind of enemy.

Incredibly cute cat sprites, And cool animation of jumps. Control logic could perhaps do with a little tuning (running and jumping didn't flow perfectly) And game play could do with a little extending to make it more exciting. Other than that, Great game!

Really fun. The platforming wasn't so interesting but the enemies made up for it. I just wish it had a boss, (but then again my entry didn't have a boss either).

Graphics and music were excellent, keep it up.

This is a nice platformer, but maybe a little bit too generic. I really like your sprites. It feels a little weird when the cat is jumping though, like it's slightly too slow and I don't have as much control over what's happening as I should. I enjoyed the ending animation and look forward to seeing what you do with this in the future.

Reasonably fun, controls are a little annoying to handle and I think some more effort could've been put into the cats and foreground.

The wind-up animations (like crouching before jumping) are pretty, but the delay is too bothersome.

Nice use of colored sprites.

I enjoyed the game ;-) I found all 9 signs. Only jumping sucks, everything else is ok

Controls feel a bit jerky and unresponsive. Needs more variety -- all the levels seem very much the same.

nice game

i want a ninja cat!!!

When you'll go on with this project, please improve the jump timing: the key response when pressing the jump button is quite annoying. Nice music.

I like the mega-man-esque level choosing. I was really frustrated by the jumping though - it takes too long. This game needed something to spice it up - same ol' platforming got boring after a while.

rather dull platformer with ankward mechanics

Nice atmosphere and general setting (hard to call it a plot though). OK graphics, nice that it had sound.

"Sticky" controls, hardly any originality. Not much to complain other than that it's hard to make a memorable game with such a simple idea and straightforward gameplay.

I liked this, the game is well produced, it has full menus and music and I enjoyed the story blurb.

I think the warnings of my team whenever I suggest making a platformer are pretty well founded. When you play a lot of commercial big-budget platform games and then move on to an indie game made in a week, the controls are always going to feel a little bit wooden. -And when controls are so crucial to the gameplay, that's always going to detract from the experience a little bit. The slight delay between pressing the button and throwing a shuriken caught me out repeatedly, and I felt like nanji should have been listening to my commands a bit more closely thoughout, but then again, she is a cat, and what do they care for my orders?

One place I'd look to improve would be level design, platformer level design is a massive contributor to how fun the game is, many indie platform games have game elements and platforms dotted about seemingly at random, and they don't feel like they're contributing to a consistent progression through the levels and the game, it's very hard to get this right, without extensive playtesting, and there are good and bad elements here.

One other comment would be that I know the theme is "nine times" and that it was done to keep in line with the theme, but nine hearts felt like a lot too much for how short these levels were, I could practically trade a heart for each ninjat without losing the level (so there's very little challenge!) - I'd have either reduced the health available, or made the levels a little longer. both work.

The list of things you've listed are all worthy additions to the game, but I'd look into the way the character controls first, as more parabolic jumps with tight controls and slightly faster movement would really improve this a lot!

The readme and the intro had a lot of character ... the game itself felt a little flat though. The platforming mechanics weren't quite as smooth as I'd like and there was no variation between the levels. I understand why you probably wanted nine hearts, but it made the game very easy. I did get a chuckle out of the ending.

Graphics and animations are great, the game is a little bit fun, i just doubt that it is possible to do it from scratch in one week.