Midnight Snack

Danni's picture
MidnightSnack.png

You are the Pogo Fox! You're also really hungry!

- Move left and right with the arrow keys.
- Hit diamonds to establish checkpoints.
- Bounce off of platforms to gain points - but watch out, for the platform vanishes as soon as you land on it! And some platforms bounce you differently...
- You can only go through the padlock blocks by paying ten points each.
- Press Shift over the chrome pads to reset your points to zero and restore all platforms and padlock blocks.

Update:
- When hitting a checkpoint diamond, any opened padlock blocks that are on-screen will become permasolid, which should solve accidental backtracking issues.
- Hopefully solved an issue where the player might accidentally bypass a post-level checkpoint diamond without actually activating it.

Event Created For: 
Made For: 
An event

Comments

thesycophant's picture

Oh, shit, Effbee, this is

Oh, shit, Effbee, this is great. I love this. I'm hung up on the first (or maybe it was second) three-screen stage.

At first, I thought the platforms should reset with every death, but I'm cool with how they are now. I just wish you'd restart at the screen after where you currently have the checkpoints.

Anyway. I think this is great.

thesycophant's picture

Man, that last level was a

Man, that last level was a lot less complicated than I was trying to make it. Awesome.

Danni's picture

The reason the checkpoints

The reason the checkpoints are like that is because of my design process. When I was creating all the objects I wasn't really sure how I was going to construct the actual levels themselves so I gave them abstract behaviors - you collide with the diamond to make that a checkpoint.

The reason I put them at the end of the stage instead of at the beginning of the next screen was due to the page-by-page scrolling. Basically, my concern was that players would fly into the pit on the next screen before they could get their bearings. Had I put the diamond at the beginning of the stage, players could possibly bounce over the diamond instead of activating it, forcing them to replay the previous stage (which they had already beaten).

Of course, this is sort of made moot by the fact that it is still possible to miss activating the diamond if you bounce into the chute with the right vertical velocity and you keep holding right. In the first version, anyway. The latest version fixes this too.

Glad you liked it!

sergiocornaga's picture

Really great. Made it to the

Really great. Made it to the 3-lock gate before it became too much for me.

Sometimes after returning to a checkpoint, you bounce up, hit a lock and lose points. So annoying! Is it intentional?

Danni's picture

No, that's a design flaw

No, that's a design flaw actually. Thanks for letting me know. Edit: Fixed.

Also the 3-lock gate is the last stage.

sergiocornaga's picture

Phew

I beat it! That last stage was pretty stressful... I'm not sure I ever discovered the easy solution thesycophant did.

Danni's picture

"Official" level 5 solution

"Official" level 5 solution attached

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MidnightSnackL5Solution.png22.4 KB
Luluna's picture

Exactly how I did it. Is

Exactly how I did it.

Is there an easier way?

Danni's picture

Weird, I just discovered

Weird, I just discovered that it's possible to bounce all the way across the upper bridge on the second screen. Maybe I should have lowered the middle platform some more.

As it would turn out, I accidentally created a puzzle where you can actually take the upper bridge all the way across or only part of the way, but you have to take the lower bridge all the way due to the red platform in the middle (as it blocks retreat since it forces you onto the neighboring platforms, which introduces a gap that's too wide to double back across). If you take the upper bridge all the way you are forced to try and double-back on the lower bridge... which you can't do.

Edit 2: Actually, come to think of it, you probably could go on that lower bridge twice, as long as you don't try to access the middle more than once. The resulting platform sequence is kind of awkward though.

Edit 3: Attached alternate solution. I can't decide if having extra (more difficult?) solutions like this is good or bad for the game's design.

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MidnightSnackL5Solution2.png21.61 KB
Luluna's picture

Ah, makes sense! Will have

Ah, makes sense! Will have to try it out.
Heh, on my first playthrough that was the first thing I tried, to take the upper path on the second screen. Seemed like the obvious intended way to go. Interesting how it's hard to spot those kinda things yourself when designing the levels, because you know the correct solution and can't really look at it from an oblivious players point of view.

Definitely a good thing! Really fond of unintended solutions in games, accidental level design and all that good stuff like sequence breaking.

sergiocornaga's picture

It's also possible to go

It's also possible to go from platform 2 to platform 9, though it isn't easy. My ultimate solution didn't use this, though it did involve two trips, one to dispose of the lower platforms on each screen, then a second across the unintended upper path.

I also think these alternative solutions are a good thing.

Luluna's picture

Dat ending. Too fricken

Dat ending. Too fricken adorable. <3
You really have a knack for making challenging and unique platformers with interesting level design.

Om nom nom~

Danni's picture

"Source code" release. Only

"Source code" release. Only 41 events long!

AttachmentSize
PogoPlatformer_6_src.zip48.98 KB
Luluna's picture

Hi! Umm, would you possibly

Hi! Umm, would you possibly be okay with me making a fangame sort of kinda thing based on this? Like just a short little experiment of a game possibly?

Have an idea that I think would work quite well with little Pogo Fox here~
If not I totally understand!

Danni's picture

:O I am honored! Go for

:O

I am honored! Go for it!

Semi-unrelated-ish: I am planning on making a full-blown game out of this for Android and iOS. It will be using new assets and an engine written in C++, but the core idea will remain the same, only I am expanding it to have many more levels (currently thinking of having multiple levels each of which are groups of five sub-levels like you see here). Right now I'm trying to get the hang of making music so I don't have anything to show... yet.

Luluna's picture

Yay~ Felt wrong just going

Yay~ Felt wrong just going ahead without asking, so, thanks! It should be done around Halloween sometime. (Don't expect too much though ahaha, learning a new language while making this thing so... horribly broken gameplay here we go~ (okay, hopefully not(but maybe)))

Ah, sounds neat! Looking forward to seeing the results of that! I can really see it working well on the iThing/Android. Good luck!

And thanks for responding so quickly, wasn't expecting that. Didn't really know where to ask this haha.