13th May 2018

After each game's release, my inbox is filled with the writings of all the people who bothered to play it.

Let's see what @RSKGames thinks of this weeks game!

You can Download Franken Hopper here.

@RSKGames

Overview: In Franken Hopper you Hop and catch the flying creatures and avoid the blazing flames from the statues to the side and the fireballs from the big statue's eyes. The platforms help to climb higher to get creatures with more points(Lowest level 5 points, Mid level 20 points, Top level 45 points).

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Almost immediately when I started this game, I found it really hard to land properly on the top-most platform, so I wanted to give players a good reason to try to do it. The higher points for higher bugs seemed the most logical way to do it.
I never did figure out how to give a "Super Bonus" for actually landing up there, though!

Gameplay: The careful design of the platforms movement, timing of the blazing flames and fireballs makes the gameplay very addictive. If you stay too long on the platform you die by smashing into the side statues.

Poor Franken gets a spike to the head

Oddly, that was actually a leftover sprite for a while.
At the start of the project, the aim was to stand on a platform, hold the secondary button, and eat the bugs by standing still with your mouth open.
At that point, the platforms were a lot slower, the flames were none-existent, and everything just kinda plodded along at a really slow pace.
I scrapped the "Stand and hold mouth open" concept, and made it just a simple collect mechanic, and then did the typical AGameAWeek thing of just ramping everything up in speed!!
This resulted in a VERY difficult game, so I had to spend the next couple of days finding the right balance between the two.

Quick hop from platform to platform and quick reflex of right left movement is required to get the creatures in the top level.

I do hope that, after all the balancing, I found just the right level of difficulty.
But who knows!

The color changing effect in the main statue will help the player to be ready for the fireballs, this really helped, but the color change in the side statues eye is not noticeable enough to get ready for the side flames, better to stick to the center.

The side "eye flicker" is only really noticeable if you're already looking at the statue. That's a bit of a shame, but I think it's more a result of the rest of the screen being so chaotic! Other than having the whole head flash and go "HEY, LOOK OUT!!" I didn't think there was an easy way to make that happen.

The game feels like a good boss level. Single life is a good decision, makes the player think before leaping up.

In all honesty, I did intend to have a 3-life thing, but once I added the "BURN!" effect, I couldn't then think of a good way to un-burn Franken for his next life!

Graphics: I will remember this game for the fantastic effects. Player getting burnt particle effect is great. The grey smoke after the horizontal blazing flame is a nice touch. Fireballs from the main statue looks like a burning miniature of the statue itself. The player dying sprite from the side statue is very good. Liked the gradual background color change and 3d room effect. A very polished effort in the graphics.

Blimey, you really do know how to make my hurriedly cobbled together graphics sound amazing

The 3D background effect is somewhat lost on the 3DS, though, since it's a single plain image (and not 2 perspective-changed ones). I've found that tiny-sprites (my forte!) don't tend to work very well on the 3DS, which is a bit of a shame.

Overall a very addictive and enjoyable game.

Thanks.
Glad you enjoyed it.
I was getting a bit bored with it, by the end, though. So it's good to know that it is at least playable with fresh eyes.

You can Download Franken Hopper here.

Views 187, Upvotes 22

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