New games every week!
Player Thoughts - with RSKGames Blog
24th June 2020
@RSKGames has taken a look back at the past few Browsercade games.
Let's join him on his quest.

-=-=-

Baby Carries a Watermelon



Idigidragon's text bubbles are crisp and cool. The ghost animations are good. The background score is catchy.


All very basic. The music is a reuse, I think.. is it?! I'm sure it is, it was already in the Multi-Mod file, so I must've already used it somewhere?!
The ghost "animation" is one single sprite being jiggled about. Very lazily done.
And, yeah, Idigidragon just uses plain text.
Very hastily thrown together

The Baby plat speed variations while empty handed and carrying the watermelon is good. The unpredictability of the ghost movements (whether they will turn back or fall through ) is done well.


I tried as best as I could to get these two things balanced well. The speed of the ghosts vs the player, and even the layout allowing you to criss-cross just enough to get through.

I really wish I could've randomised things between levels, though, but that always seemed to ruin the flow of the game.

I was only able to complete one level and 2 to 3 platforms in the next level.


It is quite a hard game. I'm not going to deny that. But the more I played it, the better I got, so I'm hoping that somebody out there decides to take on the challenge!

Many times when the ghost comes near, by reflex I threw the watermelon facing the wrong side and it ends up on lower floors. Back tracking and getting the watermelon up was not interesting.


It's very easy to do that, isn't it!?
Also, when you're near the toggle-switch, the button won't throw the watermelon.
I should probably have used ButtonB for using switches, instead.
Hmm..

But I also like the element of "Panicked and randomly threw the watermelon". I did that a fair number of times during my playtesting, and rather enjoyed the fact that I'd messed up enough to have to backtrack.
If not that, then accidentally walking off a platform whilst holding the watermelon, then cursing myself and having to work back up again.

It's not something I add into my games very often, so to have a different sort of flow felt a little refreshing to me.

Maybe is a bit too dull, though.

Having the melon on the floor and bringing down the lift on top of it was interesting.


I was originally going to *squish* the watermelon, and make it respawn all the way at the bottom.. .. I think it's probably a good thing that I didn't


I felt if the water melon knocked the ghost dead it would have improved the gameplay speed.


I did consider that. In a way, it'd make the watermelon function like the spheres do in NeonPlat, or the ball in A Bit of A Do. It'd make sense to have that be a continuation of sorts.

But I also considered that there's not much else to attack you, so the game's only real challenge would be easily defeatable.
Also, if you're throwing the watermelon "too much", you'll likely end up having to backtrack a whole lot more!

When baby plat is empty handed, the ability to jump the ghost also might have helped to ease the difficulty and added more speed to the gameplay.


Indeed, but again, might've made it too easy without anything more substantial to battle against.
In the end, I've decided that Baby Plat can't jump, and I'll probably take that as a "rule" going ahead. Might make for a few interesting gameplay mechanics, in future.

Blockman on Ice


I had a fun time playing Blockman on Ice. It played like a action quadoban game. Number of moves combined with moving enemies is a nice innovation.


I've often wanted more moving enemies in the Blockman Gets games, but when you're carefully planning a route, they can really mess things up.
Here, the ghosts only ever move in repeating circles, and that seems to work much better.
I might have to keep that in mind for a future "Gets".

The baby block movement helpers is very well done. It is especially helpful in wraparound cases.


This game is actually a remake of the week's SmileBASIC game, Roland on Thin Ice, and that game didn't have any "guides". It definitely needed them, though, to get you used to the basics.

More of those evil "Tutorials" sneaking into my games!! Bah, humbug!!

The music also is very peppy.


Yeay!
.. I need to start jotting down the ALChoon titles of these. *tsk*
It's "probably" something in the Nothing album!

Optimal Spring



The smooth spring animation is the standout feature of the game.


Very quickly done, but I took the time to try and get the hopping to feel the right speed. With only about 6 frames to go on, it was a case of choosing just the right amount of floating-point maths, per sprite!

The colorful varying platforms and the good looking enemy sprites is an added bonus.


I'm annoyed with myself that I couldn't find a good way to "mask" the drawing of the floors. In the end, I went for overlaying a black rectangle where there are gaps, instead of properly doing a nice mask for the ends of the floor.
IT's a shame, because I really wanted a decent multicoloured background, here.
But my silly oldskool techniques were against me, this time.

The point system of getting more points on higher platforms gives the motivation for player to risk going up.


Indeed. No point having the floors there, if you can just sit on the bottom and score all the points.
What I didn't do, however, was add the "Fall = punishment" that the classic Jumping Jack games had. I always hated that!!

A very well executed fun game that remained me of one more good game from 2018 ''Franken Hopper''.


Oh yeah, I forgot all about that one!
It was a little too frantic, but it had the right idea.
Maybe ripe for a revisit!?


Thanks to @RSKGames for the wonderful thoughts. And, if you want to see your own name in future Player Thoughts topics, then.. simply post your thoughts!!
Views 92, Upvotes 11  
Player Thoughts , Browsercade
New games every week!
Site credits : Jayenkai made this.
(c) Jayenkai 2023 and onwards, RSS feed

Blog - Player Thoughts - with RSKGames - AGameAWeek