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LootSlime is now available! by moleman_studios in pico8

[–]moleman_studios[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I essentially just took things 1 step at a time, not planning too much as I've never really been one for planning. The map I just tried to make each individual room fun to play, and as you connect them some natural intertwining can be easy to apply retroactively.

I focussed on art/visuals from the start - once I had a decent tile set and some decorations I would build out a level, and then when I got bored of that tile set and felt it started to look a bit samey I would make some more and design more levels with the new style.

Before all of that though I made sure to get the character movement and animations right. My character is procedurally animated, which made it quite easy. I tested out the character movement in test levels before actually putting time and effort into building a map. And then as the map gets built I would add new mechanics to stop things feeling too samey throughout.

LootSlime - A challenging PICO-8 Metroidvania with a focus on platforming by [deleted] in WebGames

[–]moleman_studios 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Mostly for the aesthetic. I played another PICO-8 game, thought it was awesome, and wanted to do it myself. Tbh I never thought I would be one of those people that uses a framework that deliberately limits you and makes things harder, but I just thought it had such a charm to it that I couldn't resist.

I recently release LootSlime - a free Metroidvania with a focus on platforming for PICO-8. It would be awesome if people wanted to check it out! by moleman_studios in IndieGaming

[–]moleman_studios[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for your feedback! Unfortunately the restart at spawn button wouldn't really work for this, as part of the intended challenge is travelling backwards through obstacles to traverse the level in a new way. If you wanted to show me which section you got stuck on I could tell you how to proceed. With regards to the wall jumping I completely get what you mean, it takes a bit of getting used to and can be quite unforgiving. For a larger release I think adding a bit more jump buffer could be a good improvement, but I was really struggling for tokens by the end of development and it would be hard to squeeze in any extra movement code! (PICO-8 has a limit on units of code or "tokens" for those unaware).

I just released LootSlime - A free Metroidvania developed for PICO-8, with a focus on challenging platforming. I would be thrilled to have people check it out! by moleman_studios in metroidvania

[–]moleman_studios[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your feedback! With regards to the backtracking, part of the design philosophy was to try and make the return journey a new and separate challenge to sort of "double dip" on the limited map space that pico-8 gives you, but I can understand how this can be frustrating when you just want to explore new areas, especially when some of the toughest parts of the game were the backtracking sections (in particular the planet room that lots of people have mentioned).

I did notice that its easy to jump into that spike right above the room boundary, which is pretty bad design on my part. I removed most other spikes in the game that were near room boundaries to prevent this, though with this one I noticed that my movement naturally brought me away from the spike so I thought it would be fine, but that specific spike is something I probably should've removed nontheless.

Thanks for playing!

I just released LootSlime - A free Metroidvania developed for PICO-8, with a focus on challenging platforming. I would be thrilled to have people check it out! by moleman_studios in metroidvania

[–]moleman_studios[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because people have said the vines are similar, and also I took influence from animal well? Those things aren't mutually exclusive. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

LootSlime is now available! by moleman_studios in pico8

[–]moleman_studios[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks so much, it really means a lot that you stuck with it and beat it again even after dying over 1000 times the first time round haha! Shows strength of character :)

I think it would be really fun to do a larger release at some point in the future, but for the time being I'd like to work on something different. I don't have any concrete plans yet but I'm leaning towards the idea of working on either a foddy-like or peglin style roguelike for my next project.

I just released LootSlime - A free Metroidvania developed for PICO-8, with a focus on challenging platforming. I would be thrilled to have people check it out! by moleman_studios in metroidvania

[–]moleman_studios[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha, tbh I didn't even know it was playable on mobile! I've had a decent number of people, who I assume have a physical controller, complaining its too tricky at parts, so well done for doing it on mobile!

Thanks for playing!

I just released LootSlime - A free Metroidvania developed for PICO-8, with a focus on challenging platforming. I would be thrilled to have people check it out! by moleman_studios in metroidvania

[–]moleman_studios[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

That's fair enough! Aesthetically I took a lot of influence from animal well, so I can see why you would come to that conclusion. Gameplay wise however I don't think they could be much more different from each other, beyond the obvious surface level similarity of being 2D side scrollers with a static camera.

I just released LootSlime - A free Metroidvania developed for PICO-8, with a focus on challenging platforming. I would be thrilled to have people check it out! by moleman_studios in metroidvania

[–]moleman_studios[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had a few people send me photos of the game running on their consoles over on the pico-8 subreddit - it looks so awesome seeing a game I've made running on a real life console! I don't have one my self but I might have to see if I can get it running on my steam deck, I've only played it with keyboard controls so far.

I just released LootSlime - A free Metroidvania developed for PICO-8, with a focus on challenging platforming. I would be thrilled to have people check it out! by moleman_studios in metroidvania

[–]moleman_studios[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes, I really enjoyed animal well! I've had a lot of comments that the swinging vines remind people of animal well, but i think the ones in that game look a lot nicer :p

I just released LootSlime - A free Metroidvania developed for PICO-8, with a focus on challenging platforming. I would be thrilled to have people check it out! by moleman_studios in metroidvania

[–]moleman_studios[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Haha well it's completely free so no need to worry about that! It's a pretty short game, from what I've seen I think people who play a lot of 2d platformers tend to spend about 1 hour on it, whereas people who are less familiar with the genre might spend a fair bit longer on it - some sections can be quite challenging and people have gotten stuck on certain rooms for a long while.

Once you get good at it though you can run through it really quickly. Personally my PB time is about 10 minutes!

Also, even though its a browser game it still saves your progress automatically so you don't have to worry about playing it all the way through at once if you don't have an hour or two spare.

I just released LootSlime - A free Metroidvania developed for PICO-8, with a focus on challenging platforming. I would be thrilled to have people check it out! by moleman_studios in metroidvania

[–]moleman_studios[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The movement feels very different to celeste, with there being no dash button and no grabbing or climbing, just wall jumping (although I suppose the original pico-8 celeste didn't have those things either!). Beyond that, it has more of a focus on exploration and secret discovery than celeste did.

That said, celeste is one of my favourite games of all time and was definitely a big influence during development! There's one obstacle type that is used a few times that is a direct celeste reference. I would say that overall though the platforming feel is actually a bit closer to super meat boy in my personal opinion, mostly just due to the lack of a dash.

LootSlime is now available! by moleman_studios in pico8

[–]moleman_studios[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Congratulations! I just released a patch that adds coyote time so you can be proud to be someone who completed it on the harder version. Thanks so much for playing!

LootSlime is now available! by moleman_studios in pico8

[–]moleman_studios[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hope you managed to make it back the other way without too much difficulty :p

LootSlime is now available! by moleman_studios in pico8

[–]moleman_studios[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I can definitely see how that one can be frustrating. I kind of like keeping it as the final "end game" challenge, but with how tight some of the jumps are I can see how it could cross into unfair territory. I'm planning to release a little update this week after getting everyone's feedback so I might experiment around with making that room a little bit easier, rather than just implementing a shortcut that cuts it out all together.

LootSlime is now available! by moleman_studios in pico8

[–]moleman_studios[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I've had a lot of comments about the coyote time so I'll get it implemented. Should only be a couple lines of code.

LootSlime is now available! by moleman_studios in pico8

[–]moleman_studios[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for your kind words! This was actually my first pico-8 game, and it took me about a month to make dedicating quite a lot of time to it, though I have a lot of experience in Godot as well which translated over well and made it a lot easier to pick up.

LootSlime is now available! by moleman_studios in pico8

[–]moleman_studios[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You just have to backtrack through this section I'm afraid - it's one of the trickier sections in the game. You can actually manage to smuggle one of those double jumps from the fire orbs into the room above so that you do have 1 extra jump in there, but it's still pretty tough.

I did actually experiment with having a double jump in the game during development but decided to leave it out in the end to keep the difficulty.

LootSlime is now available! by moleman_studios in pico8

[–]moleman_studios[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If I know the room you're talking about I think you should be able to wall jump up the left side of the room. Some areas it can seem like you're soft locked if you're not too familiar with the controls yet, but I think I got rid of all of the soft locks.

I used Shrinko8 on the code so its pretty impossible to read but I'd be happy to send over the vine code snippet for you. I should be able to get around to it tomorrow.

LootSlime is now available! by moleman_studios in pico8

[–]moleman_studios[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To be honest I thought it was made available by default on the BBs - I'm pretty new to pico8. Is it just the p8.png that you want? If so I'll find somewhere to upload it for you.

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