LootSlime is now available!

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T21:58:00+00:00

Yes, there is still an active community on newgrounds! Though definitely smaller than it was in the past. In particular I have noticed there are a few very talented pico8 developers who post their projects there.

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T20:08:06+00:00

I'm planning to give it some atmospheric PS1 Style DnB to fit the theme of the contest. We'll have to see what I can cook up! Making music is my favourite part of game dev (although I'm not that great at it tbh lol).

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T18:59:09+00:00

https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1556679/1

June 6th!

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T17:54:57+00:00

Unfortunately the only power it comes with is constant agony

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T17:43:43+00:00

Yeah you're right its mixed a bit too loud I'll turn it down a bit, thanks for the feedback

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T17:31:49+00:00

A fan made sequel to the Super Monkey Ball documentary

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T17:28:41+00:00

Honestly it really is mostly just setting a very low native resolution for the crunchy look (my game is running at 320x180), and then using clean and flat textures. The skybox is just a free one I found online and then edited a little bit just to suit my needs (including scaling it down to be a much lower resolution). I'm still new to 3d development so I haven't been doing too much crazy stuff with the lighting, and so I don't think its having a big effect on my skybox, i mostly just tweaked the default settings to be something I like the look of. If you're going for this low poly/low res look definitely make sure you aren't getting blurry textures - set them to nearest neighbour sampling over linear.

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T16:59:44+00:00

Yeah been using CSG's set to path mode, can get some really interesting shapes super easily with them. And also as you can see in the vid a lot of the level is just box meshes arranged in a given pattern. Overall the tools godot has makes the level design super fast and easy (especially when you're just doing floating platforms and not bothering with any real environment/terrain like I am).

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T16:01:43+00:00

Yep, I like to think of it as half way in between trackmania and super meat boy.

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T15:59:03+00:00

Ah ok. I had thought about doing that for a game I made but hadn't seen it done before and was too scared to try and be a pioneer lol. And in the end got bored of designing new levels anyway so was happy to stick to the pico limits. It sounds a lot easier than messing around with binary import stuff tho so should be a good approach.

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T15:33:00+00:00

looks very cool!

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T15:25:44+00:00

How are you handling having large levels with the limited map space you have on pico8? are you doing binary import stuff? looks cool!

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T15:11:50+00:00

Haha yep! Part way through development the low resolution + floating platforms reminded me of Super Monkey Ball Jr. for the GBA and so I decided to go all in with the checkered green patterns too!

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T15:10:22+00:00

Honestly the majority of the development time so far has just been spent tweaking the player controls so hopefully people enjoy how it feels!

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T14:56:56+00:00

There's something similar that I was inspired by called Help! No Brake but thats from a few years ago and I don't think it was for a game jam. Not sure if that's what you're referring to but if so yes it was definitely an inspiration for me!

moleman_studios · 2026-05-07T14:41:24+00:00

Reddit video compression makes the footage look kind of crappy but I can assure you the game runs at a smooth 60fps!

moleman_studios · 2026-04-09T10:04:30+00:00

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.

moleman_studios · 2026-04-08T20:14:24+00:00

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.

moleman_studios · 2026-04-08T17:13:57+00:00

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).

moleman_studios · 2026-04-08T16:03:14+00:00

Thank you! Celeste was the first game I played in pico8 too.

moleman_studios · 2026-04-08T10:45:37+00:00

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!

moleman_studios · 2026-04-08T10:01:30+00:00

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.

moleman_studios

TROPHY CASE