Agoravania (an attempt at ripping off knytt stories badly)

Hi,  the original knytt stories levels were maybe the #1 reason i started making games, though i didn't try the level editor until way after i started making games. My first game was an attempt to make something like knytt stories with some exploration and double jump and stuff, but i failed at having a double jump and stuff, so i gave up and just had the exploration with some weird portals. then i started making another thing like it, which might've been good, but i had technical issues, so i quit that. This is small, but is sort of the closest i've gotten to that sort of feel so far. It's not really that i exactly am trying to copy everything about knytt stories, but some things i just wanted to try. So here's the game, it is small and slightly buggy, but hopefully interesting.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/665976

I liked the vong-VONG of the hi-jump though if the game had been much longer I suspect it would have gotten irritating. The pink-pink-pink of the clock was a bit aggravating. Some music would have been nice, and why is it raining out one side of the house and not the others? (Seriously, my pet KS peeve.)

All in all, it was a fun little thing with some nice touches - I liked the crow(?) in the rainy screen and all in all the game was fun. I enjoyed the challenge of climbing for the red key. Programming of screen transitions felt a bit sloppy and the physics were a bit too heavy for comfort but hey, you're learning as you go, and I imagine if I tried to learn to program I'd feel proud of myself if I gained experience enough to make something like this. On the other hand the green key slid oddly up and off the screen when I picked it up, which made me wonder if I'd somehow lost it until the corresponding door closed behind me.

The ending was... strange.

thanks for checking it out!
yeah, the piano thing was something that i wanted to try, because i really like musical sound effects in games, but you're right about it probably getting annoying after a while. the green key weirdness was a bug that i could've fixed, but liked the weirdness of, so i decided to leave it in, but yeah, mixed messages aren't good.

i guess with the rain thing, i was thinking the other place was sort of a cave, so it wouldn't have rain in it, but i guess i didn't do anything to justify that it's a cave, maybe. For me, music almost always verges on the side of being too excessive in most games and KS levels, so i wanted to just have ambience and sound effects. I put the gravity sorta high because i read something a while back that higher gravity makes games feel nicer, i guess it depends what game.

i guess i could make a better screen transition, and i have in the past, but i guess i just wanted to be lazy with that this time, and just focus on the overall feeling of the space and atmosphere and tilesets (the tilesets are gross, but it's my first time that i tried making a few different types of tiles for a game)The ending means something to me, but not really something specific, more like a certain feeling.

Yeah, it's crude, but it has a terrific mood. I'd certainly label it an art-game, but I like such things.

Well I played for some time. If it's one of your first efforts in making a platform game, it's not bad at all!

Moving platforms were a little glitchy but you already warned about slight bugginess so as long as you know your flaws that's not a big deal either.

You could do even better and more polished stuff if you decide to keep making games. Your style may evolve so much that at one point, you may even look back to this project and say "wow, did I make this game? It looks short/simple!"

Also consider checking out Game Maker if you already haven't.

Yeah, I guess I'm a little later on this one, but I still played it.

I did find it weird that the piano plays 1/2 a second after you jump, instead of right when you land (or possibly right when you jump). Still, I agree that the mood works well with this and that it can be a good art game.

EDIT: Forget about the time delay. That's just my browser. At least I know this game works on Linux.

So this was pretty cool. I thought it had a really weird, lo-fi, almost early-aughts-indie-game feel. I really liked the crow, too; characters like that are my favorite part of the Knytt games.