A flash platformer made in 48 hours by myself and 4 other people

I started to play this game at work and instantly knew I wanted to beat it and play it all the way through. It had a great look and feel to it.

Since I did get to the victory screen I thought I'd share my comments with you. In fact this if the first time I've ever commented on YC/news and had to register just to do it.

1. I really wanted a way to go directly to the hat I wanted to use instead of cycle through them. Pressing 1 for blue, 2 for bunny etc would have made it a lot less frustrating.

2. The green hat totally confused my jumping finger. I'd put on green, jump high, switch to bunny, try to use the same button to jump with but nothing happened.

3. I had absolutely no problem figuring out what the goal was, how to use the blue hat, how to pass the first level, how to enter doors etc. I don't come from a long background of video game players. I was told by you that x and c are the controls and bam with a little playin around I learned what to do.

4. I really liked the simplicity. It looked 8 bit but we know flash isn't 8 bit. Why did you choose those graphics as opposed to a more smooth sprite?

5. I never got used to the zxc controls. I am right handed and all but for some reason my fingers kept getting it mixed up. When doing harder moves like jumping high and shooting I'd have to think it through first "ok i have to push c,z,z,z,c" and I'd still screw it up. I'd hit z 4 times instead of 3.

6. The only levels worth playing were the last 2. I almost gave up on the last level though. Had to go eat a cookie and think about it, and come back. I died at every single obstacle at least once trying the last level.

7. The second to last level was my absolute favorite. This is where you first have to shoot a guy have him die on spikes, jump over spikes, and repeat. The last jump to the exit took me forever and I planned a lot of different methods to finally get it. The reason why I liked it was because it seemed very hard to me yet I saw the door right there and knew the level was short. I had victory taste in my mouth every time I made that jump but something would always go wrong.

8. I enjoyed the early levels as a tutorial on how to use the hats but the replay value is not really there if I already know how to use the hats.

9. I really liked the lack of loading screens, lack of time it takes between death and startover, lack of frills. Just give me a game and you did!

I think if you like this game you'll probably another flash game called "Chronotron". Anyways I really enjoyed your game. I think you're doing great and thank you for sharing it!

Sweet game, nicely done!

Enjoyed figuring out what the hats are for, and how to use them.

In no particular order:

- with the blue hat, keeping c pressed will turbo-toggle invisibility. It looks like it does something, but it doesn't

- when you are in the air while doing a big jump (green hat) and then switch to speed (pink hat) you suddenly lurge forward and miss your jump. Ouch! In the same style, when walking to a cliff and switching hats (to get to the green one) you enthusiastically run into the cliff the moment you equip the pink hat.

- having two different jump buttons with the green hat is confusing. It's also not consistent with the pink hat. The pink hat makes you run even if you don't press c, but the green hat doesn't "upgrade" your normal jump with x.

- I haven't been able to figure out what the yellow (music?) hat is for.

- I only discovered by accident that you can use the dead bodies of the bigger enemies as plateau.

- touching the spikes with a toe kills you instantly. Not very forgiving.

- it took me a few levels to figure out that you have to walk _past_ a door to trigger it, that standing in front of it and hitting some keys doesn't work.

- having to switch quickly to the right hat can be frustrating. Especially if you see enemies approaching from both sides and you accidentally cycle past the blue hat.

- I got stuck on the level where you have to scare one of the big guys into a cliff with the red hat. I can stand on the body, but I can't make the jump to the exit because the avatar either hits his head on the ceiling or doesn't jump far enough. I suspect there's some kind of floating ability I missed. Hrm.

Nice game though. Congrats!

Part of why Flash is so popular is that the tools it gives creators makes it so easy to so quickly and easily develop applications like this.

Kudos.

This game has a disturbingly large number of features for the amount of time taken...which ends up making it kind of hard to play. It took five or six tries to understand the first puzzle of the game, and it actually crashes Firefox when I die sometimes.

Well done, I really enjoyed playing that game. I had to literally pull myself away from the computer because it's getting really late and I ought to go to bed, but I'll certainly play it again when I get the chance. Just one thing though: it's a bit hard for me to play the game because of the controls - I'm not using a US keyboard layout so the Z key for me is where the Y key is on a normal US keyboard. Perhaps you could make it so that the V key is used for changing the hats?

Hey, my friend was in the gamejam in WPI at Worcester, Mass. and ended up with this:

http://www.globalgamejam.org/2010/flickering-torch

One cool thing to do with yours would be to have 1-5 be hat switch keys

Played for a few minutes, couldn't get past the first guy.. as in, the guy you see within 5 seconds. I tried shooting those clouds but they don't seem to affect him, and if I try to run through him.. I die. So.. HTF do you play this game? :-)

Is flash really the only good language to write web games in?

I started writing a game in Love/lua, which is really great. But you can't write web games in it, as far as I know. Any other options?

I'm several levels in and I can't jump high enough, even with the green hat. Am I missing something?

Which gamejam were you part of?

wow, nappy hacker. The joys of cut and paste. I admire your zeal, but the truth is the product is too intrusive. I too would just say no!