Released! 2 0
toasty
Prison BreakpointAnd so I have jettisoned my fragile game, Prison Breakpoint, into the internet wilderness, ready to be devoured by a howling mob of people with probably totally valid criticisms.
I'll write a longer reflective post after the voting stage, but these are my initial thoughts on the game.
I had to crunch pretty hard last night to turn what was a congealed blob of JavaScript spaghetti into something resembling a game, but am happy with the end result. It's definitely basic in some ways (the art styles are mixed and incoherent; there's no SFX or music), but it does have a reasonable level of polish.
Because I lost a big chunk of time, there's not a whole lot of AI. The whole game is about writing some AI, which is enough to get into the jam, but it still feels like a cop-out. I would have preferred more AI in this game.
The elephant in the room: I suspect this game is a bit too inaccessible. It's not particularly hard, but… you have to read a manual. Seriously. What the heck was I thinking?
Inaccessible? Man, your not aiming so the average Joe plays it, better make a niche product. And different strokes for different folks. If TIS-100 could sell, your game is extremely acessible compared to it :D
Most criticism about the game will be about either lack of QoL(it's a jam, duh) or lack of originality (cause in the end you're just programming javascript). There's nothing else to criticise cause design-wise its as clean as it can possibly be.
If you want a lot of people to play it, just drop it in some specific reddits, maybe zachtronics' or programming subreddits, and I'm sure it will find its audience :D
(I just thought that the tick mechanic is very clever and how it could be used in a continuous environment to do the same you did, but in a platformer, like if you were programmign a TAS. That'd be cool)