Rebound (Beta)

[update] The open beta is finished!

Play Rebound here:

http://micahjones.info/rebound

Howdy! My name is Micah. In 2011, I started working on a retro platformer in Construct 2. And now it's finished!

The game is called Rebound. It's set in a (cheerfully) post-apocalyptic future, where self-replicating nanomachines have devoured the entire planet. You play as a reluctant maintenance robot, sent planetside to investigate strange readings and collect data. Will you be able to find you way back home?

The game explores a single mechanic: use a ground-stomping maneuver to disassemble your enemies and bounce up high.

Here's a trailer:

http://youtu.be/kHrWBaM7Mb4

Not bad.. I like the little intro story, but didn't like having to press enter every time. Could just be me but i would make that a play sequence with an option to skip (for return players). The camera work (view positioning) was nicely done. Good transitions, very impressive. Game play and user experience was intuitive, I knew what i was supposed to do and how to do it, accept when the player looses health when getting hit, the fading trail almost feels like i got a speed boost as opposed to being hit. Just the visual effect i guess but at first i was confused at to what had happened. After few screens though i got a little bored because after i kill an enemy if i die before finishing the level and respawn those enemy's are no longer there so i get bored going through game terrain to catch up to where i last died. Maybe don't have the player start so far back when they die so they always get instant action or re-spawn the enemy's so i have something to do catching up to my last point. Lastly I would just add some more parallax objects like clouds or something so as I'm scrolling the movement doesn't feel so fixed the few that are there don't feel like enough to keep persective. But all in all this has a lot a potential. Nice Job!

Not game related:

The file appears to be large and takes a while to load.. the first time you load it you just see a black box for quite some time and don't realize the file is still loading. I refreshed the page a few times thinking it broke. I would add some sort of spinning wheel if you can to indicate loading.

But again. Nice job!

Thanks for playing!

The loading time is something that concerns me quite a bit. Too much dang code in this game. But yeah, I need to figure out a way to let people know it's loading, even before the progress bar shows up.

I've thought maybe it would be better to have the enemies respawn whenever you die. Otherwise, you're probably right: not much reason to walk back through an empty level.

Again, thanks for playing, and thanks for your suggestions.

Amazing soundtrack!

Thank you kindly!

awesome lol

OK, I've got a temporary fix for the loading issue. Now there's an image, instead of just a black screen while the Javascript is loading. Maybe tomorrow I'll come up with an animation I can use, so it looks a little more proactive.

A pretty well made game, it took a while to load yes, but with your addition of the loading screen, it shows that it's loading and not just crashing

The double tap to kill enemies takes a while to get used to, also I found at one point that I could actually stand on top of one of the enemies once I was hit for the first time. idk whether that was a sheer fluke that only I've seen but yeah I managed to ride the enemy before going woah, lets kill him ^_^

But I like the premise, I also agree a few more parallaxes would polish the game up nicely. I also agree with the above comment regarding respawn, I personally don't mind not having any enemies, but maybe some checkpoints (but that would make it incredibly easy, so it may not be what you want)

Overall a great experience and I enjoyed playing it

P.S That music is amazing

I like it. Enjoyable experience.

At first I thought: the first green areas are a bit empty, but I think I should not see it as empty but as an art-choice. (It's a strange world, you feel alone)

Music (especially intro) is nice.

Thanks for playing, y'all!

Yes, you can stand on top of the majority of the game's enemies. Some will continue to hurt you (like the spikey fellows), but others will just go about their business.

It does get kind of monotonous whenever you die. I feel a bit silly for not realizing that before now. I think today I'll sit down and try to come up with some sort of checkpoint system, or dynamic enemy respawning, or maybe some combination of the two. In any case, it's slightly absurd to run back through an empty level.

Thanks for your comments! It's super helpful to get some perspective on this project.

Music is nice!

Thanks!

v2 update! I uploaded a new build of the game. You can follow that same link in the original post to play it.

The biggest change is that enemies now respawn in the Prairie world. My plan is to continue doing this throughout the game, but I wanted to get some opinions on how it works early on. I'm guessing this will make the game a bit harder. I would love to hear your thoughts on the difficulty, because it's a challenge to gain perspective on that aspect of the game. (When you've been working on something for a while, it's nearly impossible to view the project with fresh eyes).

Another change is that now, if you press the "v" button during normal gameplay, you can view the game's fps and version number.

There were a few other minor changes. In this version, dialogue screens appear and disappear more quickly. As per troublesum's suggestion, I'll probably add a "skip dialogue" option in the future. But for now, this small change makes reading text a little less tedious.

A quick question: has anyone made it past the Prairie levels yet? I worry that people's first impression of the game is underwhelming, and I would love to address any issues that are preventing players from progressing to the other worlds.

As always, thanks so much for playing!

I uploaded v3 of the open beta last night.

New this version: enemies now respawn after you die, each world has new parallaxes, and you can skip dialogue by holding the "Esc" key.

As usual, any feedback would be most helpful! You can play Rebound here: http://micahjones.info/?page_id=712

Just played, but it's difficult to stomp on enemies sometimes.

Anyway, I like the graphics and musics.