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ACT [Mega Blue Ball] Pixie Panic Garden v1.2 (RJ225140)


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laek

laek

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Done another minor update base on the debuffs feedback. Now on the 1st and 2nd levels of a stage, buff drop rate is increased. This was a very good suggestion that makes the begining of a round less punishing, while still allowing some rng to make the player deal with different situations (more bombs than explosion, or vise-versa).

The complete game will have both censored and uncensored versions. Also, while the font I used for the game has a nice retro feel to it, it is indeed sometimes hard to read on bright backgrounds. Unfortunatelly I only noticed this issue later in developemnt, when I had already built lots of visual assets with the font in mind, so changing it now would be more trouble than it is worth.

On the flowers stages you really need to be conscious of your current range level, and then count the squares in the grid to see if it is safe to bomb or not, Altough I did position 1 or 2 tricky flowers here and there to give you a challenge. A hint is that the punch skill is very good in the flower stages because you can "control" the enemies positioning by stunning them, and also when enemies are stunned, you can walk through them, so use that to your advantage to path between enemies and position yourself for more precise bombings.
 

Mistix

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Every flower is placed in a way that a bomb can destroy the hedge without touching any of the flowers.

On a side note, my only issue right now is the punishment for losing. I'm probably the only one getting annoyed at silly losses that mean you need to restart right from the beginning. I personally think it's better if you unlock the level once you've beaten it. So once you lose, you can start at that stage with 0 points and no powerups, but still don't need to start at the very beginning. After a few times it ruins the feeling of a H-game.

Aside from that I've been enjoying the gameplay.
Yeah, I know that. It's just with the pressure of enemies running around, having to dodge them and with the timer going down, it gets harder when you even have to calculate the correct spot to place a bomb to not damage a flower within the current explosion range in mind.
 

Papanomics

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I liked it. Good luck on finishing it. I will surely buy it if you sell it.
 
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laek

laek

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Thanks for the support. I'm actually quite close to finishing development, and by my calculations a late April release is almost certain.

Then again, I'll only be able to release so "soon" because I cut a decent amount of content. I mean, content gets cut almost 100% of the time in any game being developed, but specially since this is my 1st time doing it, I had to curb my enthusiasm and keep my goals realistic for an amateur dev. That's why I decided to start with something simple.

For example, one of the things I cut very early was a clothes-change system. If you remember on super bomberman 5 for the snes, when destroying block sometimes you would find an rabbit, and each rabbit had a different ability. In PPG you would find a rare power-up that would change Pixie's clothes and give her abilities stronger than the normal ones. But then I realized that I would have to basically draw another set of animations for each clothe, I cut it real quick. But this idea is something I really want to implement someday, perhaps on a next project if this whole indie dev thing works out. :)

An early wip when I was toying with the system:
 

neutral

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this game is frustratingly hard to be honest. i just spent two hours trying to beat it, no dice. you say there are supposed to be 5 stages with multiple levels in each, i am genuinely terrified how difficult this game will get. if i cant even beat the first stage with all of my effort, i cant image doing that 5 times.

may i suggest afew things.

1. nerf the gnome. that shit is bananas. he has too much health, or make it so that hes vulnerable after teleporting long enough for a bomb to go off. as it is now hitting him at all is dumb luck.
2. needs more checkpoints. i thought 1-5 was the boss, it was hard enough getting to him, i rolled my eyes so hard when the game kept going. being able to spawn halfway would be good, so players aren't at a disadvantage just spawn us with 2 of every powerup.
3. maybe just less flowers in the "dont hit the flowers" stages. would be nice. i get that you planned the levels meticulously, i appreciate that, please dont expect me to be immaculate in my bomb placements. there is very little room for error in those stages. if you cant get rid of afew, make it so that failure occurs if you hit 2 or 3.
4. Circumvent all my complaints, let me be a weenie, just put "continue" instead of making me start over from the beginning. preferably with all my powerups, but if not, spawn with 2 of everything.


other than that, great game. genuinely looking forward to its release.
quick question though, its censored now, will the full version be uncensored, or have a way to buy it uncensored, like on itch.io?
 

billy jones

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I will say that the gnome was a pain in the ass. His invincibility lasts for a while as for me i'm scared that i will die since you only have one Hp with the amount of lives if you don't die in the earlier stages.
I would like a zoom function since i like to see mine kinda close but not too close and not be too near my screen. Like they did in LAB2UG
Other then that i think this is a great game. Would love to see more of it in the future.
Also is the enemies just gonna be creatures/animals? No other random humans in the game?
 

Mistix

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I actually found the gnome stage really easy.
I guess the key is to have multiple bombs with high explosion range.
All I did was spam 5 bombs close to the gnome location and waited out on his invicibility to run off.
Yet again, it's all about luck on getting the bonuses you need on previous stages.
 

dijitz

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this game is frustratingly hard to be honest. i just spent two hours trying to beat it, no dice. you say there are supposed to be 5 stages with multiple levels in each, i am genuinely terrified how difficult this game will get. if i cant even beat the first stage with all of my effort, i cant image doing that 5 times.

may i suggest afew things.

1. nerf the gnome. that shit is bananas. he has too much health, or make it so that hes vulnerable after teleporting long enough for a bomb to go off. as it is now hitting him at all is dumb luck.
2. needs more checkpoints. i thought 1-5 was the boss, it was hard enough getting to him, i rolled my eyes so hard when the game kept going. being able to spawn halfway would be good, so players aren't at a disadvantage just spawn us with 2 of every powerup.
3. maybe just less flowers in the "dont hit the flowers" stages. would be nice. i get that you planned the levels meticulously, i appreciate that, please dont expect me to be immaculate in my bomb placements. there is very little room for error in those stages. if you cant get rid of afew, make it so that failure occurs if you hit 2 or 3.
4. Circumvent all my complaints, let me be a weenie, just put "continue" instead of making me start over from the beginning. preferably with all my powerups, but if not, spawn with 2 of everything.


other than that, great game. genuinely looking forward to its release.
quick question though, its censored now, will the full version be uncensored, or have a way to buy it uncensored, like on itch.io?
I'd say just make an easy mode for people like these. Don't ruin the challenge of the game. Honestly, it's not like its bad game design as almost always when you die it's your own fault. Flower stages was extremely simple if you know actually pay attention to the layout and not just try to rush through it. Only real critism I can make aside from censor, is that it can get confusing what row you're really on as I blew myself up several times thinking i was in the other row, but I was still slightly in the row where I laid my bomb.

 
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laek

laek

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quick question though, its censored now, will the full version be uncensored, or have a way to buy it uncensored, like on itch.io?
Yes, the complete game will have an uncensored version.

I would like a zoom function; Also is the enemies just gonna be creatures/animals? No other random humans in the game?
I don't want to spoil much of the additional enemies, but yes there are male humanoid enemies, female enemies for both Yuri and Futanari, and more beasts and creatures.

For zooming, when Pixie is down on the ground you can zoom in with the "A" key. Unless you mean't zooming in while alive in a level? I feel like there would be no advantage to the player, since it is preferable to be able to see the whole level while playing, and playing zoomed in would make the game even more difficult.

On the topic of the difficulty of the game, I'm very thankful for all your feedback. After months of development, it is very easy to lose sight of the game balance and how difficult it is. I'm currently considering all suggestions made, like: continue after game over option, easy mode, etc. When I decide on the most optimal method I'll release a new demo.

 

alias34

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I usually do advocate for a decent amount of challenge in a game but most of the challenge in this comes from "trying not to fuck up" which become incredibly frustrating after a while, especially when you lose in the final stretch because of one little mistake. Being able to continue where you left off would mitigate the frustration, in its current state I just don't have the patience to start over from the beginning again and again because of one misplaced bomb ruining my streak.
 

Ratman1029

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This was a little gem. Hard enough to be interesting, yet simple enough that I recognized most of my screw-ups came from me misjudging the explosion radius of my bombs or by accidentally trapping myself between bomb and a hard place. And while I did rage quite a grand total of three times when I finally made it to the gnome on my last life only to accidentally blow myself up, I still found myself coming back determined to finish it (if only to say I unlocked the stage select feature). Which leads me to agree with others that the unlock requirement be set for finishing a level instead of unlocking them all only after defeating the stage boss. Or as others have suggested, a checkpoint/continue feature so all your progress isn't immediately reset due to a run of bad luck would also work.

Regardless, I'm definitely checking back on this game. Can't wait to see how it develops.
 

dijitz

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I usually do advocate for a decent amount of challenge in a game but most of the challenge in this comes from "trying not to fuck up" which become incredibly frustrating after a while, especially when you lose in the final stretch because of one little mistake. Being able to continue where you left off would mitigate the frustration, in its current state I just don't have the patience to start over from the beginning again and again because of one misplaced bomb ruining my streak.
Yet, thats the perfect challenge. It's not the game fucking you over it's yourself. The game isn't necessarily hard it's just the stupid mistakes that the player makes why we end up dying. Infact, I'd even say it goes well with a lesson in life. In my job I gotta be make sure everything is good as one little mistake can possibly be a massive headache later. As, such you should try to correct the mistakes when you make em and get better by realizing what you get wrong.

P.S. Atleast with the game you can copy a save file and view the gallery and still "win" without doing all the hardwork.
 

alias34

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Uh ok fine by me if you think so but I think comparing games to your job is never really making a good case lol, and neither did I say I want the difficulty to be gone, thats kind of a strawman. The problem with this approach in this game in my opinion is that doing the same levels over and over is extremely tedious and boring. In a platformer you can at least zip through previous levels like its nothing, in this game you have a slower approach which is fine, but redoing stages is so boring that it makes me mess up constantly, turning the whole thing into a tedious experience.
 

jumjummju

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Uh ok fine by me if you think so but I think comparing games to your job is never really making a good case lol, and neither did I say I want the difficulty to be gone, thats kind of a strawman. The problem with this approach in this game in my opinion is that doing the same levels over and over is extremely tedious and boring. In a platformer you can at least zip through previous levels like its nothing, in this game you have a slower approach which is fine, but redoing stages is so boring that it makes me mess up constantly, turning the whole thing into a tedious experience.
I think it's largely because this game has more of a puzzle focus, even compared to the original bomberman. The original bomberman was more of an action game that required precise positioning, in this game the enemies (and you) are far slower and with level types such as the flower levels the focus is more puzzle than action, which makes repeating a level even more tedious. Replaying a level in a game with a heavy focus on mechanical skill is still difficult, but the only difficulty in replaying a puzzle game is if you forgot the original puzzle's solution. In this game, the difficulty in replaying a level mostly just comes from your own attention lapsing and you accidentally bombing a flower or yourself.

On one hand, yes that's entirely the player's fault, but on the other hand the player shouldn't be dying because they very briefly lapsed in attention out of boredom.

This game's just really hard for people like me with ADHD, man. Doubly so when I'm horny and just tryin' to have a good fap. ;-;

P.S. Atleast with the game you can copy a save file and view the gallery and still "win" without doing all the hardwork.
Sadly, no one's posted a save file and I can't find one anywhere (but I also may be blind). The save data all seems to be in some gibberish anyway so I can't just unlock all the levels by turning 0's to 1's in a config file either.

 

alphaikazuchi

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Yeah, honestly the H isn't worth all the work it takes to see all of it. If someone could share a save that'd be dope.
 

Papanomics

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The lack of checkpoints is pretty upsetting, I must say that it took me a while to get to the goblin.
 

alias34

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Yeah I don't really seem to be in the minority with this. Don't misunderstand me, I'm mostly frustrated BECAUSE I like the game, otherwise I obviously just wouldn't bother with it in the first place. But I do think the game should have checkpoints after each level. The levels individually are moderately difficult, which I like, but the tedium that comes from having to re-run previous levels again and again, often resulting in doing even more mistakes due to frustration just doesn't work well imo.
The fact that power-ups carry over between levels is enough of an incentive to still have some people be free to choose to start over each time, while people who are just frustrated with the repetition, but not the individual levels themselves, will be able to jump to whichever level they're stuck at, with the lack of power-ups from the start serving as punishment.
 
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laek

laek

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Rest assured, all the feedback regarding the lack of check points/continues are completely valid and I took notice of them. To be honest, I have no idea why I didn't just include such an option from the get-go.

I'm releasing another minor update with the Retry feature. Now when the player loses all their lives, they have the option to continue from the specifc level they died. For now, you start with 4 lives, 0 speed, no skill, 2 bombs and 3 power, and also a severe score penalty. With the feature in place, it is now easy to fine-tune those values if they are too restrictive/lenient.

Development of the full game is going really well, and my prediciton of a release close to the end of the month is almost certain. Thank you all for playing this little demo and giving your feedback.
 

alias34

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Welp, downloaded the new demo and immediately made it in one go lol. Though it gave me a game over at the gnome after winning anyways. Is the demo over there or is that unintended? Stage select makes it look like Stage 2 is available too.
 

billy jones

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For zooming, when Pixie is down on the ground you can zoom in with the "A" key. Unless you mean't zooming in while alive in a level?
Yeah only when you dead. I don't think i will need a zoom while alive. Just didn't know that the "A" key is the zoom button.

 
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