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

[super_slicer]

lol, you could probably put a toggle on the bomb's friendly fire in the menu somewhere and that'd most likely clear up any difficulty issues XD

 

[Julia_ormand]

has anyone finished and have a complete save? i suck at this game but its soo good! thanks for the amazing game you've put time and effort into! really amazing! my only suggestion would be it feels a little unforgiving if you get stuck on a stage and run out of continues, you have to start all over from the beginning. thats honestly my only complaint to be honest, it would be nice if you could just start from the stage you last cleared

 

[Jason Bill]

1) Yes, you can obtain a secret even if you start directly on the specifc level where it's hidden.
2) No, you don't need to beat the boss to be able to obtain the secret. For instance, if you manage to solve the secret of stage 2, you could immediately leave to the main menu and the secret will count as found. The secret is registered as soon as you solve the enigma and fulfill the conditions (you will hear the secret sound play).

Cool, thanks for clearing that up.

Just wanted to mention it, because you mention your "amateur" design skills. I actually think a lot of the games systems are designed pretty well. I had praised the enemy variety before, and that's a big part of it. 4-3 is still as far as I've made it ATM. The way 4-1, and 4-2 are set up though, with the mages in secluded spots, creates a constant threat and a very good challenge. I would actually say it's very well designed in that regard. I don't really see the design as being poor in terms of enemy mechanics/level design. The issues are more about the "overarching" mechanics.

The biggest trouble I've had with stage 4 in particular is the timer. 4-3 in particular I keep running out of time. Last attempt I made I was 2 hits away from winning when I ran out. The timer makes me feel pressured to play more aggressively, (as a necessity) to make sure I don't run out of time. But playing aggressively like that is a lot riskier, so mistakes happen more frequently.

The other big thing is how punishing having to continue is. It really does feel pretty hopeless when you have to continue, because of how gimped you are losing most of your powerups. Most of the time if I game over, I just quit out and go back to the beginning of the stage (x-1), because playing in such a weak state is probably a waste of my time.

I do really like the game. It's got a neat premise. Simple, but with a nice amount of variety and room for depth. I do think it might be a tad too difficult for a hentai game though. (Which is an interesting/odd quirk of this genre.) I certainly don't mind a bit of challenge, (and would even prefer SOME challenge) but I guess there's a fine line between challenging/engaging and frustrating. That's really the trick when it comes to design. You want it to be challenging and engaging, but not feel unfair. And when it comes to hentai games in particular, that quirk/oddity I mentioned just now can feel extra worse because of being locked out of the erotic content. (I really want to make progress and get through stage 4, because I want to see the next stages animations, and stage 4s boss.)

The hentai games I have in my collection that I hold in high regard are the ones that actually have good gameplay and good hentai. Those are the ones I'll go back to and replay every once in a while. This game definitely fits that criteria. Definitely was worth the buy, and in terms of development, I'm satisfied to see you're committed to seeing feedback and making the game even better. Great work. I'll be interested to see what else you can bring us in the future.

 

[Julia_ormand]

I do really like the game. It's got a neat premise. Simple, but with a nice amount of variety and room for depth. I do think it might be a tab bit too difficult for a hentai game though. (Which is an interesting/odd quirk of this genre.) I certainly don't mind a bit of challenge, (and would even prefer SOME challenge) but I guess there's a fine line between challenging/engaging and frustrating. That's really the trick when it comes to design. You want it to be challenging and engaging, but not feel unfair. And when it comes to hentai games in particular, that quirk/oddity I mentioned just now can feel extra worse because of being locked out of the erotic content. (I really want to make progress and get through stage 4, because I want to see the next stages animations, and stage 4s boss.)

Agreed, yeah i get it games should be challenging but its really hard to clear something especially when you make a few mistakes due to being on a timer and rushing and then having to start over from scratch makes you kinda feel cheated.

P.S has anyone figured out what the secrets are and care to share?

P.P.S how hard are the bosses to kill? seems to take more than 5-6 bomb hits to kill the goblin boss

 

[Jason Bill]

P.S has anyone figured out what the secrets are and care to share?

P.P.S how hard are the bosses to kill? seems to take more than 5-6 bomb hits to kill the goblin boss

Spoiler

On stage 1-4, there's a "destructible" wall on the top right. After blowing it up simply walk inside until the secret sound triggers.
That's the only one I've found so far.

As for the bosses. They all have 10hp so far. Hitting S to bring up the status overlay will show their health. The number next to the red icon.

 

[Julia_ormand]

oh! thank you! what exactly do they unlock? anything special or just CG's or something?

 

[Jason Bill]

oh! thank you! what exactly do they unlock? anything special or just CG's or something?

As far as I can tell, getting the secret on each stage lets you hit a button in the CG gallery to play the corresponding animation in the corner of the screen. So unlocking the stage 1 secret will allow that for the CGs that correspond with the stage 1 enemies. At least I'm pretty sure. Stage 1s secret is the only one I've found, and the stage 1 stuff is the only thing that has the option show up for me.

EDIT: Here's my save file. Granted, I've only beaten up to stage 3. 4-6 is the furthest I've made it at this point. Made it there on my last life/continue. Almost actually beat it on that first try. Was really hoping I could at least make it to the stage 4 boss and lose to that for a new animation. But alas, a zombie kicked a bomb into a flower.

 

[Julia_ormand]

As far as I can tell, getting the secret on each stage lets you hit a button in the CG gallery to play the corresponding animation in the corner of the screen. So unlocking the stage 1 secret will allow that for the CGs that correspond with the stage 1 enemies. At least I'm pretty sure. Stage 1s secret is the only one I've found, and the stage 1 stuff is the only thing that has the option show up for me.

Oh okay! sounds fun! thanks for the save file! ive been super stuck and just wanted to get away from stage one and try another level X3

 

[neutral]

Even though nobody asked for it, I want to give some game design tips. Im an amateur designer myself, though I havent made anything i've listened to and watched alot of lectures, and i've played alot of games. Most of the time looking for design decisions in my playthroughs and observing them. I dont claim to be an expert, but I am very observant, and I have a grasp on design principles. From the looks of it you didn't intend for the game to be difficult, which is why I felt the need to bring this up and give you my two cents. I want to see you succeed, I think your work is actually fantastic and I want to help in any way I can, even if its just in the form of advice.

1. not to sound rude, but your game design feels like the game design equivalent to a run on sentence. When I look at it I see alot of "and then, and then, and then" in your design.
In most games only about one or two things are happening at once. You can see this in megaman, most screens in that game have either a handful of enemies, or an obstacle. alot of "rooms" have basics like cliffs and spikes, but the focus of a room is usually "this enemy", or "this obstacle." a common room in megaman is the one with a conveyor belt going off the edge of a cliff, and the obstacle is usually one enemy, and its usually a spring guy that ONLY jumps. thats it. the difficulty here comes in timing. another common one is usually in the opening of a stage, its flat land with lots of cliffs, usually an enemy placed here and there, but the real obstacle is the bird that appears at timed intervals droping a bomb, sort of anticipating you to get hit by the bomb so the stun hits you and you fall off a cliff. in both these scenarios, only one thing is actually going on, but it feels like alot more is happening than it is.
In dark souls, there are combat areas where you fight enemies, or trap rooms with obstacles, the two dont usually mix, but if they do the obstacle is easily avoided, usually being "dont stand here."

In this game, using stage 3-6 as an example, you went "dont destroy the flowers, and then heres this goat man that can instantly set off your bombs, and then heres this girl that ignores walls and damage while spinning, and then heres a timer, and then break these bushes, and then break these weak walls." It's alot of rules and things happening at the same time to keep track of.

2. There was an interview with the designers of ocarina of time where they say they regret the design of the water temple. when asked why it came out the way it did the answer was in the process of how they designed it. Each room in that temple was built by itself, with no thought into how all the pieces would fit when they were finally put together. I bring this up because you kind of did this. they built a room and said "this is good" but when they put them all together they realized what was wrong. I dont know what your process was, but by observing it I FEEL you built each room individually, and built challenge for that room alone without bringing into consideration what the final product would look like when they were all finally put together. It's important to step back and see what is taking shape before you, before it grows into something terrible.

It makes sense in my head, I hope it makes sense written out.
if it doesnt...well....to put it in perspective, in god of war 3 theres an elevator sequence, there are 3 enemies, the harpie kicks, the Minotaur charges, the medusa tries to freeze you. there is no other obstacle. If you designed this level, the harpie would kick, the minotaur would charge, the medusa would try to freeze you, the floor would be lava, there'd be a sniper you cant reach, there would be a magic circle im not allowed to step in, and there'd be a lever im supposed to pull to stop the floor from collapsing. step back and look, alot of times its just that easy.

 

[neutral]

by the way, i am absolutely convinced stage 4-3 cannot be beaten without dumb luck. the enemies are too fast, too many, and too hard to hit to reasonably kill all of them within the time limit. you seriously need to bump that timer up.

 

[Jason Bill]

I'm finding the kick ability to basically be a requirement for stage 4. It really helps on 4-3. Just chuck bombs down the hallways from range. It's still tricky, but it seems a lot more consistent. I got some good value out of kick on 4-4 and 4-5 as well.

 

[Papanomics]

I didn't mind the mud bishop much at all. I've gotten into stage 3. I like how different enemies are capable of doing douchebag things (Satyrs stomp that causes damage OR explodes any bomb they touch, mud worms swallow bombs they approach, ect). The timer is a little gut wrenching as you try to place your bombs correctly.

No offense.... FUCK THE RARE BEETLES. Their movement, has no patterns at all, and with only one enemy left, one of these fuckers just decides to travel across the map and get in front of a bomb.

I like the punch ability a lot as it made it much easier for me to get through stage two. Punch the worm or flies and drop a bomb so they don't have time to dig or fly. Pokemon reference.

 

[Tildryn]

Why make the zombies kick, take multiple hits to kill, move erratically and faster as they take hits, AND be immune to the Punch power-up to try and mitigate their erratic movement? Far too much for a single enemy to have, especially with such tight time limits.

 

[jumjummju]

Heyo, managed to acquire a complete 100% save! Not by legitimate means, I just reverse-engineered the gobbledegook in the save file. Unlocking everything (all CG's, sprite animations, codes, levels) was as simple as changing the ± into a ° next to all the lines in the file except for the very first line. I'm not sure if it's meant to be japanese that my software can't translate worth ass or it's some kind of encoding that only made it marginally more annoying to cheat than changing 0's to 1's.

It also includes all the cheat codes. Here's a quick list, just type them into the main menu to activate.

safemode - Toggles ero content.

grantpower - 10 lives, max upgrades, and start with shield.

meganekudasai - Unknown, it didn't even give me the confirmation sound. Toggles censored or not.

megabulgecode - Gave confirmation sound, don't know what it did. Unlock-all code. I found this out after posting the save so it renders DLing the save pointless, but I'll leave it here anyway just in case.

debugmode - Sends you to a debug room.

 

[Julia_ormand]

Heyo, managed to acquire a complete 100% save! Not by legitimate means, I just reverse-engineered the gobbledegook in the save file. Unlocking everything (all CG's, sprite animations, codes, levels) was as simple as changing the ± into a ° next to all the lines in the file except for the very first line. I'm not sure if it's meant to be japanese that my software can't translate worth ass or it's some kind of encoding that only made it marginally more annoying to cheat than changing 0's to 1's.

It also includes all the cheat codes. Here's a quick list, just type them into the main menu to activate.

safemode - Toggles ero content.

grantpower - 10 lives, max upgrades, and start with shield.

meganekudasai - Unknown, it didn't even give me the confirmation sound. Toggles censored or not.

megabulgecode - Gave confirmation sound, don't know what it did.

debugmode - Sends you to a debug room.

I wish there was a rep system on here since you deserve one good sir!

 

[laek]

In terms of game design, my usual go-to questions for frustrating gameplay are
* in the first flower level, I ran over a leveldown pickup which reset my bomb range to 1, there were some flower/hedge combos that REQUIRED at least 2 range to hit, the rest of the level never dropped a range bonus, making the level impossible without dying
* the player being a small circle hitbox feels weird for this game. I might be misremembering, but I think in the original bomberman, the player hitbox is the size of a square, and always in exactly one square at a time - the game may display an animation for moving from one square to another, but mechanically the player teleports. With the circle hitbox, if you're between two squares you're hit by bombs crossing both, which adds "oh, really? That still hit? BS!" moments.
(Generally, rule in advantage of the player - enemies should be hit if grazed by bombs, the player should be allowed more near-misses)

* On flower levels, depending on the order you destroy some hedges, you might find yourself in a unwinnable situation. Add in the variance in explosion range like you mentioned, then yeah, the flower stage becomes too punishing. To be honest, this is something that I noticed while playtesting, but at the time I just couldn't find an elegant design alternative. Given my inexperience, it was either removing the mechanic of flowers entirely or simply leaving it as is. Lesson learned.
* The hitbox was another thing I struggled with. I even mentioned this in a blog post, but you're right on the money. In the OG bomberman his sprite is a perfect 32x32 as is his collision box. This makes it very intuitive to "feel" for positioning. I could have gone with this solution and make a chibi sprite of Pixie, but since I wanted to make ero animation, I tought that going chibi I wouldn't be able to draw much detail into them. At one point, I even considered making a button change Pixie mid-game from her current sprite to the chibi one. Ultimatelly I scraped that and just tried to make her hitbox as small as possible to mitigate for it's non-intuitivity and inform the players via the instructions image. So I think the fault here wasan't even her current sprite herself, but my lack of foresight when I was in the initial stages of design.

it I FEEL you built each room individually, and built challenge for that room alone without bringing into consideration what the final product would look like when they were all finally put together. It's important to step back and see what is taking shape before you, before it grows into something terrible.

Damn, bullseye. Now I did try to make every stage beatable by itself, as in, if you start any X-1, there will be enough upgrades for you to beat it up to the boss. But like you correctly assumed, I did build each room individually. What totally blindsided me was the fact that I was playing my own game for ~10 months, so I was expert at it and designed the rooms in that wrong context.

@Jason Bill
Thanks for the feedback! I'll definitelly tone down stage 4 as a whole, and specially 4-3. I'm almost done with the easy mode update today so those nerfs are going to be in it.

@Tildryn
The zombies will receive the nerf hammer, rest assured!

@jumjummju
Whoa that was fast! Heh, the save files are basically a simple xor encryption, which I did mostly to try it out more than anything. Good job cracking it up anyway! The "megabulgecode" is an unlock-all code. That is, if you use it on a fresh game, it will unlock everything including codes, stage select, gallery, etc. The other codes are all correct.

That said, there are still the secrets to be solved.

Please expect v1.1 today, thanks everyone!

 

[jumjummju]

I have to say, Laek, I love your attitude. You probably have the best outlook I've seen of any game dev. You take criticism better than anyone I've ever seen without dismissing it, getting angry, or turning into a drama queen. Kudos to you!

Also, for making a unique h-game rather than just another crappy side-scroller action game or RPGMaker game. And the porn's hot, even if puzzley game aren't my thing. Looking forward to the next game.

 

[Jason Bill]

@laek Just on the subject of the sprite. I think it's fine how you have it set up. It takes a tiny bit of getting used to, but I'd say that small bit of unintuitiveness is worth it to have the sprite have more detail. That's pretty important for this kind of game. So I'm glad you decided to go with what you did, instead of a chibi style.

 

[CrazyPerson]

While we're talking game design, one pitfall I see amateur game devs fall into a lot:
Excessive randomness is not a good game mechanic.

In this game it shows up a lot as enemy movement/actions,
in other games I've seen it in random level generation, or an untelegraphed rock-paper-scissors minigame.

The usual problems are (a) it offers little real outplay, and (b) it causes difficulty to vary wildly (you might even say randomly).
For example, if the white bug moves around randomly, it may decide to constantly hang out in front of the one bush I need to get past,
or powermarch to jump in front of the bomb I figured was out of range.
Similarly, flies that are invulnerable until they randomly decide to land feel noninteractive unless you have the punch power.
At the same time, because you sometimes can get lucky, an overly random game can feel like you're just retrying until the dice roll right,
without really having any influence as the player: It doesn't matter if I choose rock or paper if the AI randomly wins 33% of the time anyway.

That's not to say that you CAN'T have randomness - used sparingly it can be great at providing risk/reward tradeoffs.
But it can't stand alone, you'll want to either
- limit the impact of randomness: say, varying damage of a hit between 20..30, or picking enemy encounters from a pre-balanced list
- be the result of conscious player choice: give them an extra move that does more damage but has 25% to miss
- telegraph the result: Have ways for the player to predict what the "random" outcome will be if they pay attention

In the case of this game, the white bug could be programmed to, say, do the maze-chasing algorithm of tracing the wall to its right.
That would make it more predictable and give the player more informed choice, and fix the "camping the door forward" problem.
Most enemies probably shouldn't be purely deterministic, but maybe there could be random choices between deterministic segments.
Also, something like the 2-x worm and fly could have a hard limit on how long they can stay flying/buried at a time,
and have a telegraphing animation when they're about to change mode.

Ultimately, randomness is seductive because it's often easier to "just make it random" than having to balance a deterministic routine.
And that's not insignificant: I'd rather have games done now than promised in 10 years.
But still, random-everywhere is the single most frequent problem I have with most amateur games, I wish people didn't use it quite as much...

 

[Jason Bill]

Well, I managed to make it to the stage 4 boss. Didn't beat it. I almost did though, even after having to continue and being stuck with the suboptimal powerups you get. When I got to the boss I got surprised by a few of his attacks and quickly ended up losing my remaining 2 lives. On my last continue/life I got it down to 3 health though, and that was on the continue powerups.

Now that I know it's attacks I figure I could manage it if I can make it back there with similar powerup levels to what I had the first time. Since I almost beat it with the continue powerups. If I had more speed and bombs (potentially a shield ability if I get luck on 4-6) I think It's very much doable.

@laek The rotating squares attack felt a little cheap at times. Trying to get close to place bombs I'd sometimes just get suckerpunched by it. Not really any warning. I guess the strategy is to try and keep your distance as best you can. Sometimes with the tight spaces and corners in the level, that didn't feel like an option though, at least if I was trying to get in close to actually hit him.

The boss is my new favorite animation. Wasn't a fan of the punching on the drag. (Though it was pretty tame as far as that sorta thing goes, so it didn't really bug me.) But the animation proper was great, well done on that one.

One thing I hadn't really noted before, you only unlock animations in the gallery by actually beating the stage. It's definitely good to unlock the animations for enemies if you beat the stage. So if you made it though stage 1 clean, no deaths you'd unlock the animations for stage, 1 like you have it set up currently. I do think you should also unlock animations individually if you actually trigger them though. So it would be good for me to have stage 4s boss animation unlocked now because I actually saw it trigger in game.

EDIT: Oh, hadn't noticed the updated version was live, nice. I'm very much convinced I can beat stage 4 without using easy mode, but still. Downloading it now.