My First Game

[JosephZander]

 

Hi everyone, I have just recently finished my first game and decided I should share it in the hopes of getting some constructive feedback to improve this game and, more importantly, my future games. The game is called Coin Collector and can be played here. The game actually started off as me just messing around with some of the things I have recently learned in the HTML5/JS Udemy courses by Chris DeLeon. Once I decided that I wanted to actually finish and release the game, I set a deadline for myself and began to clean up the code a bit to make it a bit easier to work with as the project progressed. The neat and clean code didn't last very long though. As I was putting the finishes touches on the game this past week, things got messy. Overall it took me about 3-4 weeks to finish the game, working on it for an hour or two whenever I could. 

The idea of the game is to run and jump around each level to collect the coin and return it to your basket. Falling too far causes you to lose health. I didn't use any libraries or engines or anything like that. I am trying to get a pretty solid understanding of game creation without the use of an engine before I start to use one. One of the first things I focused on was getting the movement down. I knew there weren't going to be enemies and I didn't like the idea of a timer so I decided that the challenge would be controlling somewhat tricky movement. The collision detection was a challenge for me to get right. It ended up as a massive pile of code that could definitely be simplified, something I have already done in the game I am currently working on. 

All in all I'm pretty pleased with it. I wasn't expecting much for my first game but I have had fun playing through it a bunch of times and seeing it grow. I would have liked to create better art but I'm not an artist and it took me longer than I was expecting to do the art that you see in the game. There's a bunch of other features I would like to add but I figured I'd just wrap it up and move onto my next game. 

I would appreciate any feedback, this is a new hobby for me so I would like to learn all that I can. There's a couple more screenshots below. Thanks!

 

 

Edited July 15, 2017 by JosephZander
Changed link to newgrounds.

[moffylily]

it looks interesting

[Langerz82]

Think I got to about Level 4-5. Is there moving platforms in it? And perhaps moving monsters. Both would add some variety to the game. Otherwise good stuff for a first game.

[Stephan]

Nice work! I'm impressed when i read that you managed to create this in 4 weeks without a game engine.

[hotfeet]

cool little time killer. and you've overcome the biggest hurdle for any developer getting that first game finished. wd.

[JosephZander]

18 hours ago, Langerz82 said:

Think I got to about Level 4-5. Is there moving platforms in it? And perhaps moving monsters. Both would add some variety to the game. Otherwise good stuff for a first game.

Thanks for the input and for taking some time to play it! There are no moving platforms or monsters. I decided, for my first game I wanted to keep it simple although moving platforms hadn't even occurred to me when I started working on it. If i were to make a sequel I think it would make sense to incorporate one or both of those suggestions though and now that I've actually finished the game, I have some ideas on how I could. 

18 hours ago, Stephan said:

Nice work! I'm impressed when i read that you managed to create this in 4 weeks without a game engine.

Thanks! although, that's probably a little misleading. Some of the code was reused from that Udemy course I mentioned so I can't take all of the credit. 

Thanks again to both of you for taking the time to mess around with the game and for leaving feedback. Let me know if you manage to beat it! After asking some friends for input, I think it's a bit more challenging that I first thought. 

[JosephZander]

On 7/11/2017 at 5:47 PM, hotfeet said:

cool little time killer. and you've overcome the biggest hurdle for any developer getting that first game finished. wd.

Thanks! That was kind of my plan. Just trying to get familiar enough with different problem solving methods to release a game and then take the knowledge I've gained and apply it to my next game. I've tried creating games in the past, but every time I would try, I would sit down with these massive games ideas and get discouraged because everything I was doing was new to me which would lead to me never completing any games. This time around I'm trying to create smaller, and progressively more complex games to  build a knowledge/experience foundation and use that to start building more complex games. Thanks for playing my game though! 

[fupersun]

Ha! this was actually so fun!

Great job! I had to keep playing.

 

Love that there are puzzle aspects to it as a platformer. 

Honestly, to polish this up I would

add transition screen between levels, and maybe more coins to bring back to basket in level. Locks and keys would work really well in this I think, and moving platforms or different types of platforms, like ones you can slide across, or that disappear etc.

 

Super awesome though and really fun, once again great job.

[8Observer8]

That's all I'm capable of:

 

[JosephZander]

9 hours ago, 8Observer8 said:

That's all I'm capable of:

 

That's not bad, it's tricky to get to those platforms directly above you. The movement is tricky but I liked how hard it became to move your character around. Also, it used to be a lot harder haha. 

[JosephZander]

On 7/14/2017 at 3:16 PM, fupersun said:

Ha! this was actually so fun!

Great job! I had to keep playing.

 

Love that there are puzzle aspects to it as a platformer. 

Honestly, to polish this up I would

add transition screen between levels, and maybe more coins to bring back to basket in level. Locks and keys would work really well in this I think, and moving platforms or different types of platforms, like ones you can slide across, or that disappear etc.

 

Super awesome though and really fun, once again great job.

Thanks for the positive words! All of your suggestions sound like they would really add to the game without changing what it is. I'm glad you pointed out the puzzle aspect. That was kind of what I was thinking about when I was creating levels. I wanted there to be some thought involved when you were trying to figure out the best path to the coin/basket but I kind of abandoned the idea as I created later levels. I really like the idea of different platform types, since you're in a well it would make sense for there to be a slippery/wet platform that you slide across. That's just one example. Glad you enjoyed it so much though. Thanks for taking the time to leave some feedback.