Hi! Just finished the game

#1

Hey!

I just finished the game for the second time, and I thought I could share my thoughts with you.
You won’t be surprised, that I like the game, as this was my second playthrough :slight_smile: The graphics are beautiful (especially the ocean in the background in the first levels), the levels are really interesting, saving the game is well done (I played it on my own, so the problem of different savefiles didn’t occur - for a simple game like this I didn’t need multiple saves), and that “teleportation” system is just cool and simple.
I have a few minor complaints, though, but I really want to be constructive on this:

[ul][li] When I first played the game, the repetitiveness of the music in the first few screens bothered me, and I turned down the music; I thought, that there is only that one track, because the music of the title screen was the same as in Frogatto’s room, then the building, then the first outside screen, and the second outside screen. Of course it’s also my fault that I didn’t check back for new music later, but only at the second playthrough I noticed that there are more musical tracks. And most of them are quite good![/li]
[li]The “icon” of the laser gun, a small blue ball, is very similar to the standard “points” icon, a small blue cube. Sometimes, with enemies all over the place, it’s hard to tell the difference.[/li]
[li] The life powerups (to extend you max number of hearts) are, IMHO unnecessary hard to find. Ok, I’m usually not a powergamer, so perhaps it’s my laziness. But assuming someone plays through the game for the first time, that will be probably his hardest run, and it gets even harder because his max hearts are low. The experienced player will find most, or all powerups, but he’d have an easier run anyway. On the other hand, finding those powerups adds a replaying value…[/li]
[li]The powerups (laser, slow-motion, protection) are very random. Of course it’s a matter of taste, But I would have liked some kind of system, like different chances for different enemies to drop different items. (so I can “hunt down” that enemy, if I’d like a specific item) Or they could be placed in the levels, similar to the “super stars” in the Mario games. This whole problem came to my mind, when I got the laser-gun at the final boss and could beat him within 3 seconds or so…[/li]
[li] I’d find it nice to be able to roam the world after you beat the game, like talk to the few characters about how the story ended, and stuff. This is not essential, though.[/li]
[li] I also found the end story a bit weird. Ok, it breaks with the traditional “good guy vs. bad guy” theme, but I’m used to that theme in the platformers I’ve played. Rescue the Princess, free Donkey Kong, and so on… Well, I guess this is also a matter of taste.[/li]
[li]Also, there are “achievements”, but it never says how many there are, and how many I’ve got. It could say something like “Achievment 4 of 12: …”; A menu where there’s a list of my achievements could also be nice.[/li][/ul]

You see, these are the only complaints I can come up with… really minor stuff, so I can really say: great game! I even think about helping something in the community, but the best thing I can come up with are translations. Maybe I’ll give it a try.

#2

Sweet - thanks for the compliments! We (and I especially) have worked really hard on this.
Thanks especially for a constructive attitude, because we’re totally open to changes and community involvement (several current team members are “ascended” community members).

Replying to your stuff in order:

  • Yeah, in our own play experience, it takes us 40 seconds to get to “to nene’s house”. However, a newbie might take 5 minutes or more. I can see a good argument for having an alternate song the moment you actually initiate the game and start in frogatto’s room - i.e. a separate song for frogatto’s “main theme” (doubling as a victory track), and then a separate song just for frogatto’s house + grassy path. I’d want ryan’s input on this - he used to have a “frogattohouse.ogg” that I kinda liked, but if he’s not a fan of it, I’ll respect his wishes and not reinsert it into the game.

  • Ahh, you’re referring to the acquirable item; we’ve removed these, more on this later. This problem is entirely solved by our change.

  • Yes, there’s an inherent problem in this sort of thing. It takes skill to reach rewards that boost your power, and boosting your power makes the overall skill requirement of the game lower. This is a common status quo problem across videogames, and … I really don’t see a good way to fix it. I’m open to suggestions.

  • We’ve replaced the powerup system with something more like Zelda:Lttp - powers are now permanent, like zelda’s wands or crests, and you have a mana bar that gets consumed by using them. Milgram is highly resistant to them now, as well. You buy the powers at the store, and can switch to them at any time by pressing “d” - switching between powers works like in cave story.

  • Yeah, “new game +” modes are rather cool, but are very time-consuming to add. In the setup you described, most stationary NPCs would require a new set of dialogue. It’d be trivial to just let the player keep playing after beating milgram, but it’d be derpy because everyone would act like milgram hadn’t been beaten yet. So I don’t think we’re going to explore this any time soon - we might, though, after we have some very significant side-quests and side-areas of the game that aren’t necessary at all to beat milgram, so you can go back and beat them after beating him.

  • I’ve rewritten a huge mess of the dialogue in the upcoming version; I too disliked how “sudden / out of the blue” milgram’s turnaround was, and it’s much more clear in the upcoming version that the town elder is a “villain by incompetence”. A large part is that our forest/cave/dungeon sections really aren’t sufficiently developed at the moment (like the seaside section is), and the story that would be in them would make all of this quite clear.

  • we currently don’t have code-support for any kind of “inventory screen” which pauses the game, but keeps the game displayed behind it (a basic feature nearly all adventure games have). Once we do, it’ll be trivial to have a “tab” in it which displays the achievements. I suspect many are going to remain “hidden”, because most are easter eggs, rather than feats of skill.

Anyways, we’ve got an upcoming version in the works, and we’d love to have you playtest! What platform are you on, and what version of frogatto are you playing?

#3

Glad that you liked the game Darvon!

Jetryl, yea dude. go ahead and put the frogattohouse piece back in. I agree that we need a little more musical variation in the beginning. :slight_smile:

#4

Yeah, pretty much; while Frogatto can’t fail to be reminiscent of 90’s platformers, showing homage to them isn’t that high a priority. Plenty of games have villains that are evil just because they enjoy nastiness, and… well, no problem with that, either. Frogatto is just a bit different. :slight_smile:

That’d be great! We (me specially, as I oversee the translations) really like to get more translations in game. You’ll want to have a look at https://www.transifex.net/projects/p/Frogatto/, to check out the current progress (if any) in the translation of the game into your language. Even if it’s at 100%, some reviewing would surely be appreciated.

#5

Personally I think that ‘secret’ areas should tend to not contain extra hearts. Finding a secret location should give you something interesting – a new kind of weapon or move that can let you play the game in a different way, give you access to a new area, etc. If you’re playing the game over a second or third time, finding a secret area that you didn’t see before is exciting … finding that secret area contains another heart isn’t exciting.

On the other hand, most alternative weapons tend to allow alternative approaches to the game and different levels, but don’t need to really make things much easier. Unless the new weapon is way overpowered, of course.

Extra hearts should mostly be in obvious, unmissable locations. Sometimes they might be a reward for a mandatory challenge. Sometimes they might have a moderate optional challenge you have to complete to get them (i.e. they are on some high up platform or such) … but anyone playing through the game who really wants all the hearts should be able to get them. Extra hearts are very powerful, but not so exciting.

David

#6

Hey, thanks for the quick answers!

I think the music starts getting repetitive at the tutorial stage. Reading the instructions, trying the controls and so on, takes a few minutes. But a music for Frogatto’s house would be cool, too.

About the issue of the hidden powerups: When the player enters a level, the name of the level appears in white color in the foreground. A different color could be used to indicate, that there is some kind of secret. (like Mario on SNES, where the red color on the map indicated more than one exit) At some point in the game, the player would get this hint, either in the tutorial at the beginning, or from a character later in the game. This way the powerups could stay just where they are, and the player would have the information, to “look out for something”. If the secret is found, the color could change again. For example: no secret: white; undiscovered secret: fonts with red outline; all secrets discovered: fonts with green outline.
This would have helped me a lot, because basically I like to roam around in the levels, so I don’t mind searching for something for a minute or two. But the information, that there really is something useful is quite helpful.

Edit: Oh, I forgot: I played the 1.1 version from the Debian packages. But I found that there is 1.1.1 from source, so now I’ve downloaded that. And there’s 1.2 only on iOS?
And another minor complaint came to my mind: Frogatto’s tongue attack cannot be used upwards while jumping. It would be easier to grab some flying enemies that way. Also, when upgrading the tongue-length, the tongue gets longer only horizontally, the upward attack stays short.

#7

1.3 is the newest source release; get it on github:

I need to look for something misleading on our site, apparently…

#8

I changed the source link on the download page to be versionless, and to point to our github page, since github offers zipped versions of any stable branch, and since anyone interested in the source is probably going for the latest unstable (since even linux users tend to use debs or whatnot rather than going straight from source, these days).

#9

This was fixed a bit later, in frogatto 1.2.

#10
(since even linux users tend to use debs or whatnot rather than going straight from source, these days).
:-[ Well, I've compiled it now, in the terminal it says 1.2, but it's definitely the zip that github offered me on the Frogatto main project page. And yes, the tongue problem is no more, and my thoughts about the shooting powerup can also be ignored. I've played around with the level editor a bit, very cool :)
#11

Hello, I too just finished the game. I played on mac os version 1.1.1.

(I’m new to the forum but as a suggestion it might be nice to sticky a “I just finished the game” thread. . . this one is a good candidate.)

I thought the game was beautifully done and enjoyed it so much!

Here are some thoughts after playing through:

First, it’s been said before, but I thought it was very easy. The hardest section for me was probably certain areas of the forest. The squirrels (I think they were squirrels?) who throw acorns I think had AI that allowed their throws to anticipate your movement (assuming it is constant) and that was tricky. Other than that, it was pretty simple (but extremely enjoyable!) to just run through the game. In fact, I beat it only buying a couple of tongue length upgrades; I was saving my money for later if the game got harder, then it ended. It would be more satisfying if there was just enough money in the game world to buy all the upgrades. Right now it seems like you can afford all the upgrades while missing a good chunk of coins.

I thought the levels were brilliantly mapped out, but the puzzles themselves were very simple. This might have been the intention, I don’t know. This goes back to difficulty. For example, there could have been areas only reachable by sliding. Or areas only reachable by hopping back and forth between walls (it seemed all these areas were either optional or reachable by other means).

One other thing: as someone who enjoys playing games like these, I was expecting more hard to get to “secret” areas. I think this has been discussed above. Specifically, in the caves, a lot of the drops that would kill you were difficult to identify (for me). I found myself dropping down a lot of them hoping to find a secret area only to die (of course the auto save infinite re-try feature minimizes the frustration of this). Two exceptions were when Frogatto says “this area of the cave looks deep” or something, and one area in the caves where you jump on several rocks to eventually get to a treasure chest. If you fall in this area you are in a moderately difficult to get out of spikey area. I thought this was well designed. Well, I thought the whole game was well designed, but anyway. . . Maybe drop areas that result in instant death can be darker than other areas, or have visible spikes (which some of them do).

Thanks for the game! It was a lot of fun and very inspiring to this aspiring (but incompetent) game developer!

#12

[quote=“kingrockit, post:11, topic:277”]I thought the game was beautifully done and enjoyed it so much!
Here are some thoughts after playing through:[/quote]

You know - I really appreciate people doing this - this kind of feedback is immensely valuable.

Yeah. We’re adding another difficulty level, because this “really easy” aspect is a double-edged sword; unfortunately seasoned gamers like myself don’t find it very compelling. Up until now, we had committed to making the game accessible to “the casual audience” at any cost, and this came at the expense of skilled gamers. I personally have greatly regretted this because a lot of people - especially on indie gaming sites and such, have had “meh” reactions to the game because they find it boring - unfortunately, the indie gaming crowd is formed almost exclusively of seasoned gamers, and our game was designed to be boring to them. We’d rather have a game that works for both, it’s just that difficulty levels take a lot of work and it wasn’t until now that we got around to adding another one.

We’re doing difficulty levels by changing: 1] amount of damage received 2] amount of HP enemies have 3] making certain traps and such appear at nuanced positions on the harder difficulty (which don’t appear on the easier one).

:frowning: We’re not going to make some levels and content exist only on the harder difficulty; we can’t afford the work, and in principle, I’m hostile to the idea because it doesn’t work: you can’t keep the real ending a secret because LPs on youtube, or just cheating will break the secret to people (very much unlike 80s gaming where the only way to find out about the secret ending was to beat a console game fair and square, game-genies notwithstanding). Also, the only -real- point of beating a game on a harder difficulty is just the sense of achievement in the act itself (I’ve beaten hard games by cheating my way through them, and it’s not very fulfilling - these days if I want to see the “hard” ending I usually just fire up youtube). I have a limited amount of time to work on the game, and just don’t have the time to make multiple scenes for e.g. the ending depending on how you did. I’d rather focus on making one scene be better-done.

(Note: I’m not against in-game acknowledgement and maybe unlocking something huge like “new game +”, I’m just against having different endings. Actually having something like new game + would be ideal… we might do exactly that!)

Actually, this isn’t the case; they just dumbly toss them in a forward arc. :wink: However… (muahahaha!), they DO aim their shots in the upcoming “challenging” difficulty.

This again goes back to our commitment to be accessible to casual players. All such puzzles ended up getting the chop. :frowning:

You can expect some of this stuff to exist on harder difficulties in the future.

Definitely something I want to do, I just am tied up working on the non-secret areas atm. Another very related thing is we want to make an inventory screen and stuff later, and this would track if you’ve missed secrets.

We’re probably going to borrow a page from Shantae: Risky’s Revenge here, and make little, faint “deaths head” icons float up from deadly pits.

Thanks a lot - actually, if you’re interested in game development, we would LOVE for you to join our irc channel (it’s #frogatto on irc.freenode.net) - our engine is open-source and we’ll happily coach you on making games with it. It’s suitable for doing any sort of 2d game, and the programming in it is not dumbed down - you’ll learn real-world gamedev skills if you use it to build something.

#13

And a maybe some 3D games, as well. Here’s my project with Frogatto, http://ddr0.github.com/. :-\

#14

Not sure if I’m to this level yet, but thanks. Still learning basic programming ideas here. Someday. . .

Cube Trains looks cool! Looking forward to playing it.

#15

^ Cube trains does look kinda cool

#16

If you’ve compiled Frogatto from the github source, recently, you can run “./game --module=cube_trains” to play it. The github source of cube trains is a bit out of date, as it only tracks official releases.

#17

[ul]I hope it’s okay to bring this thread back. I just finished the game for the second time.

I liked the fuzzy cutesy look of the game: the squirrels, the white flower turrets, the kitties, the fountain hearts.

I also had an impulse to do more exploring after Milgram. I reminisced of games with alchemy ingredients. They could make the biologist hermit give more unique rewards, requesting specific ingredients for each. The special ingredients could replace heart capsules, and retaining the contents of Frogatto’s stomach would present new challenges in old maps.

The Milgram’s castle bosses were the easiest. In my first run through the game, Milgram and the fat square were the only bosses that I beat on my first try. Mecha-kitty took two attempts only because I senselessly destroyed my source of ammunition.
The fat square was really, really easy! I might have been challenged if I had to take on three at once.

[quote=“Darvon, post:1, topic:277”][ul][li] I also found the end story a bit weird. Ok, it breaks with the traditional “good guy vs. bad guy” theme, but I’m used to that theme in the platformers I’ve played. Rescue the Princess, free Donkey Kong, and so on… Well, I guess this is also a matter of taste.[/li][/ul][/quote]I thought the ending was humorous.
By the way, developers, Milgram is a name that all beginning psychology students learn. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

#18

[quote=“haplorrhine, post:17, topic:277”][ul]I hope it’s okay to bring this thread back. I just finished the game for the second time.

I liked the fuzzy cutesy look of the game: the squirrels, the white flower turrets, the kitties, the fountain hearts.[/quote]
:smiley:

[quote=“haplorrhine, post:17, topic:277”]The Milgram’s castle bosses were the easiest. In my first run through the game, Milgram and the fat square were the only bosses that I beat on my first try. Mecha-kitty took two attempts only because I senselessly destroyed my source of ammunition.
The fat square was really, really easy! I might have been challenged if I had to take on three at once.[/quote]
Yeah, Milgram is based entirely on chance at the moment. We could really stand to weight the attacks he does, so you don’t get a bunch of bricks at the beginning and win. Especially on “challenging” mode, he could be more aggressive.
The fat square? He’s sort of a half-boss, which given Milgram’s difficulty isn’t saying too much. I think the game in general tends towards ‘too easy’, though. It’s better than the alternative, but … it’s something we’ve discussed. Mostly, I think, most of our enemies just aren’t that threatening at the moment. We’re working on an alternative forest route which fixes that, but it’s still only fixed in that forest route then. Kitties, for one, could be much faster on the uptake.

[quote=“haplorrhine, post:17, topic:277”][quote author=Darvon link=topic=447.msg2181#msg2181 date=1338935590][list][li] I also found the end story a bit weird. Ok, it breaks with the traditional “good guy vs. bad guy” theme, but I’m used to that theme in the platformers I’ve played. Rescue the Princess, free Donkey Kong, and so on… Well, I guess this is also a matter of taste.[/li][/list][/quote]I thought the ending was humorous.
By the way, developers, Milgram is a name that all beginning psychology students learn. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment[/quote]
Weird, but humorous. :smiley:
Neorice, who created Milgram, had in mind a story more or less completely unlike what we actually did. Only the name stuck around. Also, “Milgramen” (the name of his minions, collectively) is fun to say![/ul]