What's your favorite part of Frogatto? Least favorite?

#21

Favorites:
-play control
-cute/quirky dialogue
-professional grade graphics
-music
-levels are designed like an unbroken narrative

Least Favorite:
The level design was so much like Wonder Boy in Monster World that I was a little disappointed to realize there were no “locked” areas/levels. It seems like this kind of feature isn’t being planned on either because each level has one entrance and one exit. This is all very fine, and in my book Frogetto is already a masterpiece, but as an avowed retro-platformer aficionado, I think adding multiple exits (which can only be reached when new powers like double jumping, tongue-grapple-swinging, etc.) would skyrocket the game into legendary status.

This game made me really happy as soon as I started playing it and I can’t wait to see how it grows. One thing that I’ve never seen in another platformer is that fact that the goodies dropped by badguys are an unlockable. This indicates that the designers are trying new things and I applaud that innovation.

#22

Actually we definitely are in favor of having extra secret areas, side quests and so forth! There are a few little side areas right now, but later we are definitely fine with adding ‘locked’ areas you can access later. :slight_smile:

David

#23

My favorite part is the core gameplay mechanics. I like platformers.

My least favorite part is having to rewatch the unskippable cutscene that plays before certain bosses after each time you lose to them. Milgram’s in particular got annoying after many repeated viewings (it was good the first time around though)

[quote=“Jetrel, post:2, topic:25”]My least favorite part is some of the later-stretch in the forest and caves. Not by fault of the level itself, but due to a lack of unique puzzles and monsters, it gets to be a bit of a drag. I’m hoping to fix that in coming releases.[/quote]This too. Stuff like this seems to be a symptom of the whole game being unfinished. There are a lot of parts that seem like they’re being used as placeholders until stuff actually gets put there.

#24

I personally love the secret area I found in one of the maps. I spat an enemy at one of those bushes that are supposed to hurt you and nothing happened so I jumped into it and walked through to a side part of one of the forest maps. Made my day :wink:

I don’t really like the fact that I don’t know how far I am in the game and I haven’t gotten to the upgrade shop which I’ve been patiently looking for.

#25

Errr, if you’re in the forest, you’re way past the upgrade shop. Take a teleport back to Crevice Village (next time you come across one), and then go back a level; that’s the upgrade shop.

#26

I liked the boss battles, almost all of the dialogue, the houses, and the first two or three worlds.

I like the forests and caves, but they go on for a long, long time, with unfortunately little variation. It might be nice to throw in more things, like some stuff in the locked-up houses.

It might be nice to make some of the bosses tougher, and give more options as how to kill them off; with a lot of them, the only way to do them in is to spit moving enemies (that are generated by them or a nearby object) at them. Of all the major bosses, the ninja kitten is the only one that is significantly different. The bomber is a great first boss battle, but the mech kitten and Milgram are both very similar to it (relative to the player’s level of experience, I’d say that they are probably easier). The cat ambush squad is fun, but too easy to be grouped in with the major boss battles. I enjoyed all of them, and the surrounding plot, but it wasn’t very hard to do away with some of them. I know that the protagonist is inherently limited in the types of attacks he has, but any more variation y’all could put in would be much appreciated.

Finally, although the checkpoints are cool, they do make the game a lot easier – I try not to avoid dying anyway, but the game doesn’t really punish you for it at the moment. It seems the checkpoints should at least save whatever health you had, at the time you reached them, so you can’t get more health by dying.

#27

My favourite part of frogatto is the ease of modification. I’m a maker. Not a good one, particularly, but… ::slight_smile:

Least favourite part?
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#28

The notion that projects follow a simple, obvious path from start->finish is a quaint fantasy. What does it mean to be finished? We have a roadmap of plans, but the problem is, like time, it branches. There are lots of different things we could throw weight into. Is the game not finished until it has multiplayer? Is the game not finished until it has multiple, playable characters? Is the game not finished until we’ve got 20 different graphical environments, and whole entire arcs of the story that are non-linear, and mutually exclusive? Is the game not finished until it has full RPG-like character evolutions, including alternate transformations the character can reincarnate into? (like in breath of fire?) We can’t do all of these - we have to pick some at the expense of others. We have to make choices, and we don’t know when we’re gonna draw the line.

We have enough imagination that if we wanted to, we could keep adding “obviously unfinished” (from our perspective) stuff to frogatto for the rest of our lives.

Without releasing, there’s a real danger of us losing heart, and self-destructing. Or deciding to “redo the whole game over again”. There’s a real danger of it never getting done. We’re not robots, we can’t just “keep trucking till it’s done”. Something might change in our life. One of us might die. One of us might find something more important. Especially when you’re talking in a time-frame of years, there’s a lot of stuff that could make the band break up. So we decided to actually cut an album, take a snapshot, etc, of where we were at, for posterity; preferably at a nice point with a self-consistently ‘finished’ story with an actual beginning and end.

We’ll keep doing that, occasionally.

#29

wat is this ‘girlfriend’ that u speak of. ??? ??? ???

#30

I liked the music the most. It really fits the game perfectly. Of course, the rest of the development is also brilliant. ‘Chapeu!’ :smiley:

What I dislike a lot is the ‘collision area’ for the tongue to capture enemies, as I think it’s too damn small. A larger one will provide more satisfaction through the whole game… Look carefully at Yoshi’s or Kirby’s titles for that…

I understand the game story is actually pretty short (great humor, BTW), as the development time is not as desired… Cave Story was written through 5 years, so Its ok for me by now… More to expect in the next months, I hope :wink:

I really feel the forest and cavern levels, through playable, are a bit easy, and some enemies are put in their platforms just as an excuse…

The last levels(castle) and the first ones(village) are really enjoyable and you can assume the artist put more emphasis on their design.

Keep working on it, it’s really a good game, better than some xbla games I’ve playing these days, imho… ;D

#31

My Favorite Part :
Music, Really good artwork
Fun to play

Least Favorite Part :
It’s too short right now. (in my time is version 1.0.2)

PS : Can i ask who made the beautiful music?
Maybe you could add artist to the music file.

Looking for the future release. :smiley:

Sorry for my bad english

#32

Favourite part is Crevice Village - Elevator, Central and Fan houses in particular. After that the forest and caverns got too repetitive for me, and I just ran through them. I quite like Milgram’s castle levels, but town is still the best.

#33

My favorite part of the game is the spritework, and maybe even more than that, the way each article of art is used WELL. It’s not enough to have good sprite work, but more importantly to balance out one piece of art, in contrast to the sum of all art, and to find a way to make it fit is very hard and was done well in this case.
So that, the construction of art for the world is very natural and easy on the eyes. I love the organic sense of the way each element of the art is used to create the entire world, every pixel seems that it is in perfect harmony with those around it… I am Very pleased with how every area of the game looks. It really makes the game far more fun to play!

I also think the music is INCREDIBLE. My oh my, who is the handsome devil that wrote it all? Someone pay this man!

[quote=“vVoVv, post:31, topic:25”]PS : Can i ask who made the beautiful music?
Maybe you could add artist to the music file.[/quote]

Hi. Glad you liked the music! While I am not busy making dog sleds, I write music as a hobby. I worked mind and body into a frenzy to try to make some original music for a platformer and it’s really incredible to hear how people have enjoyed listening while playing the game.

I am glad someone likes it HEH.

take care!

#34

The music is great, suits the scenes and gameplay excellently. :smiley:

#35

Thanks man! :slight_smile:

#36

Well! I’d have to say, the best part of the whole game has to be the rain effects - they just look so good! Whoever made them must be a genius. It’s not too surprising no one else said that though, since they’re not actually used anywhere. :smiley:

#37

Rain effects? Guess they’re one of those editor things. Future game extensions please :stuck_out_tongue:

#38

Me and my kids love it, however what we don’t love it that there is only one game save! :’(

#39

[quote=“cooljeanius, post:23, topic:25”]My favorite part is the core gameplay mechanics. I like platformers.

My least favorite part is having to rewatch the unskippable cutscene that plays before certain bosses after each time you lose to them. Milgram’s in particular got annoying after many repeated viewings (it was good the first time around though)[/quote]

Great news is that cutscenes are now skippable. Press “escape” during one, or on iPhones, there’s a skip button that appears.

Derek Yu does a better job of writing up why we released 1.0 than I did.

“Just like writing - you don?t want to go through it sentence by sentence, making sure every sentence is perfect before you move on. Get an outline down.” Especially, once it’s out and we could get reactions to it, we could gauge how better to approach finishing up that outline. We could even get bits of code and such from other people, such as the key-configuration code.

#40

Favorite: The art in general. The background in the beginning specifically. Mmm parallax.

Least favorite: It’s too short! Then again it’s free, so I can’t really complain.
Speaking of which, people are designing their own levels, right? The maintainers should leverage this and create a compilation of the best levels and release them in a nice package from easiest to hardest. It’s an easy way to give the game some more content in a way that’s easy for less technically savvy people and people that don’t check the forum too often to use.