I’ve just released a demo of the Eskimo Bob NES game which includes the first 8 levels of the game. Hopefully that’s just enough to give you a tiny taste of the game and leave you wanting some more.
I’ve just released a demo of the Eskimo Bob NES game which includes the first 8 levels of the game. Hopefully that’s just enough to give you a tiny taste of the game and leave you wanting some more.
One major flaw: the whistle tune doesn’t play after you Press Start.
Hahaha, not sure I can pull off a convincing 8 bit whistle using the tiny amount of space left in the full rom
I understand~
One legitimate bit of feedback: it’s currently possible for the player to make a level permanently unbeatable. Level 3 is a good example: push the Walrus off the ledge before grabbing the fish on the left and you’re stuck, with the only option being to deliberately lose a life. I’m not sure if this is intentional (since there is a suicide button after all) but so far I don’t get the impression this is that kind of puzzle game where absolutely every move needs to be thought through before you touch the first block.
This was actually a deliberate design choice. Although it’s not reflected in the demo because I gutted the password system, the final version of the game allows for infinite continues and keeps track of your death count. Because levels are fairly short, it makes the game over screen more demoralizing than actually punishing. Allowing for little mistakes, such as pushing the walrus away, was meant to warn the player that this can happen later in the game if they are not careful. Maybe I should update the demo to have a continue button on game over to better reflect the full version
Ahhh, okey dokey then. :>
After thinking a little bit I do think you are somewhat right in the case of the walrus in level 3, and I’ve updated the demo to reflect this. However, instead of protecting the player from trapping themselves, I made the consequence of poking the walrus off the ledge a bit more “obviously bad”.
I extended the ledge you start on to be slightly wider, but removed the floor underneath it. This gives the player a bit more room to experiment with poking the walrus, but also means that knocking the walrus off the edge will instantly kill him instead of just leaving him there on the floor. Hopefully this makes the idea of knocking him off the edge seem worse. Also added the continue button.
Just made another small change. I made a little warning sign with an exclamation mark which I’ve placed in some of the early levels where you can trap yourself. In the demo you can see it in the walrus level by the cliff now. I also noticed level 4 had a similar situation and just slightly altered the design to prevent the player from trapping themselves, as that one seemed a little less obvious.
The warning signs I think are an excellent idea! Ensures the player can be reasonably certain they can put themselves in a failure state before they actually end up in one.
I just went through and added warning signs to “dangerous” levels for the first section of the game. After about level 25 the danger is pretty obvious though, and I think the player will probably be trained to expect it.