OLAF & ELMAR in the Castles of Nabokos (beta)

[Mike Wiering]

This is a new game I made together with a cartoon artist. Basically, it is a Sokoban clone, but with two characters: the elephant Olaf, who can push large blocks, and the mouse Elmar, who can only push small blocks. They have to work together to solve puzzles (push blocks to the right place, get the key, collect the diamonds and both exit the castle).

During the game, you have unlimited undo (BackSpace), the goal is to solve each level with the fewest possible steps. You can always go back to previous levels on the map and play them again.

The shareware version contains two of the seven islands.

Screen shots: http://www.wieringsoftware.nl/tmp/oe.jpg

Download: http://home.wxs.nl/~mikewiering/OlafElmarBetaSetup.exe (8.8 Mb)

This game is still in beta stage, any feedback is welcome!

[jankoM]

Very nice looking. Because of the verbosity (2 heros, potions, wooden/stone blocks..) I wouldn't call it sokoban Clone. Levels vere interestign and as I said seemed verbose, gfx is very nice. I didn't like the pushing sound too much.. it's not that pleasant to listen to but more scratchy (maybe something softer). Pushing was a little too slow for me (impatience). Nice to have an "undo".

I haven't played it much because I have only little time, if I have something I will reply when I play it more.

[Sharpfish]

I had a little look. Here are my thoughts (for what they are worth).


Positive

.Very nice cartoon artwork, this will attract downloads on it's own (it's why I tried it!)

.Clean look in levels

.Music (where applicable) was fairly nice and jolly..

.Audience Applause on level exit was a nice touch

.Usual gameplay with some twists (appeals to block pusher fans)

Negative (bear in mind I usually look more for this stuff)

.Transitions/Wipes on *everything* got a little old

.Ala above, especially in story the wipes were very slooooow - I quit out of it because of the waiting. I wouldn't wipe every time but store it up for special times.

.Pushing sound. The sample was not looped properly so you could here a digital click on continuous pushing. Not sure if you intended this an audiable cue of number of spaces pushed but it didn't sound too nice.

.No Music in game (unless I missed it?) only on level complete/transition

.Any way for Mouse Control? (I have seen them done with mouse using flexi arrow guides)

.Only music on/off no seperate levels or SFX control

.entering name after EVERY level, one of my pet hates. Can't you just ask for this when the game finally ends and apply (Implicitly) to all previous passed levels? (edit: Or in fact know the profile of the player in advance from the save slot mechanic - thus removing that flow-stopper?)

.A bit "static" overall. Looks like nice pictures and decent backdrops with a game being played on top. Maybe liven up the environment with some particles, animations (extra eye candy!) :)

Overall - graphically polished, sound could do with some tweaks. Controlled and ran fine (though I would like mouse control if I was playing it for long), and very nice character art. Maybe could do more with the character art in game (close ups / conversations between the characters maybe?)

This was only based on first impressions and 5 minutes of gameplay (reaching level 3 I think)

rgds

[Mike Wiering]

Thanks for your replies.

I just tried the game on an old PC and agree that the transitions can be awful. I'm used to seeing them go very fast and hardly noticed them anymore. But I've made them optional now, off by default.

And I agree about the pushing sound, I've just made new sounds that are a bit better, but maybe I'll eventually make an option to disable them alltogether.

I also made Elmar go a little faster while pushing blocks (for impatient people like jankoM :))

There is no music during the game itself. That is because especially the harder levels can take really long to solve and I'ld need lots of long music to not make people get sick of hearing it all the time. Actually, the fun part of the game is playing the same level over and over, saving a few more steps each time...

About the high scores, you only have to actually enter your name once, next time, it will already be there and you can simply press Enter. It is saved along with your progress so you don't have to type it next time you play either.

There is joystick control, but I thought mouse control for a game like this would be silly. Oh well, I'll think about it.

I've just uploaded the new version 0.92 (same link as above).

[svero]

I had some of the same complaints as you've already addressed. Pushing speed and so on.

I think it would be nice to have more fluid animations on the main characters. They're what now? 2 frames? Id like to see some in betweens.

Id make the mouse work for the menus at least.

- S

[Sharpfish]

Nice to see some of those quirks cleared up! :)

I didn't realise your transitions were frame (not time) based. I guess on my laptop (much faster cpu than my "online test system") they would fly by. Ever thought about time based modeling for those? I thought I saw some varying animation speeds but wasn't sure?

As for mouse control, I know sokoban players are possibly more towards the hardcore (retro?) end of things, but given your "playful" graphics I imagine if it attracted many casual users they would probably first try doing things with the mouse (as in 90% of the other games they check out). Whether it's a problem worth addressing is of course up to you and what kind of audience you are trying to appeal to mostly. If you check out games like puzzle monkey for instance they have a mouse system with one of those flexible path/arrow things, however they have only narrow paths IIRC unlike your "wide open" areas so I'm not sure it would work so well with yours. Take it with a pinch of salt as usual, if you can't see a decent (and timely) way to get *good* mouse control in then better to not force it in!

re: Highscores, yes you do only have to enter it once (though you can put just "Spaces" in which Is the first thing I always check for on a demo. I suppose it was because it was showing it after each level, but then I guess you want to show the standings FOR that level to let the player know where he ranks. I was looking at it from the wrong angle so ignore me ;)

[Sharkbait]

I played the game till the end of the trial and quite liked it, mostly due to its cartoon illustrations. I think the characters need more in-between frames and the levels could do with some extra animations, such as moving water in the moats, rustling grass, hopping birds on the walls, moving flags on the turrets etc. I also think some extra colour would be nice although I admit this might conflict with the cartoon style of the game.

[Mike Wiering]

I've added some very simple mouse support (without a pointer or arrows) and you can now play the entire game with only the mouse (except for entering your name once). But to use Undo, you do need three buttons! Still personally, I much prefer using the keyboard.

More animation frames would probably look better, maybe we'll do that in a future version. As for animating the levels, the idea was to only animate the active player (Olaf or Elmar) so it's always easy to see which one of them is active.

I replaced level 1-6 with an easier one, since that one was actually pretty hard for the first island.

I've just uploaded a new version 0.94 (same link).

[Sharkbait]

You could keep the swirling particles around the active player as an indication so the player does not get distracted by the background animations. I think it would also help to have the main characters (and movable blocks) more colour saturated than the level graphics so they stand out more against the backdrop.

my 2c :)