To The Heights

Hi, yesterday I saw you were updating your game so I decided to play again. :) 

I did again this thing of freezing the objects mid air just to go faster than last time and this time I knew what I was doing, I had more fun. Also, it’s nice I can see what the objects are with the table of the description, which helped me with the new blocks I couldn’t see last time.

I saw a few other things that I want to say something, those don’t ruin the experience, and I’ll put images like last time.

If you try to use a ladder from below, you can’t use it because it acts like a solid block, so in this image, instead of just jumping vertically, I had to jump outside and touch the ladder from the sides.

The jump pads are fun and maybe had this not intentional behavior, but if you jump from below, you can jump higher than using it normally, I put 2 images to show what I mean. (Red in the 2nd image would be the normal jump and green from below the pad)

Also, if you press jump, sometimes the jump pad doesn't work and you stay in the pad. But I think this block it’s one of my favorites.

The transition of the music in the checkpoint should be “permanent” maybe, or feels weird that all the time I cross the point where the music changes, can change all the time.

I put a jump pad in that point and the music changed all the time haha. The change of music did a mini lag that made me fall off from the elevator. So each time I used the jump pad to land in the elevator, I fall through it and reset the song. This is more likely on me because my PC is old but I just want to say this.

And I think pistons have the same old elevator problem I said last time, when you ride those and when you are going down, the playable character just jumps a lot.

Oh, and it would be nice to know the range of the teleport block. I put 2 and since those were out of range, it didn't work haha.

But about the changes, I liked that you can use the hammer more. The checkpoints are nice and it’s good you can ride the stars, I liked that. About the fast animation of boxes, it’s nice but for me wasn’t a problem before because I could open those while the box was sliding to the center of the screen, you can still do that so now it’s faster to open boxes.

And the jumps felt better. I can see this with the ice block, I like them so now was more fun to use them.

Things I didn’t saw last time because I didn’t reach that high, the black boxes are fun and the change of music it’s a nice touch, and the hazards are fun because it actually helps to shortcut and they aren’t hard to avoid so it was fun to place those when I could.

This time I reached the top but probably 2 rest and 10 minutes are extra because I was testing stuff and I fell in dumb ways and preferred to rest. I wish I could show my final tower but I didn’t record it or take screenshots. But I had fun again playing this. :D 

Well polished, very impressed that you managed to to this in 4 days. Good mechanic but a bit hard to figure out what everything does. After a bit of playing and some resets you figure it out though.
Well done you guys should really be proud!

This was an absolute blast to play through, and I loved the messages along the way. When I first started the "OH" moment I had when I realized that the blocks have gravity was spectacular, and the future puzzle of fitting your limited building blocks together in order to reach higher and higher was lots of fun. Just thought I'd give some design ideas if you decide to expand on this game in the future.

First of all, I think the existence of the floating blocks that you can place is somewhat detrimental overall. At least for me, one of the most fun parts was trying to find a way to continue building upwards despite my tower getting continually more unstable, and whenever I made a mistake it was interesting because you then have to work around it. However, once you get access to the floating blocks, this no longer happens, reducing the almost chaotic nature of building the tower. I do think that anchor points are good though as you move upwards, and instead extending the tree branches that are at the very start throughout the level could be interesting as it adds a new challenge where you are trying to figure out how to connect something way over on the other side of the screen to your structure. There could also be some variety with these too, maybe they move up and down or do something interesting that the player then has to work around.

Next, gaining the blocks felt a bit too passive for me, as if it were somewhat disconnected from actually building the tower. Even though there were boxes to collect along the way, the player will almost always receive way more boxes than the ones they collected (I think this is tied to how high you got but not entirely sure). What I would do is instead of awarding these bonus boxes automatically, instead spawn extra boxes along the player's tower at the start of each building phase. This gives the player a choice between whether they want to have less resources next round, skipping the boxes and just trying to get higher, or instead going slower, but with lots of building blocks to work with. As well, this also gives the player another challenge in trying to figure out how to get over to these boxes.

Finally, starting the player all the way at the base of their tower can get kind-of tedious eventually, for me my way up at the start was primarily a tower of the one way platforms, so jumping up them wasn't great. However, I also loved trying to jump and navigate through all the mistakes that I had made, and trying to find a way to make all of the chaos just work, so I'm not actually sure if this should be changed at all.

All in all, this is by far the best game I've played in this jam, it took me about two hours to reach the top and I absolutely loved every second of this. I wish you the best of luck in the jam, and in any future endeavours you have!

This is a kind of interesting game.

After almost 40 minutes, I want to write something about it. :) 

I had fun while playing and probably later when I have more time, I’ll try to finish the game since I feel it can take some time to reach the top. I could relax a bit at the start but there are small things that I want to share.

Getting into the elevators can be a bit annoying when they are descending, because it’s like makes you "jump" all the time or you can’t control the jump well for those micro air times. I’ll be putting images to show more or less what I mean, like here you get that mini air time and jumping gets a bit annoying. Also, I only got 1 while playing so maybe those are rare haha (while writing this, I got another one hahaha)

When I died to this thing, I respawned dead and couldn’t move until the next rest, so I was forced to rest to see if that fixed it and yeah, I could move again.

Also, jumping to the supports can be a bit annoying, that the left and right sides are solid, makes jumping to them a bit weird because you can get stopped by it, which does not make the jump bad or unplayable, just is a bit annoying to jump when there are a lot of them.

Ladders can be a bit funny visually because you can get in this eternal jumping state, you can move and don’t affect the game until now. Now I think if I could put a ladder horizontally with the next point, I think I could float and that would be a bit game breaking hahaha.

If you end up the building mode while an object is falling, you prevent it from falling. Which makes the game easier and you can fix those mistakes you can make in early game or those tilted platforms.

I think I thought about this because if you remove a block with the hammer after a round, the block above the one you remove stays still, so that’s how I think this maybe works, and yeah, you can freeze objects mid air.

I like the higher you are, you get more than pity boxes, I got already a few normal ones and iron ones.

This is my max point until now, which is before the clouds in the sidebar that shows your progress, also, I really like that you can ride the clouds, the trampoline it’s fun and I don’t know how to use the fan I just got, I still don’t know what that black box contains, but as I said, I’ll be back to this game to keep playing because I really want to finish it. :D 

Oh, also, I liked the visuals and the song it’s calm so it helps the game.

About the theme, I like how this game uses it, how slowly you can build a big tower slowly, but I break that by freezing the block mid air, but I can see the Build to Scale theme.

I think that all I have to say right now (^^)

fun little game, I do suck at building though xD