2d multiplayer game contra style

[komalr]

Its an idea for a game I've had for quite sometime and finally made it into a playable prototype. Would love some feedback on it.

 

You'll need a friend to play with, that's how a multiplayer game works. 

 

https://komalrajsingh.itch.io/2d-komal-multiplayer-game

[K^2]

It's not clear how MP is supposed to connect, but I've been able to run two clients on the same machine, and they synced just fine. How is this meant to actually work for two people playing against each other?

 

I liked the line-of-sight mechanic, but it wasn't clear immediately how that works. For a moment, I thought the rendering was just glitching. I imagine, sudden appearance and disappearance is going to be jarring. Have you tried making characters fade out instead, when you lose line of sight? Might make it more clear what's going on and also make the game less flickery when two people are playing against each other.

 

Movement seems to be mostly fine for this kind of game, but jumping can use work. Right now, it seems like the jump height is always the same, and it makes navigating the maze a bit awkward. What most platformers do is let you have small jumps if you hold the jump key briefly and higher jumps if you press and hold. The simplest way games achieve that, going at least as far back as Super Mario Bros. is that while the jump key is pressed, and so long as character is still moving up, the gravity is reduced, allowing a higher jump. You switch gravity back to full as soon as jump key is released or character reaches apex of the jump and starts coming down. This means a brief press of the jump key gives you a small jump. Very simple technique and it's something a lot of people playing will already be used to.

 

Have you considered bots? Makes it a lot easier to show off your game if people can play solo. To have a bot traverse a level like this, you can pre-define jump points around the map, then have the bot randomly chose whether to jump or not at each one as it moves around. Though, you can improve this further with A* and have the bot actually chase you if it has line of sight, but even with just random movement, I think it can be fun to play against. At least, enough to demo the game.