I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

ByteArray · 2018-06-21 17:22:55

Some of you may be aware that I've been working on a new game called "Rotate". It's a puzzle-platformer web game (HTML5) where you have the ability to rotate gravity. Well, yesterday I finally released it!

So if you're interested, come play it for yourself!
https://www.kongregate.com/games/JoshuaStone/rotate

I'd love to hear what you think.

Vitalijus, Sensei1, AlphaJon, Atikyne, drstereos, Dencc, Kirby, Raphe9000, Zoey2070, mutantdevle, Zumza, Phinarose, Loganyoshi, hummerz5, Jersa, TaskManager, drunkbnu, RavaTroll, SirJosh3917, Nikko99, Latif, Kikikan, Anch, PTU, Victoria

Vitalijus · 2018-06-21 17:24:23

I'm pretty sure I've already seen / played a game with this concept... Wasn't this released to public before?

ByteArray · 2018-06-21 17:26:58

Vitalijus wrote:

I'm pretty sure I've already seen / played a game with this concept... Wasn't this released to public before?

Nah, I've only let a couple people try it before release...

AlphaJon · 2018-06-21 17:45:25

Looking at the video reminded me of the Shift flash games. The game looks nice to play, but the video makes it seem easy. Will give it a try.

EDIT: you might want to fix the high scores, there are a few users with a -1 there.

▼screenshot

hummerz5, mutantdevle, Jorc

MWstudios · 2018-06-21 18:52:05

ByteArray wrote:

Vitalijus wrote:
I'm pretty sure I've already seen / played a game with this concept... Wasn't this released to public before?
Nah, I've only let a couple people try it before release...

Play Climbo, it's less laggy and better quality

ByteArray · 2018-06-21 18:58:49

AlphaJon wrote:

EDIT: you might want to fix the high scores, there are a few users with a -1 there.
▼screenshot
https://i.imgur.com/JqJCaRH.png

Yeah, I did an update that I believe fixes that, but I can't manually remove those scores. I've contacted Kongregate about removing them, though.

MWstudios · 2018-06-21 19:14:14

Well I don't know for which computers is this game for. But for my gaming i5 7th gen computer, it's a laggy potato
Make games for normal people, not for NASA supercomputers

drunkbnu · 2018-06-21 19:32:30

If you just came here to give destructive criticism and advertise other games, you should just leave and let others try and enjoy.

I can run the game smoothly on my laptop with Intel Core i3 @ 2.5 GHz & 4 GiB RAM.

Kirby, TaskManager, TundrumMax, PTU

MWstudios · 2018-06-21 19:43:12

HG wrote:

If you just came here to give destructive criticism and advertise other games, you should just leave and let others try and enjoy.
I can run the game smoothly on my laptop with Intel Core i3 @ 2.5 GHz & 4 GiB RAM.

Ok but why EE and other flash games run normally and this doesn't?!

ByteArray · 2018-06-21 20:47:00

MWstudios wrote:

HG wrote:
If you just came here to give destructive criticism and advertise other games, you should just leave and let others try and enjoy.
I can run the game smoothly on my laptop with Intel Core i3 @ 2.5 GHz & 4 GiB RAM.
Ok but why EE and other flash games run normally and this doesn't?!

With HTML5 content it's largely dependent on your browser and whether or not hardware acceleration is enabled. For me, EE is a bit jittery while Rotate is perfectly smooth.

I will be looking into potential optimizations, though.

Edit: I also wanted to mention I'm on a laptop with an i3 @ 2.4 GHz and 4GB RAM.

drunkbnu

AlphaJon · 2018-06-21 20:53:52

Ran it on Firefox 60.0.2 64bits on a 6 year-old laptop, went through the whole game with no performance issue.

I enjoyed the game, controls were straightforward, the difficulty went up in a natural way without being frustrating at any point, the commands and mechanics were smooth and fair. I rotated in the wrong direction way more than I'd like to admit x)
I would have liked a "time taken" stat at the end of the first play-through without having to go through the speed-run, but that's a minor detail. I didn't bother doing the speed-run because the levels are the same from the regular mode, and puzzle-type games aren't exactly known for replayability.

The story was a bit light though, there's no explanation about what the cat exactly is (looks like an hologram to me but why would it be there then), why the cat wants to free the main character, and the lack of detail about the "hidden guy". I can understand that the focus wasn't on the story, so I'm OK with that.

I liked the graphics and found them appropriate to the mood of the game, but graphics never were an important point for me, so I don't have much more to say here.

Overall rating: 4/5. Great game, has potential to be expanded on.

LukeM, mutantdevle, ByteArray, SirJosh3917, Latif

Zoey2070 · 2018-06-21 20:54:47

Very Good, spent several hours on one level but then managed to speedrun it in about 30 minutes.

will have to replay now that it's FULLY RELEASED

ByteArray

Vitalijus · 2018-06-21 21:32:47

Game runs smooth on Google Chrome [win10] while having teamspeak, autoclicker and a lot of browser tabs open.

mutantdevle · 2018-06-21 22:39:34

As an aspiring solo indie developer, I can very much relate to what you're doing with your career and your motivations so I've definitely been keeping up to date with your development logs. You are very much where I see myself in a few years time (I'm currently studying games development in college). Throughout my childhood, I would always be creating game ideas for me and my siblings to play through our imaginations and I wish to create some of these ideas as video games as well as the many many game concepts I have had over the years. I don't plan to make any of my games free to play (unless I become established) and am instead thinking of publishing them on steam for 1 or 2 pounds though I admire your commitment to having them free (I too despise ads).

I absolutely loved playing the game on Kongregate and it really did feel like the flash / HTML 5 style that you were going for. It's been said already but, it reminds me a lot of the game shift which really does give me quite a bit of nostalgia. Not sure if you're aware of that game or if you took inspiration from it but your game easily matches what was fun about that game. The difficulty curve on rotate feels really nice in my opinion. At the start, it's really simple rotations (as shown in the trailer) but towards the end, you really have to start thinking a lot more towards the end and that's exactly what puzzle games should be. The story leaves the player with a lot of unanswered questions which I guess is the point of the flash style mystery escapes the game kind of story arcs. The visuals were nice and simplistic like all good flash style games should be and the music was spot it. I really enjoyed the music as it kept you in the mystery mood of the game and felt more intense the more you failed the harder levels. My only complaint in regards to the sound though would be that the sound of the text appearing, and to some extent, the walking sound, kinda detracted from the atmosphere the music was creating so I would have liked to have been able to disable those sounds but keep the music. In regards to the lag mentioned by other comments, I found the game run smoothly most of the time except I had a bit of lag in the latter midpoint of the game but that quickly sorted itself out. Btw, bonus points for having the player follow a cat . I just wish there were more levels because I was really getting into it and then I was just like "aww, it's over ".

Overall, you've done a really good job on this game. It feels nice and polished to a professional indie standard and I hope your game gets the attention it deserves. Seeing a developer for EE produce something like this is really reassuring for the future of EE. Getting to see your personality through your game dev logs is also really reassuring as we can tell straight up that your motivation is in the right place. I really look forward to seeing the kind of content you produce in the future, both through EE and your own games, because if you are anything like me then I'm sure you have lots of ideas floating around in your head that you can't wait to produce

Atikyne, ByteArray

Kirby · 2018-06-21 23:27:37

ha

ByteArray, AlphaJon, RavaTroll, SirJosh3917

Luka504 · 2018-06-21 23:47:50

I'm... Kinda mixed about this game. I really like the concept of this game and love the way it was presented. It has great simple art, great simple story and some pretty great music. But there's just a lot of things that I really don't like about this game.

Just as a side note, some of these issues probably exist because I'm just an idiot who has no idea what he's doing, and I'm also pretty a cynical person by nature, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

So let's start with the controls. For the entirety of my playthrough I just could not get used to the way the rotations work. I always get confused as to which way is which and only realized my mistake when it was too late. I can name dozens of times where I died because I accidentally pressed the wrong button and ate spikes. AND I NEVER LEARN. Sometimes I find myself dying in the same exact way I died the last time! This issue might stem from the fact that the camera also rotates with the character, so my senses for left and right also get mixed up, but I'm not sure.

And dying is amplified by the pretty confusing level design. Now, the levels are really well made, they made me think outside of the box multiple times and made me feel pretty clever for solving them, but there's one fatal flaw that hinders it. The Camera. My God. The Camera. It doesn't give me a good view of the level at all, meaning I had to take numerous leaps of faith, which usually resulted in me getting punctured by a bed of spikes waiting below. If the camera was just a teensy bit larger I could make a plan of what I should do instead of going in head first and hoping for the best.

I mentioned the music was pretty great, but frankly it got kinda dull after about 30 minutes in. I found myself mockingly humming the tune in frustration because I kept dying repeatedly. And speaking of music, I really don't like the sound effect for the scrolling text, it's grading. Just add more music pieces and have them be played in a pattern so it doesn't get stale so quickly.

I genuinely don't know how to feel about this game. I finished it (Purely out of spite), but it doesn't seem like a game I would want to replay anytime in the future. There's just so many small things that domino-effect into such huge frustrations. I really felt like I would have loved this game, but I frankly feel more upset and dissapointed than before I played it.

AlphaJon · 2018-06-22 02:20:39

▼Hidden text

Congrats on reaching top games of the month, I hope you'll stay there once you rake up more gameplays!

Hmmm, I wonder where that rouge intelligence from the game description can be found.

ByteArray · 2018-06-22 03:24:39

AlphaJon wrote:

▼Hidden text
Ran it on Firefox 60.0.2 64bits on a 6 year-old laptop, went through the whole game with no performance issue.
I enjoyed the game, controls were straightforward, the difficulty went up in a natural way without being frustrating at any point, the commands and mechanics were smooth and fair. I rotated in the wrong direction way more than I'd like to admit x)
I would have liked a "time taken" stat at the end of the first play-through without having to go through the speed-run, but that's a minor detail. I didn't bother doing the speed-run because the levels are the same from the regular mode, and puzzle-type games aren't exactly known for replayability.
The story was a bit light though, there's no explanation about what the cat exactly is (looks like an hologram to me but why would it be there then), why the cat wants to free the main character, and the lack of detail about the "hidden guy". I can understand that the focus wasn't on the story, so I'm OK with that.
I liked the graphics and found them appropriate to the mood of the game, but graphics never were an important point for me, so I don't have much more to say here.
Overall rating: 4/5. Great game, has potential to be expanded on.

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you felt the difficulty curve was good enough.

I was initially going to record times like that, but that system ended up being a little prone to errors. There's a chance I could revisit the idea, if I can make it work well and not spend too much time working on it.

mutantdevle wrote:

▼Hidden text
As an aspiring solo indie developer, I can very much relate to what you're doing with your career and your motivations so I've definitely been keeping up to date with your development logs. You are very much where I see myself in a few years time (I'm currently studying games development in college). Throughout my childhood, I would always be creating game ideas for me and my siblings to play through our imaginations and I wish to create some of these ideas as video games as well as the many many game concepts I have had over the years. I don't plan to make any of my games free to play (unless I become established) and am instead thinking of publishing them on steam for 1 or 2 pounds though I admire your commitment to having them free (I too despise ads).
I absolutely loved playing the game on Kongregate and it really did feel like the flash / HTML 5 style that you were going for. It's been said already but, it reminds me a lot of the game shift which really does give me quite a bit of nostalgia. Not sure if you're aware of that game or if you took inspiration from it but your game easily matches what was fun about that game. The difficulty curve on rotate feels really nice in my opinion. At the start, it's really simple rotations (as shown in the trailer) but towards the end, you really have to start thinking a lot more towards the end and that's exactly what puzzle games should be. The story leaves the player with a lot of unanswered questions which I guess is the point of the flash style mystery escapes the game kind of story arcs. The visuals were nice and simplistic like all good flash style games should be and the music was spot it. I really enjoyed the music as it kept you in the mystery mood of the game and felt more intense the more you failed the harder levels. My only complaint in regards to the sound though would be that the sound of the text appearing, and to some extent, the walking sound, kinda detracted from the atmosphere the music was creating so I would have liked to have been able to disable those sounds but keep the music. In regards to the lag mentioned by other comments, I found the game run smoothly most of the time except I had a bit of lag in the latter midpoint of the game but that quickly sorted itself out. Btw, bonus points for having the player follow a cat . I just wish there were more levels because I was really getting into it and then I was just like "aww, it's over ".
Overall, you've done a really good job on this game. It feels nice and polished to a professional indie standard and I hope your game gets the attention it deserves. Seeing a developer for EE produce something like this is really reassuring for the future of EE. Getting to see your personality through your game dev logs is also really reassuring as we can tell straight up that your motivation is in the right place. I really look forward to seeing the kind of content you produce in the future, both through EE and your own games, because if you are anything like me then I'm sure you have lots of ideas floating around in your head that you can't wait to produce

I appreciate you taking the time to write all of that! Finishing Rotate was a ton of work, and most of the time I didn't feel like I could even do it. I suppose I feared that, even if I did finish it, it would seem poorly executed, broken, or just unremarkable. Even last night, after releasing the game and trying to fix a couple of bugs, I was having trouble sleeping because I was so worried that something would go terribly wrong.

But seeing that players like you had a good experience with the game, and that it even brought feelings of nostalgia, makes it worth it. And yeah, it was definitely inspired by the Shift games; those were some of the classics I remember playing throughout the years growing up!

Luka504 wrote:

▼Hidden text
I'm... Kinda mixed about this game. I really like the concept of this game and love the way it was presented. It has great simple art, great simple story and some pretty great music. But there's just a lot of things that I really don't like about this game.
Just as a side note, some of these issues probably exist because I'm just an idiot who has no idea what he's doing, and I'm also pretty a cynical person by nature, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
So let's start with the controls. For the entirety of my playthrough I just could not get used to the way the rotations work. I always get confused as to which way is which and only realized my mistake when it was too late. I can name dozens of times where I died because I accidentally pressed the wrong button and ate spikes. AND I NEVER LEARN. Sometimes I find myself dying in the same exact way I died the last time! This issue might stem from the fact that the camera also rotates with the character, so my senses for left and right also get mixed up, but I'm not sure.
And dying is amplified by the pretty confusing level design. Now, the levels are really well made, they made me think outside of the box multiple times and made me feel pretty clever for solving them, but there's one fatal flaw that hinders it. The Camera. My God. The Camera. It doesn't give me a good view of the level at all, meaning I had to take numerous leaps of faith, which usually resulted in me getting punctured by a bed of spikes waiting below. If the camera was just a teensy bit larger I could make a plan of what I should do instead of going in head first and hoping for the best.
I mentioned the music was pretty great, but frankly it got kinda dull after about 30 minutes in. I found myself mockingly humming the tune in frustration because I kept dying repeatedly. And speaking of music, I really don't like the sound effect for the scrolling text, it's grading. Just add more music pieces and have them be played in a pattern so it doesn't get stale so quickly.
I genuinely don't know how to feel about this game. I finished it (Purely out of spite), but it doesn't seem like a game I would want to replay anytime in the future. There's just so many small things that domino-effect into such huge frustrations. I really felt like I would have loved this game, but I frankly feel more upset and dissapointed than before I played it.

Yeah, I understand that the game is far from perfect. I'll be learning from my design mistakes in my future work!

AlphaJon wrote:

▼Hidden text
https://i.imgur.com/hFGilnr.png
Congrats on reaching top games of the month, I hope you'll stay there once you rake up more gameplays!
Hmmm, I wonder where that rouge intelligence from the game description can be found.

Oh cool, I didn't notice it appeared there! And yeah Kentiya just pointed out to me as well that I spelled rogue wrong. lol

Atikyne

AlphaJon · 2018-06-22 04:27:31

ByteArray wrote:

I was initially going to record times like that, but that system ended up being a little prone to errors. There's a chance I could revisit the idea, if I can make it work well and not spend too much time working on it.

Tbh that was just a minor detail, but I suggested it because the functionality is already there, when going in speed-run mode. That said, I wouldn't display the time live during the first playthrough, because that would make players feel like they have to rush the levels (you could leave it shown if you actually want to create that feel, judging by the last sentence of your game description).
As a bonus, submitting a high score even during non-speedruns would allow the kongregate admins to easily create a badge by giving it to everyone who registers a score.

MWstudios · 2018-06-22 19:13:16

My idea is to add letters and symbols to the number sign like in the official levels, not only numbers.

The sign can have 256 different symbols.

▼Symbols example

Then saving can result in [Symbol1]-[Symbol2].
For example, typing JK on the sign would save as 09-0A.

And yeah, Rotate isn't laggy on Chrome so I finally could enjoy the game

Zumza · 2018-06-22 20:32:58

A short game perfect for an evening.

ByteArray, mutantdevle, AlphaJon

ByteArray · 2018-06-22 21:08:00

MWstudios wrote:

My idea is to add letters and symbols to the number sign like in the official levels, not only numbers.
https://imgur.com/5YdU2Ge.png
The sign can have 256 different symbols.

▼Symbols example

Then saving can result in [Symbol1]-[Symbol2].
For example, typing JK on the sign would save as 09-0A.

And yeah, Rotate isn't laggy on Chrome so I finally could enjoy the game

I'm glad that worked! The one problem with adding letters and such is that I'd have to basically include a whole separate pixel font just for player made levels... So I ended up just doing the numbers, plus some special codes for the "C-" and "F-". There's also a way to do a "--".

peace · 2018-06-22 22:15:55

ByteArray wrote:

Some of you may be aware that I've been working on a new game called "Rotate". It's a puzzle-platformer web game (HTML5) where you have the ability to rotate gravity. Well, yesterday I finally released it!
https://youtu.be/4kRI-mMmPkA
So if you're interested, come play it for yourself!
https://www.kongregate.com/games/JoshuaStone/rotate
I'd love to hear what you think.

nice a kong game ima check it later

MWstudios · 2018-06-22 22:30:12

ByteArray wrote:

MWstudios wrote:
My idea is to add letters and symbols to the number sign like in the official levels, not only numbers.
https://imgur.com/5YdU2Ge.png
The sign can have 256 different symbols.
▼Symbols example
00-A; 01-B; 02-C; 03-D; 04-E; 05-F; 06-G; 07-H; 08-I; 09-J; 0A-K; 0B-L; 0C-M; 0D-N; 0E-O; 0F-P; 10-Q; 11-R; 12-S; 13-T; 14-U; 15-V; 16-W; 17-X; 18-Y; 19-Z
20-a; 2A-b; 2B-c; 2C-d; 2D-e; 2E-f; 2F-g; 30-h; 31-i; 32-j; 33-k; 34-k; 35-l; 36-m; 37-n; 38-o; 39-p; 3A-q; 3B-r; 3C-s; 3D-t; 3E-u; 3F-v; 40-w; 41-x; 42-y; 43-z
44-0; 45-1; 46-2; 47-3; 48-4; 49-5; 4A-6; 4B-7; 4C-8; 4D-9
4E- , ; 4F- . ; 50- - ; 51- : ; 52- ? ; 53- _ ; 54- " ; 55- ! ; 56- § ; 57- / ; 58- * ; 59- + ; 5A- ( ; 5B- ) ; 5C- < ; 5D- > ; 5E- [ ; 5F- ] ; 60- $ ; 61- ÷ ; 62- × ; 63- ¨ ; 64- ' ; 65- ¤ ; 66- \ ; 67- | ; 68- ; ; 69- ° ; 6A- ~ ; 6B- ^ ; 6C- = ; 6D- % ; 6E- # ; 6F- &
70- Ě; 71- Š; 72- Č; 73- Ž; 74- Ý; 75- Á; 76- Í; 77- É; 78- ě; 79- š; 7A- č; 7B- ž; 7C- ý; 7D- á; 7E- í; 7F- é; 80- Ç; 81- Â; 82- Å; 83- Ê; 84- Î; 85- Ô; 86- Û; 87- Ä; 88- Ë; 89- Ï; 90- Ö; 91- Ü; 92- Ÿ; 93- ç; 94- å; 95- â; 96- ê; 97- î; 98- ô; 99- û; 9A- ä; 9B- ë; 9C- ï; 9D- ö; 9E- ü;- 9F- ÿ
A0- @; A1- {; A2- }; A3- đ; A4- Đ; A5- ł; A6- Ł; A7- ß; A8- ģ; A9- Ģ; AA- ķ; AB- Ķ; AC- ļ; AD- Ļ; AE- ņ; AF- Ņ; B0- ŗ; B1- Ŗ; B2- ş; B3- Ş; B4- ţ; B5- Ţ; B6- Ú; B7- ú; B8- Ů; B9- ů; BA- ő; BB- Ő; BC- ű; BD- Ű
Then saving can result in [Symbol1]-[Symbol2].
For example, typing JK on the sign would save as 09-0A.
And yeah, Rotate isn't laggy on Chrome so I finally could enjoy the game
I'm glad that worked! The one problem with adding letters and such is that I'd have to basically include a whole separate pixel font just for player made levels... So I ended up just doing the numbers, plus some special codes for the "C-" and "F-". There's also a way to do a "--".

Use this

SirJosh3917, AlphaJon, drstereos

Latif · 2018-06-23 14:11:03

Make it for mobile

Official Everybody Edits Forums

#1 2018-06-21 17:22:55

I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#2 2018-06-21 17:24:23

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#3 2018-06-21 17:26:58

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#4 2018-06-21 17:45:25, last edited by AlphaJon (2018-06-21 17:52:17)

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#5 2018-06-21 18:52:05, last edited by MWstudios (2018-06-21 18:58:38)

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#6 2018-06-21 18:58:49

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#7 2018-06-21 19:14:14, last edited by MWstudios (2018-06-21 19:15:04)

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#8 2018-06-21 19:32:30

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#9 2018-06-21 19:43:12

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#10 2018-06-21 20:47:00, last edited by ByteArray (2018-06-21 20:49:04)

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#11 2018-06-21 20:53:52, last edited by AlphaJon (2018-06-21 20:55:08)

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#12 2018-06-21 20:54:47

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#13 2018-06-21 21:32:47

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#14 2018-06-21 22:39:34

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#15 2018-06-21 23:27:37

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#16 2018-06-21 23:47:50, last edited by Luka504 (2018-06-21 23:50:11)

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#17 2018-06-22 02:20:39, last edited by AlphaJon (2018-06-22 02:21:35)

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#18 2018-06-22 03:24:39

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#19 2018-06-22 04:27:31

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#20 2018-06-22 19:13:16, last edited by MWstudios (2018-06-22 19:17:32)

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#21 2018-06-22 20:32:58

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#22 2018-06-22 21:08:00

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#23 2018-06-22 22:15:55

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#24 2018-06-22 22:30:12

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

#25 2018-06-23 14:11:03

Re: I've released Rotate, my puzzle-platformer web game!

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