some things I worked on…
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Frogbo
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Frogbo
Tags
solo
Released
2021
Made in flowlab, a drag-and-drop prototyping tool, for Saxion's Game Design module.
It's a somehow relaxing precision platformer about a frog's relationship with creativity and productivity.
Design Thoughts
It's a spiritual successor to my first game, Multijump, in the sense that it borrows the main mechanic of unlimited mid-air jumps. This one is a bit more inspired as I created a story and themes for it.
I do not get along with visual scripting. In my experience it's like trying to cut down a tree with a pair of scissors because I can't be bothered to learn how to use a chainsaw. Unfortunately as far as I could tell Flowlab didn't give me the option to write code myself, so I chose a very simple mechanical concept: a platformer with unlimited mid-air jumps.
This is the same concept for the first game I've ever made when I was 13 - MultiJump. Having unlimited mid-air jumps has a number of interesting design implications. For example, I could design levels where all walls are hazards, including the floor, requiring the player to jump in a specific rhythm - slow enough not to hit the ceiling, fast enough not to hit the floor. This was the basis for my design thinking in this project.
Based on this implication, I came up with two supplementary mechanics:
A type of block that toggles between solid and non-solid every time the player jumps.
Moving hazards that bounce back and forth between walls.
Combined with the rhythmic platforming, this combination of elements created interesting timing puzzles. I'm pretty proud of it!
I also added collectible flies (since the player is a frog) to add some optional challenge by daring the player to get closer to hazards. At the end of the game,
(spoiler)
the player is greeted with a message stating that I'm proud of how many flies they've collected. This message shows up even if the player collects as few flies as possible. If I actually required the player to collect all of them, that'd be antithetical to the message of the game.