“Sunnie Bell in Just-A-Jest” is a side scrolling platformer filled with cartoony characters, silly sight gags, and a retro-inspired style that harkens back to the 8-bit days of gaming.
After Sunnie’s family circus is left in shambles by the devious Pippi Shortfuse, Sunnie sets off across the platforming and puzzle-based first level to defeat the Clown of Cuteness in this demo/proof of concept. Help Sunnie jump, run, and hammer her way to victory!
"Just -A- Jest" is a proof of concept/ demo of a game that I want to make. It's an amalgamation of what I've learned as a game dev. It's made up of a single level and a boss battle! It should average to about 10 minutes of game play.
Controls:
I recommend using a gamepad, the game was design with a controller in mind, however the keyboard controls are:
Feedback:
I would love to hear constructive criticism! In addition to the comment sections, I've created a review form that you can find here.
The game was mostly a solo-dev experience with the following credits:
This is more of a disclaimer, but I did use Phind during various stages of the game development to help me when I couldn't figure out GDScript. All my future projects will not feature its use in any way.
Hi!
1. I'd like to cosplay the character. Do you have Twitter or any other social media where I can send you the results?
2. If you need a Spanish translation of the game, I could do it. I'm from Argentina! (Also, if you need voice acting or anything else, lol)
sorry for my bad english
cool, but I found bug with banana, when you slip and slide on it the game just paused
This was wonderful, loved the setting and character design! the clown car moment was brilliant too
Honestly, my only major issue with the game is that the hitboxes can be a bit weird, specifically with the clown eggs and where you're supposed to position yourself to talk to NPCs. But, other than that, it's a really solid game, and I'm hoping to see more like it sometime!
Hey, this is a pretty neat game! The main selling point here is definitely the graphical presentation, the goofy characters and the dialogue filled with puns: it's just got some great vibes to it all with the whole clown aesthetic! Kinda takes me back to those Mickey Mouse platformers. The gameplay is pretty neat too, filled with some novel setpieces like the part where you need to flatten yourself and make it across some platforms without jumping while hammers rain down on you, as well as a cool boss fight to finish it all off. Certainly some promising stuff!
I will say, though, that as promising and neat as the game is, at times it felt very much like a 'style over substance' affair where the gameplay was letting the side down:
*The movement took a lot to get used to: it's just so incredibly heavy and sluggish, feeling like I've got a ball and chain tied to my character constantly. And yet at the same time, it's also awkwardly slippery like you're on ice the whole time! If you wanna keep it because the game is balanced around it, then fine, but damn if it doesn't feel bad at times.
*While the game has a nice variety of obstacles like windy updrafts, platforms, anvil shrinking, and so on, the levels are rarely constructed to put them together in challenging and engaging combinations. So much of the level feels like some sort of testing ground or debug developer room to showcase mechanics where stuff is just placed haphazardly, not meaningfully and something actually meant for players to play and have a good time.
*As an addendum to above, yes, there are some times where the game does have some interesting moments, like the part where the clown car crashes and you've got a bunch of enemies marching at you in all sorts of patterns and elevations. The problem is that, as challenging as it can be to weave through the enemies, you don't have to and can instead remove all the challenge by just playing defensively and swinging your mallet at them one-by-one. Feels like a bit of a waste.
In addition to those issues, there were a few other nitpicks I had as well:
*There were some glitches here and there, like when I hit an enemy and they somehow hit me when they were dying, sometimes the jumping physics would get wonky, stuff like that which is kinda hard to pinpoint the cause or reproduce.
*It was a bit frustrating trying to talk to people with how you need to stand in an exact spot right in front of them. If you stand a bit too close to them and try to talk to them, you can't do so, even when the game has a little speech bubble above which you'd think would indicate it'd work from that position!
*I wish we could press a button as text is typing out to fast-forward it to completion: we don't have to wait for too long for it to type out, but still, it's a nice convenience.
*Maybe it's a weird nitpick, but I couldn't get over how desynced the attack animation is from the actual hit: the actual hit and dust particles happens immediately when you press the attack button, but it isn't until a moment later that the hammer actually finishes its downward swing and hits the ground.
Now, I said a lot there, but that's only because, as said before, I do think this game is promising, so I wanna point out as much as I can to make the eventual final version be as best as it can be, and I wanna see that final version because I'm sure it'll rock! You've got a good foundation here, so I'm looking forward to it!