E Y E L A N D / v2 UPDATE on itch!

Pulp
66

@lori --

I'm glad you liked it!

And I agree - there are so many unique ideas/cool-looking games coming out - i've been waiting for my Playdate to arrive to check them out!

67

a VERY GOOD game indeed! once your itch page is live I will certainly purchase this. Thanks for letting me play through and thanks for all of your hard work making this game.

1 Like
68

Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed this, it worked great on my Playdate. The whole tone was just fantastic and the puzzles were a lot of fun. Will definitely buy it if/when you put it on Itch at some point!

1 Like
69

@deanhuff

Thank you! thanks for playing - I'll announce the itch page here when i put it up

70

@tylersticka

I'm glad you liked it! And thanks for telling me how it did on the device. I will be putting it up on itch as soon as i can see it on the device myself.

1 Like
71

I played through this tonight and very much enjoyed it. I am so impressed that you achieved this using only Pulp and I can’t believe this was your first game. It’s very clever and charming and the puzzles are very well constructed. My compliments on your efforts and their excellent result! Please do let us know when it can be purchased!

1 Like
72

@dandraper

I will - Thank you so much for playing it - and for the compliments!

:playdate_proud:

73

W.O.W just wow. Played through twice (EYELANDb6), LOVED it.

You really put together something incredible here @ronlent, seriously artful, and your attention to detail really shows – I'm definitely going to check out the code in some spare time.

Thoughts:

:playdate_heart: I loved how revisiting characters/sprits will often trigger new dialog! That was super motivating to discover and try to revisit characters until I'd exhausted their dialog. I'm thinking of the mirror in the coalmine and the guy on the roof – "...have fun?" really got me :rofl: .
:playdate_heart: Tons of people have mentioned the rain, seriously agreed. and how that area gets kind of "weird" is fun.
:playdate_heart: So many satisfying momentary animations! The shimmer when Statique appears, and I kept replaying the mine cart animation to feel like I was "zooming out" (the variation when you skip a station was a nice surprise)

Feedback:

:playdate_eyebrow: I often found the music significantly louder than the sound effects – I didn't even notice the rain sound until second playthrough (but interaction generally). I was playing with headphones connected to the playdate, if that matters
:playdate_agh: I definitely missed the "don't close" notice and lost progress pretty far along. I definitely pop in and out of games too much :grimacing: but it would be nice to be able to close and reopen.
:playdate_agh: I caught a bug in the give up region, and was "locked" in place and couldn't move/progress. Someone else mentioned getting "stuck" when the player moves during an animation, so it might have been that

"crazy idea time"

your game is seriously inspirational – I was immediately thinking about ways to add replay value... if you're wanting to add more content :smiley:

(spoilers) Would have loved if the **boat** in the final scene were steerable! I would totally have fidgeted with it and watched it move ...it would be enough to allow up/down/right to turn the player 45 degrees up / horizontal / 45 degrees. If the boat changed rows automatically while in the 45° up/down sprite, it'd be enough to feel like I was actually moving through the ocean. Looping the top/bottom of the screen, like in the "GIVE UP" world, would also be pleasant.

I would also have loved to interact with the computer in the house! I thought I was going to have to discover (or "remember"?) the password somewhere in the dream (like maybe finding E-Y-E-L-A-N-D blocks throughout the level?) to fill them in on the computer. That'd be a great way to encourage replay and exploration, especially after you've finished the dream...might really require a means to save the game for the player to revisit/explore deeply. I assumed the "end, dead" sign was false and there was something hidden behind it.

Anyway, phenomenal effort! really incredible job.

1 Like
74

@STG

Spencer, THANKS!

I'm so glad you liked it. and thank you for the comments and feedback! i love that you liked the Statique shimmer build-up - i was proud of that one! haha.

music volume - i haven't had a chance to test it out on an actual device yet, i imagined i might need to make some sound-mix / EQ adjustments.

i'll check out those other issues too - thank you

LOVE the CRAZY ideas!

there are a BUNCH of thoughts that came about with this project that i've pushed to a possible "future game." i was trying to manage scope creep - - in fact, this entire project was scope creep! i really didn't intend to make a game at all, but it was just too fun playing around in the pulp environment and i got hooked!

the computer was actually intended to have some kind of further functionality - maybe a way to open a hidden room, or a "game within the game", but i couldn't find a way to integrate it in a meaningful way. maybe it does a feel a little bit of a dead end?

thanks again for the thoughtful comments and for playing it... TWICE!

75

I finally play the game (after all the buzz) and I am really impressed by it. I really enjoyed every moments of it.

I will not start to list all the details I would like to gush about because it will be a too long post, but I'll mention what stand out:

  • There is a lot of variety in the game. Each screen bring something new and fresh. I love also how some mechanics are used only once for example for the puzzles.
  • The thought pickup is brilliant and a really good guidance system.
  • Graphically this is really great especially the small animation like the rope or the hair
  • The ending.

Really amazing work! This is really a great showcase for Pulp and what's possible with it.

Please make more games :slight_smile:

3 Likes
76

Thank you so much for playing, @Nic !

I'm glad you liked it, and noticed those things AND i appreciate you took the time to tell me!

:playdate_proud:

1 Like
77

cover40

SOOooooo - I've decided to put EYELAND up on ITCH.IO. Even though I still haven't been able to test it on the device myself - (still waiting here "patiently" in group 2) A few people here in the forum have been able to play it on the device and from the reports that I've heard, and the recent edits/tweaks I've made, I figure :crossed_fingers: it's close enough to post. version 1

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE HERE!!!!

for being inspiring and smart and helpful and for testing and everything else..

AND ESPECIALLY TO THE PLAYDATE and PULP PEOPLE

that made this awesome programming environment / tool that became an obsession for a few months.

>> LINK to EYELAND on ITCH <<

PS - I can't wait for my device to arrive so I can buy/play all y'all's games!

6 Likes
78

Hey! Just chiming in to add that I was also able to play it on my device this last week and was able to get through without any noticeable issues whatsoever -- glad you've got it up on Itch.io! Just purchased it as well, hope you get lots of support there. Thanks for the fun and for an inspiring example of a first game in Pulp.

1 Like
79

@hdensmore

thank you so much Harrison for being a TESTER and a CUSTOMER! This whole process has been a really fun experience!

81

Hi,

Wow! What a game :clap: really striking and fun. Played it through twice now.

I’m currently making my first playdate game. Complete novice. Getting a hang of the coding but it’s still tricky. Can I ask, did you have a line of code you used to disable player controls while a tile played an animation loop? Then presumably something to switch the tile out once the loop had finished and restore movement? Have tried a few times but cannot get it to work.

Any help would be much appreciated!

1 Like
82

I am not the OP but I would try this:

ignore
play "animation" then
    swap "new tile"
    listen
end
2 Likes
83

@gummipferd
Yep, that's pretty much it! -

a strange thing about ignore and listen is that they are accumulative -
which is to say if you accidentally have 2 "ignores" you will need 2 "listens" to regain control.

i'm not sure why that is, it makes no sense with a strictly binary ON or OFF function.

--

also - thanks! i'm glad you liked the game!

84

also - i assume you are the "GEO" that commented on my itch page about cut scenes. you may have figured it out by now, it's pretty simple.

my coding skills are pretty basic so there might be better ways to do what i describe here. the cutscene is just another room. your player exits to the cutscene room, i use "hide" to keep the player from being drawn in that room as the animation of that room/scene plays-out. when that's done, the player is then sent to the next room where "hide" is disabled -- you continue the game. that's it. in some cases there may be a few rooms for a single cutscene.

NOTE - hide can only be called from the Player’s draw event, which means you have to set up something in your player's script like this:

on draw do
if hideme==1 then
hide
end

then you would use hideme = 1 and hideme = 0 to trigger that draw event to toggle your player's visibility

i hope this makes sense - like i said, i'm new to this as well :slight_smile:

85

Ah, thank you so much! Hoping I can allocate this to specific tiles and have a kind of cutscene play out while the player is disabled. Appreciate the help

1 Like
86

This is excellent, thank you. Seems so obvious but never had that lightbulb moment.

Looking forward to seeing what I can do with this now.

I really did enjoy EYELAND. Are you working on anything new?