You Cannot Go Back! A little 5m dungeon adventure (feedback wanted)

Greetings all,

I have completed porting and updating my smartwatch game You Cannot Go Back to Playdate! More details on porting this C-project are over on this post: Porting 'You Cannot go Back' from Pebble to Playdate

You Cannot Go Back is a short adventure game designed to fill a spare five minutes. Can you successfully navigate all three levels of the dungeon? You will pass through chambers which will test your puzzle solving, your reflexes, and your ability to remember clues.

I don't have a device however, and before I consider posting the game more widely I thought that I would ask here if those of you who do have a device would be able to post some feedback on how the game runs? Some things I would like to know:

  • Can this build of the game maintain a constant 20 FPS on device?
    • What about in portrait mode?
    • What about in the corridor of blades, with the rotating sprites?
  • Is the game playable in landscape mode, or is the game-screen too small on the device without the x2 scaling from portrait mode?
  • Are the title card, launch image and launch sound all picked up by the system?

playdate

You Cannot Go Back v1 is built for the Playdate (& Linux simulator). This release candidate has the FPS counter enabled.

YouCannotGoBack_v1.pdx.zip (18.4 MB)

This is a MIT licensed open source project GitHub - timboe/YouCannotGoBack: Knightmare inspired dungeon exploration game for pebble watches

2 Likes
  • Can this build of the game maintain a constant 20 FPS on device? Yes, it seems to consistently run at a solid/stable 20fps.

    • What about in portrait mode? Yes, stable 20fps even with swapping back and forth between landscape/portrait.
    • What about in the corridor of blades, with the rotating sprites? I did not notice any significant slowdowns (or slowdowns at all really) on the few runs I did.
  • Is the game playable in landscape mode, or is the game-screen too small on the device without the x2 scaling from portrait mode? I personally find the landscape mode to be crisp and totally playable, the portrait mode is a nice focused screen option and id play either way depending on what I feel like or how I feel holding the playdate.

  • Are the title card, launch image and launch sound all picked up by the system?
    Title card: :white_check_mark:
    Launch image: From title card to game boot it only does a black fade in/out to the initial launch screen what is telling you to turn playdate to portrait mode or landscape (initial arrow selection area, first tile area before run)
    Launch sound: makes an error type sound so I'm assuming that's correct

Side note, the soundfx/music sound great and make the game feel very alive and fluid.

Hope this helps! This is a fun little game and I think I could easily get some mileage on this one with friends handing them my playdate to try it.

1 Like

Many thanks arised_death! That was super fast!

I'm very glad to hear that the FPS is stable and that the metadata got picked up - thanks for the report. It should play Freesound - "Jingle_Achievement_00.wav" by LittleRobotSoundFactory on launch - from your description I'm thinking that this all got picked up correctly by the system.

The launch audio only plays 2 quick beeps so its not using that entire audio clip you linked, so if its supposed to play that whole thing then I would say its pulling the audio but not playing it to completion. The only other thing that it may not be doing is pulling a launch image as it just fades into the start area screen.

Just trying to do my part since I got my playdate pretty early and want to help anyone I can plus I love tinkering with all these demos/prototypes. This one fits the playdate very well and it looks great so far!

The launch image or animation can be tested in the simulator if you put your game in the SDK/Games folder and use the Simulator home screen launcher.

On at least Mac and Linux you can also put aliases to a game in there. How to add games to Launcher in simulation - #5 by matt

4 Likes

Oh my gosh, @matt I had no idea there was a way to test the full game select / open flow in Simulator. This is amazing

1 Like

Yes - thanks @matt! That's really useful to know. Also @DavidMedin 's follow up comment on case sensitivity - though this looks to be resolved, I did not need to make the .pdx folder be lower case in order for it to work on 1.11.0 on linux.

So I can now try the launch from the simulator, here it loads so fast that it manages to play just the first two notes of the intro sound... I'll simply remove this.

Next... get it added to itch.

Thanks for the help here, the game is now released:

2 Likes

This is great! PD games often make me feel like I'm missing a manual... but with this one, figuring it out is part of the fun. Portrait orientation feels great—I want to see more games use that.

Among my favorite games so far!

1 Like

For people who are not so interesting in figuring things out :slight_smile: or who want to check if their deduction was correct, there is now a guide / walkthrough on You Cannot Go Back - Playdate Community Wiki

1 Like

Echoing praise - one of the few games I figured out as I went along, and loved every moment. One of my favorite games atm.

2 Likes