itch.io

Fourth update for the alpha / prototype playtest.

New things

• Added a movement combo system - destroy bananas or dive to get "1" arrow (up to 7) that increases your speed for as long as you continue destroying things or moving. Still work-in-progress!
• Added a few more levels (and removed previous level 4 and 5). Most are WIP with placeholder assets and are greyboxed.
• Changed how to get medals - you have 3 tiers of speedrun to get instead of only 1 time to beat.
• Changed how the world progresses - you first have to beat the first 3 levels to unlock the rest of the world. In the final game, I'll use the first 3 levels as introduction to the world's gimmicks. Then, the next 6 levels are going to be more challenging and pilling up on the world's mechanics. Finally, the 10th level is going to be boss, unlocked when all previous 9 levels have been beaten. The next world will unlock based on the amount of medals you earned.

 Things I want to revise for 0.5+

• I don't like how you aim the Cherry up and down, I feel like I often want to shoot up but it shoots left or right. I'll try to revise the way it's done.
• I want to add the intro cutscene and a bunch of dialogues at the start to introduce the world, the characters and the gimmicks.
• I want to get the level's total to 9 by the end of next week.
• I want to start working on a proper boss fight to finalize world 1
• Bug fix and improvements

The goal will be to nail down the loop by 0.6, and start working on a Steam page at 0.7!

Thanks again for the support!

Here's the 3rd update for the Alpha Prototype. I was a little bit sick last weekend and early this week, so I couldn't do everything I wanted, but it's still a pretty significant upgrade.

What's new in 0.3?

• New DIVE move - adds an horizontal boost. Diving has a cooldown but it resets if you wall jump, jump, bounce on something or use a power, so you can really chain it with multiple moves! It's not a dodge, so be careful if you dive into enemies and threats.

• New CHERRY attack - so here's the big improvement, I re-thought the cherry attack. You have crates in the level that you can destroy using your spin. When destroyed, you get a Cherry Juice Pouch (it will all be explained in the story, trust me!) that appears in the top-left of the HUD. You can stack up to 8 pouches. Press "A" (keyboard) or "Y" (controller) to use it while holding the direction you want the explosion to go to. An explosion that explodes a Neo Banana will explode perpendicular to it.
• Improved CLIMB - I tweaked the climb to be able to change side (left and right of the vines) and also I made it so it's a little less stiff when exiting and entering a climb state, especially when climbing down from a platform or reaching the top of the vine.
• Horizontal Speed - I tweaked a little bit how the character speeds up when spinning a banana, you get a small boost that you can keep until you do another move. Still work-in-progress, but the goal is to be able to keep that speed and do a combo by adding the speed of the dive on top of it!
• Added the gems to collect in the bottom-left of the HUD

What's next for 0.4+?

• Tweak the cherry power a little bit (add polish, better effects and a proper way to aim)
• Add 2 new powers :
  • Carrot Juice power = a ground pound++
  • Grape Juice power = a sort-of gun that shoots a small grape that turns an enemy or a banana into a jelly cube that you can bounce on
• Better level design - I want to redesign the 5 levels I already did + add 3 more - I want to make it more suitable to the current loop with the powers.
• Re-add the in-game options
• Make a small dialogue system to introduce the game when pressing "Play prototype" and a small cutscene when you're giving your cherry power to explain how to use it.
• More polish!!

Thank you everyone for your support. No matter if it's just 1 or 2 players this week, or a dozen, every feedbacks helps!!!

Hey! This is an update to improve the sequence of level and progression in the game. This alpha update aims to bring it closer to my final vision by having a level selector, objectives per level and a level-by-level gameplay. This is still pretty early in development, the concept and art will evolve, but this gives an idea of where I'm going for.

Here's everything that changed in Version 0.2

• No more going back to the exit to finish the level. The level ends with the final (8th) banana punched.
• You have 1 hp to complete the level instead of 3 hp. It encourages retries, tighter platforming and faster times. There's no Game Over, you can retry infinitely.
• On a death, you're now prompt to retry or select another level
• Add a quick retry shortcut when pressing SELECT on controller or R on keyboard
• It saves your best times locally for each level, plus it adds a Sum of Best for all levels combined in the Level Select screen.
• Remove the leaderboard for now - mainly because the levels are going to change every week, I'll reimplement it when it's more stable
• [PROTOTYPE] When completing a level, you're booted out of it instead of transitioning automatically to the next level. After the transition, you can see your level time and select another level from the pseudo-map. More inline with a SMB3 than an arcade game like Goliath Depot.
• [PROTOTYPE] You have 3 objectives per level : beat the level, beat it under a certain time, and beat it while collecting all gems.

What's next in Version 0.3+

• Adding a "How to play"
• Adding a "Alpha Disclaimer" when booting the game
• Adding a small dialogue when first opening the level selector to have story contexte
• Prototyping more movement options and combos
• Prototyping a more sustainable and fulfilling powerups system (cherry++)

Alpha Roadmap

Until I reach Beta, I will update the game every Friday afternoon.

• Version 0.1 - simply having something that exists and is playable (yay!)
• Version 0.2 - level & world lifecycle, progress and sequence
• Version 0.3 - movement
• Version 0.4 - powerups
• Version 0.5 - level design & enemy design
• Version 0.6 - beta version

Thank you! I appreciate :) I wanted to keep it simple since it's just a very very early feedback-focus alpha version, but I'm glad you like it

Hey thanks for the feedback. I think I put "Jump" has the skip for the loading when it says "W1. Mountains" but I realize it's not clear, so I just push a new web build where it automatically goes to the gameplay after 2 seconds if nothing is pressed, so it should be more intuitive :)

Hey everyone!
This is a very very early build of Neo Bananas and I'd like players to playtest it and provide feedbacks. The game (and the build uploaded here) will evolve. I will most likely upload new builds every few days and increment the numbered version, so keep an eye on that.

Regardless let me know what you think. Be detailed. Be explicit. Be respectful and keep in mind that this game is a long way from being over.

Write your feedbacks below.
If you don't have a itch.io account and want to give feedbacks, you can also do it via the official Discord server: https://discord.gg/Bk8RaXDhsx

Thank you very much!
- Dav (Vidvad)

Yo, good job avec la dernière update. Je vais me taper ça pendant mes vacances et un gros GG pour le développement du jeu en son entier. J'ai hâte de voir tes prochains projets!!

Yo this is nice! This reminds me of Rampage.
The feeling is good so far, keep it up!

This looks awesome! Super cool tool to have as a solo dev!

Do you plan on having a free demo available for people to test before buying?

Neat game, I liked it.
Minor issue: it would be nice to have controller options for keyboard. When using ASWD to move, it feels awkward to have Z to attack. It works fine with arrows though!

Very clever game!
Great twist with 2048 and I loved all the extra mechanics being introduced throughout the gameplay.
In the extra levels, I had to scratch my head a lot to find the solutions, it's a very well-thought game,
I'd love to see a longer version of this on Steam someday ;)
Great job on the jam submission!

Hey ! I'm usually streaming twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday morning 9am est) during the month at https://twitch.tv/supermegadav

Feel free to hang out. I'm using the Godot Engine and I'm building an early 80's arcade-inspired game. Not sure how I'm using the theme yet, but I'm focusing on the gameplay right now!

I did a 2-player run of this with my cousin and I had an amazing time. Everything was smooth and fun, we were very impressed by this game!
I wish there was a mini map to help know where we've been as we were lost a few times (but not for a long time and it wasn't frustrating. It's simply for helping backtracking since a lot of the environments look alike). It took close to an hour to beat it the first time !

I would gladly pay for a DX version on Steam/Itch with more levels, more enemies and bosses, more map designs and a randomize map mode :)

I'm a big fan of your games! Quest of Graal was insanly fun too, keep it up!

So nice!
Good job, this was fun to play Insane polish and quality for a 48 hours game

Neat concept, I love this. It wasn't too hard and it wasn't too easy (I struggle with a few puzzles). Congrats on the submission for GTMK!

Thanks a lot for playing!! :D

Merci beaucoup! :)
J'ai hâte de montrer une version plus proche de ce que j'ai en tête pour la version commerciale. J'ai comme but d'avoir un démo jouable cet été! Stay tuned :)

Thanks for playing!
I'm currently working on a bigger version of this with a store that is not only 1 screen and you can walk around fighting waves of sales people!

Hey thanks for playing!
Sorry for the late reply, I missed it somehow.

Yeah, it could be quite overwhelming especially near the end ! I'm glad you liked it
I'd love to revisit this small game and make it bigger with more levels :)

Thanks for playing!
The level design could use some tweaks for sure to make it less annoying, but for a jam game, I'm happy with it!

and yeah, I chose this music to make it less frustrating for the player haha

Good use of the rewind feature in your playthrough :D

Solid game, I really enjoyed playing!

That's a neat idea! I'm currently brainstorming on ideas to scale the game to multiple levels and different modes. I like this, it gives me ideas :)

Thanks for sharing!! Thanks for playing!!

I tried to do speedruns of the game and I had a blast. My goal was to break the 10 minute mark and I finally finish with a 9m02 when I started to memorize all puzzles and 1-shot all of them!

It was a lot of fun!

I challenge anyone to try to beat it, it's a cool way to support indie games and share that to the world :)
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1269484619

Really cool game! There were some tough puzzles! 

Oh my bad, I missed the information on the page!
Pretty cool! Good job again

Thanks a lot! Happy you liked it :)

Thanks for the in-depth feedbacks, it's very appreciated !

We learned from the previous jams that the difficulty needs to be right, since, like you said, we have so much games to play. When we hit a wall, we simply play something else!  But at the same time, it's fun for the more hardcore gamers.

Thanks again! I'm glad you liked it :)

Thank you! haha
I'm happy you enjoyed it :)

Thank you! I appreciate

Thanks man! I appreciate. Super happy you liked it :)

Haha! Thanks for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed :D

Thank you for playing!
Indeed, I didn't want to make it too powerful but I could rework what it does during the boss fights. I'll brainstorm on this. Thanks for the feedback!

I love the artstyle, it was super charming!

The character sprite and animation is super well done! I love the concept of Sofia spinning as she shoots bullets around her.

Adding a feedback when you hit an enemy could improve the feeling of impact (a few tricks like scaling/downscaling the sprite quickly, flashing white on impact or changing color quickly, screen shake, etc). That would help! The same apply to when the player gets hit.

Like others said, a health bar would help too!

Also, for bullet-hells, you want the hitbox of the player to be very clear since the screen fills with bullets. I wasn't sure which part of my character was the hitbox (the torso I think? because the head wasn't getting hit). Many incorporate the hitbox visually in the sprite for their characters to let the player know where it is! Just to keep in mind for this kind of game :) Food for thoughts!

Good submission overall, great job!

Oh also, I had another feedback. It would be cool to be able to play full screen. I clicked outside of the game a few time and it's pausing the game. Especially when you go fast. On your itch game page, I think you can click a checkbox to allow for full screen for HTML builds.

That was an awesome experience! Port that to mobile, I'd play like crazy!

My only feedback is that Level 13 was a bit frustrating because of the narrow corridors, I kept sticking to walls trying to go fast. Other than that I had a blast playing. Nice little animation at the end after you beat Level 15 :D

Nice and juicy game. This game shows that you don't need crazy graphics to be fun! GG on your game!

This is quite challenging! I was able to get to the 5th stage but somehow, I can't see the solution.
I'm a sucker for those kind of games, congrats, so far the demo is very attractive ;) The design is really charming despite its simplicity.

Gameplay-wise, the fact that once you grow, you can't go back makes every move important and I love that. Good thing we have an undo button. I know it's just a demo, but in the final game, I'd suggest to have a slower difficulty curve for the first few levels to ease the player in and make sure he understand everything he can do. For instance, I wasn't sure how properly to grow in different shape and already in the 3rd level, there was a big puzzle about it. Food for thoughts!

Otherwise, it's a very cool game. I'll try to beat it soon!

Congrats on a very interesting concept and I'll follow the development on Twitter for the full release!