Jess' Cool Forum

That's right, I am not dead yet. I got really discouraged while working on my last project, not from a lack of progress but rather the sordid state of the wider game industry. So I stepped away from making games for a while. But as it turns out I am too delusional to stop, and I've decided to say "fuck it, we ball".

So my current game in progress is Project Petunia. A 2D platformer that trades in the more advanced, weighty movement of my last game for a dedicated powerup system where players can choose from a variety of different options in each level. I still want to keep to the simple "make a game that's just fun" mentality that was driving my last game forward, so my focus on this game has just been making it feel good to play.

I've got a playable demo of the game out currently, on which I've been trying to gather as much feedback as possible. Check it out on Itch.Io: https://zinniagames.itch.io/project-petunia

Work continues as it does.

I am working on getting more platforming gimmicks into the game, here are some of the more fun ideas I've been having recently.

I am also working on leveling out the powerup's complexity difference. Every powerup will have two abilities or effects for the player. In the case of the already powerful Glide powerup, I've decided to make it also augment the player's Pounce ability with a much larger hitbox. It's not a huge change, but gliding is already a very strong ability to have in a platformer.

nice! we've been meaning to give this a go but keep forgetting

Jess wrote: ↑Sat Sep 21, 2024 4:29 pm

nice! we've been meaning to give this a go but keep forgetting

Don't worry I am patient, whenever y'all wanna get around to it is fine by me.

Got a new blog post relating to working on polish for Project Petunia: https://zinniagames.com/polish-and-problems/

I'd put the text and images here, but the attachment limit on this forum is unfortunately just a bit too strict for how bad GIFs end up being in terms of space efficiency.

Decided to try something new for blogging about game projects in general, and that is a weekly update series.

Basically every Friday I want to try and talk about any recent work I've done for Project Petunia.

The first of these has just gone up: https://zinniagames.com/the-friday-fill ... ugged-out/

This post goes over more bug fixes, as well as new levels and enemies that are being added to the game.

Got the second weekly blog post up: https://zinniagames.com/the-friday-tidi ... he-barrel/

This post goes into some detail on the character design of Project Petunia's main villain.

Another week, another post: https://zinniagames.com/the-friday-tidi ... ble-skill/

This post goes into some of my considerations regarding game design for Project Petunia.

A pretty short post for this week: https://zinniagames.com/the-friday-tidi ... ick-walls/

I'm stuck working on character design, and not being very good at it.

Finally doing work on the game itself again. https://zinniagames.com/the-friday-tidi ... sh-hazard/

Not a massive post, but I do got some things to report regarding one of the levels that will be in Demo 2