Nosey Joe first playable demo

baardbi

Well-known member
UPDATE: Nosey Joe is changing it's name to Nosey Jones (or JoNES is you will ;-) ).

Here is the latest version of the demo. It doesn't contain a whole lot in terms of new levels or enemies, but most of the bugs from the first demo are fixed, and there are some new graphical changes as well as some minor tweaks on the level design. One of the big changes is related to the boss...

I would like to get feedback if you find bugs or have any thoughts about the game so far. One thing you don't have to comment on is the HUD. I know it's kind of a mess :lol:

Enjoy a more playable version of the new and improved tutorial level of Nosey Jones:

http://baardbi.ddns.net/games/noseyjones_demo12022020.nes

PS! The next demo I'm going to publish will contain cutscenes that will explain the story.

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noseyjoecover.jpg


http://baardbi.ddns.net/games/noseyjoe_demo01022020.nes

Here is the first playable demo of Nosey Joe. It has a TON of bugs and the game over screen doesn't work right, but you should be able to complete the first level (including the boss).

I know about the following bugs and incomplete features:

- Player bullet sometimes disappears or will not come out of the gun :lol:
- Music stops when you lose a life
- Health pickups doesn't work
- Sometimes you don't go to the next screen after defeating the level boss
- The energy counter for the boss doesn't work quite right
- Game Over screen is not quite functional
- One crate "glitches out" after text box
- Score in HUD sometimes show a blank as the last number

There are also a few other minor bugs or features that needs to be addressed.

Enjoy this first demo of Nosey Joe.
 

Dirk

Member
Hi! Indeed I couldn't move on to the next screen after the level boss. I only wanted to mention one thing... the switches look a bit "suggestive" XD
Sorry, maybe I'm just in a juvenile mindset at the moment.
 

red moon

Member
it’s great to get a chance to play what you have so far, I really enjoyed the intro song and the atmosphere you created for the industrial area. I thought the walk cycle was really clean as well. I know you still have things to fix and add and I will play through updated versions as they pop up. I did end up with duplicates of myself each time I died...

As far as switch placement you may want to add a sign to show that you can go inside the buildings. Well done so far!
 

baardbi

Well-known member
Thanks for the kind words and tips. I have to point out that I'm using tutorial music made by Patricio Pereira for the time being. I can't take credit for that 😊
 

SciNEStist

Well-known member
You have a clean and fun cartoony art style that I enjoy seeing. The downward slope to the bullets is something that a more games should employ IMO. A jump sound effect would be a good addition.
 

baardbi

Well-known member
Glad you enjoyed the demo SciNEStist :) Thanks for the tip about a jumping sound. I will experiment with something that sounds good and doesn't become annoying.
 

Dirk

Member
There was one room where I couldn't avoid getting hurt by a rat. The rat starts on a platform above the player and keeps dropping down until it's on the lowest floor. When the player is above the rat he can't shoot the rat, because of the trajectory of the bullets and the player can't jump over the rat.
 

baardbi

Well-known member
Dirk: Yes. I think I know what you're talking about. I'm currently looking at stuff like that. I also know that there are screens where I need to place monster barriers at the edges of the screen, so that you don't immediately get hit if you need to backtrack. Thanks for the feedback though :)
 

Slime Stack

New member
Hello, baardbi, thanks for posting the first demo of Nosey Joe! I just got done playing through it and have some thoughts I'd like to share with you about the game.

The graphics looks great! The human characters look like your drawings of them that you posted in the first post. They kind of have a Popeye type of feel. I was really impressed with the bird animation as it was flying away. It was really elegant. All of the graphics looked great together. It felt like you were on a wharf or the docks somewhere, searching for something. It was nice how Nosey Joe had a dark blue outline around him so he didn't disappear into the background of the water, which was the same color as his clothes.

The music, as stated above, fit really well. I think you should keep it in this game. I noticed that when I died the music stopped playing, but when I died again it started playing again. That's something that you might want to check into.

Having the bullets drop the farther they go is an interesting mechanic. It almost feels like he's tossing bean bags or something. It makes it so that you can shoot enemies that are lower than you, or straight in front of you. So having those screens where there are some boxes to get higher on are a good level design choice. I noticed that if you press down, the gun disappears, but you can still shoot bullets like normal. Was that intentional?

The boss battle felt like a good first level boss battle. It was more challenging than the rest of the stage, but not too challenging. I only died twice on it before I figured it out. There was a weird behavior on the boss, when he had 3 hit points left, the whole screen slowed down for a second, and then his death animation triggered. When this happened the first time I lost control because of it and fell on the spikes. This might be something to check out I'm sure you can iron that out soon.

One part that seemed like a bit of a large difficulty spike was the room where you have to jump over a pit of spikes. It's the room where you have to perform a perfect jump to get across the pit that is your whole jump arch. I'm not against having difficult jumps like this in games, but for the first level you might want to lead into it a bit more. Like, maybe make the spike pit one tile less so there's a little wiggle room to land that jump. Just a thought, nothing you have to change, just giving you my perspective as a player.

Of course, I noticed the game over glitch where a Nosey Joe sprite falls into every screen that you progress through. I'm sure you're aware of it. I thought, if you could figure out what it is, that might be a fun gameplay mechanic in the game. Like a part of the game where some items randomly fall in the screen and you have to retrieve them? I don't know, something good could come out of it.

Oh yeah, I did notice one glitch on the score counter. Everytime you kill a baddie your score points go up by one, but when you enter a new screen, that number disappears and it looks like you have a score of 0. But when you kill an enemy again that your score counter goes up once more to the correct number. Weird, I'm not sure how that is happening, but just thought you should know.

One last thing that I'm curious about is the story or the "why" of the game. Like, I'm wondering who those goons are, and why I have to flip the suggestive looking switches in the rooms. And who in the heck is that boss at the end throwing boxes at me? I keep trying to come up with a story for that, and it feels so much like Hammerin' Harry to me, where you have to get through a construction site of bad construction workers. I'm sure this is something that can be addressed in a manual, or a start up screen, but it's got me interested in what your idea for the story is.

Keep up the good work, I'm looking forward to playing the next build.
 

baardbi

Well-known member
Slime Stack: Thank you very much for some awesome feedback. I was actually aware of most of the issues you address, but until now I didn't know how to fix most of them. I have spent the last week working hard on bug fixing and improvements. I had a big breakthrough today, so many of these problems are fixed. I also appreciate very much the feedback on level design. As you correctly guessed this is sort of a tutorial level, and I agree with you. The pixel perfect jump is a bit harsh for the first stage. And by the way, I'll use this opportunity to announce that Nosey Joe is changing name to Nosey JoNES :)
 
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