v2 update! I uploaded a new build of the game. You can follow that same link in the original post to play it.

The biggest change is that enemies now respawn in the Prairie world. My plan is to continue doing this throughout the game, but I wanted to get some opinions on how it works early on. I'm guessing this will make the game a bit harder. I would love to hear your thoughts on the difficulty, because it's a challenge to gain perspective on that aspect of the game. (When you've been working on something for a while, it's nearly impossible to view the project with fresh eyes).

Another change is that now, if you press the "v" button during normal gameplay, you can view the game's fps and version number.

There were a few other minor changes. In this version, dialogue screens appear and disappear more quickly. As per troublesum's suggestion, I'll probably add a "skip dialogue" option in the future. But for now, this small change makes reading text a little less tedious.

A quick question: has anyone made it past the Prairie levels yet? I worry that people's first impression of the game is underwhelming, and I would love to address any issues that are preventing players from progressing to the other worlds.

As always, thanks so much for playing!

Thanks!

Thanks for playing, y'all!

Yes, you can stand on top of the majority of the game's enemies. Some will continue to hurt you (like the spikey fellows), but others will just go about their business.

It does get kind of monotonous whenever you die. I feel a bit silly for not realizing that before now. I think today I'll sit down and try to come up with some sort of checkpoint system, or dynamic enemy respawning, or maybe some combination of the two. In any case, it's slightly absurd to run back through an empty level.

Thanks for your comments! It's super helpful to get some perspective on this project.

OK, I've got a temporary fix for the loading issue. Now there's an image, instead of just a black screen while the Javascript is loading. Maybe tomorrow I'll come up with an animation I can use, so it looks a little more proactive.

Thank you kindly!

Thanks for playing!

The loading time is something that concerns me quite a bit. Too much dang code in this game. But yeah, I need to figure out a way to let people know it's loading, even before the progress bar shows up.

I've thought maybe it would be better to have the enemies respawn whenever you die. Otherwise, you're probably right: not much reason to walk back through an empty level.

Again, thanks for playing, and thanks for your suggestions.

[update] The open beta is finished!

Play Rebound here:

http://micahjones.info/rebound

Howdy! My name is Micah. In 2011, I started working on a retro platformer in Construct 2. And now it's finished!

The game is called Rebound. It's set in a (cheerfully) post-apocalyptic future, where self-replicating nanomachines have devoured the entire planet. You play as a reluctant maintenance robot, sent planetside to investigate strange readings and collect data. Will you be able to find you way back home?

The game explores a single mechanic: use a ground-stomping maneuver to disassemble your enemies and bounce up high.

Here's a trailer:

http://youtu.be/kHrWBaM7Mb4

Howdy! I wanted to do something similar with my game, but I couldn't find an event to change bounded/unbounded scrolling settings in-game.

My solution was to set every layout to "unbounded scrolling", and then change my camera behaviors so they only followed my sprite's position if it was within a certain area. For example, if your game's window size is 400 pixels wide, you make it so that the camera follows your sprite's X if it is greater than or equal to 200 and less than or equal to (LayoutWidth - 200).

Then you build your level a little beyond the borders of the layout's actual dimensions. That way, you'll only see that little bit of extra level if the camera shakes while its near the edges of the layout. But the camera won't scroll that far otherwise.

It might not be the simplest solution, but it worked for me.

It helped me. Thanks!

This is a lot of fun. Simple, but interesting.

Modularity sounds pretty cool. However, there's no question for me: I would LOVE a debug menu. I've been working on a larger project in C2 for almost two years now. There are a lot of variables to keep track of, and I feel like I waste a lot of time assigning variables to text boxes. Continuous preview has helped with that, a little. But a fully functional debug menu, like the one in Construct Classic, would make the whole process so much more efficient.

I heard about it from Richard Perrin's talk on how to get started in game design.

you can make video games