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Jimmy Sticks
Help Jimmy Sticks survive through a day of boredom at school, where he must survive against historical foes such as the Goths in order to survive until school gets out.
Jimmy Sticks was written by Mike Maloney for Professor Perlin’s graduate games class.
AVERAGE RATING
/rating_on.png "1 Star")
/rating_half.png "4 Stars")
/rating_off.png "5 Stars")
(2 votes)
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The graphics style fits really well with the school theme. I like it a lot.
In terms of narrative I like how it has a very concrete context, but I think extending the narrative would help, like after you beat the Visigoths, you gain some of their skills, so your player is picking up these skills through his travels through history.
Some small things:
1. Holding “space” when the enemy walks into you kills them. The animation looked like the character was holding the shield up, so I wasn’t sure why they were dying at first.
2. The 300s levels are too long. There were 3-4 times when I waited 10+ seconds for another enemy to come on screen, and I wasn’t sure if it was a time limit (like I need to kill everyone within 300 s) or it was a countdown to the end of the level. Even if the length of the level is the same, I think a “kills to next level” counter would be better than a timer countdown, since one is a positive goal and the other negative (kill X enemies vs. don’t die in Y seconds).
3. I wasn’t sure about the two choices after the level finished. I clicked “go back to class” and it started a new level and I wasn’t patient enough to finish, but I don’t know what play hookie would have meant. If it was the same as “quit” that would be good to spell it out.
November 14, 2009 @ 11:15 pm
I have to admit I was not patient enough to wait out the entire level. After killing a few dozen of the bad guys, I tried to run off the screen hoping it was going to be a side scroller but I just lost my character.
Sometimes I would wait for a long time just for an enemy to appear.
I didn’t really get the narrative part of the game. I knew I should kill the bad guys, but that seemed to be about it. I guess when I died it told me that I was in Valhalla, but I didn’t really make any connection with the character.
Is there a way for me to feel invested in the character, besides counting his lives?
For a first-person shooter/striker game I was really wishing there was at least some sound.
I, too, did not understand the menu choices.
November 16, 2009 @ 1:04 pm
I liked the narrative a lot. “The boy is being taught some lesson, he instead is lost in his sketchbook world, killing Visigoths…”
Instead of levels, maybe you could have “Periods”, as in for History class, you are killing Visigoths, for Science class, you are making things react to make new stuff (say, you have to create a water molecule, you bring 2 Hydrogen molecule and an Oxygen molecule together), or for Math class you are adding / multiplying stuff in a fun way. Essentially, its a set of mini games.
Looking forward to seeing the next version.
November 17, 2009 @ 12:48 am
I think there can be improved about narrative parts, not just keep killing bad guys. Maybe if you killed 10 bad guys then one of your friends can be saved or something? Doing same thing in 300 seconds is a little bit boring.
November 17, 2009 @ 2:01 pm
i like the artwork. and i scored a perfect. not much more you can ask for in a game.
since the narrative is about a boy daydreaming in class, you could make the game a little more fluid and surreal (like in a real dream). for instance, the goths could turn into something else like civil war soldiers and your weapon could morph into a bayonet. from there you could morph into a congressman filibustering on the floor of the Senate. no need to have discrete levels — just keep morphing like in a real dream.
November 18, 2009 @ 5:29 am
The game was too easy because all you had to do was hold down the space bar. Seems reasonable to have to at least look in the direction of the oncoming goths to and move my sword in that direction. Would beeen nice to use my shield, and to jump and to have difference visigoths with different abilities… blah, blah, blah. I liked the graphics here a lot.
November 18, 2009 @ 4:50 pm