Progger by Andrej Karpathy and Daniel Lister

Categories are rated from 1 (excellent) to 7 (poor).

Sound and Music: 7

• Why bother with a title screen sound effect? Could have put that time towards finding other in-game sound effects.
• Why not multiple boing sound effects? If you can only find one decent boing, at least vary the frequency.
• A song that matched the boingy gameplay would really improve this game.
• I really want to steal the song from Immunity and play it here.

Graphics and Art: 5

• Effort was put into the frog, the planets and the title screen.
• The black background, while technically accurate, really makes the game bleak.
• Simply having a giant backdrop of stars would have added a LOT, without affecting the gameplay.
• I wish the frog changed expression when you jumped (just 1 frame of animation).
• The cartoony frog didn’t really mesh with the realistic graphics. Why not a realistic frog, or cartoony everything else?
• Aside from the title screen, the graphics lacked polish. i.e. Planets with shadows could have been 2 bitmaps - a full rotating planet bitmap with a black shadow bitmap on top that way shadow wouldn’t rotate with the planet.

Adherence to Theme: 3

• You need to jump, so using a frog makes sense.
• If you zoomed out enough, the frog would appear in profiel on the planet, so it seems to make sense.
• Potatoes are small enough, relative to the planets, that it’s possible they’d be orbitting.
• I felt it made sense that I was only able to tongue potatoes (and not planets), probably because they’re edible.
• I’m glad the makers didn’t try to explain anything, because you can’t explain why these things fit together, they just kinda new.
• I would be hard pressed to come up with a better theme for this gameplay. i.e. Lillypads wouldn’t work.

Originality and Creativity: 3

• I’ve played planet jumping Flash games similar to this, but the tongue / grappling hook mechanic is a welcome new twist.
• The tongue felt like a tongue. When it got stretched by the potatoe, it looked like it hurt.
• Liked the freedom of the game. Felt like I could sovle things in ways the designers didn’t expect (which is awesome)
• Liked the risk/reward idea. Should I go for the big risky jump (like a hero), or several small jumps (like a putz).
• Really liked jumping “over” large planets. i.e. From small planet on left to small planet on right. It made me laugh.

Technical Achievement: 3

• Gravity from multiple sources. Momentum. A tongue with spring action. Rotations. Definitely tricky.

Overall: 2

• I beat 12 levels, and plan on finishing all 22.

Comments:

1. Loved the fact you saved my progress, gave me no penalty for retrying, made it quick to reset
2. Loved the fact you let me go to the next level no matter how many jumps it took me to solve the previous one.
3. Classy green dot touch when I went offscreen (to show me where I am).
4. Did NOT like the fact I had to use the right mouse to dettach my tongue - why not use left or space (since I can’t do anything with those while I’m swinging)
5. Did NOT like the fact my tongue would “snap” due to momentum. Ruined a lot of fun plans