It’s the 13th century in the Floating Isles of Isildor, and the king is rounding up baby dragonkin everywhere. All but the improbably heavy Harold (because nobody could figure out how to move him).
\nThrow Harold’s weight around in this silly platformer and rescue your friends from the king’s ugly, boring crates! Arrow keys or WASD to move, spacebar to jump.
\n","source":"elliot-nelson/js13k-2023-harold-is-heavy","stars":5,"post":"https://7tonshark.com/posts/making-of-js13k-2023-harold-is-heavy/","comments":[{"at":347257450,"author":"Sebastian Dorn","login":"sebadorn","gh":1146318,"url":"https://sebadorn.de","text":"Short and fun, with a lot of attention on the animations/effects. All that screen shake from jumping made me a little dizzy, though.
\nDoes not work correctly in Firefox: The screen is tiny. But everything is fine in Chromium.
\n","games":["The Treasure of the Nibelungs"]},{"at":347301390,"author":"Cliff Earl","login":"Antix-Development","gh":17822130,"text":"I know Harold is heavy and all but it would be nice to have the option of disabling screen shaking. Great wee game though :)
\nYour game worked just fine in FireFox on my Windows10 computer also :)
\n","games":["When Your Neighbors Are Mongols"]},{"at":347387385,"author":"Chris Glover","login":"madmaw","gh":1129626,"twitter":"mad_maw","text":"Very polished and a new mechanic for platforming as far as I am aware. Not so much on theme, but a nice game
\n","games":["Dragon Simulator"]},{"at":347405076,"author":"Almar Suarez","login":"wololoa","gh":10622012,"twitter":"repunkgame","text":"Harold’s heaviness made me a bit dizzy with that vertical screen shake, but overall it’s a cool game - graphics and music are very cool :)
\n(And I liked a lot the “speed run timer” at the end!)
\n","games":["Feast Night"]},{"at":347408618,"author":"Emre Guneyler","login":"eguneys","gh":3844764,"url":"https://eguneys.github.io/jsgames/","text":"thanks very innovative and amazing. difficulty is great too, glad i could see the endgame.
\n","games":["belly flop","blue retro"]},{"at":347429798,"author":"Rob Louie","login":"roblouie","gh":5448110,"url":"roblouie.com","twitter":"rob_louie","text":"I love the idea of crushing everything, the blood splatter is very satisfying. Also like the porcupine idea, forcing you to jump near them to flip them before smashing. Reminds of in Lion King where you roar at the porcupine. Usually platformers with heavy gravity are frustrating, but this one was still very well balanced and nice.
\nThe problem for me was that there’s no interpolation on the camera. With so much fast vertical movement, you really really need to add interpolation. This way Harold can jump up and down quickly all he wants, the camera will smoothly move in his direction, rather than directly in time with him.
\nAs it stands, it just kind of hurts my eyes stomach after playing too long. The screen shake doesn’t help this, but it’s really the camera that is the bigger culprit I believe. If this was adjusted, I’d love to play this more!
\nReally great idea and presentation though! A little camera tweak and I think it’s a wonderful game! The graphics, concept, mechanics, and level design are all really really great!
\n","games":["Upyri"]},{"at":347456916,"author":"Ryan Tyler","login":"tyler6699","gh":50468,"url":"https://carelesslabs.co.uk","text":"Really cute character and animations, was great to see your design process with getting the heaviness of the character!
\nLove to play a good platformer and this one is really well made.
\n","games":["Fort Knight"]},{"at":347479756,"author":"Benjamin Boyd Austin","login":"bbaustin","gh":18755168,"text":"Really fun! Physics felt good and heavy, and crushing dudes was very satisfying!
\nOne more thought on the camera (in case you ever make an expanded version and want to add some features). Would be cool if down arrow moved the camera down (so you could better plan your long jumps to push down unstable platforms).
\n","games":["Parry"]},{"at":347520089,"author":"Christian Staudte","login":"t4khosu","gh":28463194,"twitter":"t4khosu","text":"What a cute game! The whole idea around Harold’s weight and how it influences your surrounding is really genius. I am only a bit sad there are so few levels.
\n","games":["Cathar"]},{"at":347683203,"author":"Crystal Parker","login":"Vertfromage","gh":29644308,"url":"https://vertfromage.github.io","twitter":"vertfromageio","text":"I got stuck on the platform that was supposed to drop if jumped on from too high when I tried to crawl through the gap.
\n","games":["Journey to the East: Silk Road Adventure"]},{"at":347708499,"author":"Jasper Renow-Clarke","login":"picosonic","gh":26137750,"twitter":"femtosonic","text":"Enjoyed playing this game. The story, graphics and animations were great. I liked the variety of enemies. The music and sound effects sounded good and the level jump when you hit the ground was a nice touch.
\nThe platform spacings were very unforgiving at times meaning lots of time spent restarting levels.
\n","games":["Princess of Corinium"]},{"at":347788721,"author":"Mark Vasilkov","login":"mvasilkov","gh":140257,"url":"https://mvasilkov.animuchan.net","twitter":"mvasilkov","text":"Landing a crushing blow on an enemy is deliciously satisfying. Audio also slaps! In general, I dig the art style.
\nNice touch on hedgehogs that need to be flipped before they explode in a spectacle of blood and gore.
\nOf all js13k games, Harold would have benefited the most from gamepad support. Clearly a skill issue on my part, but controlling this living meteor as it drops menacingly from above onto a tiny floating block is hard.
\n","games":["Super Castle Game"]},{"at":347852528,"author":"Allen Schmidt","login":"cobrajs","gh":297238,"url":"https://cobrajs.itch.io","text":"Really great little platformer! Audio and graphics feel cohesive and complete, and I liked all the little extra touches. It was definitely pretty short, but I enjoyed it. Well done!
\n","games":["Pied Pipe Revolution"]},{"at":347876319,"author":"Roman Miniv","login":"RomanMiniv","gh":50551993,"text":"G’day!
\nI liked the animation of shaking under the weight of the dragon! I also liked the hints that inform the player about new things and keep the attention. The graphics also look good, as does the music. I was also pleasantly surprised that at the end of the game my progress was played back - cool!
\nAlthough the theme is questionable, it was fun to play, thanks!
\n","games":["Crusaders and their Journeys"]},{"at":348012616,"author":"Sami Heikkinen","login":"sz1521","gh":38181301,"text":"Very smooth platformer! Easy to pick up and get going. Once I managed to get stuck between ground and a moving platform (probably my own stupidity, but still). Looks and sounds really good. Especially I like how the hero really feels heavy.
\n","games":["Predecessors"]},{"at":348129298,"author":"Marcin Walczak","login":"wiserim","gh":18725798,"twitter":"wiserim_","text":"Fun little platformer.
\nThe ground bouncing on Harold’s impact is quite satisfying.\nIn game tutorial is also well welcomed.\nAlso the controls are really smooth.
\nAs others mentioned, adding an option to disable screen shake would be a good idea.
\nFor some reason on Firefox canvas is tiny (changing screen size and/or zooming in/out triggers canvas resize tho).
\n","games":["Petty kingdoms"]},{"typ":2,"at":348227610,"author":"Christer Kaitila","login":"McFunkypants","gh":2111957,"url":"http://www.mcfunkypants.com","text":"amazingly polished and cool! also really hard!! this game has tons of personality. nice work!
\n"},{"at":348376651,"author":"João Lopes","login":"lopis","gh":2715751,"url":"www.jlopes.dev","text":"The relation to the theme is a bit forced but this game is really cute and fun! The music and sfx are adorable. It’s too bad it’s so short! Hope you release more levels. The little details in the animations of the characters and platforms are quite polished and were not left unnoticed!
\nApart from the odd CSS issue in firefox, I think the game would look so much better if you didn’t change the height and width of the canvas element. There are many visible glitches in the pixel art, e.g. gaps between pixels, because the pixel art is not “real pixels” but up-scaled. If you fix that and make the screen movements a bit softer, the game would look instantly better.
\n","games":["Market Street Tycoon"]},{"at":348614730,"author":"Adrien Guéret","login":"adrien-gueret","gh":1508585,"twitter":"AdrienGueret","text":"A nice game with a lot of details in animation. The “heavy” behavior of the character is a nice touch and provide some nice gameplay ideas.\nI unfortunately stucked myself below a platform without being able to reset the level, so I had to reload the whole game and my progress was not saved :’(
\nDespite this point, I really like this game, well done :)
\n","games":["Number Knight"]},{"typ":2,"at":348713708,"author":"Joep van Duinen","url":"https://poki.com","twitter":"joepvduinen","text":"What a great game! although I understand you want the game to be challenging I would have probably allowed for a double jump to make it a bit more forgiving in terms of game plays.
\nVery cool art style and storyline, I would definitely share this with my friends, 10 out of 10!
\n"},{"typ":2,"at":348784310,"author":"Tom Harris","login":"tomhcrazy","gh":128033392,"text":"This was a really fun game with nice visuals and music!
\n"}],"results":{"theme":{"rank":116,"min":1.08,"score":2.5,"max":4.38},"innovation":{"rank":66,"min":1.12,"score":2.87,"max":4.43},"gameplay":{"rank":11,"min":1.24,"score":3.83,"max":4.34},"graphics":{"rank":13,"min":1.21,"score":4.2,"max":4.73},"audio":{"rank":5,"min":1,"score":4,"max":4.32},"controls":{"rank":9,"min":1.29,"score":3.87,"max":4.23},"primary":{"rank":17,"min":7.57,"score":21.27,"max":24.7},"label":"Overall"}}