[Steam Early Access] Poi, a 3D Adventure Platformer

Awesome, a lot of fresh air from this title
I like the liberty feeling and the big world eploration sensation mixed with platformer.

 

Backed day one as promised! If I can, I'll try to bump it up even further sometime soon. The beta sure sounds tempting... Love the improvements you've made so far. Good luck!

 

If I could offer one bit of feedback... I think it would help to change the main picture of the Kickstarter page. I don't think it really represents the game very well, and honestly might turn people off before they even see what the game is. You have so many beautiful screenshots, pretty much any of them would work perfectly as an eye-catcher that makes people want to see more. Unfortunately, one piece of art is all it takes to lose a whole lot of potential traffic.

 

Hey Sully,

Thanks for your support and feedback! It's greatly appreciated.

You're right that a project image is really important and is the thing that needs to drive people to click on it. We like the simplicity of this one and how it showcases the character front and center, but yes, we agree there is so much we wish we could show people (but can only do so much with one image). Here's the one we had before we got the current one made:

 

Is there some hub to select the different maps areas ?
Did you use some treaming on these big or only culling and activating platform mechanims when the character is near enought ?

 

As the one who did this picture, I respectfully disagree.
Actually I think, showing a screenshot of the game itself isn't the best idea. It looks a bit lazy IMHO
The project image has a similar purpose like box art. It needs to convey what the game is about/or catch the people attentions, making them curious. It doesn't need to be a accurate representation of the gameplay itself.
I do find it catchy and you get the idea that this game is a platformer, with some roots to the classics. But yeah. A mans praise in his own mouth stinks


Just my two cents of course and I might be a bit biased

 

We've uploaded some video overviews of our two types of levels. Challenge levels are focused on precision platforming (and doing them as fast as you can!) and exploration levels are more about exploring every nook and cranny, finding collectables and collecting explorer medallions.

We also show off our co-op prototype in the last video! We think it could be a really fun addition to the game.

You can read more in our updates on Kickstarter.

 

Fair enough! Normally I would agree that a screenshot looks lazy, but Poi is a different case to me because it has so many unique visuals that catch my eye far more than character art, even if it is good character art. That's how I started following Poi all those months ago, just one screenshot is all it took to get me hooked. I think in this case it might be worth it. If, knowing nothing else about Poi, if I had to decide based off the character art if I wanted to see more, I might say no... but based off a screenshot like one of the two in the first post here? I'd be shoving people out of the way and foaming at the mouth to get more!

Of course, that may just be me, I can't guarantee the campaign would've been any more successful with it. But it's a thought, if you ever choose to re-launch...

 

Hey All, we're now available on Steam Early Access!

And here's our latest trailer.

 

Good job

How many months before the game gets out of early acccess ?

EDIT : I baught the game on Steam to support the game development , and this is really a great platforms with very responsive controls.

 

Congrats guys! Bought it and blazed through Cozy Canyon already. I don't want it to be over yet so I'll save the lava level for tomorrow.

[WARNING! Incoming long feedback!]

For the most part, everything's great and exactly how I imagined it playing. The platforming felt good, with double jumping, walljumping, and ledge grabbing allowing for a lot of fun movement through the level, and the exploration is a lot of fun. 3D platformers, collectathons specifically, are such a joy to me because it's just pure fun to see something in the distance and say, "I'm gonna go there", and use a bunch of acrobatics to do it -- so thank you for scratching that itch for me.

Other than the obvious stuff like some animations or textures that need polishing and some places that need sound effects, only a few things bugged me:

1. I'm not sure if it was my controller or what, but holding straight on the control stick seemed to make me move slightly towards the right instead of straight. (I do have a weird controller setup though, it's a Wii U Pro controller using a special adapter emulating a 360 controller... Normally it doesn't have any issues though.) I learned to adjust after a while but it messed me up now and then while jumping, or while walking across narrow ledges. One good example was the wooden log up in the tree in the junior explorer course that you had to use the tightrope to get to -- it was difficult to walk straight across that before I realized I was moving to the right.

2. In the first challenge course (currently #3 in the leaderboards!), sometimes my character refused to do full jumps while holding onto the ledge. It didn't seem to be a matter of how long I held the jump button or anything, sometimes he would just do half jumps that weren't high enough to grab the next block, sometimes multiple times in a row. When it happened multiple times I would intentionally hold down the button to see if that would fix it, but he kept on doing it. Needless to say that made me restart many times...

3. It was also a little annoying in the first challenge course how the positions of the block towers wouldn't reset when restarting, meaning sometimes I'd be plain out of luck for that run because I'd have to spend 5 seconds waiting for the next tower to move into place if it wasn't in an ideal spot when restarting.

4. Lastly, I love how you can simulate the Mario 64 long jump by rolling and jumping at the right time, but it was frustrating to try to do on small platforms when there was just barely not enough room, since if I tried to jump too early, I just wouldn't jump at all and roll off the ledge. I'd say keep the timing for the long jump how it is, but if I try to jump too early, it would be nice if I could interrupt the roll with a normal jump. At least that way I'd have a chance of recovering instead of a guaranteed fall.

Those are mostly minor complaints though, overall I've had a blast so far! Great work guys, the potential really shines through. I hope you get enough support from this to keep going with development, I'd love to see more.

 

@zenGarden Thanks for your support! Our initial plan is to have a full release sometime in the first half of 2016.

@SullyTheStrange Thanks for the detailed feedback and kind words! It's great to see a familiar username from all the way back in March. =)

1) I've tried to test with as many controllers as I can get my hands on (at least 6 different types) but I haven't run into that yet. Could be something on our end, so I'll keep an eye out for it.

2) I've seen this before and I think it's a subtle bug in our platforming code when doing jumps from the ledge grab state. Will try to take a look, but you're definitely right in that the jump height isn't consistent there. Grats on the leaderboard spot btw, I see you're still holding strong at #5! =P

3) We're going to reset the level state on restart to fix exactly this.

4) You're not the first person to bring this up, so I've added it to our ever-growing internal TODO list.

Good luck with Sneaky Ninja! I haven't been following you guys as closely as I'd like, so I have some catching up to do! =)

 

It must be your controller, i used a 360 controller and i could control the charcater with a total precision and response.

 

Isn't it too short , i already finished the two worlds fo the early access, the game would need at least 3 other worlds or more if you could.

Some question, i didn't seen any ennemies like some flying birds, or octopus shooting at you , are ennemies planned to increase the challenge ?

 

No problem, it's been my pleasure.

I got a chance to play the rest of the game and enjoyed it just as much. The lava level was a lot of fun to explore, and the challenge levels are a blast. I even made it my mission in the exploration stages to collect every single coin in the whole level, so I could appreciate every last nook and cranny. I'm sad that it's over now.

It's been a while since I played now but the only other issue I can remember having was not being able to interrupt the side flip and triple jump with a double jump, which would be nice. And maybe some camera issues in close quarters but I know you guys know about that.

Thanks! One day when we make the jump to 3D, we'll have to talk about a Poi/Sneaky Ninja crossover!

 

Why rushing the game, perhaps it would be better to launch it later and have a real platformer with ennemies ?
It feels very incomplete without Mario World 3D like ennemies.

 

Hey all,

We just posted a big update over on our Steam Early Access forums: http://steamcommunity.com/games/poi/announcements/detail/883079388281108170

Probably the biggest news is we now have enemies in the game! The talented @nipoco has been providing the models, rigs and animations and of course with mechanim, it's been super easy to get them in the game. We've been using Playmaker for basic AI control.







We also have been doing a UI overhaul. Still using NGUI since we are still on 4.6, but we hope to take the plunge and upgrade to 5 in the coming months. There seem to be a lot of new mechanim and lighting features we're eager to try out!

 

Nice work guys
Finally the game is becoming more alive and challenging with ennemies.
What shader do you use for ennemies models ?

 

Hey all,

It's been a while, but Poi is finally finished! We're leaving Steam Early Access on February 1st. Here's our launch trailer:

New website: http://www.poi-game.com
Steam Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/401810/

We're busy finishing up last minute bugs, but we've got hundreds of screenshots of our progress through the last 2.5 years that Pawl and I want to go through and post a kind of post-mortem / dev log thing. We think other indie devs might find it interesting!

 

Congrats on the release, guys! I already had the existing content 100%'d, so I didn't waste any time getting to the finale. It was more than I expected honestly, a fitting conclusion to a great adventure. Now to hunt down those new costumes...

 

I remember seeing this thread a loooong time ago and was really impressed by what you have achieved at the time, now I see you release your game 3 years after you started as an indie studio. Congrats and hope you have a successful launch.


PS: Bought your game

 

Looks good! I plan on buying it myself!