Small Ponds
A downloadable game for Windows
Arvo Pond is a renowned jewel thief who happens to be a frog. Help him steal 9 diamonds from various locations around the world in SMALL PONDS, a puzzle-platformer for PC. Pick up and toss objects, trigger various buttons and mechanisms, and avoid traps and obstacles in your quest to 'liberate' diamonds from their current owners.
Originally commissioned for Indiepocalypse 72.
Even though I've made many games before, this is my first serious attempt at making a "real" platformer game. I'm pretty happy with the scope of the game, and the various interactions between the mechanics, but I think there's room for improvement with the game physics and the level design. I want to make more platformers in the future so I can improve my skills.
Controls
- Up/down to change menu selection, space to select items, ESC to go back, left/right to change options
- Left/right to move, space/Z to jump, X to run
- Down + C to pick up items, C to throw items, Down + C to put down held item
- Up to enter doors
- ESC to pause game
- R to restart from checkpoint if you get stuck
- F or F11 to toggle fullscreen
Even though the game is for Windows, it's just a simple SDL application, so it should run fine on other platforms using something like Wine. I may publish real versions for other platforms soon.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Each stage was incredibly fun because the sprites, the music, and even the direction of the gimmicks were all different every time.
You wrote that this was your first serious platformer, but this is definitely one of my favorite games.
Especially in the later stages, I could feel that you’d grown more accustomed to building levels while I was playing.
One thing I noticed was that using C + down to pick up items felt a bit confusing, and the waiting time for the moving platforms that go up and down was a little long.
My favorite stages were the Pyramid and Heaven, meow! (=^･ω･^=)
I also recorded some gameplay footage, but it was captured from an older version.
Hooray! Thank you for playing, I’m so glad you enjoyed it!
And yeah, I fixed that issue in the factory level. Sorry about that. 😵💫
I noticed another game-breaking bug:
Thank you for letting me know! I’ve uploaded a fix in the newest version (changing the map file).
Very nice puzzle platformer!
I noticed a bug. The bomb is sometimes invisible.
Hmm, I’ll investigate!
This game is written in a new engine, so there are probably many bugs I didn’t catch in testing 😅
ooooh, platformer! That's interesting! (Speaking as someone who isn't always great about stepping outside his creative comfort zone, such as it is.)
I did hit a bug while in the Tomb of the King, while trying to reach the secret that's visible from the entrance: I must have landed weirdly or moved too quickly, and now my frog is shapeshifting. When I stand still it cycles through sign, diamond, fire, nothing; when I move, it cycles through gray disk, blue disk, key, slime; when I jump, it's arrow, and then I think something else but I land before I can tell. (Restarting from the beginning fixes it, though, well, now I'm at the beginning...)
Huh! I think I know why that type of bug occurs, but I thought I had successfully squashed it. What happens is that the frog’s texture gets messed up and assigned to the wrong set of images, but the animation data is preserved, so it looks very funny. I’ll take a look, thanks!
edit: I fixed this bug! Thanks for reporting it! The trigger for the bug was that you had to die a lot of times in a map that contains bows and arrows.