Tortuga: Journey To Isla

I think this is an interesting game with a good amount of replayability, there's a determination to get to the end, but I think it would be better if you could also move left and right and the jump wasn't quite as intense as it was - but these are just small issues which shouldn't take much to resolve, that aside it's a good concept and a good entry - the music was a nice bop as well! :)

Cool game! I like how your progress is recorded in the form of all the island pieces on your back-- giving the player a visual way to track their progress is a great way to encourage them to keep playing. I also really like the day and night feature-- While it's completely unnecessary, little details like that really make it clear someone cared about the game when they made it.

As for things that could be improved-- it would be nice if the game was more zoomed out. Sometimes I felt like I didn't have enough time to properly react. Also, while the arrow keys worked great, with WASD, you can't dive.

Overall, nice take on an endless runner. Good job!

Lovely! A nice challenge and a fun interpretation of the theme. The turtle's sprite is very sympathetic!

The controls could feel more responsive if you could vary your jump height by holding the jump button. Maybe even be able to move left and right a bit! The hitboxes were a bit bigger than you'd expect, too. I would differentiate the "good" and "bad" objects a bit more clearly so it's intuitive what is what - maybe with distinct coloring or something.

A fun entry, good job! We played this with dosto on the same computer alternating turns and my favorite part was seeing their dead turtle appear again where it died!

And the rim sat atop the back of four elephants, which were in turn carried by the great turtle A'Tuin...

Very interesting premise. The music is beyond funky, and I really like that you can see the shells of your previous attempts pass by if you manage to get further than them. You've managed to pack a lot of questions in a small space and I'm interested in this turtle-centric world.

I think that the eggs would have benefitted from having an outline, since their white color against a bright blue sky didn't have a lot of contrast, and some sound effects when taking damage and collecting things would have been a good addition. But overall this seems pretty feature complete, there's a full game loop with enough variety to keep it interesting as you go.

It could use some polish, but not bad!

One thing, my turtle seems a bit broken. Isn't he supposed to dive underwater when i hold the "S" key? he just does a little bounce and doesn't do much, so that needs fixing.

Not bad! I think the music was my favorite part of the game. When things were going by on the screen, it kinda just seemed like they were blurry. So, I wasn't always sure of what they were until they were far into the screen. I got used to some things showing up, so I could tell those apart, but eggs and planes were a no go for me. haha I got three items with a distance of 0.31.

I like the concept but the art and execution seemed a bit lacking to me...particularly the GUI was a bit rough.

Wow, this one is oozing with personality! I love the Tortuga's swim animation (looks like it's bopping to the music), and the tiny details that accumulate on its shell (volcano, tiki, etc) are very well done and really make it look like an island. I also love that past Tortugas remain on subsequent playthroughs, to give a visual representation of how well you did previously.

The in-game lore is well thought-out and makes sense. Too bad ol' Torty has to die in the end. Why?! shakes fist to the heavens

That music, though! Holy crap. Normally I would say something about the lack of sound effects, but in this case, I think sounds would hurt the experience because they'd make it harder to hear the music. :D

The gameplay is challenging but fun, and I picked up on it fairly quickly. I beat the game after 4-5 attempts with a best distance of 0.61.

It might have been nice if there were some visual indicator of which items are good and which are bad during gameplay, as the fast pace sometimes makes it hard to determine what's coming until it's too late. Maybe good items could glow green, and bad items glow red?

All in all, great game with lots of charm and addictive gameplay. Great work!

Yay I have become Isla! It's kind of a sad story that you have to kill yourself at the end to become an island. D:

I found watching the shell grow with the island items you pick up very cool. It was also really fun to see the turtle jam its head to the music. I also really appreciated switching to night mode. It's a little detail that gives the game some personality too!

I managed to beat the game without swimming underwater. I could not figure out how to dive. Your game description mentioned clicking "s" to dive. It was only on another playthrough I realised it is actually down arrow I had to press to dive.

I found the size of the turtle a bit cumbersome to deal with. Once you figure it out, it wasn't too hard to dodge obstacles. However, on the earlier playthroughts, it felt frustrating to jump and belly flop on an obstacle. Maybe a better way to control hang time might be more satisfying. I'm a little torn because I get wanting to have reaction time more of a challenge but I felt frustrated in a way I normally don't when playing the google chrome offline dinosaur game. Once I realised I should wait for the object to get much closer though, it's something I was able to adapt to pretty well.

Collecting the items was fun and seeing them get added to the shell. I think it'd be cool to get to decide what kind of island you'd like to be and what kind of people you want to let on your shell. Maybe it gives different abilities depending on your choices. But that's just a really subjective more of my own personal taste coming in :P

The personality of the game was fun and contrasted with the poor turtle having to die to become inhabitable... think it elevated it overall. The piece of lore was interesting! The death thing is a neat way to flavour the end of an endless runner. I always felt bad in temple run because you can't actually escape the temple. Here, you do get some closure! Even if it is a bit sad, you still feel the story go on.

This was fun. I was able to beat it a couple of times with my best distance being 0.67. Took a few tries but got there in the end.

I had a few issues and noticed some very minor things.

Very minor things include:

• The 'L' not being capitalised in 'Careful' in the introduction. The rest of the word is capitalised but the 'L' isn't.

• The clouds on the title screen go over the title and sun/moon icon. Obviously just a depth issue with the title and although the clouds going over the sun/moon visually makes sense, since its something you can interact with it probably makes more sense to have it at the front.

• During gameplay the clouds dont spawn at the far right of the screen. Instead they spawn in about 3/4 of the way along the screen.

• The Tortuga's head is clipped off slightly in the animation.

Some bigger issues:

• The eggs are pretty easy to miss. They are coloured the same as the planes you need to avoid so often I found myself avoiding them by mistake. All the other items you have to collect stand out visually but the eggs dont really do that.

• The gameplay is rather fast which can make it difficult to react. However I did beat it twice so it is doable, but maybe could use some tweaking.

• The other islands that show up in gameplay confused me at first. I wasn't sure if they were something to collect or to avoid. Seems its neither. But sometimes they can cover obstacles which makes it look like they hurt you.

• Although you can swim underwater I never found a need to do so. Even when an Iceberg and Plane are heading towards you, you can still jump over both.

Despite these criticisms I had fun with the game. I do like the art on the Tortuga and the various items you collect. Seeing the people on it's back when you win was a nice touch too. The music is great. I loved it and found myself losing a few times as I was just enjoying the music. I do feel it could've used a few sound effects though. But overall it's a great entry.

The music was great and I really liked the look of the turtle. Overall really good experience.