I am working on a 2d platformer and I am interested in some of your opinions. I'm currious what features you like when you play one, and what features you don't like? Do you have any ideas that you think you would like in a plaformer that you havn't seen before? I really want to make this unique. I have no desire to make another mario brothers or sonic clone so I thought I would see what you guys thought. I have some ideas I'm already going to go with but the more ideas the better. Thanks

Perhaps you can tell us about your ideas? When we don't know what you have in mind, it's pretty hard to give specific feedback. :)

I quite like:

- A strong graphic theme (the same across all art, be it cartoony, 'chunky vector', 3d render...
- 2D physics system with links to gameplay (rope bridges etc)
- Particle effects! (water, fire, gas)
- Deformable terrain!
- Powerups, cool weapons
- Vivid colours

But most importantly: 10 seconds of fun. The concept goes as follows, if you can have an extremely fun 10 seconds... ie get the base actions fun then the rest of the game should be quite good. Platformers are quite often action games, so you need to get the action part working right.

A few relatively unknown platformers that are cool:
Facewound
Liero
Little Fighter 2

Co-op play.

I want to see something that I haven't thought of before. Because I've played out all the things I've thought of in my mind already, and I'm working on implementing the ones that I liked best. :)

I'd just recommend thinking over the platformer games you've played, and consider for each one what you liked and didn't like. Consider if there's a different way of accomplishing things, and think about its ramifications. At first blush this sounds like I'm advising you to just follow in the footsteps of previous platforming developers, but just thinking about the facets of these games will get you into the right mood to come up with new ideas. Brainstorm for a bit and see if you can't come up with something on your own that sounds fun.

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Original post by shuma-gorath Co-op play.

Seconded, this isn't available in nearly enough games and is something that could really make a game stand out a bit when done right. That means it needs to be co-op play where it actually matters that there's two players, not just another player jambed into the single-player game.

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Original post by Kazgoroth Quote: Original post by shuma-gorath Co-op play. Seconded, this isn't available in nearly enough games and is something that could really make a game stand out a bit when done right. That means it needs to be co-op play where it actually matters that there's two players, not just another player jambed into the single-player game.

It's been a while since I've played it, but Knuckles' Chaotix involved 2 players, who were connected by some kind of elastic band. The game was pretty fun and you could do some nice tricks with the elastic connection between the two players.

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Posted by umbrae - A strong graphic theme (the same across all art, be it cartoony, 'chunky vector', 3d render... - 2D physics system with links to gameplay (rope bridges etc) - Particle effects! (water, fire, gas) - Deformable terrain! - Powerups, cool weapons - Vivid colours

i concur.
i don't play a lot of platformers, but deformable terrain (as in, "blowupable", i believe) is something i don't see very often in games.
some other things i would like to see in all games are crisp, un-uniform (such as cracks in cement, and rips in wallpaper, etc) background textures, secret items and levels, and of course, as umbrae pointed out, powerups and cool weapons.

Good characters. I've noticed that all of the best 2D platformers have really good character designs. It sounds kind of stupid but hear me out.

I've played this 2D platformer for the Saturn called "Astal" and while it's well-designed and sometimes entertaining the main character is horrendous. It's like this weird freaky furry thing with huge arms and tiny legs. I have no idea what it is and for some reason I end up disliking the game because of it. And although the game is competent it doesn't really stand out and doesn't help me ignore the awfulness of the main character.

On that same token I've played some pretty bad Mario games because..well..hey it's Mario. He's a strong character that can bring any game together.

Also while on the subject of Mario. My favorite levels in 2D platformers all had one thing in common: replayability. Super Mario World was well..the world to me back then and I've lost track of the number of times I've beaten every stage.

Each of the stages in the game had varying paths, some had different exits that lead to new levels, some had completely optional and/or more difficult parts for the players to check out.

Other than that the best advice would probably be to keep things fresh through each stage. The Donkey Kong Country series was good in that regard because even when you got to a stage that looked like another(Jungle, Underwater, factory, etc) there would be some new concept to overcome. Like maybe in the first factory stage there were conveyor belts but in the next factory stage you'll have moving platforms and so on and so forth.

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Original post by Kazgoroth Quote: Original post by shuma-gorath Co-op play. Seconded, this isn't available in nearly enough games and is something that could really make a game stand out a bit when done right. That means it needs to be co-op play where it actually matters that there's two players, not just another player jambed into the single-player game.

I believe "QFT" best sums it up. A great 2D platformer should run on a 3D engine for all the fun eye candy, but it must have co-op play. In fact, every game should have co-op play. Co-op play is the coolest thing ever in a game, but I must say that I prefer standard co-op: nothing is specifically changed gameplay-wise for multiple players (aside from things like the number of powerups etc.) and you can just platform all you want. This is one of the reasons Halo was so successful - co-op. People underestimate how much fun it can be to do something with a friend. If you want, incorporate a specific co-op gametype, but don't water down the gameplay to support multiple players only in a specific "co-op mode."