coverart by 'SSF 2025 Attendees'!
WELCOME, AGAIN!
Hello everypony! Welcome back to another exciting installment of Gappy Bi-Monthly! If you missed last month's installment check it out here (It's kinda important for this one...)
Hope you all are doing wonderful! for the students reading this I hope classes are going well, and for those who celebrate I hope that the Silksong release was everything you could have hoped and dreamed of! Congrats to Team Cherry for there release! I haven't even played hollow knight yet so in the far off future when I eventually get around to checking it out I hope it makes me smile smile smile!
In this installment we will, strangely enough, actually talk about something related to gameplay! What a concept! A blogpost on a games storepage talking about the game on said storefront! What will they think of next! Stuff relating to the game's 'Tab' economy and all it's related mechanics!
But before we show off some cool game stuff we have to talk about some cool irl stuff first! So lock in because this one is gonna be longgggggggg......
SHORT SHORT FEST 2025!
As I mentioned in the last post, Gappy had a small little demo booth set up at Short Short Fest 2025 at both the PA and MI events!
In the SSF Demo, it would select 1-of-7 random levels from a roulette for the player to run around in, a very neat concept that people seemed to like overall! although you may not see it in the video the demo would also record people's best times and high scores for a sense of competitiveness between play sessions. The only problem was that I selected a lot of mid-game levels that may have been a tad too hard for someone just picking it up a to try out…
from this, I think some people may have gotten the wrong idea about the games difficulty overall, the game isn’t hard like this from the get-go, your just getting plopped into a late-game stage because I thought it looked cool. My main thought-process was I wanted to show people cool locales and kinda assumed most people wouldn’t struggle very much with what I thought was some pretty bog-standard platforming knowledge. And I learned the hard way that I was in the wrong! Very weird assumption for me to make but whateves ig! Even with people's struggles, everyone really seemed to like it! Something I was really shocked by overall was people's absolute love for the game's art, It seemed like everyone was singing the praises on the pixel art and the NES-style graphics overall! Leaning into this retro style was something I personally liked but assumed most people would scoff at, I guess most of that is just coming from terminally online people because it seems like people generally are much more accepting of this! Or maybe I was just too intimidating, people don't wanna pick a fight with this ol' slab of muscle, i'm sure of it!
But even though many people were nice, lots of people had there fair criticism. Someone who played the game for quite a while and gave a lot of good feedback was the iconic, glowing, krinkles, probably most famous for his Breadman series and something else I can't think of off the top of my head... uh?.. idfk
He specifically wasn't a fan of the old knockback system. In the SSF & NG demo knockback worked very similarly to castlevania's, when you take a hit you lose all movement control until you hit the ground. In a specific auto-scroller level the only platform you had was a very small ski-lift platform which made getting hit by a specific enemy that chases a 1-hit KO essentially, which was not fun! He suggested making it work akin to smash bros, where getting hit would STILL play a animation that locks you from moving, but only temporarily so that you can adjust and save yourself with a double-jump or dive. So of course, the next time I had a chance to sit down and work, that's what I did! And I think it makes the game feel so much more fun!
And lots of other friendly faces got to play! And do you know what a lot of friendly faces got as a little prize for playing?..
CUSTOM PRINTED SHIRTS!
I stupidly didn't get very many pictures of them but I was given out hand-printed shirts as prizes! Along with stickers, zines, and little magnetic figurines! All made with love (and stickerapp too)
With the shirts specifically, they were all thrifted / donated shirts to go along with the environmentalism message of Gappy, keeping shirts and clothing out of landfills and making them into cool art! Almost all of them were gotten from Ohio Upcycle in Athens, so thank you to them for supplying the shirts! They do a lot of great stuff in the Athens community and they made a lot of nerds smile at SSF! So go give em' some love!
This segment is already going on long enough and we haven't even gotten to the main thing so I'm gonna wrap this up with some quickfire thanks! Thank you to Nick Senny for pushing to go to this event, Thank you to Lee Thompson for hosting this and having me! And last but certainly not least thank you to Owen for giving me a place to stay, help me run the booth and also buying me a bagel for breakfast the next morning and also casting a protection prayer over me before I left Philly, I truly believe I would have gotten into a 30 car pile-up if it wasn't for that.
One last thing! Shoutout to Popper and IndigoBluez, it was really nice to meet you fellers :o)
OKAY LET'S TALK ABOUT THE ACTUAL GAME NOW THANK YOU!!!
POP TABS!
Yes, I call them Pop tabs, I'm from the glorious midwest where we call 'carbonated drinks' Pop like true red-blooded American patriots!
But more importantly they are the main collectible of Gappy's adventure, a stand-in for coins since... well... someone is keeping all of them. I wonder who?...
Throughout levels you'll find the most common type of tabs, the grey ones. You'll find them in large stashes in hard to reach places, inside blocks, and as a soft guide on where to go in certain levels. As you go further and further on your adventure, they'll be less out in the open and more hidden away. So if you're not the curious type, spend em' wisely or start becoming a bit more adventurous.
For those who aren't afraid to snoop around or get there hands dirty you'll find them hiding in plain sight! Literally!
Dice blocks are placed throughout levels and do all sorts of neat things! When you hit them they'll fly into the air and upon landing can reveal colorful secret tabs (Still worth the same as a standard grey tab) along with platforms and other such things! Don't let this gif fool you though, some dice can be a lot more dastardly and spawn tabs in way more treacherous spots to get too! Or the dice itself can be suspended in hard to reach locations
Along with Dice Blocks, Bonus Bottles are found in every stage! Very hidden too, and when hopping into one of them they'll bring you to a bonus game! Not every bonus game rewards just tabs but a lot of them do! And this one specifically gets stressful! The more you play, the faster these blocks fall. But each time they land they grant 10 tabs which is quite the prize! In a later volume, I'll be showing off a bunch of these fun bonus games along with maybe some ones that are (so far) scraped!
TAB TRADE-INS
Once you collect some tabs, you can trade them in for useful items on the overworld map screen at Parallelogram Man's Shop!
Each item available at the shop in, descending order, is a different way to help players who want more involved help.
1Ups are just for those who want extra chances at the stage they are currently on.
Helper Blocks make extra platforms, trap enemies and cover up pits for those who may be struggling on trickery sections of a level.
The skipper ticket allows you to skip a level outright! If you think it's too hard and just can't seem to get it, just skip it! However . . . during the campaign you only have access to 3 skipper tickets! Once your out, your out! So don't be using them all up willy nilly!
Now something you might notice is that each item all costs the same, even though some items are more outright helpful than others. in most games, the more helpful items would be more expensive. However, I want players who are seeking help to have an equal chance to get the kind of help they are getting, and for easier ways of play to be expressed!
If a player is struggling with the game, the reality is that they probably don't have that many coins! 1Ups are the most basic form of help, they just allow you to keep trying! If a player were to actually need help, why make them spend more coins that'll be even harder for them to get? So, they're all equal amounts!
And in my mind this also doesn't cheapen the game experience, for the skilled players you either don't HAVE to spend your coins on the uber-helpful items and just keep spending them on 1UPS or nothing at all, although I'd recommend buying 1UPS as not only does the game get really hard during the end of the campaign, but if you're ballsy you can trade them in for stuff for only extreme players! But we'll save that for another day ;)
WAIT, LIVES? IN THIS ECONOMY?
YES, Gappy's Adventure DOES have a life system!
I feel like life systems have gotten extremely over-hated in the modern era. It's really a tragedy because for me I feel like lives can really up-the-stakes in a game and in turn make them really rewarding and fun! But it seems like most modern games have just kinda given up on making them an engaing mechanic you have to actually think and plan around, and are just kinda there because... we'll they've always beem there! So for most people, when they think about life systems they think of Coin-Op arcade games and the absolute stinkers of the 80s and 90s. It seems like for 99% of games, they either have no bearing on the gameplay whats-so-ever or take a decent game to the absolute pits of frustration and pain. But when a game gets it right, it honestly feels magical. The perfect balance of tension and fairness, what ANY type of game, digital or not, truly aspires to be.
So with how way out of scope this project is already, why not swing for the fences in more ways than one, I am confident I can reach that sweet spot, but as a player you gotta be willing to meet me there! But if your still not convinced let me calm your worries.
The life system is ONLY for the campaign.
I.e, once you beat the main story the game goes into a sort of free-play mode where you get access to a level select! In this mode you get infinite lives, easy toggling of helper blocks for those curious and even a debug mode to mess around with! We'll take about this free-play mode in a future volume in more detail but I mostly just wanted to share just how outreaching the 1UP is on the player I suppose.
FINAL REMARKS
I apologize for my lack of internet activity and how long this post was, I've been pretty busy these past 2 months with some irl stuff that needed my attention more
Gappy is still chugging along well, In fact It was chugging along so well that I forgot to commission someone for this months cover! I had to think fast so the very cool poster art will have to work! I sadly don't know who did the main piece of artwork featured, or most of the art for that matter so if you see this, let me know and I'll credit you at the top and possibly add an artist corner for ya!
The next time you'll be reading a Gappy Bi-monthly post I'll be 24! So until then, bye-bye
-Levi
