Selecting a name for my game!

I had been thinking A LOT about how should I call this little ninja game, it should be a catchy name, easy to pronounce, related to the game, that transmits multiplayer fun and the kind of cartoon style the game has.

One rule I decided to follow is that it must be short, one or two syllables, if it has more then it must be rhythmic or rhyme. The basic test I'm using is thinking in me asking some friend: "wanna play some <<name>>?" or "have you ever played <<name>>>?"

So I came up with some names, and applied a poll with some friends. I asked to vote for two in favor and for two against. These are the results I got:

1. One Lap Attack [+1][-3] = -2
2. Lap 'n Attack [0][0] = 0
3. Lap and Attack [+2][-1] = 1
4. Leap a Lap [+2][-3] = -1
5. Wall Jumpers [0][-1] = -1
6. Jumpaloop [+1][-2] = -1
7. Jumpjutsu [+7][0] = 7
8. Runnup [+5][0] = 5
9. Ninja Climbers [+2][-2] = 0
10. Round Around [0][-3] = -3

Proposed by voters:

1. Leap 'n Lap
2. Leap Attack

Some people just voted negatively for "all the others" but obviously I can't count that.
Advice: if you wanna know if your game's name sucks, just go ask people, at least my friends were incredibly fast to detect those names they hated :).

I must admit I was considering "Lap 'n Attack" seriously, but I cannot ignore that it was the one everyone was totally indifferent!

So obviously Jumpjutsu and Runnup won the poll. Jumpjutsu is good because it relates easily with ninjas, and I would say the game itself is about mastering the art of jumping. I think it's easy to remember as well. Even though, I must admit some times I struggled a little to pronounce it.

Runnup is good because is short and simple, but I'm not so sure how much it reflects the game style, and also it is used by native English speakers as per my Google searches, so it may sound very generic.

So, I won't spend more time going back and forth with this, so my little ninja game from now on will be called: Jumpjutsu!

Yay! :D

Ninja Game progress: Sword up / Gravity change / Temp graphics

OK, to after a good trip through Japan I'm back full of energy to keep up with this still untitled Ninja Game :D.

I created this gif to summarize the game progress so far:

Here you can see the gravity change between corridors, it was a little tricky to achieve but I hope to don't need to touch that code again for a while ;). Also I added a new technique to avoid losing speed when moving between corridors, basically the player can raise up the katana and redirect the ninja's speed to the next corridor.

You can see as well some new graphics, I reused a background I created once in Xololitos, I'm still trying to figure out what I should put as the corridors' backgrounds, but for now this should be enough.

What's next? Well in the gif above you can see how the ninja runs practically the whole upper wall, that's not supposed to be like that, I want the player to keep jumping constantly, so I need to make the phases of the wall-run dependent of the ninja's speed... maybe it's not clear now, so I will just make it and post it once done :)


Bonus picture, check out this cool fountain we saw in Fushimi-Inari!