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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | ColeSlaughter's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 4 04:24:19 | Love is Sacrifice | ♥ 1 | Love the art style in this! Very distinctive. The walking controls can be a little bit dodgy at times, but I liked being able to control everything with one hand. Like another comment, I got stuck at the "job offer" scene and couldn't get out of it. The subject matter is something that I personally connect with and think about often, so I was happy to see someone tackle it for this game jam! Maybe implement a "click to continue" for the text bubbles though? The cutscenes were a little slow for my taste... | |
| Dec 4 04:34:35 | 10m 16s | Go Gobelins ! | ♥ 1 | I love how much personality this game has! I'm not quite sure how the music works, but it definitely felt like it was dynamic based on what units I sent out to their deaths. Nice touch! I did hit one bug where I sent out a shield guy and a couple of small goblins. After the small goblins died, I got the cymbal crash notifying me the level was over, but my shield goblin was still troopin' along. After HE died, the gate was stuck open and I had to restart the game to try it again. It's been a while since I've played a Tower Defense game, but I like this little subversion where you play as the enemies. :) Nice job! |
| Dec 4 04:44:52 | 10m 17s | The Treachery | ♥ 2 | 9 levels and boss battles in one game jam...Now that's damn ambitious! I like the style and tone you're going for here. I kind of wish there was a bit more visual feedback for your actions though? Like, when your attack connects, when you get hit, when you get healed, etc. It's a small change, but I feel like it'd go a long way. Also, when I got to level 3, I felt like there was a HUGE difficulty spike. I went from having 3-5 enemies on the screen to 10+ constantly. It's a bit tedious to take them all out one by one, so I opted to try barreling through it, much to my demise. :P Other then that though, I like what y'all have goin' on here! |
| Dec 4 04:56:55 | 12m 03s | Queuest | ♥ 1 | Aight, this is gonna come across as pretty harsh, but only because I really really like this idea and would love to see it improved. Firstly, a difficulty curve would be much appreciated. Walking into the first room with 5 baddies flanking you on every side is less than ideal, and makes it hard to figure out what the best course of action is. Second, maybe I just suck, but it seems to me that if an enemy is directly adjacent to you, but you aren't facing them, it's impossible to kill them without taking at LEAST 1 point of damage. It's practically game over if you find yourself in that position with other enemies headed your way as well. I don't quite know how to fix this, except maybe have the attack button attack any adjacent enemy without having to turn and face them? Third, I wish the different weapons did other stuff. This could actually be a really good design space to mess around with. Maybe some weapons CAN attack adjacently, or over a range, or in an area of effect, which could help you get out of some jams where you just slowly get cornered and die. It is kind of strange that the bow and arrow still only has the range of a sword attack... Now that all the "bad" stuff is out of the way, lemme throw out some positives: I really like how you laid out the UI in a way that, within a few steps, I immediately understood the mechanics of the game. That's not normally an easy thing to do. I love the attention to detail you have in the sprites and sounds too. This feels much more polished than a typical game jam game, great job! |
| Dec 4 05:06:28 | 9m 33s | Suicidal Knight | ♥ 1 | Nicely done! I like all the spritework going on here. I was pleased as punch that sacrificing a leg actually took my leg away! As for the combat itself, I kind of wish I could swing my sword in any direction while I'm moving. As it is now, it pretty difficult (or impossible?) to swing at an incoming swarm of enemies without taking a lot of damage from having to stop, turn around, and swing at a slow rate. The sacrifice mechanic is pretty neat, though! It gives it almost a roughlite feel, but with the progression reversed. I also like the variety of enemy AI as well to shake things up. Pretty ambitious to make in such a short amount of time! |
| Dec 4 05:12:54 | 6m 26s | Retro Bat | ♥ 1 | Loooooove the style here. The CRT effect with the pixel art is just great, and the music is a great fit too. Nice little twist on the Flappy Bird format! I wish there was a bit more strategy involved with deciding when to use the power though. I would generally use it when I was in a big open space, because you never know when you're going to be face-to-face with a huge up-close wall. :P Needless to say, I was not skilled enough to get very far... |
| Dec 4 05:21:40 | 8m 46s | Off the Rails 2 | ♥ 1 | Dedicated Dab button. Masterpiece. I'm gettin' some Jet Set Radio vibes from this...I like it! Kinda wish the physics worked the way I'd want them to, but that stuff is REALLY tough to get down, even outside of a game jam setting, so what you have here is still pretty impressive. The map was a tad hard to navigate on account of there being only so many unique textures to mark the locales, but I still had a pretty decent time just skating around and dabbing on rails. :) |
| Dec 4 05:36:19 | 14m 39s | The Interview | ♥ 1 | Full-on, audible laughs were had with this game, particularly with the slot machine dialogue system (awesome idea, by the way). "My junk smells like John." ".....Great!" Really wish there was a payoff for my choices though! I thought the gas clouds covering up my answers were due to the fact that I didn't poop ahead of time, but even when I went into the interview fully showered and pooped, I still got the clouds... What I really like about this game is that, unlike a lot of game jam games, it feels like a cohesive whole. Everything, from the animation to the music, to the premise/gameplay complements each other, which almost never happens as seamlessly as I see it here. Awesome work! |
| Dec 4 05:46:50 | 10m 31s | Bob the Reaper | ♥ 0 | Neat idea! I like the concept of a "cursed form" that you only have a limited amount of time with. It's evident that you put a lot of thought into the level design, with how you slowly teach the player new mechanics through the obstacles. There were some things that confused me though. For instance, I felt it kind of strange that the creatures you could kill with the Reaper to gain health are also used to complete a level. So you can essentially soft-lock yourself out of beating a level if you just kill everything in sight, and it's not exactly clear that that can happen until it's too late. Other than that though, I like the art style and the puzzle-esque feel to the game! |
| Dec 5 07:35:10 | 25h 48m | Super Sellout | ♥ 5 | This is an incredibly well-polished game jam game. It almost feels like you guys had all the time in the world to make this look like a legit retail game (low-key jealous...). I love all of the little touches of personality you were able to squeeze in here (the flexing kitty probably being my favorite). I sort of wish there were a larger variety of unique contracts to take, though. I love the concept of setting your own difficulty level ala Bastion-style, but I wish I could have selected any of the contracts from the start, instead of seeing the unique-sounding ones un-selectable, and only being able to choose from a bunch of speed-dropping contracts. Regardless, though, I'm super impressed with what you guys have done here! This is easily one of the most polished games I've played so far! |
| Dec 5 07:42:53 | 7m 43s | Save Or Sacrifice? | ♥ 0 | Interesting idea! :) I like that you went a different route with the sacrifice theme rather than some of the more obvious choices. As others have mentioned already, the game seems a bit bugged on WebGL in that I can't hit the down arrows on the bottom 3 icons. I've run into this issue before, looks like you're building to one resolution and setting the viewport window in itch.io to a different resolution. Going to Edit->Project Settings->Player in Unity should get you to where you can change the resolution you build to for HTML5. Then make sure your viewport in itch.io is identical and you should be good to go! Also, I request photos of the foster kitten 🐱 |
| Dec 5 07:54:43 | 11m 50s | Jesus Take the Wheel | ♥ 3 | Damn hilarious! It took me a few rounds to really get to grips with the controls. I think having 2 hands but only being able to move one car at a time, while it makes sense from the gameplay you were trying to accomplish, made it a little bit visually confusing. Other than that, though, I loved that the cars all felt pretty unique and had various difficulty levels in terms of keeping in control of them. I like the polish that in this, from the grimacing Jesus faces to the obituary blurbs that appear on top of each of the corpses. One of the few games I played that I actually cared to try and get a high score (15.83 miles btw, probably garbage but pretty proud of it). |
| Dec 5 08:04:21 | 9m 38s | Pyres | ♥ 2 | Really like the tone and style of this game! It really nails the medieval war tactics vibe. The music and war sounds just added to the ambiance in a great way too. In terms of gameplay, I didn't really see any reason why I should just be "Heavy Attacking" the entire time. More often than not, my troop number vastly outnumbered the enemy troop number, and I didn't see any feedback telling me that defending was doing anything significant. Perhaps some more visual feedback would be helpful so the player understands what's going on? This seems like a pretty neat prototype, though! I like your guys' style, and hope to see more from y'all in the future! :) |
| Dec 5 08:12:03 | 7m 42s | HEALTH SHOT | ♥ 1 | I'm a sucker for this kind of aesthetic. :P Really nice looking game! And a pretty unique concept to boot. I like where you went with this. I had a bit of a hard time killing some enemies, though, particularly when they grouped up and were shooting me at the same time. I quickly discovered that my shots cancelled out their shots, but I couldn't seem to get through to actually deal damage when more than one was shooting at a time. I also find it interesting how brutally cruel the enemies are. Certainly gives your game a unique personality that leaves a lasting impression. :) |
| Dec 6 09:05:43 | 24h 53m | Bee Defence | ♥ 1 | This is one of the more unique entries I've played so far. I like how seamlessly the resource management ties into the action part of the game, where you're essentially farming for ammunition. As is the case with most game jam games, the difficulty tuning could be better. I rarely found myself running out of ammo, despite rarely sending bees to the flowers for pollination, but I think you were still able to get the spirit of the idea across, and that's what's most important for an event like this. :) The flying bears was also a nice touch of hilarity that I enjoyed! The sound effects could maaaaayyybe be a little less harsh, but other than that, I think you have a really solid idea here! |
| Dec 6 09:15:53 | 10m 10s | Altruist Project | ♥ 3 | It always impresses me when I see a game that practically looks like it never had to cut any corners. The art, sound, ambiance, story, and overall tone of this game is top notch. Walking into every room was always a tense experience, though I would have liked to have been able to make some more informed decisions. The rocks and flares were nice touches to test a room before you walked into it, but I almost always threw them into safe rooms, making me feel like I wasted it. :( It's difficult not to see this game as something of a bit of random chance (unless I missed some critical strategy somewhere?). Finding a new person vs. dying in a room looks exactly the same BEFORE you choose where to go next, so I didn't really see any optimal way to find the exit, which from a player perspective can be pretty disempowering (unless that's what you were going for, in which case kudos!) I really dig the mood of this one. I hope you guys make similar stuff in the future! |
| Dec 6 09:23:40 | 7m 47s | Journey To The Promise Land | ♥ 1 | Reminds me a lot of FTL. :) I like how all of the family mechanics kind of play off of each other and have significant importance. The game could definitely stand to have some things tuned, though. For one, the game is REALLY long for what it is. I felt like I got the gist of it about 2 min in, and it didn't really change much from there. Also, the upgrades were a tad expensive to the point where I could rarely afford them in the early game, which was frustrating. Still though, a family-based survival rouge-lite-esque game is a pretty cool idea. Hope you find it interesting enough to continue working on it, the additional features you mentioned sound pretty neat! :) |
| Dec 6 09:33:27 | 9m 47s | Detritus Walks | ♥ 2 | Dem physics are damn impressive to me, excellent job on that! I actually kind of like how wobbly the character is to control, gives the game a lot of charm. :) One thing that was kind of confusing was determining when I beat a level. I understood that you had to feed the generator to finish, but sometimes since I threw myself and the generator was offscreen, I would "win" without necessarily knowing what I had done. A victory jingle, or camera focus on the filled up generator would go a long way in remedying that confusion. :) This is a pretty unique entry, and probably the best use of "sacrifice your character's body parts" I've seen yet! |
| Dec 6 09:53:24 | 19m 57s | Pyme's Genocide | ♥ 3 | I think the cuteness of this game gave me hardcore diabeetus. This game has a LOT of potential that makes me excited. The style and tone of it remind me of old-school PS2 action-adventure games. The premise is unique and interesting, and with a little polish, could really be something special. There are a few things that I think definitely could be improved. First and foremost, the physics were a bit too unpredictable for my tastes. Particularly when jetpacking next to a wall, I would often get flung either down or outwards, causing me to waste precious critter fuel in the process. Secondly, I think some of the platforming challenges were a bit too punishing, particularly one where I had to climb a really big tree while maintaining enough critters to break the crystal at the top. Falling near the top of that (or making there without enough ammo) meant falling a long way back down, spending several seconds sucking up more critters, and making the long, arduous journey back up, hoping things go better next time. That loop is just a liiiiiiittle bit too long, which can lead to frustration All that aside, though, I'd say the point of a game jam is not to make a perfectly fleshed-out game. Instead, a "proof of concept" is far more realistic, and I think you guys accomplished that with flying colors with this game! I hope you guys continue to work on it in the future. :) |
| Dec 7 05:41:01 | 19h 47m | Death Wish | ♥ 1 | Classic beat 'em up style, I like it. :) The controls are maybe a biiiiiiit to slow/unresponsive for an action-based genre like this though. I'd have preferred the animations to be a bit more snappy, so I could attack/move faster. |
| Dec 7 06:02:53 | 21m 52s | ANKH | ♥ 0 | I like the idea here manipulating your respawn position to your advantage is a unique idea, and I like how you were able to take a simple concept and take it to some interesting places. From a polish perspective, it would be great if the jump was a little less responsive, if that makes sense. Letting go of the jump button should stop adding upward force to the player, causing them to naturally slow down and descend due to gravity. It shouldn't immediately send them downwards no matter where in the jump arc they are. Also, while I like the idea of activating Ankhs with projectiles (yet another interesting design space to mess around with) I think the way you teach the player how to do that kind of works against the design of the game. Up until that point, I was taught to throw rocks at snakes to kill them. So when you put a player in a level where all they immediately see is a rock and a snake, almost 100% of them are going to use the rock to kill the snake. Then, when they learn how to activate Ankhs with projectiles, they'll have no way to kill themselves because they already got rid of their only resource to do that. I really enjoyed the level layouts you had, and how they taught the player your mechanics in an easy to understand way. I just think this one could use some tweaking so most players don't get soft-locked into it. :) |
| Dec 7 06:32:41 | 29m 48s | The Cold Remains of Warmer Days | ♥ 1 | *Cracks knuckles* Alright, I have a lot to say about this one. First, before I get into it, might I humbly suggest you host the download of this game on itch.io? Even though everything was on the up-and-up, every step of the download process, from opening MediaFire, to closing a popup, to telling Chrome NOT to discard the single executable file I was downloading and running on my computer made me nervous and almost back out. It's probably best to remove as many barriers to entry as you can for people who want to play your game. :) That being said, I'm really glad I DID play this. You have a very unique style that, while slightly off-putting at first, really starts to grow on you. It almost scares me how much this reminds me of my own past experiences with relationships and break-ups. My very first game I ever made tackled the exact same subject matter, though maybe a bit more conventionally with 2D platformer mechanics (my icon is actually the icon for that game and I use it almost everywhere). While I focused more on the general shittiness of break-ups, I think you really captured the heart that is the creative element. I found it especially profound the way you used the bottled up memories of your ex to fuel the creativity of your work, while at the same time questioning whether or not it was a healthy thing to indulge in. I connected with that scene because I recall doing the *exact same thing* with love letters from my ex when making my game, and I've never seen that idea conveyed with mechanics before. Very excellently done! With every scene, there was always a risk of coming off as pretentious, or having the concept fly over the players' head. And while that will likely be the case for some players, I think that anyone who's been through a situation like this will be able to find SOME meaning or personal connection with each of the mechanics like I did. I play LD games to have fun, dammit. You had to go and make me all introspective and shit. :P Truly though, thank you. This was excellent. |
| Dec 7 06:50:08 | 17m 27s | A Sworded Tale | ♥ 3 | OOoohhhhh, a classic turn-based RPG for a LD game? :) Nice!! I like the visuals going on in this game. The 2D sprites in the 3D world actually fit in surprisingly nicely, and I like the transitions from roaming states to walking states. I think this game could have benefited from a bit of tuning, though. The maps you roamed around it were way to big and sprawling, in my opinion. You probably could have just scaled everything down to half and it would have been much more digestible. Enemy spawns also seemed out of control and impossible to avoid, which is frustrating since, from what I could tell, there was no EXP or level up system, which meant that every battle only served to be a drain on my resources (namely my health). So unfortunately the combat mechanics and the roaming encounter mechanics were kind of at odds with each other, rather than working together to create a cohesive experience. Despite all of that, though, this is very ambitious for what it is, and I'm impressed with what y'all have been able to accomplish in a short amount of time. I'm a big fan of the genre you decided to go with, so it was a pleasant surprise to see. :) |
| Dec 7 06:57:56 | 7m 48s | Volcano Island | ♥ 1 | Nice and simple, and yet the art, sounds and animation really give it some polish. I like it! Sound effects are maaaaaaybe a bit too harsh, though? They definitely took me by surprise when they were played extremely loudly on top of the otherwise soothing backtrack. >.< Also, I'd suggest taking a look at your random sequence generator. ;) I stopped playing after I kept getting the same character added to my sequence over and over. By the end the sequence was Light Shirt, Dark Shirt, Light Shirt, Light Shirt, Light Shirt, Light Shirt, Light Shirt, Light Shirt, Light Shirt...etc. Dark-skinned people were never requested. :P |
| Dec 7 07:10:14 | 12m 18s | Wizard Swarm | ♥ 1 | Pretty basic and fun top-down twinstick shooter you got goin' on here. :) Made it to Wave 5 before dyin'. Couple of suggestions for improvement: I feel like the dropped power-ups are far too infrequent. I would maybe get like one every other round. It would also nice to be able to tell which stat it would power up before I picked it up. Personally, I felt that Speed Up was always a detriment, because it made my character much harder to control, and since 1 hit would kill me, it would up the difficulty of the game significantly. Despite these little complaints though, I had a lot of fun playing. It was simple, but functional (the latter not always being the case for LD games, so nice work!) |
| Dec 10 05:41:36 | 70h 31m | Reap what you sow | ♥ 1 | Oh geez, I kinda zoned out playing this game. It's very zen and relaxing! I appreciate that even though I had to take a day or two to figure out what I was supposed to be doing, I still had a chance to make up the work in the following days with careful crop management. I was really feelin' the sacrificing theme when it came time to harvest, and I only had enough stamina to either harvest all of my completed crops, or water my wilting crops, but not both. As for things that could be better, I did sometimes have moments of frustration when I accidentally repeated an action on a square more than once, while still consuming stamina. It would be great if the game were a bit more gracious for those kinds of mistakes. Also, I'd say the aiming reticle is a bit too difficult to see, particularly when hovering over large crops. A more vibrant reticle (perhaps rendered above the crops) would really help ease this frustration. Other than that, though, I can definitely say that this is the longest I've played a LD game so far. Awesome work! |
| Dec 10 05:58:40 | 17m 04s | Forest Of Sacrifices | ♥ 1 | Hey, this is pretty neat! Pretty ambitious to try a Metroidvania for a game jam. ;) I think you were able to pull it off pretty well! The music and the artwork were both relaxing and charming, probably my favorite aspect of it, really. You maaaaaaayyyy want to look into picking a more standard resolution to display your game in, though. I'm running a dual-monitor setup, both with a resolution of 2650x1440, and the game looked a little something like this: dualscreen.png As you can see, it kinda bleeds into my second monitor there. Not sure how that's happening, but it's also clipping off my character's current health in the bottom-left corner. :( As for the gameplay, I definitely found it engaging enough. One suggestion I may have is, if they only attack you currently have is a straight-thrown knife attack, it's kiiiind of unfair to have the first enemies you encounter in the game be flying enemies that come at you from above. It's very difficult to kill those enemies without taking at least one point of damage if you have a limited attack toolset at the beginning. Still though, this seems like a pretty classic Metroidvania-style game, well done! |
| Dec 10 06:11:25 | 12m 45s | Blood Altar | ♥ 1 | Ay, neato game! Wish y'all had some more time to implemented some of the other features you talked about (enemies and whatnot) :) I'll have to check out y'all's post-jam version when I get the chance! The art and music for this game were great! Really fit together with each other. I dig the sort of Aztec/Egyptian theme you guys got goin' on here. As for the controls, I personally found them to be a bit frustrating. I could never really get a read on where I was going to land immediately after I hit the jump button. It seems like the characters stop all forward momentum when they jump, which was REALLY tough to get used to. Thankfully, there weren't too many precision-platforming sections, so it wasn't too bothersome, but it was something I never could quite get used to. Regardless, I'm a sucker for puzzle-platformer games, so I saw this thing through to the end. I appreciated the Spyro-like "treasures collected" end screen. :) Nice touch there! |
| Dec 10 06:24:00 | 12m 35s | Sense Shift | ♥ 2 | I like the focus that this game has. :) A nice, simple concept with a few tricks to sort of spice things up. Kind of wish there was a bit more to the mechanics, but what you did here was still pretty enjoyable. I will say though that, for a game that has a very significant focus on audio, the footstep sound effect was shockingly loud and sharp to the point where I spooked myself every time I went into blind mode. :P Perhaps consider toning it down to match the smooth, relaxing vibe you got goin' on with the rest of the audio? Other than that, I quite enjoyed this Antichamber-esque first person puzzle game. :) Great work, and a neat idea! |
| Dec 10 06:34:37 | 10m 37s | Upwell | ♥ 1 | As a big fan of Downwell I just had to try this one out. :) It's obvious that you drew a lot of inspiration from that game, which is really cool to see. I will say though that starting out the game picking 5 different upgrades is a bit overwhelming. As a first-time player, since I didn't really know what the game looked like yet or how it controlled, all of my choices were made pretty arbitrarily. I wasn't given a chance to see my character's moveset evolved as I played, because I was learning everything for the first time. Perhaps having a tutorial level could help abate this frustration. I will say that I did enjoy the silliness of this game though. :) The art style and sound effects really added to the charm (I don't know why everything is ducks, but I love it). Overall I'd say this was a pretty ambitious game, but you did an impressive job for developing it solo! |
| Dec 10 06:43:02 | 8m 25s | Learn to be a self stopper! | ♥ 2 | I liked the idea! Looks to me like you were a bit pressed for time, though (as also evidenced by your own game description 😉 ) I'd have loved to see this taken further. Perhaps actually showing the consequences of your actions, or having your choices result in a different newspaper headline depending on what you did (I played the game twice very differently and got the same newspaper...). Also, methinks your UI is a tad bit borked on different resolutions. I'm not sure what resolution you tested on, but this is what it looks like on a 2650x1440 monitor: ui.png I'm thinkin' the anchors for the text should be set to expand the text box as the window size increases. That should fix it right up! Curious if you plan on expanding on this further. :) Sounds like there's a lot of things you'd have like to have done with this project, had you had more time. |
| Dec 10 06:49:33 | 6m 31s | Zombi'Escape | ♥ 4 | Excuse me, was that a INTRO CUTSCENE in a GAME JAM GAME? Friggin' awesome! 😃 This was a nice little arcade-style game. I could definitely see this being played on a phone. It was maybe a tad too easy (I survived with everyone my first try) but that can easily be tweaked. Maybe consider slowing down the speed though? Y'all have such pretty art, but it was difficult to see as it zoomed past me. :( Super glad I tried again and intentionally tried to hit obstacles. 10/10 sound design that got a good chuckle out of me. |
| Dec 10 07:00:23 | 10m 50s | A Starving Monk | ♥ 1 | Hahaha, great premise. :) I liked the little intro cutscene at the beginning. For some reason, this reminded me a lot of "Peasant's Quest" on Homestar Runner, quite nostalgic! I do think the lanes could be a bit more clearly defined, though. I think what made it difficult to tell where my monk was going to go can be attributed to the fact that the obstacles could be spawned in a continuous fashion across the whole horizontal field (thus they would often cut into multiple lanes). Because the monk only had a discrete selection of areas to move to, it made it difficult to judge what button I should press to avoid an obstacle or reach a donor. Other than that, though, this type of game is pretty classic so it's tough to get upset about. :) Nice job giving it your own charm! |
| Dec 10 07:25:33 | 25m 10s | Gears | ♥ 0 | I would love love love love for this to be given some more time for polish and expansion. As a huge fan of puzzle-platformers, I'd say this has a lot of potential to be something great. The idea of having a dynamically sized character that can jump as long as any section of it is touching some sort of "ground" is incredibly novel and intuitive. And you guys have demonstrated in your level design just how much mileage you can get out of a simple concept like that. Some things I would suggest improving on if you were to continue working on this: 1. It's kind of difficult to keep track of the little notches on the gears that tell you how you're able to match up with them. I would say 90% of the time, I wouldn't even pay attention to them until they became the key factor in solving a puzzle. Not sure how to solve this issue (or if it was even an issue for anyone else), but it would be nice if there was some more visual feedback on it. 2. Right now I'd say the platforming segments are a bit TOO precise. I found the most joy in figuring out the puzzles, and how to set my gears up for the right outcome. Failing to execute a solution that you KNOW works can get a little frustrating. Perhaps be a little more generous with the platform spacing and also lower the hitbox on the spikes so that the player is able to execute a solution more easily after figuring out the solution. 3. I dig the screen shake on each gear connection. Would be nice to add a nice, crunch sound effect to go along with it. Pretty minor, but would be a nice touch. 4. Consider adding a visual indicator to how high the player should anticipate a Drop/Jump to be. I pretty quickly picked up on the fact that dropping multiple gears at once resulted in a higher jump, but I never really knew for sure HOW high it would launch me until I did it. Maybe a sort of transparent arrow pointing up to the max jump height the player should expect to reach if they dropped at that instant would be helpful (especially if you could somehow do it in a way that was unobstructive. Make it transparent, perhaps?) 5. The camera is a BIT too zoomed in for my tastes. I personally like using the fully zoomed out camera mode (thanks a ton for including!), but that was likely because the zoomed in camera mode was a bit too restrictive. I think a nice middle ground should be possible. Whew, that was a lot of typing. I'm usually extra critical to the games I really really like, because I would love to see them taken further and expanded upon. This is easily one of my favorites of the jam so far. I look forward to future work from y'all! 😃 |
| Dec 10 07:33:23 | 7m 50s | Nasty Birds in a Chill Forest | ♥ 0 | I love the look of this game. :) Music is very relaxing too. I would say that maybe either the play space is too small or my character avatar is too big, though. Avoiding some of the obstacles required some pretty precise line-ups (or at least, more precise than I would expect from a chill game like this). Other than that, I really enjoyed the bird facts. :) It's clear that you have a passion/deep interest in the subject matter, and it shows! |
| Dec 10 07:45:45 | 12m 22s | Angry Mountain | ♥ 1 | Well I certainly enjoyed the hell out of that writing. :) Sounds to me like this was a great learning experience for you and using Unity. That's awesome! I remember my first few project with Unity were a LOT worse than this, so I'd say you're off to a great start! *Checks the "MISSING" section...* >There was going to be a goat. NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Sorry you ran out of time. :( |
| Dec 10 07:53:49 | 8m 04s | Electric Kaiju | ♥ 0 | Hoo boy, I would say 9 pages of tutorial text is a bit much to throw at a player before they even know how your game controls/plays. I'd recommend slowly doling out tutorial text as the player plays through the game. That way, they can attribute context to the actions you're trying to explain. Other than that, though, this is a very well polished entry. Fantastic art/animations, plenty of depth, and quite a bit of polish (You had time to do a minimap too? Damn, that's impressive...). There's an impressive amount of stuff going on here for just being made in 72 hours. That's pretty admirable! |
| Dec 10 08:06:51 | 13m 02s | Brick Climb | ♥ 1 | Yo, this is like some weird mix between an action game and chess, I like it a lot! It's a very novel concept that I think has some potential. Here are some suggestions for improvement if you decide to continue working on this. 1. First and foremost, the bomb sound effect scares the shit out of me every time it blows up. It's a REALLY harsh sound in contrast with the soft muted "setting" sounds of your bricks. Consider either changing the bomb sound or revamping what you want your game to sound like so it fits in better. :) 2. Maybe remove that "Default Unity Skybox" you got there. ;) I'll excuse it since it's a game jam, but for future reference it's pretty easy to change that one background. Even any sort of solid color would be less distracting, I think. 3. I personally think the camera moves WAY too fast at the beginning to manage all 3 bricks at once. I would start a bit slower, and save the frantic brick management (which I still think is a fun aspect) for later on in the level. I really appreciated the ability to fool around in the tutorial for a while (and thanks for putting in a tutorial in the first place!) but I still think the player needs some time to get used to how to manage 3 bricks at once. 4. Currently I think your game has an optimal strategy of only using the Blue brick and ignoring the others. If you're fast enough, you can just jump from bomb to bomb for massive points, at which point the other two bricks become kind of a waste of time and resources since every time you move them, you're not moving the blue guy to get 5 points per bomb. Pretty standard balancing issue that plagues most game jam games anyways, so it likely just needs some time for testing and tweaking. :) Sorry if it sounds like I'm bashing your game. I tend to be a lot harsher towards games I like, since I would love to see them improved and expanded. I actually really did have a lot of fun with this one, and I hope you have plans to take it places in the future! |
| Dec 10 09:47:26 | 1h 40m | Deity Hook-Up (Not A Romance) | ♥ 1 | Awwwww, I was hoping for another otherworldly dating game like ours. ;) This is pretty nice, though! Doing a visual novel for a game jam seems pretty ambitious, but I liked the style you went for with the writing. After sacrificing keys: > ...Why did you do that? Hilarious. It would have been nice to know the tangible consequences to each of the actions I took though. Currently it just felt kind of arbitrary. I got the "Blessed" ending on my first try, but the only thing that the deity reacted to was the fidget spinner I put down at the very end. Upon experimenting with other stuff, I found multiple things that could be "vanished" by the deity, and still ended by putting the fidget spinner down, but then that time I got a "you tried" ending and didn't understand why. :( Still though, this was a funny concept, and I liked the style of the art as well. Great job here! |
| Dec 10 10:04:12 | 16m 46s | The Questiest Quest of the Intertwined Feast | ♥ 2 | Aw man, a rhythm LD game, I am all OVER that. I love that you guys managed so stuff a bunch of personality in the game too. :) I loved the way you guys implemented the dialogue system, and the writing on top of it was super clever. Also, that soundtrack was bumpin'. FanTASTIC job all around! Unfortunately I think I encountered some syncing issues with the beatmaps and the audio. Hopefully you guys are using dspTime to keep everything in sync instead of deltaTime of fixedDeltaTime? Either that, or the grace window for hitting beats is way more forgiving than I expected. Regardless, it wasn't too much of a detriment, because I still loved everything about this game. Awesome entry! |
| Dec 19 21:16:53 | 227h 12m | Charming's Sacrifices | ♥ 1 | I like the style and theme of this game. :) Very charming that even the menus are made out of cardboard, and the tone of the game is very childish (in a good way!). Would have maybe liked some variety in visuals between the attacks. It took me a while to realize that the main difference between them all was their "mana cost" (and damage, obviously). Also, was there any reason that the attack keys were mapped to z, a, e, and r? Seemed kind of random to me, but maybe I'm out of the loop? Anyhoo, this was a cute little entry. :) Well done! |
| Dec 19 21:27:13 | 10m 20s | SacrificeSimulator2018 | ♥ 0 | Whew, there is a HUGE jump in difficulty between Normal and Hard mode. D: I like this entry, though. :) Always nice to see alternative control schemes in a game jam game. The combo system made it really feel like casting spells, which was a nice touch. I like the level of polish in this game as well, extensive tutorial, difficulty settings (that actually change how you play the game) well done! I think with a little polish and a little more variety (without overcomplicating things further) this could really be something neat! |
| Dec 19 21:40:39 | 13m 26s | Ethic in the machine | ♥ 0 | Simple concept with a 5-star presentation. I loooooved the silent, scrolling text and the clinical, if slightly passive-aggressive Jarvis. Kind of eerie to imagine an existence where 100% of your conscious hours are spent making drastic moral dilemma decisions. Kinda wish I could get different endings, though. In both of my playthroughs, I decided to both strictly limit birthing and eliminate half of the population, but neither of them resulted in a different ending. :( I noticed different paths I could take to get to that point though, so that was neat! |
| Dec 19 21:46:44 | 6m 05s | Superstar | ♥ 1 | A tad buggy...but I like the concept! :) The physics of the starfish were really well done, and it was fun trying to reach out for the next holding before I lost my last few limbs. Maybe a cap on momentum would be useful though. I was usually always holding right, which would send me FLYING in a lot of the more open areas. |
| Dec 19 22:01:49 | 15m 05s | haeresis | ♥ 1 | A++++ on the presentation here. Easily one of the best looking games I've played so far. I particularly like the way the camera floats and sways in an almost dream-like state as you stand still or walk around. Nicely done! You may get some flak for making such a slow burn of a game, but I personally really enjoyed the atmosphere. Kind of wish there was a bit more payoff for the ending, but I was still satisfied with it by the end. :) Nice work! |
| Dec 19 22:17:16 | 15m 27s | The suicidal adventure of Squish | ♥ 0 | Seen this concept around quite a bit, but I like that you went the extra mile with the additional mechanics! Wall sticking/jumping and double-jumping open up a world of possibilities for unique level designs. It might have been nice to have been able to distinguish between spikes, safe areas, and sticky walls, though. Since everything was the same/similar color, sometimes it would be tough to differentiate until it was too late. Other than that, though. This was a nice, cute little entry. :) |
