The Time Gnelf and the Quest for the Missing Golden Cogs

blodyavenger 2018-12-03 14:09

I really, really love the story behind the game and how you need to collects the cogs in order to power up the start system machine :)

I didn't know the use of slow-down though. I collected all the cogs without using it once (apart from trying out what it does). Also, there is a bug with an elf which deforms if you are not moving.

Platforms are really simple and some cloud moving platforms and other obstacles would add a lot. With lots of improvements I think this could become a really fairy platformer with the given story. Well done on completing the compo!

wfmg 2018-12-03 16:19

@blodyavenger Thank you! He dematerialises into the 11th dimension for the sake of longevity.

thomas-lacroix 2018-12-03 17:13

Cute game :) I also got this strange deforming bug(?)(*). I collected all the cogs, but I don't really know if there is something more to do ^^ And like @blodyavenger I don't really know what slow-down is for (PS: it doesn't slow down rotating cogs)

(*) ooookkkkk it's not a bug ^^ but that's really weird! Looks like a bug ^^'

f4kethis 2018-12-03 17:17

Fun platformer and I enjoyed the concept. Not sure if it fits with the theme but great job none-the-less.

driagonv 2018-12-04 12:49

Quite fun game, but the dialogue is messed up, it just keeps repeating and plays at the incorrect time (for example the arrow dialogue came after I collected the 6 cogs, also after collecting the cogs nothing happens, so I assume that's it, and there is no reason to use the slow down ability, and to be honest I don't see how it fits the theme, but it managed to keep me playing until the end and it was quite fun platforming around with an occasionally deformed gnelf!

giovannibarrottu 2018-12-04 13:01

I'm not really sure where the connection to the theme is, I don't really see what sacrifice I'm making. And the slow motion ability isn't that useful since the jump is already *really* slow. I'm also not entirely sure why the player model does that weird scaling thing when you stop, a bug? The story part kept replaying on every scene load too.

There was also only one sound in the game and I don't think it worked amazingly as a jump sound when the jump was so slow.

The platforming wasn't bad, and the movement felt decent, but there didn't seem like any reason to or reward for collecting the cogs.

devon-l-steyn 2018-12-04 14:14

My Gnelf deteriorates and becomes part of the Void dimension itself if I don't do anything

10/10 game would absolutely play again

Seriously though, this game is very well made and put together and by far one of the best LD43 games I've played so far! :smile:

samh 2018-12-04 17:17

Make everything 3 times faster and i’ll play it again and again!

kciwsolb 2018-12-04 18:03

Played mostly for the story. I would enjoy the gameplay more if it were sped up. That would also make the time warp feel more useful. Nice entry though! :D

flaterectomy 2018-12-05 10:34

I collected the six cogs and I *think* that was the game, but I am not sure. Clear victory feedback would've kept me from wandering around confused for a bit.

Jumping and movement in general feels a little sludgy. The glitch with the character model also didn't help me line up for jumps very well. :smile: The hitbox for the cog/time pickups could have been bigger than the model itself, at one point I was walking circles very closely around a cog without grabbing it.

I also never used the slowdown ability, but if there'd been a speed-up ability I am sure I'd have used up all charges. :laughing:

The art is minimal but has some character to it. Footsteps/landing sounds for a platformer would have been welcome additions to the jump sound, I felt they were missing.

wfmg 2018-12-06 20:27

@flaterectomy Thanks for your feedback! I want to answer some of your questions and ask you some in return.

Firstly, the victory feedback. That is almost certainly the biggest flaw with my game. I couldn't quite get the dialog box to work properly. Because I used a coroutine to read through all of the dialog, I couldn't manage to clear the queue while it was being read. Rest assured that you did win if you saw the six cogs spinning in the machine once you came out of the final hut at the final platform. Due to me not figuring out a proper solution, it ended up going through the whole queue of every message it's ever had in there every time dialogue was triggered. This was not great, but I had to submit it like this. If I ever come back to this, this issue will be one of the most important ones to fix.

Secondly, the hitbox. I wasn't quite sure about that. I'm glad to get an opinion on that so I know to make it bigger in the future. I experienced the walking about the pickups as well.

Thirdly, the audio. I would've loved to add more sound effects and music as well, but I ran out of time. I actually spent at least two hours working on a song for it, but it ended up as a really noisy, low-quality recording of like 30 seconds of the nutcracker on an electric guitar. It would've lowered my ratings, so I didn't put it into the game. I agree that the audio is quite barren.

Now for my question: Several people's gripes with the slowdown feature. People want a speed up feature, but I don't understand why or quite in what way. What is it that's too slow? I really want to know so that if there is ever, say, The Time Gnelf 2, I can fix that.

wfmg 2018-12-06 20:30

@giovannibarrottu @driagonv You have to go into the hut on the final platform and you will come back to inside the snow globe. There is victory dialogue, but because of the messed up dialogue system, the impact is lessened to quite an extent.

Something that can be seen, though, is the set of cogs spinning in the machine back in the globe once you beat the game.

flaterectomy 2018-12-06 21:27

@wfmg Yeah, I had all six cogs spinning. So I knew I had achieved my goal, I just didn't get gamey feedback for it. :smiley:

Audio-wise, if I were to figure out my priorities for this game, I would've gone: 1. Sfx for movement: jump, running, landing, clock pickup and gear pickup. 2. Atmospheric: just a loop of cold windy weather (I'd probably try blow-whistling next to a microphone and layering a few tracks on top of each other with some subtle panning, for example. Not tried it, don't *know* how it'd turn out, but that's my first thought). In a third person 3D game, feeling a part of the world through sound can add so much. 3. Music: music can of course really set the mood, but it doesn't have to be complex. It can be super subtle and simple. Figure out some nice chords, set the tempo to match the intensity of the game, have some synth pads play the chords and repeat the sequence with some variations. Maybe melody. Maybe an arpeggio. But for background music, it really doesn't have to shred. :guitar:

Right, actually to your question. :laughing: The movement in the game is slow and floaty as it is. Slowing down to steer after you make a mistake isn't something I really needed, for instance. I did fall once or twice, but by the time I noticed things were awry, no amount of slowing down would have helped me. Within the context of this game, a time-reverse feature would've been more useful. But the main issue for me really was the movement speed of running and jumping. The latter of which just feels like it's one constant speed, without any kind of *bouncy ball* effect. A google search got me to this useful video as a quick illustration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRVhtMxQWRs

wfmg 2018-12-14 22:51

@flaterectomy I understand the issue now. I've been away from this site for a while, been busy.

My jumping is completely physically based and parabolic. It is scientifically accurate, but also not very appropriate for a video game. "Better jumping in 7 lines of code" or whatever the video's called comes to mind.

Thanks for the feedback! Sorry for the delay!

secretpocketcat 2018-12-18 15:43

The mood is pretty great - the poem takes it up a notch. The only thing missing in that regard is music a possibly a voiceover for the poem. The visuals are nice, though not very cohesive. The gameplay is kinda missing. It feels like a character-controller demo with the slowdown thrown on top. If the controller was tweaked and there'd be some hazzards (especially moving ones to take advantage of the slowmo) it could be a solid platformer.

BTW. the WebGL build doesn't run for me (Chrome). 2018-12-18 16_42_19-NVIDIA GeForce Overlay.png

tgiant 2018-12-18 18:04

Cute little game. Interesting idea as well. I must say there are a few things that did not feel very good for me. One of them is the gravity of the world/player. Everything felt a bit too slow. Character was cute and the animation also nice.

levidsmith 2018-12-25 03:41

Good job on the models and animation. I managed to collect all six cogs, and saw them spinning at the house. I wasn't sure if anything else was supposed to happen after that. If I stopped walking it seemed to bug out (maybe a missing animation?). Only suggestion is to maybe use smooth shading on the elf instead of flat shading, that way he looks less boxy.

wfmg 2018-12-29 21:08

@secretpocketcat It does work. It just takes a long time, and you have to ignore an error.

@tgiant Thank you! That's the fault of it being physically accurate. Had it been more gamey, it would've felt much better. I just didn't have the time to do that.

@levidsmith You've got the full ending. There is dialogue for the ending, but the dialogue system is unfortunately broken. I probably could've fixed it with another day, but it was a school day anyway, and I wanted to enter into the compo.

As for the boxiness, well, he's meant to look low-poly.

ava-skoog 2018-12-30 11:50

You had me at "gnelf"! And using 'masterpiece' as custom noun on itch was a nice touch too. 😎 Not to mention your beautiful poem!

I've been reading through your previous comments so it seems a bit superfluous to repeat what has already been said, but much like many of the others, I didn't quite understand the use of the slow motion mechanic and I'm unsure about the connection to the theme (which obviously is optional in LD anyway, so maybe you didn't use it, but since I need to rate you in the theme category).

Cute little character! The lack of music somehow actually fits into the somewhat mysterious and desolate-feeling atmosphere of the world!

Checkpoints in any platformer with bottomless abysses is a Christmas miracle, so thank you for that! I did fall more than once. :p

As for issues with the web player, I've found that going into the build settings for web in Unity and setting the memory to 512 instead of 256 tends to solve any problems I've ever had with that, so that's a tip in case you haven't done that. c:

Good work!

wfmg 2018-12-30 19:44

@ava-skoog Thank you very much! I appreciate the advice and criticism a lot! I enjoyed your entry very much! LD is a great opportunity to learn, and you've just taught me a fair deal!