CaseyH

Resist and Persist by conrad123 2018-12-06T03:34:48Z

Solid shooting and flying mechanics, fun gameplay, relaxing but moody music, very nice-looking art. I enjoyed this game.

I don't really feel very motivated by the notion of "getting as much score as possible" when there is no real objective or win condition. Score is kind of just an arbitrary number to me.

It didn't really feel like I was sacrificing anything, to be honest. It felt more like "wait until the planet's health is real low, then destroy it so you don't lose extra points".

But the combination of audio and art was very pleasing for me. It's a relaxing game to play, and it plays very well, especially considering the time constraint. Well done!

Santaur's Elf Cola by tweedle 2018-12-07T00:30:22Z

Fun concept, polished art and audio, music feels right, fun elf demise noises, and I appreciate the time put into actually explaining the game and setting it up inside the game instead of in a description box. Couldn't see any technical glitches or hiccups in my playthroughs.

A little oddly balanced. I managed to get somewhere around 52 escaped and 208 sacrificed just by putting spike traps on top of each doorway and beside each doorway, constantly refreshing them when they expired. Most elves died to a single trap before stepping off of it, and the ones that came in from above just fell on top of the trap and got stuck (which was funny and appeased the serial killer in me, but still).

I'm impressed that this came out of a 3-day challenge. Nice job!

The Cult by mmason 2018-12-07T02:45:18Z

I dig your art style. Music is nice, moody but not overbearing. Nice to see some polished platforming physics, but I feel like it's a little too slippery for such tight platforming.

Playing on the web version, I killed myself when switching tabs here and there (Ctrl + Tab, but Ctrl kills yourself).

Wall jumping mechanic is kind of different. Instead of using it to get places after you leap off to a distant wall, it's more like something you use to gain more height right at the start of your jump. It actually kind of makes more sense; you size up your jump and kick off the walls to make it happen, and once you get a certain amount of gravity or velocity, there isn't much you can do to stop it. It makes you think more about how to approach your 8bit platformer parkour. But I still kind of prefer wall jumping in a more traditional sense because it's just...more flexible and fun, I guess.

I feel like using torches and lamps as background art, then using similar-looking campfires as instant death is kind of deceptive hah. I kept walking into campfires accidentally because I forget they're not background art like the rest.

I don't really understand the point of the game. Maybe I didn't get far enough. Still, the mood, atmosphere, and dialog were very entertaining and interesting to me. You built an intriguing world in such a short duration.

---

*NPC: "careful, fire can get pretty hot"*

*me: "you don't fuckin say...oops I touched the fire"*

DUSKHEARTH by Lance Krasniqi 2018-12-05T14:30:37Z

I like the art and the concept for this game. Now that you have more time to put into it, I could see it growing into something pretty cool.

If you had to actually plot out their villages and make decisions about how they run their civilization, *and* make decisions on cards to sacrifice, then I could see it being super interesting.

Letting the player get closer to the action to decide what the village does in order to expand (designate X people to hunt, Y to farm, Z to build, etc.) could be fun.

As it is now, it kind of lacks gameplay. Others have said this already so I won't harp on about it, but I didn't get the impression that my decisions made a difference. The only thing I felt could cause a real problem would be if the gods chose that card that set a house on fire, because I always seemed to have plenty livestock and plenty trees, and the water never came close to the houses, but I always only had 1 or 2 houses at a time (unless I just didn't see the others).

But hey, 3 days is a ridiculously low amount of time to make a game, and you made something pretty impressive in that time.

When I first started playing I thought that the 'sacrificed' cards were cards I was playing, and the cards with two opposite effects (e.g. "population grows more rapidly or starts dwindling") would do the positive effect if I played them, and the negative effect if the gods played them.

Then I realized I was just discarding things I didn't want the gods to use (right?).

Maybe play with the idea of making every card two-sided like that, and the player actually plays the good side themselves every so often, but must choose a card to play the bad side every now and then? Then the player is somewhat in control of the situation.

All in all, good job and I'm interested in where this goes, if you keep working on it!

*P.S.: Does the rain falling and water expanding actually do anything? Maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention. I'm assuming you didn't have time to put rainfall in, or perhaps it doesn't show well in the WebGL version?*

Vitality! by Avi 2018-12-04T22:18:20Z

Nice job, the game is pretty fun! Nothing like some good old shooting hordes of enemies. I could see it being built upon in the future with new enemy types and whatnot.

Difficulty is a bit weird. I started with reserve hearts scattered over the floor while I stood still and gunned down every cube that showed up. I ended circling the enemies with no spirit left (I could definitely notice the ratio of health to spirit changing, as you mentioned). Even then, it isn't really that *difficult*, per se; you can mostly outrun them while shooting them.

I think the main thing in that regard is just a lack of mechanics. Games where the enemies simply home in on you and touch you to damage you tend to fall a little flat in engagement. If you're too slow, it's unfair; if you're to fast, it's tedious and too easy.

Given some differences in types of enemies and some extra mechanics (and more than 3 days to make the game, of course), I could see it being challenging in a more meaningful way.

The sound was nice. I like the kick in the level 1 weapon sound; honestly, it felt nicer to use than the stronger weapons just because it had more "oomph" to it.

The environment is somewhat hard to see. Enemies, being all neon-bright, were super easy to spot and had great contrast, but the player and the pillars in the environment were kind of hard to keep track of.

All in all, good job! It controls and plays well, especially considering the time frame!

*P.S.: I managed to get my movement stuck early on; not sure how I did it, but some combination of using WASD and arrow keys at once caused me to be stuck moving diagonally up-right even when I released the keys. I fixed it by pushing them at the same time a bunch until it worked.*

A Town of Questionable Morals by CaseyH 2018-12-04T21:10:28Z

@avi Oops, sorry about that! Should be fixed now; if not, please let me know. Also, I uploaded a web browser version if you'd rather try that.

Thanks for the heads up!

A Town of Questionable Morals by CaseyH 2018-12-04T21:47:05Z

@avi Go [here](https://gamejolt.com/games/a_town_of_questionable_morals/383036) and hit the "Play" button with the green border, next to the Download button.

If you're gonna play in the Web browser, don't press F to fullscreen (it's glitched). Just use that little button in the bottom-right of the web player.

A Town of Questionable Morals by CaseyH 2018-12-05T00:48:28Z

@avi Thank you for the kind words and feedback! Glad you enjoyed it!

My brother actually suggested that, with the shaking of the camera and the way the player comes out flashing with hit invulnerability, it could be seen like you're beating the ladies until they give up their baby. I'm not sure which is worse...

The most I've gotten is 36 babies, but I want to try for more... The time is actually glitched right now. I thought I had fixed it, but it's actually telling you how long you've been playing the game, not how long the last run was. Oops. I may try to fix that in a bit (is it legal to fix glitches this late?)

And you are correct about the specters; every 3 babies sacrificed = 1 more specter spawned. It gets pretty ridiculous after a while...

As for the music, I pretty much ran out of time. I only put the sound effects in during the last 2 hours, so even they barely made it! And I didn't want to just throw any old publicly-licensed music in because I wanted to be able to say "I made all this myself!"

I've always wanted to get into making music, though. I appreciate the advice on where to get started. I'll check it out. Thank you!

@keldy Thank you, happy to see you liked it!

A Town of Questionable Morals by CaseyH 2018-12-06T02:33:52Z

Thanks everyone, glad to hear people are enjoying it!

@danilo-freire I didn't even know the game could support controllers, to be honest...I didn't explicitly support them because I've never dealt with it before, and a game made in 72 hours needs as few learning curves as possible lol. If I take this game anywhere else, I'll try to support controllers better.

A Town of Questionable Morals by CaseyH 2018-12-06T04:06:17Z

@simon-strange Because your god will kill you if you don't sac a baby in 30 seconds. Also sex is fun, babies aren't (depending on who you ask).

As for a vertical element, I actually intended for there to be several 'stands' that you could jump on that had further houses on them (basically two background, vertical pillars holding up a foreground, horizontal slab of tiles you can jump on; these can be layered on each other to build up multiple stories).

But I kind of ran out of time and the added complications of implementing this didn't seem worth the trade, I guess. The flying specters would have to adapt to the player's vertical position as they jumped up stands; altars would have to be accessible from any level or it'd get annoying; etc.

Ultimately I decided to simplify like I probably should've done from the start, and just give one clear objective and one small level to work with.

@hygon not good enough, try harder.

I'm joking, of course. Thanks for the feedback and thanks for playing, everyone!

A Town of Questionable Morals by CaseyH 2018-12-07T00:17:26Z

@sethr Yep, I intended to do the compo, but I had all these other ideas for mechanics, tried implementing stuff, found out it wasn't fun, realized it was too late to shape it up in time, and decided to just pull out and use the extra day. I would've liked to have made it for the compo (now I'm competing against all these 3- or 4-man teams!) but all in all I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

I initially had the idea that the player would sac babies during the day, then the specters come at night and you have to shoot fireballs at them to kill them. But basic platforming + shooting fireballs wasn't very fun. I implemented all that, and then thought "damn this sucks" and concluded on a tighter, more focused objective. I have a lot of trouble with scope, which is part of the reason why I decided to do LD (it forces you to tone it down, suck it up, and ship something).

As for the controls, I've fumbled over them a fair few times myself. I'll probably switch it to Up/W to jump.

Also I'm sorry about your love life lol

Thanks!

A Town of Questionable Morals by CaseyH 2018-12-07T01:33:47Z

@jlv Wow, thank you very much!

You're right about the audio, it's pretty bare. I wanted a whistling noise when the player first opened the door (to alert the ladies *what time it is*) and some door banging open and shut noises, baby noises, etc. but I actually only got the sound in during the last like, hour and a half.

I really like the idea of alerting the player when babies are born with some distinct sound. Thank you!

A Town of Questionable Morals by CaseyH 2018-12-08T13:55:52Z

@peachtreeoath Haha, well done!

I did think that would be a pretty solid strategy: pile babies up near an altar, throw one in every now and then. I never had the patience to do it myself though.

Because of that, I considered cutting the 'judgment' mechanic out completely and making it so specters come automatically based on time, instead of coming every 3 babies sacrificed. That way, this strategy isn't as useful and the player is rewarded more for efficiently making babies and moving around the town.

After all, the main point of judgment was to prevent the player from stockpiling babies on the ground near an altar for 5 minutes and then chucking them all in at once. If specters come automatically every X seconds, this isn't a problem anymore, and you might as well sac every baby as soon as you can.

Keep Vlad Alive by zimny11 2020-04-20T02:44:02Z

EDIT

OK I figured out from other comments how to play it (I also thought you meant right-click in Story mode, and also did not realize I could click the bean bag).

A tutorial would have been nice. If you don't have time to put one in the game, it'd help a lot to at least put up some instructions here or on the itch page.

Interesting mix of mechanics with the way the different plants have to be organized. A solid little farming simulator. Music got pretty repetitive, but fit the mood.

Kill the undead - keep her alive (for as long as you can) by Gaspar Laprida 2020-04-20T02:23:07Z

Solid if a bit bare. It's satisfying to shoot the zombies. I like how you have to constantly be on your toes about the best time to reload.

But the mouse movement is pretty clunky and unnatural. I would've liked it better if you just used WASD or the arrow keys to scroll the camera. It would probably be really easy if it was like that though. I kind of get it if you were trying to make the mouse movement finicky to sort of 'simulate the nerves', but since it's the main mechanic, it'd be nice if it was a bit...nicer?

The shooting noise sounds more like popping some bubble wrap. I feel like it could use a bit more of a kick to it.

All in all, not bad at all for such a short time span!

Wisp by Squeg Inc. 2020-04-20T02:39:38Z

I liked the art - pretty and stylish. Some more 'oomph' when guns are fired and when bullets strike enemies would make it a lot more satisfying to play (barrel flashes, 'splashes' of wispy matter when bullets pass through enemies, stuff like that). I like the way enemies kind of 'lose matter' as they take damage. I like the enemy spawning in effect, too.

Gameplay was interestingly tight. A bit bare, but the way it's balanced does a lot with a simple setup. I feel like it's almost bad to pick up the power-ups that make you shoot faster, because you end up getting swarmed by enemies, and you die really fast (a couple of those explosive guys spawning on you is almost enough to kill you!) It might even be easier to get a high score if you ignore them as long as possible.

The music is nice (although the volume slider doesn't appear to work?) Some sound effects for shooting and enemies blowing up would've added a lot.

This is an impressive game to be made in 2 days, though. Nicely done!